Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation
Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Li Yao returned to the city with an overwhelming sense of joy. This time, his plans went unexpectedly smoothly. He had received all of the Boss’s Exp, and his Exp bar skyrocketed by 38%. Even if he were to kill a few hundred Elite mobs, he still would not gain this much Exp.
Beep beep beep beep…
Li Yao was about to find a place to take a good look at the loot when the messages kept coming.
Li Yao took a peek, it was from AdorkableTong.
“Bad guy! You’re a bad guy Big Bro!”
Tong was displeased and began barking at Li Yao as soon as the call got through.
Li Yao was puzzled. “Who is it that made you upset this time?”
“Hmph, I’m talking about you! You’re a big bad guy, I will never talk to you again!” Tong was clearly angry since she was just a child.
Li Yao was even more confused. “Ahem, what did I do this time that made you so angry?”
“You’re such a betrayer. You’ve forgotten the promise you made to me,” said Tong unhappily. “Yesterday, you promised to bring me along to future Boss fights, now you’ve forgotten the promise in less than a day! I’m going to expose you in the forum now, you heartless man! I’ll let everyone know that you’re StarFire and that you’re tricking them!” Tong exclaimed without even giving Li Yao the chance to talk.
Li Yao could not stop laughing. What in the world.
“You’re a Gnome, even if I came to you, would you be able to enter Elven area?” Li Yao asked. Novice villages were divided based on different races. Other than special tasks, it would be difficult to cross to others’ areas.
“Excuses. I told you that the old man that teaches me skills could have sent me there. You even forgot about that.”
“Next time, next time I will definitely bring you along.” Li Yao smiled. This little girl was too quirky and eccentric, was this really the Shaman that had successfully apotheosized ten years in the future? Li Yao began to question.
“Don’t bother next time, I’m already in your novice village. From now on, I’ll just follow you around. Let’s see what you will do now.” She then continued, “Besides, I brought along a pretty lady. If you don’t come and look for us, I’m going to kidnap her and you will never see her again.”
Li Yao tried to connect the dots in his mind. His guess was that the lady could be HundredFaceWitch. “In that case, come to the hotel. We will meet there.”
World of Ancient Gods had become too influential and its player base was too large. Li Yao did not intend to be a solo player forever. He planned to search for past solo players or experts that had not joined any forces as it was part of his goals.
Tong would become the strongest Shaman player in the future. Hence, Li Yao would not want to push her away. If he wanted to grind mobs, it would be very troublesome if there were no strong players in his team.
Even if he wanted to deal with a big force, it would be very difficult for him to do it alone.
Li Yao and AdorkableTong agreed to go directly to the hotel. It was now daytime in the game, and the hotel was sparkling clean. Other than two women, there was no one else inside. The boss lady was slouching on her own seat lazily, she did not greet Li Yao when he entered.
“Big Bro, over here!” AdorkableTong waved at Li Yao.
Li Yao and HundredFaceWitch gave each other a nod, and he sat opposite them.
“That’s too good to be true, you just took down another Boss! What’s up with Getaway Studios?” HundredFaceWitch asked.
Li Yao did not hide the news from them either. “What’s there to say, when the Boss was low on Health, they came out of nowhere to steal my kill. But they were super unlucky as there was another Boss inside of the Puppet Boss. They were completely obliterated, so I took matters into my own hands and killed the Boss.”
“That’s it?” Witch frowned. She knew things were not as simple as Li Yao had explained. Although she knew about Li Yao’s real-life identity, she was still in distress. She did not know how to handle the relationship between them.
If she told Li Yao directly who she really was, the outcome would be unpredictable. But covering up her identity was not the right way either. If one day they managed to make things right, this cover-up would bring in new troubles.
“Yeah, that’s it.”
Players’ appearances would change upon entering the game. If the player were a beauty with 90% appearance rating, her in-game character’s appearance would also have a 90% rating.
In front of Li Yao, HundredFaceWitch was a beautiful lady, and there was a special vibe about her.
Only that Li Yao was no longer that same young man he was before. He would not think of wanting something special to happen between the both of them just because she was a beautiful woman.
Besides, they did not know each other that well yet. In his previous life, he had no memory of this person. It was natural for him to not say much.
“Members from Getaway Studios are so obnoxious! Do they think it is okay to bully solo players? Hmph! They deserved their deaths.” AdorkableTong raised her tiny fists. Then she turned to Li Yao, “Oh by the way, let’s not talk about other things for now. What loot did the Boss drop? Hurry, hurry, I wanna see it.”
Li Yao shrugged, “I was in a hurry and did not get the chance to check, let’s take a look now.”
Li Yao opened up his backpack. The first thing he saw was a sheepskin scroll and he could not wait to take it out. He caressed the scroll. He knew what it was without even looking inside.
“What is this, a skill book?” Tong asked. “But skill books don’t look like this.”
Li Yao shared the item’s stats to the bunch.
Mogor Mine Title Deed: The deed holder will possess the Mogor Mine, and the title is transferrable to other players if agreed by the former owner. 30% of the ores harvested will belong to the mine owner.
In World of Ancient Gods, mine caves were open to all. Mine owners could use machines to collect ores, and the proceeds would be owned by the owners themselves. Other adventurers were allowed to enter the mine to collect ores, but 30% of their harvest would go to the owner.
Needless to say, this was just a small mine. Medium to big mines were generally controlled by various big forces.
Besides, this contract only allowed Li Yao to obtain the titleship of this mine cave in this novice village, but not in other mirrored villages. This contract was exclusive, and only Li Yao had it in his hands.
At the novice village that Li Yao was in, the mine cave was cleared out. The Boss would not respawn in the area anymore.
Moreover, Li Yao could even recruit workers for mining, except that there were too many mobs on the way. Transportation for the ores might be a difficult problem and no NPC would apply for it.
However, players could start mining in the cave now. When Li Yao owns a guild in the future, he could use the mine as a stronghold. It was part of his property now, but he could certainly choose not to build it up for now.
After listening to Li Yao’s simple explanation, Tong said, “Big Bro, you have won the lottery this time! Now that ores are high in demand, if you work it well you will make a fortune!”
“Not bad. From what I know, forget about mining ores, many classes require a lot of ore. Unfortunately, the ore supply in the market is too low, so maybe you should put more attention to it. Maybe you can work with a big guild and start running the mine first, you can earn quite a bit from it.” Witch advised Li Yao in fear that he would not make good use of this opportunity.
Li Yao felt a jolt in his heart, his original plan was to post this in the forum to invite ordinary players to mine in his cave, which might turn out to be quite disorganized. If he were to collaborate with a big guild, not only would everything run in an orderly fashion, he could also charge the guild a huge fee.
The point was that, although he was still low in proficiency, he could still do some simple repairment on the mine’s machinery. It would make his mining more efficient.
“I’ll contact a guild.” Li Yao gave her a serious nod, then he took out the second item. It was a round bead, and Li Yao shared the Stats.
Heart of the Titan
Grade: Leader-tier
Effects: While crafting any mechanical puppet, insert the Heart of the Titan to receive blessing of the Titan.
Tong fiddled around with the item for a while. “What is this, it doesn’t seem like something useful.”
“With the name Titan, this sounds like something powerful, but its usage wasn’t stated clearly.”
However, Li Yao was delighted. “It sounds like something magnificent, but it’s not that incredible, though this thing is indeed precious. Let’s put it this way, learning engineering will allow players to create little pets and such, but most of these little pets are for display and non-functional. This item right here can be understood as a Template.”
“Template?” AdorkableTong’s eyes lit up, “Big Brother, this means that if you add this Heart of Titan when creating a machine, the little pet will transform into a Boss, right?”
“Yes, this Template is only dropped by mechanical monsters. The Templates are divided into Elite-tier, Leader-tier, and of course other more subtle divisions.”
Li Yao was also surprised because Leader-tier Templates were very hard to come by.
The mech-pets that Li Yao had created were all Common-tier Templates. Even though they received Li Yao’s extra attributes, they were yet considered as Elite-tier.
At that time, he thought of killing mech-mobs while trying to obtain a Mech-Chick blueprint in hopes that the mobs would drop an Elite-tier Template.
This was equivalent to bringing along a Divine pet that was even more powerful than an Elite pet. Examples of high-level Divine pets were Flaming Tortoise, Dragon, Phoenix and so on.
In his previous life, Hunter players were the fewest compared to other players. But among the total population of twenty billion people, there were two hundred to three hundred million people that played as Hunters. And amongst these masses of players, only a handful of Hunter players had a Divine pet.
Players would normally depend on their luck in acquiring a Divine pet. They might be powerful when compared to average players, but when faced with an expert, they were still considered weak.
In Li Yao’s past life, he was only a step away from obtaining a Divine pet. An opposing guild got a hold of the information and ruined his entire plan, leaving him in utter dismay.
One of his most powerful pets in his previous life was a Demigod Sire Battle-Soul Bear, a semi-divine pet. The fact that he was able to become a semi-divine level player was all thanks to that pet.
A Leader-tier Heart of the Titan would allow Li Yao to create a mech-pet with a Leader-tier Template, which could roughly be considered as a semi-divine pet. Of course, once his level was higher, he would definitely obtain a semi-divine pet.
Now, Li Yao was faced with another problem. The mech-pet blueprint he had obtained in advance was a mech-chick blueprint, and was mech-chick valuable enough to be given this Leader-tier Heart of the Titan?
“Big Bro, hurry up and take out the next item. The Boss must have dropped more than these, right?” Tong asked.
Li Yao came to his senses and proceeded to search his backpack. He took out another item, and it was a blueprint.
Li Yao looked at the blueprint in delight. He did not know that this semi-mechanical Boss not only dropped Hearts of the Titans, but also mech-pet blueprints.
Although both mech-pets and mech-puppets could be equally adopted by Li Yao as mech-pets, there was an obvious difference between the two.
Pets were used for display whereas mech-puppets were used for combat. The difference between the two was conceivable.
At that time, he did not think much but to just kill the Boss. He did not expect to get such a surprise in return.