145: Chapter 145 Points are never enough

The benefits that the [Lucky Pharmacist] specialty brought to Hu Jinsi were solid and tangible.

Transfer invitations, school silence, and the team living in peace—every single item was well worth the price.

However, the side effects trailing behind those benefits were equally obvious.

He could no longer immerse himself in dungeons heart and soul to farm points like before.

Now, almost every time he woke up, several unread messages would pile up on his terminal.

Some were orders from acquaintances, some were from strangers introduced by acquaintances, and others were simply anonymous purchase requests from people who somehow got his contact information.

Hu Jinsi glanced over them and directly deleted those with whom he had no intersection whatsoever, but even after excluding them, the number of remaining orders each week was still quite large.

Between this week's two dungeon CDs, in that short twenty-four-hour gap, he spent nearly half his time holed up in the public pharmaceutical room.

Brewing medicine, portioning, labeling, and checking order lists—going through the entire workflow left him not only with a sore back and aching limbs, but also severely exhausted mentally.

Fortunately, every time he finished a bottle of potion, that familiar prompt would pop up in his field of vision: Professional Experience +1.

Although the numbers were pitifully small, the sheer volume was overwhelming.

After brewing several thousand bottles, the experience bar could still nudge forward by a small fraction.

Many a little makes a mickle; Hu Jinsi understood this logic.

But to actually have him repeat this mechanical labor day after day, he still couldn't help but feel a bit of respect for classmates who chose living professions.

At least he still had dungeons to run and battles to fight; what about living professionals?

Every day when they opened their eyes, it was the same work, the same workflow, the same material ratios, day after day, year after year.

Hu Jinsi stared at the potion bottle in his hand, suddenly feeling somewhat dazed.

He recalled a joke he saw online in his past life, saying that many jobs in modern society were essentially no different from assembly line workers; they were all repetitive labor and mere cogs.

At that time, he treated it as a joke; now that he had become half a "potion assembly line worker," he actually tasted a bit of bitterness.

This was probably why some people clearly awakened a decent living profession, yet ultimately chose to give it up.

Hu Jinsi remembered that there was a girl in their cohort who awakened the doctor profession, which was envied by quite a few people during the Early Stage.

The doctor profession's healing abilities and stable social standing made it a hot commodity both inside and outside dungeons.

As a result, before the first week had even ended, she voluntarily gave it up and re-awakened a combat profession through the Awakening Stone.

At the time, Hu Jinsi didn't quite understand, but now, after continuously brewing potions in the pharmaceutical room for several hours, he could finally taste the flavor of it.

Some pursued stability and certainty, while others pursued change and excitement.

There was no superiority or inferiority; it was simply a matter of different choices.

Hu Jinsi felt he belonged to the latter; if he were made to soak in the pharmaceutical room brewing potions for a lifetime, he estimated he would go mad in less than half a year.

Hu Jinsi screwed the cap onto the last bottle of potion, leaned back in his chair, and rubbed his shoulders.

He suddenly remembered what the name of that girl who gave up the doctor profession was.

Seemed to have the surname Liu?

Or was it Liu with a different character?

He subconsciously reached for his terminal, wanting to search the class roster.

After a brief pause, he came to his senses and found that there were still nearly a thousand bottles of potions waiting to be portioned out over at the preparation table, with bottles and jars sprawled all over the desk. He sighed and temporarily suppressed the thought.

Let's talk after finishing up.

If he kept doing this, when he came back here to make medicine in a few days, he would seriously consider hiring a temporary hourly worker.

After all, having just come out of the dungeon, followed by continuous brewing and packaging, the workload was truly a bit overwhelming.

At critical moments, the Dire Wolf was useless; raising a wolf for dozens of days, only to find out when you needed to use it that it didn't have hands and was completely useless.

The equipment in the public pharmaceutical room was much worse than the set at his own home.

The heat control wasn't precise enough, and the stirrer's rotation speed was unstable, forcing Hu Jinsi to watch it the whole time and adjust it manually.

The work originally planned for two hours dragged on stubbornly to three hours before wrapping up.

He packed the finished potions box by box, then led the Dire Wolf out of the pharmaceutical room.

The afternoon sun in Haigang City was still viciously blazing, baking people's scalps numb.

Hu Jinsi glanced at the time; although the sky was still very bright and it wasn't quite time for dinner yet, he simply turned into the Silver Arch next to the Wonderful Adventure dungeon plaza.

He ordered a basic broke-guy combo each for the Dire Wolf and himself, found a seat by the window to sit down, and booked a courier pickup service.

The Dire Wolf lay beside the chair, its nose twitching as it sniffed the fried aroma drifting in the air.

After Hu Jinsi unfolded the wrapper for its burger, the guy rested its upper body on the table and began to eat.

Hu Jinsi gnawed on his burger while casually pulling out his terminal.

The moment the screen lit up, several message notifications popped out.

He first opened Lin Rui's chat window; the last message was still the one he sent today when coming out of the dungeon, and the other party hadn't replied yet.

He estimated that Lin Rui was soaking in a dungeon again, their times completely misaligned.

He swiped over to Su Wan's side, and there was indeed a new message, just sent two minutes ago.

Su Wan had recently been practicing Leoni's Movement.

Hu Jinsi knew about this set of movements; it belonged to the lingering remnants of dungeons that descended 200 years ago.

Su Wan had been practicing this set of movements even before Awakening, and her initial Awakening into the Bard profession was probably related to her long-term music practice.

However, Leoni's Movement had a special feature.

Although the tunes inside could be practiced by anyone and ordinary sheet music could be found through public channels, wanting to truly trigger the special effects of the movement required a matching Resonance Stone.

Without a Resonance Stone, no matter how skillfully practiced it was, it was just an ordinary tune, sounding at most a bit pleasant without any transcendent-level bonuses.

Su Wan being able to get her hands on a Resonance Stone this time was purely an unexpected pleasant surprise.

When she was accompanying her grandmother at her grandmother's house, an elder visiting her grandmother gave her a Resonance Stone.

That elder's original words were: "Although this Resonance Stone's ability is quite peculiar and clever, I have no use for such things anymore, so I'll leave it to you young people like Su Wan."

Hu Jinsi looked at the text on the terminal and raised an eyebrow.

Such a plot of an elder casually giving away transcendent items basically fell into the category of Protagonist Halo in novels of his past life.

But in this world, Bloodline and personal connections could indeed open up many channels that ordinary people couldn't reach.

The fact that the friend of Su Wan's family elder could pull out a Resonance Stone indicated that her family background was somewhat deeper than he previously understood.

The melody represented by the Resonance Stone in Su Wan's hands was Muddy.

From the name, one could roughly guess the effect: resonance could trigger sluggishness, slowing down the enemy's movements.

However, the special thing about Leoni's Movement was that its range of effect depended entirely on the performer's depth of understanding of this concept in their heart.

The exact same Resonance Stone, the exact same melody, could be vastly different in different people's hands.

Some could only cause a single enemy to slow down for a few seconds, while others could cause hundreds of targets within a radius of a hundred meters to simultaneously sink into a mire-like sluggishness.

This wasn't a fixed numerical setting like in the skill bar, but a subjective idealism-based ability closer to the essence.

Su Wan wrote very modestly in the message: "I just obtained this Resonance Stone [Muddy] gifted by an elder today, but because my own understanding of this power is not quite sufficient, I am still unable to trigger the ability inside the Resonance Stone."

"Although the entire movement is right there, and the musical fragments can be checked for free, how to integrate my own understanding into the music and express it still requires me to gradually put in the effort myself."

After reading it, Hu Jinsi hovered his finger over the screen for a few seconds, then replied: "Congratulations. Take your time, no rush."

He knew what Su Wan said was the truth.

Leoni's Movement was completely different from those fixed skills in the Early Stage of a profession.

Things in the skill bar, as long as they were acquired and activation conditions were met, could be used, and the effect was however much was written.

However, the ability of a Resonance Stone required the performer to truly integrate their own emotions and cognition during the performance, and attentively feel the weight of the concept of "Muddy".

The word "Muddy" superficially referred to the state of slush, swamps, and being unable to move an inch.

But thinking deeper, it could also be psychological procrastination and obstacles in action.

Su Wan's current understanding of these things was obviously not deep enough; her living environment from childhood to adulthood was relatively smooth, and having not experienced any true dilemmas, it was naturally hard for her to sing the feeling of "Muddy" down to her bones.

This kind of ability was, to some extent, closer to the professional essence of the Bard, resonating with the Laws of the world through song and performance.

By the high-tier transcendent stage, the Bard's manifestations would become even more subjective and idealistic; as long as the emotion was sincere enough, it could trigger the corresponding power.

This was also why many people said Legendary Mages were terrifying, but Legendary Bards were recognized experts at bullying noobs.

A mage's strength lay in destructive and control power, which was a hard-hitting suppression; whereas a Bard's strength lay in the fact that under legendary strength, subjective idealistic power approached the realm of spoken words becoming reality.

As spellcasters, they might not have Spells as exquisite as those compiled by Legendary Mages, nor were they like Legendary Sorcerers whose Spell output was like Bloodline instinct, but you would never know when a Legendary Bard started his performance.

However, Su Wan was obviously not at that level yet.

She hadn't even triggered the basic ability of the Resonance Stone, and was still a hundred thousand miles away from the legendary resonance of heaven and earth.

Hu Jinsi replied with a few words of encouragement and then took the initiative to end the conversation.

He knew Su Wan didn't need to accompany her grandmother tonight, but the newly acquired Resonance Stone definitely required a lot of time to practice, so he wouldn't disturb her further.

He put his terminal back into his pocket and stretched lazily, leaning against the back of the chair.

The air conditioning in the Silver Arch was blasting heavily, and the cold air blowing down from the overhead vents carried away some of the fried smell in the air.

In the direction of the dungeon plaza, people came and went.

The Dire Wolf rubbed against his calf nearby, letting out a few muffled syllables.

Hu Jinsi lowered his head to glance at it and stuffed the last piece of burger into his mouth.

The cub tilted its head up, staring longingly at the cola cup in his hand, its tail sweeping back and forth across the floor.

"You can't drink this."

Hu Jinsi raised the cup a bit higher. "Carbonated drinks; drinking them will cause osteoporosis."

The Dire Wolf whimpered two times in dissatisfaction, but still obediently lay back down.

It rested its chin on its front paws, staring half-open-eyed at the flow of people outside the window, looking completely idle.

Hu Jinsi looked at it, suddenly remembering that this cub hadn't studied yet today, and estimated that it also wanted to progress and needed a bit of recharging and studying.

He leaned against the chair back, spinning the empty cola cup in his hand, his mind beginning to calculate the next arrangements.

The delivery guy would arrive in about half an hour, and this amount of time was enough for him to handle some more matters.

Hu Jinsi threw the cola cup into the recycling bin and patted the Dire Wolf's head.

"Get up, it's time for class."

The Dire Wolf got up reluctantly, its tail drooping to the ground with a wronged expression of being exploited for labor.

Hu Jinsi ignored it, pulled his terminal out of his backpack, brought up a set of elementary school third-grade mathematics courseware, and placed it in front of the Dire Wolf.

The cub stared at the numbers and graphics jumping on the screen, its ears twitching, and let out a low whimper.

"Don't howl; there's a reward after finishing this section."

What Hu Jinsi adopted was pure cramming-style teaching; regardless of whether the Dire Wolf could understand or not, he would pour the content in first.

Anyway, this cub's intelligence was roughly no different from an adult human now, its rote memorization ability wasn't bad, and its comprehension ability depended on luck.

After watching a class period's courseware, as long as it left an impression, that was enough.

The cramming-style teaching starting from the May Day holiday had better results than Hu Jinsi expected.

At least now the Dire Wolf could understand the concept of a "dungeon".

It knew that a dungeon was an independent space with enemies, drops, and points; once inside, one had to fight, and after fighting, things could be exchanged.

As for how the dungeon's mechanism operated, or how the world consciousness pieced various fragments together, the Dire Wolf obviously couldn't understand these deep principles yet.

But Hu Jinsi didn't expect it to become a scholar either; as long as it understood basic common sense and didn't make low-level mistakes after entering the dungeon, that was enough.

"It definitely wouldn't pass an exam."

Hu Jinsi looked at the Dire Wolf staring blankly at the addition and subtraction on the screen and shook his head. "But it doesn't matter; I don't expect you to get a PhD anyway."

He himself also took out his terminal and selected a set of courseware on the legal common sense of Awakeners.

A considerable portion of the content here was what Hu Jinsi cared about himself, such as the Dire Wolf's citizenship issue, tax issues, and dungeon rights issues.

After the May Day holiday ended, Hu Jinsi specifically went to ask their head teacher, Teacher Fan, about these issues.

Teacher Fan's reply was very direct: The Dire Wolf hadn't awakened yet, and legally was regarded as a minor citizen, temporarily not needing to bear tax obligations.

But once awakened, the situation would be different.

Demonic Beasts after Awakening enjoyed the same legal status as Hu Jinsi and other human awakeners, had their own independent item space, could enter dungeons alone, and could also obtain professional experience and attribute bonuses.

Correspondingly, the obligation to pay taxes according to the Law had to be borne just the same.

Hu Jinsi was not surprised by this answer.

He had already checked quite a bit of information before asking Teacher Fan, and had a rough idea in his heart.

What truly concerned him was another matter: the Dire Wolf's career planning.

Hu Jinsi recently had a new idea, inspired by those ninjutsu in Wonderful Adventure.

Since the Dire Wolf could awaken, could it sign a Summoning Contract after Awakening?

After all, in that anime of the Eye Legend, the battles involving various summoning contracts were too classic.

Through the contractual relationship, both contracting parties could teleport to each other's side at any time via summoning / reverse summoning.

If all three members of the team could sign a summoning contract with the Dire Wolf, in many scenarios, it would be equivalent to having an alternative teleportation method. Can't beat them? Directly reverse-summon and run away. Need backup? A single thought could pull teammates right to your side.

But this idea had two key problems that could not be resolved.

First, does a Dire Wolf belong to the "Spirit Beasts" recognized by summoning contracts? Are Demonic Beasts and Spirit Beasts the same concept? Are there any relevant definition standards in this world? Hu Jinsi searched around for information and didn't find a clear answer.

Second, where does the summoning contract come from? In the [Wonderful Adventure] dungeon, Hu Jinsi speculated that there was a high probability of finding related exchange items, after all, there were all sorts of weird things in the dungeon. But he wasn't too sure whether ninjas originating from the Mist Hidden Village had summoning contracts. The manga originally had very little description of this village, and summoning jutsu almost never appeared directly.

None of these questions had answers for the time being. Hu Jinsi could only write down the thought first and pay more attention to the exchange list the next time he entered the dungeon to see if there were any relevant clues.

If worst came to worst, he could only work harder to explore; after all, hidden exchange lists weren't just the one Hu Jinsi was currently seeing. At least he had also seen a suspected Big Mom Pirates exchange list in a post where someone was showing off on the forum.

He took out his terminal and created a new entry in his memo: "Summoning Contract? Source: Wonderful Adventure Exchange / Other Dungeons. Needs Confirmation: 1. Whether the Dire Wolf counts as a Spirit Beast; 2. Whether all three team members can sign simultaneously."

...

The Dire Wolf yawned beside him, its tongue curling over its nose. It had been watching videos for nearly an hour, and had clearly reached the limit of its attention span. Hu Jinsi put away his terminal and patted its head.

"Alright, class dismissed. Rest for ten minutes, then continue."

Hearing the word "continue", the Dire Wolf's ears instantly drooped, its entire face full of reluctance. It lay on the ground, covering its eyes with its front paws, stealing glances at Hu Jinsi's reaction through the gaps between its paws. Hu Jinsi looked back at it expressionlessly. The man and the wolf stared at each other for three seconds before the Dire Wolf conceded first, slowly crawling up with its tail hanging down listlessly.

"Don't act pitiful." Hu Jinsi pulled up his terminal again. "After your Awakening, all these things will have to be used. If you don't learn now, you'll be the one suffering losses when entering dungeons in the future."

Hu Jinsi glanced at the time; nearly an hour and a half had passed since he booked the courier. There were no new messages on the screen, and not even a shadow of the delivery guy could be seen. Frowning, he took out his terminal and made a phone call.

"Hello, hi, I booked a pickup at six o'clock on my end. It's almost seven now, when are you guys going to arrive?"

A flurry of noisy background sounds came from the other end of the phone, mixed with the roar of a motorcycle engine and the howling of the wind through a microphone. The delivery guy's voice was intermittent: "Sorry, bro, traffic is blocked ahead, and there's another package to deliver. Wait another half an hour, I'll definitely arrive within half an hour."

Hu Jinsi hung up the phone and sighed helplessly. Half an hour wasn't long, but it wasn't short either; waiting idly was also a waste of time. He simply took out the items in his backpack one by one to check them, and began organizing the various items from the past two CDs that he hadn't had time to process yet.

The basic weapon drops from the [Wonderful Adventure] dungeon were indeed quite numerous. Short swords, scimitars, tabar axes, maces, cleavers, longswords, obsidian spears—all kinds of cold weapons were piled all over the floor. However, the basic attributes of these equipment were generally mediocre; even vanilla equipment in most dungeons of the same Rank was slightly higher than them.

Hu Jinsi had recycled them all into points inside the dungeon; after all, with their poor attributes, taking them out to sell wouldn't fetch much money anyway. Converting them into points was better than taking up backpack slots.

The reason why these weapons with mediocre attributes could still attract players was because [Wonderful Adventure] had a unique mechanic: equipment upgrading. One of the sponsors in the dungeon provided equipment upgrade services, allowing players to spend points to enhance dropped equipment step-by-step, up to a maximum of Rank 8.

Although the weapons after being fully upgraded couldn't compare to top-tier equipment that came with four or five special effects by default, they were at least a cut above the equipment in most people's hands that only had one or two special effects.

Hu Jinsi didn't know which game this pay-to-win routine was learned from, but the effect was indeed remarkable. During this summer period, the flow of people at the entrance of the [Wonderful Adventure] dungeon was noticeably much more than during Qingming, and many professional players with average equipment came specifically targeting this upgrade System.

After all, for people with less-than-ideal equipment, a weapon that could be steadily enhanced to max level had a much higher cost-performance ratio than gambling on drops.

Moreover, the types of equipment in the dungeon were extremely rich, ranging from various cold weapons to gunpowder weapons like pistols, rifles, and shotguns, to weird and wonderful items like raptor claws, giant crab pincers, and shaman staves—everything you could possibly want. There was always one that suited your class and combat style.

Hu Jinsi pulled out two unprocessed pieces of equipment from his backpack and placed them on the table.

One was a [Bamboo Cane], and the other was an [Ankylosaurus Shield]. Both were unupgraded vanilla versions, but he had already looked up their max-level effects in the forum's strategy posts.

[Bamboo Cane · Max-Level Refined] (Lv8 Max-Level Vanilla)

[Type: +1 Staff / Magical Weapon]

[Damage: 8–12 / Blunt]

[Bamboo Forest Adaptation: Stamina consumption is reduced under jungle and bamboo forest terrains.]

[Heavy Sweep: After attacking, there is a probability of causing the enemy to fall into a Weakness state.]

[Countershock Block: Gain 8 points of shield every 6 seconds. When the shield shatters, there is a probability of reflecting 1/4 of the damage back to the attacker.]

---

[Ankylosaurus Shield · Max-Level Refined] (Lv8 Max-Level Vanilla)

[Type: +1 Heavy Shield / Alien Shield]

[Defense Bonus: +4]

[Damage: 10–16 / Blunt]

[Beast Protection: When attacked by beast and behemoth-class enemies, damage taken is permanently reduced by 2 points.]

[Dragonbone Countershock: Whenever successfully blocking an enemy attack, there is a high probability of triggering Dragonbone Countershock, reflecting 4–8 points of blunt damage back to the attacker. For behemoth and reptilian enemies, the reflected damage is doubled.]

[Hard-Shell Shield Bash: After landing a melee hit with this shield on a target, there is a probability of causing the target to fall into a Slow and Stiff state, reducing their attack speed and movement speed.]

---

Hu Jinsi weighed the Bamboo Cane in his hand and swung it twice. The feel was alright, but the combat style didn't quite match his routine. This thing leaned more towards defensive counterattacks, requiring cooperation with blocking and counterattacking rhythms to use. Meanwhile, Hu Jinsi's current fighting style was high-speed entry, burst output, and flexible shifting; taking this cane would instead tie his hands and feet.

But the Ankylosaurus Shield was different. After maxing out, it had a +4 defense bonus, plus three special effects: Beast Protection, Dragonbone Countershock, and Hard-Shell Shield Bash. No matter how you looked at it, it was a quite solid heavy shield. Lin Rui's genre path relied heavily on the shield's attributes and effects, and this Ankylosaurus Shield's attributes highly matched his class requirements.

The problem was that Lin Rui still hadn't replied to the message. Hu Jinsi had sent him a message right after coming out of the dungeon in the afternoon, introducing the Ankylosaurus Shield and the dungeon's situation, but the other party hadn't made a sound so far. He estimated that Lin Rui was probably grinding in the dungeon so intensely that he completely couldn't look at his terminal.

Equipment in [Wonderful Adventure] had a rule: once upgrading started, it could no longer be traded. Therefore, the unupgraded vanilla Ankylosaurus Shield currently in Hu Jinsi's hands could only be kept for Lin Rui first. When he replied and confirmed he wanted this shield, they would decide whether to mail it over or wait for him to pick it up in person.

...

Besides the upgrade System, the dungeon's equipment also had prefix-grade distinctions. The most basic was "Vanilla", above Vanilla was "Rare", further up was "Overgrown / Corrupted", and the top layer was "Legendary".

Equipment with the "Rare" prefix had slightly higher attributes than Vanilla, but no new special effects. Equipment with the "Overgrown / Corrupted" prefix gained one positive buff and one negative cost, where risk and reward coexisted.

As for equipment with the "Legendary" header, it directly gained an independent exclusive special effect, and there was a high probability that it was an unconditional passive trigger without requiring any extra operations.

In short, [Wonderful Adventure] was a dungeon where your points always had a place to be spent. Equipment upgrades, skill exchanges, item purchases, pet training, pet grooming, and so on; the money-spending items were dazzling in variety, and there was always one that could make you open your wallet.

Hu Jinsi put the Bamboo Cane and Ankylosaurus Shield back into his backpack, and his gaze fell onto his own skill panel. For him, updating skills was always a higher priority than updating equipment. Equipment was merely external objects; skills were the foundation. Unless one day his luck exploded and he directly picked up a [Legendary Bamboo Cane], he might then consider tilting his resources toward equipment.

But that kind of thing was just nice to think about. Those who understood drop rates of Legendary equipment understood them; he had run dungeons so many times and hadn't even seen a single strand of Legendary hair.

...

The delivery guy finally arrived, ten minutes later than the promised half hour. Hu Jinsi didn't say anything, moved the stacked potion boxes onto the other party's electric tricycle, checked the manifest, and signed it. The cub followed at his feet, watching the boxes filled with potions being hauled away, its nose twitching as if sniffing some familiar scent.

"Let's go, back to the dungeon."

Hu Jinsi patted the Dire Wolf's head and turned to walk towards the direction of the dungeon plaza.

In the blink of an eye, another week passed.

During this week, Hu Jinsi's life was basically fixed, switching between two modes: entering the dungeon to grind points, and coming out to brew potions and ship goods. During that short gap in the middle, he spent another half a day soaking in the public pharmacy room, finishing off the backlogged orders.

The only change worth mentioning was that his and Lin Rui's schedules finally aligned.

That night, just as Hu Jinsi came out of the dungeon, Lin Rui's reply popped up on his terminal. The two chatted on the phone for nearly twenty minutes, and Hu Jinsi detailed the attributes of the Ankylosaurus Shield and the situation of the [Wonderful Adventure] dungeon. The background noise on Lin Rui's end was noisy; he was probably answering the phone at a dining table.

"I'll keep the shield for you first. If you're sure you want it, I'll have a courier send it over tomorrow," Hu Jinsi said.

"Want it, definitely want it." Lin Rui's voice carried a hint of fatigue, but his tone was very firm. "But I can't break away from my side for the time being. I plan to soak in Daibei City for the entire month of July, grinding [Unparalleled Hulao Pass]."

Hu Jinsi calculated the time and understood Lin Rui's choice. The Soldier class had a nearly BUG-like reward mechanic in the [Unparalleled Hulao Pass] dungeon. As long as one survived for a full seventy-two hours in the dungeon, they could get 7,200 points of Soldier class experience for free.

Entering the dungeon twice a week meant 14,400 points. Ascending from Level 16 to Level 17 required a total of 64,000 points of experience, which meant that as long as Lin Rui soaked in Hulao Pass for the entire month of July, relying solely on survival rewards plus dungeon combat experience, it was enough to steadily level up.

This kind of opportunity was hard to come by; no matter who it was, they wouldn't give it up.

As for the [Spirit Sword] skill from the [Dark Martial Arts Tournament] and the Ankylosaurus Shield from [Wonderful Adventure], Lin Rui planned to postpone dealing with them until August. Anyway, since the shield was confirmed to be wanted, Hu Jinsi directly had a courier send it over, conveniently attaching a handwritten equipment attribute description. Although sending messages on the terminal was more convenient, a guy like Lin Rui probably wouldn't bother checking messages once entering a dungeon, so a paper description was more reliable.

...

On Hu Jinsi's own end, his Rank had already reached Rank 18. The further back it went, the more exaggerated the experience requirement became; the experience bar from Rank 17 to Rank 18 made his scalp tingle just looking at it. But at least being able to see that hopeless numerical value in itself showed that he was ahead of most people.

Of course, he certainly wasn't the fastest in this year's batch in Wei City.

That pair of twins from [No. 3 High School], the [Draconic Sorcerer] and the [Dragon Scion], had already pushed their Ranks to Rank 18 before the summer vacation. The characteristics of these two classes were deeply bound to the [Dragon Clan] Bloodline; as long as they absorbed dragon blood, their class experience would increase, and their leveling speed was ridiculously fast. Therefore, before the end of their second year of high school, the two of them had already broken through Rank 18 together, leaving their peers far behind.

Back when they flipped over in the [Lakeside Town] dungeon, the root cause was also this insatiable leveling method. The [Black Whelp] dragon blood was of decent quality and large in quantity, and the twins wanted to rely on themselves to be self-sufficient and reduce some of their debt.

As a result, they underestimated the gathering speed of the whelp swarm and were surrounded dead on. In the end, they had to use a Tier-2 forced teleportation talisman to run for their lives. That gadget was much more expensive than dragon blood; it was equivalent to working for nothing and even paying out of pocket.

The student loans approved for them by the school rolled interest upon interest, causing them to owe more and more. But even if they were deep in debt, [No. 3 High School] would scrape together every last resource to ensure these two people reached Rank 30 before graduation. As long as the [Draconic Sorcerer] and the [Dragon Scion] grew up, the return on investment would far exceed the input; the school could never give up potential stocks of this level.

Between Hu Jinsi and these two people, there was no comparability from the very beginning. The path he walked was one where he climbed up step by step with his own down-to-earth efforts; there were no shortcuts and no cheats. But at least, this path was chosen by himself, and every single step was walked solidly.