Chapter 401 - 373: Enhanced Special Effects
When Qin Ziwen woke up, he found Mogu squatting guard by his side.
He instinctively tilted his head to look at the sky. The Home’s sky was pitch-black, illuminated only by braziers burning at regular intervals.
It was then that he came back to his senses, rubbing the bridge of his nose. ’Underground caverns have no day or night.’
"Let me see what time it is."
Qin Ziwen pulled his phone from his pocket, glanced at the time, and saw it was exactly 7:30 in the morning.
"It’s so early... What’s that smell?"
He sniffed the air, sensing something was off about the smell.
A faint, bloody scent mingled with an indescribable odor, like rotten almonds and rusty moss. It reminded him of the bugs he used to catch in the fields as a child.
’Bugs?’
He sat up and looked toward the source of the smell—behind Mogu.
"Master." Mogu rose and stepped aside. Behind it was a dark, looming little hill.
Qin Ziwen rubbed his eyes and looked again. That was no hill—it was clearly a "bug mountain" piled high with insect corpses.
He looked at Mogu, at a loss for words.
’I’m glad you can kill bugs.’
’But bringing all their corpses to my bedside is a bit much.’
Mogu said, "Master, these are all corpses of Extraordinary insects."
Qin Ziwen was stunned, but his face quickly broke into a pleased smile. ’Then again...’
’Mogu worked hard all night to bring back so many Spoils of War. It’s only natural he’d want to report to me first thing. I should respect the customs of the Fishman, after all.’
"So many? I didn’t see a single Extraordinary insect during the day. I was starting to think they didn’t spawn here." Qin Ziwen put on his jacket and walked over to the small mountain of corpses. As far as he could tell, the insects were of two main types.
One was a black-and-red millipede, and the other was a black-and-white... house centipede?
[Extraordinary · Rock-Eating Multi-legged Millipede: ★★★★] Level 1 Defensive Stink Gland, Level 1 Super-Digestive Stomach Sac
[Extraordinary · Cave-Dwelling Scutiger: ★★★] Level 2 Armor-Piercing Legs, Level 1 Presence Concealment
A scutiger. ’Looks like I was right, it’s a house centipede.’
"There must be over a dozen here. Are there really this many insects around at night?"
"There are some near the Gated Community. These millipedes were likely drawn by the black beetles; when I found them, many were feeding on the beetles."
"Didn’t they drop any Cards?"
Mogu shook his head. "These insects probably don’t qualify as powerful creatures on this map. Not a single Card dropped."
Qin Ziwen understood the implication. He looked again at the mountain of insect corpses. These creatures didn’t even meet the minimum requirement to drop a Card.
"So the difficulty of this map is that high."
If you put these Extraordinary insects in the first map, they wouldn’t even rank as high as the big wild boars in the forest’s ecosystem.
Yet if they were on the starting map, most beasts—aside from the Giant Toad—would be nothing more than their prey.
"Hm? What’s this?" Qin Ziwen suddenly noticed a distinctive glint of gold in the pile of corpses.
He picked it up and found it was a long, slender, dead snake with golden scales.
The small snake was about three meters long but no thicker than a man’s arm. Its scales glittered like gold leaf in the torchlight.
Mogu said, "I came across this while hunting. The little snake was surprisingly fierce. When I found it, it was devouring a five-meter-long millipede."
[Extraordinary · Fierce Golden Earth-Devouring Snake: ★★] Level 1 Immune to Hundred Poisons
Qin Ziwen was surprised. ’For a Two-Star creature, this snake is incredibly fierce.’
’If it had reached adulthood, it might have been something truly special.’
Too bad it had already become one of Mogu’s Spoils of War. No matter how high its potential, it could only die in vain against an opponent like Mogu, who was so many stars above it and didn’t play fair.
"Let’s go, let’s go." Qin Ziwen eagerly carried the corpse toward the Eternal Hunting Tomb.
He called over Qin Ziwu and Du Yu, and the four of them carried the corpses into the Eternal Hunting Tomb.
Then, they began burying the corpses.
First up was the millipede.
Once the millipede was buried, the soil churned, and a dark-red, serrated sword was slowly spat out from the ground.
The sword was 2.3 meters long and about two palms’ width wide. Its core was recessed with a crimson line running down the center, and its edges were a mix of black and red. From a distance, it looked like a red insect covered in sharp red legs.
It was a greatsword.
[Hunting Artifact] Bloodtread
[Level] Level 1 (0/1000)
[Species] Myriapod/Gland-Blade
[Hunting Exhibition]
First Stage: Thousand Blades
Second Stage: Not Activated
Third Stage: Not Activated
Qin Ziwen stepped forward, lifted the greatsword, and silently activated its Hunting Exhibition.
The Bloodtread greatsword in his hand trembled violently!
The sword’s blade nearly doubled in size as countless sharp, blood-red blades emerged from its sides.
A faint Glow swirled around the surface of the blood-red blades.
It looked anything but simple.
"This is a good sword, but it requires a lot of strength from its wielder. Besides, I don’t use swords."
After speaking, Qin Ziwen had the others try it out. In the end, Mogu took the sword.
Next, they buried the scutiger.
A moment later, a pair of fifty-centimeter-long piercers slowly emerged from the grave mound’s soil.
They were perfectly straight, sharp at both ends, with a grip in the center.
"These are Parting-Water Piercers, a type of exotic weapon," Du Yu identified them.
Qin Ziwen carefully picked up the Parting-Water Piercers. With sharp points on both ends, they felt awkward to hold; he worried he might injure himself. He looked at Du Yu. "Do you know how to use these?"
Du Yu shook his head.
"My Lord, I’ve dabbled in common weaponry, but Parting-Water Piercers are considered exotic cold arms. I have never studied them. Weapons like these require great proficiency, or one is liable to harm themself before the enemy."
"That is a bit of a problem. If even you can’t use them, then no one in the Gated Community can." Qin Ziwen mused, looking at the other cave-dwelling scutiger corpses on the ground. "In that case, we won’t bury the rest to upgrade the Hunting Artifact. Let’s see if the Military Equipment Supervisor can make use of any of their organs. We’ll toss the remains into the Abyssal Ruins."
Qin Ziwu thought his brother’s decision was a good one. No one knew how to use the Parting-Water Piercers, so even an upgraded version would just sit in the warehouse collecting dust. It was far better to use the corpses to refine their Law Bodies and increase their innate percentage strength.
The group then buried the remaining millipede corpses in the tomb. It was worth noting that only the first corpse needed to be buried by hand. For the rest, they merely had to place them at the edge of the grave, and the tomb would automatically devour any other corpses of the same species.
As it devoured more and more corpses, the grave mound grew larger.
The tomb belonging to Bloodtread was now gradually expanding before their eyes.
With every Rock-Eating Multi-legged Millipede corpse that was swallowed by the churning mound, the Level progress bar etched on the tombstone jumped.
Level 1 (98/1000)...
Level 1 (487/1000)...
Level 1 (997/1000)...
Level 2 (69/10000).
When the Level increased to Level 2, a subtle red light flashed across the surface of the Bloodtread in Mogu’s hands.
Immediately after, wisps of tangled, pale-white mist began to swirl along the sides of the blade.
"Holy shit, it even has enhancement effects."
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