Xiao Hua primarily bought Level 1 white items for Xiaohei to eat, mainly because they were cheaper. The town's shop only refreshed thirty of the same type of equipment at a time, so Xiao Hua bought a total of 30 Level 1 daggers and 11 Level 5 daggers.
He tossed all the daggers in front of Xiaohei at once. Xiao Hua clearly saw that after Xiaohei swallowed about 20 Level 1 daggers, it started to eat the Level 5 daggers. Once the Level 5 daggers were all gone, Xiaohei reluctantly started eating the Level 1 daggers again.
Based on his past gaming experience, Xiao Hua guessed that the lower Xiaohei's hunger, the more selective it became about the equipment it could devour.
Seeing the system prompt, Xiao Hua clicked "agree."
System notification: Your pet "Dark Slime" has successfully devoured the equipment. Physical attack power is now 1-3, and hunger has increased by 50 points!
Seeing Xiaohei's hunger increase after devouring the equipment, Xiao Hua knew his guess was probably correct.
"Really a bottomless pit!" Xiao Hua sighed, looking at Xiaohei, who was staring at him with big, watery eyes, clearly wanting more to eat. He sighed again, bought another large batch of equipment, and threw it in front of Xiaohei. Once Xiaohei's hunger decreased, Xiao Hua sighed once more and put Xiaohei back into the pet slot.
"Hehe, it's rare to have a mysterious town all to myself. Let's see if there are any quests here!" There were no other players in this town, meaning that all the quests here had never been touched. Such a good opportunity, Xiao Hua wasn't about to waste it.
Before looking for quests, Xiao Hua wanted to find a mailbox to send a message back home to report his safety.
However, after searching the entire town, Xiao Hua frowned. Even a small village usually had a mailbox, but this relatively large town didn't have one at all, which was truly strange!
Without a mailbox, Xiao Hua had no choice but to give up temporarily. After all, it was just a game, and even if he didn't report his safety, Piaoling and Fang Ning would know he was fine.
Next, Xiao Hua began his quest-hunting journey. The process was straightforward—carpet-searching and asking every NPC he met. What surprised him, however, was that despite wearing the "Well-Read" title, which gave him 7 charm points with male NPCs and 12 charm points with female NPCs, the NPCs, though very friendly, offered no quests after he had wandered through most of the town.
About an hour later, Xiao Hua looked at his quest panel and smiled wryly. The town was truly bizarre; apart from two D-rank monster-killing quests, he couldn't find a single decent quest.
Looking at his quest panel, Xiao Hua remembered that his main quest for the Free Faction had been marked as completed, and there was an option to claim the reward!
This was a very rare situation. Normally, rewards could only be claimed from the NPC who issued the quest. Xiao Hua had assumed he would need to return to Black Fog City to find Hassan to claim the reward.
Clicking the "claim reward" option, Xiao Hua immediately received a system notification.
System notification: You have completed the Free Faction main quest "Eliminate Ogara"!
System notification: You have received 100,000 gold coins!
System notification: You have received 500 reputation points!
System notification: You have received the item "Free Faction Recommendation Letter"!
Free Faction Recommendation Letter: A recommendation letter from a mysterious figure within the Free Faction. With this letter, you can join the Free Faction unconditionally from the corresponding NPC and receive special treatment not available to others!
"Gold and reputation rewards, indeed, experience and Shadow Shoes were almost all the rewards. The reputation is okay, but this gold is too little!" Xiao Hua grumbled, dissatisfied with the rewards. He was currently very poor, with only 500,000 gold coins left. In Black Fog City for over a month, with tripled prices, large health potions and poisons had become extremely expensive, especially poisons, which had cost him a lot of gold.
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"But this Free Faction Recommendation Letter seems to have some use." Although Xiao Hua hadn't decided which faction to join yet, this item was not bound. Even if he didn't use it, he could sell it and make some money.
After claiming the reward, Xiao Hua focused back on the town, summarizing the information he had gathered in the past hour.
The town was called Hasamo. Apart from having no players, no mailbox, and almost no quests, one other thing caught Xiao Hua's attention. During the beta test, Xiao Hua had visited a couple of towns and knew that generally, there wasn't much difference between towns and villages. Normally, towns had more and larger buildings and more NPC citizens, but otherwise, their functions and facilities were similar, with basic NPCs.
However, Hasamo had NPCs for alchemists, potion makers, armorers, and weaponsmiths. Xiao Hua had even visited a tailor, but nothing special happened, possibly because his tailoring skill was too low. Despite this, the presence of all these crafting NPCs in a small town seemed odd.
Strange as it was, since there were no quests, Xiao Hua didn't plan to stay long. Towns were usually near cities, so Xiao Hua decided to explore nearby cities.
...
Three days passed in a blink. Xiao Hua's character was diligently mining with the Andes Pickaxe at a wild ore vein. Beside him, Xiaohei was idly staring off into space. Not far behind Xiaohei, Xiao Hua was controlling Illusion to attack a Level 50 monster.
He was trapped in this town, which was located in a valley. The valley had an exit, but he couldn't leave, as he was trapped here!
On the first day, he spent nearly a day exploring the area outside the town, navigating through a zone filled with Level 50 monsters. He finally found an exit, but it was guarded by a large group of Medusa Snakes.
These Medusa Snakes had the ability to break stealth and petrify characters. Xiao Hua tried using Illusion to sneak past, but despite the occasional effectiveness of the Shadow Shoes, the exit was densely packed with Medusa Snakes. He managed to get about ten meters before his stealth was broken, and a swarm of Medusa Snakes surrounded him, petrifying Illusion with a single gaze.
The chance of being petrified by Medusa Snakes wasn't very high. Xiao Hua had fought one and was petrified only once in nearly a minute. However, there were too many snakes. Once his stealth was broken, at least twenty to thirty snakes would surround him, making it almost impossible to avoid petrification. Only archers or mages could continuously use ranged attacks to clear the snakes one by one, but otherwise, there was no way out of the valley.
Xiao Hua wasn't one to give up easily, but after struggling with the Medusa Snakes for half a day, he had to admit he was helpless against them. Each Medusa Snake had 10,000 HP, and even with both him and Illusion, it took a lot of time to kill them one by one. Clearing the entire hundred-meter path was impossible.
With no other choice, Xiao Hua returned to the town and asked the NPCs if they knew how to deal with the Medusa Snakes. After spending half a day, he finally learned from the alchemist Ulg that he had a solution. Ulg said that carrying his specially made sulfur powder would make the Medusa Snakes automatically avoid him, clearing the path.
Relieved, Xiao Hua asked how to obtain the sulfur powder. Ulg calmly told him that he needed 1,000 pieces of sulfur ore, and he would help him refine the sulfur powder.
"Come on! There's no way refining sulfur powder requires 1,000 pieces of sulfur ore!" Xiao Hua thought, but he had no choice. From Ulg, he learned that sulfur ore could be mined at a wild ore vein outside the town, but it required an advanced mining skill. With the Andes Pickaxe, Xiao Hua only needed to reach intermediate level to have a chance of mining sulfur ore.
Xiao Hua's mining skill was still at the novice level. With the Andes Pickaxe, it would take a few days to reach intermediate level. He took the Andes Pickaxe from the warehouse and headed to the ore vein Ulg mentioned, where he mined for two days.
The wild ore vein was quite large, and like other wild ore veins, it was guarded by Level 50 monsters. Xiao Hua tested the monsters' stats and found them to be very strong, only slightly weaker than the enhanced monsters from earlier. He wasn't sure if this was due to the game update or if they had always been this strong.
Fortunately, the ore vein was large enough, and the distribution of monsters was not too dense. Xiao Hua could control Illusion to fight the nearest monster while his character mined.
After more than a day, Xiao Hua's mining skill, which had been at "Novice 4," reached "Novice 5" and then became "Intermediate 0."
The experience from the monsters was considerable, so Xiao Hua released Xiaohei to bask in the sun and share the experience, helping it level up. Without levels, Xiaohei couldn't do much.
Over the course of a day, Xiao Hua also realized how precious Xiaohei was. Just watching him mine, Xiaohei's hunger increased by 5 points per hour! This meant that if he really wanted to keep Xiaohei, he would need to feed it five pieces of equipment every hour, which was practically impossible!