3 Chapter 3: Monster Fire Fox

These newbie tasks are mostly errands and inquiries, quite trivial.

After running to eight locations, finding six naughty children, and going to the stable, Ye Rong finally collected all the scrolls required.

Peach-tree Sword, made from ordinary peach-tree wood, able to exorcise evil spirits, and its sharpness is no less than that of refined steel.

Damage 10-15, Attack Speed 10-15, Evil spirits and spiritual creatures damage +1

Whether it's a Peach-tree Sword or a Green Steel Sword, neither can be used for sword flight, and they are not considered true flying swords.

Ye Rong swung his Peach-tree Sword a few times. Having a weapon in hand gave him much more confidence, otherwise, even the lowest-level spirits outside the Newbie Village would be difficult to deal with.

By this time, many of the players in the village had already rushed out to level up.

Ye Rong accepted all the newbie tasks available in the village. After completing them all, he had five or six dozen copper coins, a headband, an upper garment, and a pair of pants—an upper garment and pants only had decorative effects and no properties. They were just meant to make Ye Rong look more lively. Only the head crown offered some benefit, albeit not much.

Merit Crown: Black horn leather belt, bicolor flower cotton, Vital energy +30.

My good man, recently, a Giant Water Turtle has come to the east of our village and has attacked several children playing by the river, leaving the women and children in the village uneasy. I wish to ask you to do me a favor and deal with this matter. There will be a hefty reward!"

With very few players left in front of the Village Chief, Ye Rong easily accepted his first challenging task.

Holding the Peach-tree Sword, Ye Rong headed to the village's eastern stream. The reward for this task was an Earth God Talisman, and he had to find a way to complete the task no matter how difficult. Otherwise, he wouldn't be able to leave the Newbie Village.

The Other Shore's world is similar to ancient China in terms of its vast territories, even hundreds of times larger than the real world.

Any player who wants to join a sect they admire will have to rely on walking or using a beginner level sword to travel from the Newbie Village to the nearest sect, which may take several days.

The Earth God Talisman provided by the Village Chief allows the user to instantly reach the nearest Main City from the Newbie Village.

"How can we kill the water turtle that refuses to come out of hiding in the water even when we try enticing it?"

"Exactly, it has thick skin and lots of blood. Without long-range attacks, there's no way we can finish this task."

A group of angry players walked past Ye Rong, cursing and complaining. Several of them were empty-handed—

In The Other Shore, when a player dies, they may lose some of their money or an item but can also apply for system protection to ensure that their equipment is not dropped. However, equipment protection requires a gold fee, and the value of the initial equipment does not merit the expense.

These players' weapons must have exploded when dealing with the water turtle and resulted in their deaths.

Ye Rong listened to the conversation and stood still. After taking a quick look at the stream, he gave up the idea of hunting the water turtle for now.

If the organized group of players was powerless against the water turtle, Ye Rong wouldn't believe that he could achieve it on his own.

Operating systems in The Other Shore are similar to those of Shushan Swordsman. Apart from levels, the strength of a player depends on their spells, treasures, flying swords, and swordsmanship. Operation is essential but not heavenly. It simply accounts for a large influence.

Ye Rong stabbed the Red Fox between its eyebrows with his Peach-tree Sword. The red fox swung its fluffy tail, dodging part of the sword and spouting a puff of blood.

-18

With a swish of its fluffy, red tail, a surge of great power transmitted through the sword, and the intense vibration almost made Ye Rong lose his grip. Fortunately, his Innate Strength attribute was not low, so he quickly stabilized.

Among the five Innate Attributes, the Strength attribute is often overlooked. In fact, besides affecting the size of a player's strength, it also affects the outcome when exchanging blows with treasures. There are some treasures that require a certain level of strength from their users.

If your Innate Strength attribute does not meet the requirement, even if you have powerful treasures, you won't be able to equip and wear them.

"What beautiful fur! Bringing this fox fur to the real world would definitely drive women crazy!"

The Red Fox is the lowest-level monster outside the Newbie Village, and even a level one player can handle it without much difficulty. With a little care, killing a Red Fox would consume at most a third of their vital energy.

A single stab to the fox's throat yielded a critical hit, and the Red Fox disappeared in a burst of white light, leaving a handful of experience points for Ye Rong—Since the game's design allowed for the involvement of minors, monsters' deaths would not be excessively gorey. Only high-level monsters or humanoid NPCs would be left by the system for a while before disappearing.

Before leaving the Newbie Village, Ye Rong picked up a side task: collecting twenty red fox furs, which could be exchanged for fifty copper coins back at the fur merchant.'

Don't underestimate fifty copper coins. Although the price of Blood-Supplementing pills and Recovery powder in Newbie Village is up to a hundred copper coins each, and most garments and equipment without additional attributes cost several hundred copper coins, the most basic flying swords and treasures are calculated in gold coins. Ye Rong had only accumulated sixty-odd copper coins after completing the previous tasks.

Moreover, ordinary monsters in The Other Shore wouldn't drop money, only experience, some furs, and, rarely, equipment.

Coins could only be obtained through task rewards, by selling items to NPC merchants, or by making substantial gains in large-scale instances.

"Kill, kill, kill!"

The large number of Newbie Villages helped disperse the massive number of players. Moreover, since Ye Rong had spent more time in the village, there were fewer players leveling up in this area at this time.

With an unwavering focus, Ye Rong devoted all his attention to hunting Red Foxes. He would rest and meditate in a quiet place after killing two or three Red Foxes. Although this slowed down his leveling progress, it was impossible for him to spend a lot of copper coins on buying Blood-Supplementing pills at the beginning of the game.

As for directly converting RMB into game currency, the currency exchange system in The Other Shore hadn't been implemented during the public testing stage, and with an unstable conversion rate and high costs, not even RMB players would take such action.

Moreover, Ye Rong's financial ability wouldn't be able to support this kind of behavior. He initially intended to dig out a few pots of gold from the game.