Chapter 16
◎ Novice Protection Period ◎
【Name: DazedFish
Player Status: Official Player
Level: 4 (102/1000)
HP: 160 (Stamina x20)
Skills: First Aid (Common), Morph (Rare), Fine Forging (Common)
Stats: Strength (4→5) Agility (6→8) Stamina (5→8) Spirit (11→22) Luck (8) [Fixed]】
At night, Yu Chi lay in bed looking at her system panel. She had just leveled up again. Since the last time, she had sold a total of 692 HP worth of items, and 590 HP had already been used.
It had to be said that leveling up by selling bandages and adhesive bandages was quite fast at this stage.
This time, she also received 3 attribute points. Yu Chi added them to Stamina and Spirit, one point to the former and two to the latter.
Stamina equaled HP, and Spirit equaled skills. Yu Chi’s current plan was to create more bandages and adhesive bandages, sell them, and level up as quickly as possible.
She glanced at the system screen. There were only 4 hours left until the end of the novice protection period. The chat channel had already descended into panic. A few troublemakers were mixed in, making the situation even worse.
【Spark】: There can’t still be people who haven’t completed the novice quest, right? With just a raft, if you get attacked by a monster, you’ll definitely die!
【HalfAnOrange】: I have some extra materials, if anyone is willing to trade for them with good stuff.
【Spark】: What good stuff could they have? They can’t even gather the materials to upgrade a raft.
【WillTheSnowStop】: If you ask me, giving a week is way too long. It would be better to just eliminate everyone who hasn’t completed the quest tonight.
【ILoveBlueSkies】: There’s no need to say that. We’re all from Earth. We should unite.
【WitheredTreeSprouts】: Heh, unite? If you’ve got the guts, take out your materials and help those people upgrade!
…
Yu Chi glanced at it briefly, then closed her eyes, planning to sleep. During the novice protection period, she wouldn’t be actively attacked by monsters. Resting well now would give her the energy to deal with the dangers of the early morning.
She woke up again at 11:30 PM. Yu Chi yawned. The first thing she did was open her private messages to see if anyone had contacted her.
At 9:30, [SurfingTheSea] had sent her a few messages.
【SurfingTheSea】: Sorry, I passed out earlier.
【SurfingTheSea】: The novice protection period is about to end. Do you need a weapon?
【SurfingTheSea】: I got some interesting stuff.
The system promptly popped up a notification: 【Received a gift from SurfingTheSea】.
Yu Chi clicked to view it and found 10 round, black little balls. When she held them in her hand, the description was as follows:
【Item: Scented Bomb
Grade: Common
Description: As a small bomb with low lethality, it is usually used to purify the air, repel small contaminants, and soothe emotions. Please be careful not to use it in an enclosed space~】
Yu Chi hadn’t expected [SurfingTheSea] to actually send her a small gift. For a moment, she didn’t know how to reply.
She turned to sort through her miscellaneous items and found that she had nothing to give back as a gift. She had to cut half a durian and send it over as a gesture of goodwill.
【DazedFish】: Thank you, but please don’t send any more in the future.
It was a very tactless sentence, vividly expressing the subtle unease in the protagonist’s calm mood. She chose to refuse the friendly gesture and raised her guard.
【SurfingTheSea】: Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it.
【SurfingTheSea】: This thing isn’t very useful to me, and I’m too lazy to sell it, so I thought of giving it to you.
【SurfingTheSea】: You can think of it as me wanting to get priority purchasing rights for bandages and adhesive bandages from you in the future?
The other party sent three messages in a row. Yu Chi felt inferior in terms of emotional intelligence, so she simply replied with a “.” to end the conversation.
Huh, so the period is such a useful thing?
Yu Chi held the small scented bomb in her hand. This little thing could repel contaminants. Did it contain something that contaminants disliked?
She was indeed a little curious. It would be great if she could study it… Just imagine, in the future, wherever DazedFish’s small boat passed, contaminants would all retreat!
—What a wishful thinker!
Yu Chi put the scented bombs into her backpack, then took out the compass to take a look. She found that the boat’s course had already deviated from the direction the compass was pointing.
She thought for a moment, took out 20 palm leaves and 10 wood planks, and threw them into the crafting interface.
With [Fine Forging], even without a blueprint, if she was just making simple items, she could do it directly through mental meditation.
This was something Yu Chi had only figured out this afternoon. Since she had no table and chairs for eating, she had gotten desperate and turned her attention to [Crafting].
Perhaps her desire to make a table was too strong, which led her to directly develop the mental meditation function, and [Fine Forging] had also changed a little because of it.
【Skill: Fine Forging
Grade: Common
Description: Can be crafted according to mental meditation. Tools or weapons crafted will have a random attack power bonus, with a 30% success rate.】
It was just that the 70% success rate after her Spirit had increased had changed back to 30%. Yu Chi wasn’t in a hurry. In any case, her Spirit would slowly grow.
And, once an item was successfully crafted, the probability of making the same item again was 100%, which was acceptable.
When using [Fine Forging] to craft items, the materials had to be controlled precisely; otherwise, no matter how many times she tried, the result would only be failure.
Yu Chi closed her eyes and carefully pictured the shape of a sail in her mind. 1 minute later, the word “Crafting Failed” popped up on the [Crafting] interface.
Her expression didn’t change. She continued to add materials to the [Crafting] interface. In the afternoon, in order to make a neat and beautiful set of a table and chairs, she had tried a full 5 times!
Fortunately, the materials used were all wood planks, which could be directly obtained from the “marine debris tide.” Otherwise, her heart would have truly died.
On the third try, a success notification finally popped up on the [Crafting] interface. Yu Chi let out a breath. Mental meditation wasn’t that easy to use. It had consumed more than half of her Spirit to complete the sail.
A boat usually has a mainsail and a headsail. The former has a larger area and plays a leading role in propulsion and direction adjustment, while the latter plays a supporting role.
Yu Chi had only made the mainsail so far. Compared to the headsail, the mainsail was simpler to operate and suitable for single-person operation.
She guessed that in the subsequent upgrades of the small boat, all the functions a boat should have might be completed. It was just that she needed to go to the island now, so she had to manually make the sail.
After the sail was made, she set it up on the boat. Yu Chi adjusted it according to the wind direction and the compass, and the two were once again pointing in the same direction.
Next, she just had to wait patiently.
The time on the screen ticked forward. There were only 12 minutes left until the end of the novice protection period.
Everyone wanted to know what other changes would occur besides contaminants starting to attack actively. They were discussing it non-stop in the channel.
Yu Chi saw the posts from [SurfingTheSea], [GrumpyBro], and a few other familiar IDs again. She had to admire their energy.
—When posting in the channel, you could choose a familiar format, such as typing on a keyboard or voice input. You could even directly output with your mind, and it would all be presented as text in the end.
Yu Chi was a little nervous. Her fair, slender fingers unconsciously tapped on the system screen. She looked up. The original 50,000 people had been reduced to 46,157 after three days.
Nearly 4,000 people had died.
Time was slowly ticking by. No one was sending Yu Chi messages. She couldn’t sit still in bed and got up, walked out of the room, and went onto the deck of the small boat.
The sea was very calm tonight, reflecting a crescent moon in the sky. The atmosphere was actually somewhat peaceful, and Yu Chi’s heart also calmed down a lot.
The time finally reached 12 AM. The system instantly popped up a notification.
【System Update Announcement】
The red font occupied almost the entire screen. Everyone’s system was forced to open, and the words appeared before everyone’s eyes.