Regardless of the players’ feelings, the monster wave arrived right on schedule.
The moment 24:00 arrived, He Miaomiao heard messy footsteps echoing from the distance, followed closely by the tinkling chime of bells along the alert line 20 meters away.
She had long been standing in the yard, watching with her own eyes as the first wave of monsters surged over.
Leading the charge was a pack of Level 0 Corrupted Rabbits; He Miaomiao glanced over, estimating around 20 of them.
Following right behind was a pack of Level 1 Corrupted Dogs—smaller in number than the rabbits, but far more menacing in momentum. Barking loudly one after another, black drool dripped from their maws, looking as if they wanted to tear the player to shreds.
She opened the wooden fence, stepping out to greet them proactively.
The rampaging monsters were instantly drawn by her fresh human scent, launching attacks toward her one after another.
Yet just like the battle this afternoon, not a single one could breach He Miaomiao’s defense.
[Raw Rabbit Meat ×20, Raw Dog Meat ×10!]
[Raw Rabbit Meat ×20, Raw Dog Meat ×10! (Critical Hit)]
All of them were free delivery.
“Woof! Woof!”
“Awoo—”
Having just taken down the final Corrupted Dog, new monsters rushed forward.
Level 1 Corrupted Dogs and Level 2 Corrupted Wolves.
Raw Dog Meat ×50, Raw Wolf Meat ×30, Beast Hide ×30
Effortless.
The third wave: Level 2 Corrupted Wolves and Level 3 Corrupted Crows.
The Corrupted Crows were extremely fast, wielding wings to attack from the air while inflicting a blindness effect. Appearing in a pack of 20 at once and coordinating with the Corrupted Wolves to launch ambushes, they posed a significant threat—if this had been before today.
The Corrupted Crows traded part of their health and attack power for high agility, the consequence being that they couldn’t breach He Miaomiao’s defense at all. Their hits felt even less painful than the Corrupted Wolves’, no matter how fast they were.
Besides, the crows’ agility was no match for He Miaomiao’s current stats anyway.
The only hassle was that the crows were airborne, making them unreachable with her Dual Blades.
She was in no rush, slaying Corrupted Wolves with her Dual Blades on one hand while using the crows as moving targets to practice the accuracy of her Sparks Slash on the other.
It had to be said that hitting airborne monsters was indeed slightly trickier than hitting ground-running ones, making it easy to miss. It was only because the Corrupted Crows possessed low intelligence—focusing single-mindedly on fierce attacks without bothering to dodge much—that He Miaomiao didn’t need to spend significantly more time.
Raw Wolf Meat ×30, Beast Hide ×30, Feather ×80
The fourth wave was still Level 2 Corrupted Wolves and Level 3 Corrupted Crows, only their numbers had increased.
Raw Wolf Meat ×60, Beast Hide ×60, Feather ×100
Even He Miaomiao had to exert some effort before clearing them out.
The fifth wave.
What He Miaomiao spotted first were 15 crows flying over rapidly, along with 30 wolves sprinting forward.
“Something’s wrong.”
Why was the wolf count identical to the previous wave, while the crow count had actually decreased instead?
She hardly believed the monsters would suddenly soft-hearted toward players and secretly lower the difficulty.
Fighting while retreating, He Miaomiao surveyed her surroundings at the same time. However, the swarming wolf pack and swooping crows obstructed her sightline.
This made her even more certain there was a trap involved.
[Durability -250!]
He Miaomiao retreated to defend immediately, only then discovering that the burrowing Corrupted Giant Rats had actually used the cover of the wolves and crows to sneak close to the safehouse and attack it frantically.
10 of them in total; attacking together could deal up to 250 damage!
A Level 0 Safehouse had a total Durability of only 100, incapable of enduring even a single volley.
He Miaomiao cast Sparks Slash.
High in attack power as she was, Sparks Slash dealt a full 156 damage, yet killing a single giant rat still required following up with an 84-damage basic attack from her Dual Blades.
[Durability -225!]
“Stinky rats!”
They were very smart; the 10 rats weren’t huddled together, but evenly distributed across all four sides—front, back, left, and right—of the safehouse, preventing He Miaomiao from attacking several giant rats at once.
She had to cast a Sparks Slash to interrupt one rat’s attack, deliver a basic attack to another nearby giant rat, follow with a Sparks Slash to harvest one, and then sprint in front of another giant rat for a basic attack.
[Durability -175!]
Corrupted Giant Rat -2
[Durability -125!]
They didn’t care about taking damage at all, nor did they care about the deaths of other rats, gnawing on the fence with single-minded focus.
Several rats further away behind the house had already bitten through the fence by the time He Miaomiao arrived, rushing in to gnaw on the wooden walls of the house.
Raw Rat Meat ×2, Beast Hide ×2
Slaying the final rat, He Miaomiao still felt quite furious in her heart.
These rats had gnawed away 850 points of her home’s health!
[Congratulations to the player for clearing the Simple Monster Wave! Obtained Copper Coins ×300, Beast Hide ×15, Wood ×20, Hemp ×15, Stone ×30!]
[Copper Coins ×300, Beast Hide ×15, Wood ×20, Hemp ×15, Stone ×30! (Critical Hit)]
[Player He Miaomiao’s safehouse did not collapse, citizens suffered 0 casualties: Full Stars.]
[Congratulations to the player for being the fastest to clear the Simple Monster Wave with Full Stars! Extra reward: Copper Coins ×500, Safehouse Primary Expansion Item ×1!]
[Copper Coins ×500, Safehouse Primary Expansion Item ×1! (Critical Hit)]
[Congratulations to player He Miaomiao for accumulating 100 Corrupted Wolf kills and achieving the Wolf Pack Killer achievement! Rewarded with Blue Chest ×1! Warrior, please continue fighting!]
[Blue Chest ×1! (Critical Hit)]
[Would the player like to continue challenging the Hard Monster Wave?]
[Hard Monster Wave: Monster Count ×200%, Siege Waves +2. First attempt grants Death Exemption privilege.]
The He Miaomiao of the past—who only wanted to steady her pace and hunker down—would not have continued. But the He Miaomiao of today—whose heart was set on growing stronger—definitely would.
However, she didn’t answer immediately, opening the Village 4 group chat first instead.
“Watch out for rats.”
More details couldn’t be shared directly due to system restrictions, but as long as they were mentally prepared, they would definitely notice something amiss very quickly.
Following that, He Miaomiao opened 2 Blue Chests.
Bedside Cabinet ×4, Copper Coins ×200
Throughout the Simple Monster Wave—where no monsters dropped copper coins—He Miaomiao had earned a total of 1,800 copper coins.
Added to her original 1,369, she now possessed 3,169 copper coins.
[Lv2 Safehouse Upgrade Requirements: Wood 150 (Completed), Stone 120 (Completed), Dry Grass 200 (Completed), Hemp 80 (Completed), Iron 40 (Completed), Beast Hide 35 (Completed), Copper Coins 3000 (Completed), Player Level Lv2 (Completed)]
[Upgrade takes 15 minutes. Upgrade now?]
He Miaomiao was slightly surprised. She knew her wood and stone supplies were abundant enough, but when had her iron requirement been completed too? Last time she checked, she had only 8 pieces.
Skimming through the transaction details on her panel, she realized Xia Ning had given her 40 Iron as part of her installment payment for the purple-tier rabbit fur carpet.
He Miaomiao had told the 4 players on installment plans to upgrade their safehouses first; if they had leftovers, they could pay her back slowly without rushing.
It seemed Xia Ning’s accumulated iron reserve was plenty sufficient.
He Miaomiao’s safehouse had just been gnawed on by the Corrupted Giant Rats. However, thanks to the critical hit multiplier, the house’s Durability was as high as 1,900. Thus, even if Durability hadn’t recovered much in this short span, over 1,000 points still remained.
“Don’t upgrade for now.”
A house’s Durability—much like a player’s health bar—could be refilled to max instantly upon upgrading, making it useful at a more critical moment.
Setting other resources aside first, He Miaomiao tapped confirm before the prompt to continue the challenge automatically vanished.
In an instant, 40 Corrupted Rabbits and 20 Corrupted Dogs rushed out from the dark night.
A full 60 monsters surging over together looked like a sight that made one want to flee.
Yet He Miaomiao merely tightened her grip on her Dual Blades, not even planning to use Sparks Slash, slaying them one by one with real blade strikes—no matter how large their numbers, the rabbits with 21.6 attack power after group buffs and the dogs with 22 attack power couldn’t breach her 26 Defense.
The only thing requiring attention was that she couldn’t block all 60 monsters at once. The ones she missed would keep running toward the safehouse; if she wanted the safehouse to continue recovering Durability, she couldn’t let a single monster succeed.
That required her movements to be extremely fast and her judgments impeccably precise.
Grasping her blades in both hands, He Miaomiao launched into a sprint.
“Come at me—you can serve as practice for my blade technique and speed.”
Rabbits had 80 HP; she killed them in a single strike.
Corrupted Dogs had 120 HP; He Miaomiao no longer aimed to harvest them in one go, but rather focused first on ensuring both dogs and rabbits were held in place as much as possible, preventing them from drawing near her home.
The monsters held numerical superiority. Even with high agility, it posed a certain challenge for He Miaomiao, requiring her to monitor the monster group’s movements at all times and interrupt their forward paths promptly—ensuring their entire firepower was focused on her and pulling all aggro.
Through this round, she felt far more tired than in the simple mode, yet her proficiency with the Dual Blades grew significantly higher, and her control over the overall rhythm of battle became much stronger as well.
Raw Rabbit Meat ×80, Raw Dog Meat ×40
The second wave.
50 Corrupted Dogs, 30 Corrupted Wolves.
The sprinting wolf and dog packs kicked up a patch of stifling mist. He Miaomiao retreated two steps cautiously to ensure that if she caught a poisoning debuff, she could safely return home to take cover.
Wolves could breach her defense; when their health fell below 30%, their attack power would rise by 30% and their agility would increase by 20%. But He Miaomiao didn’t care, because—a single strike from her could take away more than half a Corrupted Wolf’s health. With another blade strike, although the Corrupted Wolf’s health dropped below 30%, it also hit zero simultaneously, leaving it unable to counterattack.
The third wave.
An identical number of Corrupted Wolves. Armed with experience from the previous wave, He Miaomiao handled them even more deftly.
The Corrupted Crow pack flew fast; she employed Sparks Slash to slice through them once more, taking them down one per cast.
Midway, however, she munched on a piece of rabbit meat, allowing her depleted Energy Points to recover to 1,245 before fighting on.
With so many monsters, she couldn’t afford to fall. Otherwise, once her eyes closed, not even her eyeballs would remain.
The fourth wave.
60 Corrupted Wolves, 50 Corrupted Crows.
He Miaomiao felt the pressure.
It wasn’t on her health bar—after breaching her defense, the wolves’ attacks dealing damage to her amounted to only 2 points. Even if all 60 hit her simultaneously, it would be a mere 120 points, whereas her max HP stood at 330. Not to mention her speed was nearly 10 times faster than the wolves, making dodging attacks no issue.
The real challenge remained—how to hold aggro, preventing a single monster from going over to her home to make trouble, while calculating the optimal time to begin upgrading the safehouse.
He Miaomiao chose to give up on slaying wolves, relying solely on speed to dangle in front of every wolf casting its eyes toward her home to draw their attention, while directing all her damage toward the crows mid-air.
1, 2, 3…
The giant crows emitting a foul stench exploded in mid-air. Even with He Miaomiao standing far off and dodging, plenty of stinky monster blood and grey mist still rained down on her head and body.
To the point that by the time the airborne crows were cleared out, He Miaomiao smelled absurdly foul from head to toe, looking as if she had just crawled out of a trash can—gasping for breath meant nearly fainting from her own stench.
Yet she had no mind to care about this matter, her entire body tense.
The greatest challenge was about to arrive.
The fifth wave.
60 Corrupted Wolves, 30 Corrupted Crows, 20 Corrupted Giant Rats.
Just like in simple mode, with the addition of Level 4 giant rats, the originally scattered monster wave learned to obey orders and coordinate.
The Corrupted Wolves surrounded He Miaomiao tightly, interfering with her movement.
The Corrupted Crows—unable to breach her defense—targeted the safehouse with clear intent, flying straight for it and no longer having their aggro pulled by her Sparks Slash at all.
The burrowing giant rats went without saying: stealthing all the way, 20 rats joined the 20 crows that hadn’t been eliminated in time, opening their maws to gnaw away.
[Safehouse Durability -300!]
[Safehouse Durability -300!]
[Safehouse Durability -500!]