Depressed, He Miaomiao stood right inside the safehouse and began her counterattack.
Sparks Slash!
[Corrupted Dog HP -27!]
Bad news: the hit Corrupted Dog had high HP and came with 1 point of Defense, leaving it with 93 HP—impossible to kill in a single strike.
Good news: Sparks Slash landed on the Corrupted Dog, inflicting burning pain that interrupted its attack, so the safehouse wouldn’t lose any more durability!
Now’s the time!
He Miaomiao quickly gobbled a piece of rabbit meat and attacked again.
[Corrupted Dog HP -27!]
Again!
[Corrupted Dog HP -27!]
[Corrupted Dog HP -27!]
[Corrupted Dog HP -27!]
The Corrupted Dog had high attack power with a continuous damage effect. Without taking a single step outside the safehouse, He Miaomiao relied entirely on munching rabbit meat to restore her Energy Points, pounding the monster to death stroke by stroke.
[Raw Dog Meat ×1!]
[Raw Dog Meat ×1! (Critical Hit)]
[EXP +35!]
[EXP +35! (Critical Hit)]
[EXP: 1030/250 (Upgradeable)]
Phew!
That was close!
The safehouse almost collapsed!
The good news was that her Crit Talent hadn’t expired yet.
He Miaomiao checked the group chat. Thankfully, apart from a jinx like her, no other player’s safehouse had been attacked by monsters.
Dammit. Waking up first thing in the morning had already consumed 4 pieces of her cooked rabbit meat quota, meaning she could only eat 6 more pieces this morning before having to return inside to rest.
Among the resources she could gather herself, she was still short 8 portions of dry grass. After confirming that the safehouse’s durability was slowly recovering automatically, He Miaomiao placed the 2 pieces of raw meat beside the campfire and headed straight for the grass patches.
Swung the Stone Sickle 4 times.
[Dry Grass ×4!]
[Dry Grass ×4! (Critical Hit)]
At this point, all the wood, stone, and dry grass required for the safehouse upgrade had been fully collected.
The only remaining requirement she had to collect herself was copper coins.
He Miaomiao looked around, stood in front of a small grove of trees, planned her escape route, and started chopping.
Wood ×2
The monsters arrived.
There were actually a full 3 Corrupted Rabbits!
If He Miaomiao remembered correctly, Corrupted Rabbits had a special skill called Pack Alertness: whenever 3 or more Corrupted Rabbits appeared simultaneously, the attack power of all Corrupted Rabbits increased by 20%!
A single attack from 1 Corrupted Rabbit was 18. Increasing that by 20% meant 21.6 damage per hit for 1 rabbit, and for 3 rabbits, that was 64.8!
He Miaomiao’s total max HP was only 70.
Once she did the math, she didn’t waste a single second, blasting them directly with a Sparks Slash before utilizing her agility—which had increased by 2 points after leveling up—to sprint back as fast as her legs could carry her.
Fortunately, the speed of the Corrupted Rabbits hadn’t increased with their numbers. He Miaomiao took only one hit before successfully scrambling back into the safehouse.
At this point, her remaining HP was down to 5.2.
“I knew it—leveling up definitely makes things worse.”
If her accumulated EXP hadn’t exceeded 10 times the upgrade requirement and triggered a passive level-up, He Miaomiao would never have voluntarily leveled up to seek her own death.
Look at that—she almost lost her life!
Facing 3 rabbits, He Miaomiao could no longer use her previous tactic of rushing out to strike once and running back. Because she could only attack 1 rabbit once per run, the other 2 rabbits would definitely attack her during her offensive. The risk was far too high.
“Sparks Slash, I’m relying on you.”
Cooked Rabbit Meat -1
[Corrupted Rabbit HP -28!]
Cooked Rabbit Meat -2
[Corrupted Rabbit HP -56!]
Cooked Rabbit Meat -3
[Corrupted Rabbit HP -84!]
He Miaomiao had hit her morning limit for eating cooked rabbit meat, unable to continue restoring Energy Points by eating.
And since Sparks Slash lacked an auto-lock function and relied entirely on manual control, her 7 cast attempts ended up averaging 2 hits per rabbit first, dealing 56 damage to each and leaving them with 24 HP apiece. It wasn’t until the 7th cast landed that she finally finished off 1 Corrupted Rabbit.
He Miaomiao was driven to exasperated laughter.
It was only because the Corrupted Rabbits stopped to eat grass whenever they lost their attack target—acting as stationary targets very close to the safehouse—that she succeeded. Otherwise, she didn’t doubt in the slightest that her Sparks Slash would “coincidentally” miss entirely, putting on a grand show of godly mechanical execution with a grand total score of zero and zero.
“Don’t get angry, He Miaomiao. At least you turned 3 rabbits into 2, so the 20% pack buff is gone, right?”
Without the buff, each rabbit’s attack power dropped back to 18. Even with 2 together, He Miaomiao could manage a charge.
Run, strike, retreat.
Relying on her Level 1 base attack power of 7, He Miaomiao charged 8 times, finally slaying all the rabbits.
Loot! Loot! Loot!
Raw Rabbit Meat ×6
Copper Coins +2
EXP +120
[EXP: 1150/250 (Upgradeable)]
Began passive rest.
He Miaomiao sat back down on the rabbit fur carpet, noticing instantly that her Energy Points recovered much faster on the carpet.
Unfortunately, with the Corrupted Dog—which actively attacked players and safehouses—around today, she didn’t dare take any risks. Otherwise, she would have gone out to gather resources 4 more times no matter what.
“Loot.”
[Cooked Dog Meat ×2!]
[Cooked Dog Meat ×2! (Critical Hit)]
He Miaomiao casually listed them in the group chat.
[You Hua]: “Dog meat? Big boss, did you encounter a new monster? How does it compare to the rabbits?”
“Check the price.”
He Miaomiao had already noticed that the automated pricing reflected the relative strength of monsters to a certain degree.
She had listed cooked rabbit meat before; comparing its price to cooked dog meat would allow one to roughly calculate the Corrupted Dog’s combat power and HP.
1 Hemp for 2 Cooked Rabbit Meat; 1 Iron for 4 Cooked Rabbit Meat.
Now—
1 Hemp for 1 Cooked Dog Meat; 1 Iron for 2 Cooked Dog Meat.
[You Hua]: “Hiss—so strong! Bullshit novice protection period! My whole life would be gone in a few swipes!”
[Qi Yi]: “Waaaah, the rabbits already make me shiver, how come there are dogs too? I’m most afraid of dogs, waaaah, I want to go home, waaaah…”
Since He Miaomiao only needed hemp, iron, and copper coins right now, the only person who could buy them was naturally Xia Ning alone.
Fortunately, Xia Ning truly needed the food buff. To her, the gains from eating cooked food could generate far, far higher profits, so she snapped them up nimbly.
Thus, He Miaomiao now possessed Wood 82, Stone 60, Dry Grass 120, Hemp 8, Iron 15, and Copper Coins 426.
[Lv1 Safehouse Upgrade Requirements: Wood 80 (Completed), Stone 60 (Completed), Dry Grass 120 (Completed), Hemp 30, Iron 15 (Completed), Copper Coins 1200, Player Level Lv1 (Completed)]
Victory was in sight… right?
He Miaomiao wasn’t too worried about hemp anymore; as long as Xia Ning had it, she could trade for it sooner or later. But copper coins were truly…
10 rabbits dropped 2 copper coins. She was still short 774, meaning she needed to kill another 3,870 rabbits.
“I wonder if earning money from Corrupted Dogs will be easier than from rabbits?”
Logically speaking, stronger monsters should be worth more.
Please don’t require killing 10 of them just for 1 drop like the rabbits; even needing just 1 fewer than rabbits would be nice.
Since her morning food quota was exhausted, He Miaomiao didn’t consider going out again, choosing instead to sit at home organizing her items. Whether in the safehouse storage chest or her portable inventory, each slot could only hold the same type of item. With her growing variety of resources, she was running out of space.
She placed materials she couldn’t gather herself into the storage chest first. Since these items could only be obtained through trading, and she would only trade with group members inside her safe house, there was no need to carry them on her person, so storing them at home saved inventory slots.
Iron 15, Hemp 8, leaving 2 slots pending allocation.
Her portable inventory had 8 slots in total. The three gathering tools—Stone Sickle, Stone Axe, and Stone Pickaxe—were essential, taking up 3 slots.
The remaining 5 slots were prioritized for wood, dry grass, and stone, which could be gathered at any time. Otherwise, putting these in the chest would mean taking up portable inventory slots when gathering them outside later, effectively wasting slots and being inefficient.
As a result, only 2 slots remained.
He Miaomiao looked at her remaining items: Campfire 1, Copper Coins 426, Soft Rabbit Fur Carpet (Purple) 4, Cooked Rabbit Meat 20.
In addition, there were 6 pieces of raw rabbit meat currently roasting, as well as raw dog meat and cooked dog meat she would get from killing Corrupted Dogs later.
2 slots were simply not enough.
“Energy Points are vital for both agility and Sparks Slash. I must bring food with me.”
Therefore, cooked rabbit meat took up 1 slot.
Copper coins were important, but the amount was small, only dropping one or two after every monster kill.
After thinking it over, He Miaomiao stored the copper coins in the storage chest.
“Campfire…”
He Miaomiao examined the burning campfire before her. It had been burning for a long time, yet it remained in its original state, showing no signs of going out.
“Crafting a campfire requires Dry Grass ×30, Wood ×5, and Stone ×3. I can pull those together at any time, so there’s no need to keep this campfire as a spare.”
He Miaomiao listed the campfire in the group without restricting what resources to exchange for, letting the price auto-generate.
The moment it was listed, she received the exchange item—10 portions of Hemp.
[Xia Ning]: “Thank you, big boss! I was planning to craft one myself, I didn’t expect a finished product!”
Xia Ning lacked the three basic materials: dry grass, wood, and stone. Aside from trading with He Miaomiao, the iron and hemp she gathered were traded with other group members for those basic materials.
There were quite a few group members—70 excluding herself—but gathering resources was difficult. Not everyone had crafted gathering tools yet, and with Corrupted Rabbits spawning every 5 successful gathering actions to cause trouble, progress was slow. Even if they wanted to trade with her, they couldn’t offer much.
Having finally scraped together the items needed for a campfire, Xia Ning was just about to light a fire when she spotted the finished product listed by He Miaomiao, snapping it up on the spot.
This way, she could keep the traded resources instead of consuming them on a campfire, using them to trade with other group members for more basic materials, saving a lot of hassle.
Furthermore, once she had a campfire, she could roast the raw rabbit meat in her hands, giving her even more food.
The big boss really was her lucky star!
The more Xia Ning thought about it, the happier she became, quickly posting in the group again: “Sister, what else are you short of? I’ll trade with you!”
He Miaomiao took a quick glance.
“12 Hemp.”
Apart from copper coins, she was only short on hemp.
However, He Miaomiao only had 2 spare stones left in terms of extra basic materials. Although she would definitely have to keep gathering to make money later, that was a matter for afterward; right now, she simply didn’t have enough stone to trade for 12 portions of hemp.
She had plenty of cooked rabbit meat left, but her consumption was also high, so she needed to save some for herself.
After pondering for a moment, He Miaomiao tentatively listed a rabbit fur carpet.
Soft Rabbit Fur Carpet (Purple): Priced at 50,000 Copper Coins / 2,000 Hemp / 1,000 Iron.
[Duanmu Jing]: “?”
[You Hua]: “?”
[Wan Zifan]: “?”
He Miaomiao: ???
Are you serious with this price tag!?