Chapter 26: What Level Are You Now?
Vacation in the wilderness?
Zheng Mu looked at his current, rather suitable wilderness outfit.
Wearing standard battle attire and military combat boots, he even prepared sunglasses to shield his eyes from the sun.
Of course, if one ignored the sizzling skewers in front of him and the ice-cold beer emitting a frosty mist.
Everything else was passable.
Even Leng Bingyue couldn't help but grit her teeth at Zheng Mu's actions.
However, watching the three mechanical beings begin to slaughter the mutated corpses, she had no choice but to rush forward.
Wielding her long sword, she momentarily froze one of the mutated corpses while slashing at its neck.
"Crack!"
Ice shards flew, but the mutated corpse wasn't killed in one strike as she had imagined.
"Roar!"
As the grotesque and howling mutated corpse lunged at her, Leng Bingyue's expression changed drastically.
Behind her, Cai Shengkun still hadn't reacted to assist.
Seeing this, her expression changed even more.
However, just as Leng Bingyue thought her situation was dire, a cold metallic creature suddenly pounced from in front of her.
The terrifying mutated corpse, capable of posing a significant threat to her on its own, had been tackled and sent flying by the Devourer.
Despite its struggles, it could only be torn apart in the blink of an eye under the Devourer's sharp claws.
[You have assisted in killing a mutated corpse (lv16) and gained 103 experience points.]
The notification in front of her panel made cold sweat stream down Leng Bingyue's forehead.
After glaring at a guilty-looking Cai Shengkun, her gaze involuntarily shifted toward Zheng Mu, who was lifting a can of ice-cold beer in her direction.
"Hmph!"
Her childhood tsundere personality made it difficult for her to openly thank Zheng Mu for his help, so she huffed coldly instead.
Acting as if he had meddled in her affairs.
In response, Zheng Mu and Cai Shengkun, who had already seen through everything, simply smiled without saying a word.
The subsequent battle went much smoother.
With Cai Shengkun's long-range attacks and Leng Bingyue's close-range combat and control, plus Zheng Mu's mechanical creations providing protection, they managed to kill more than a dozen mutated corpses in less than an hour.
Zheng Mu watched the two return, slightly out of breath, as he silently collected the mechanical components he had just transmuted using his "Midas Touch."
"Poker, we both reached level 7. What level are you now?"
"Your mechanical creations didn't kill a small number of monsters. All the experience points went to you alone. You should have leveled up at least twice, right?"
Cai Shengkun asked with a hint of jealousy.
However, after looking at his experience bar, Zheng Mu could only shrug helplessly.
"Unfortunately, leveling up is still a long way off for me."
Beside him, Leng Bingyue, who had just taken a sip of water, raised her eyebrows without any intention of being polite and cast a probing spell on Zheng Mu.
However, she couldn't see anything.
"Heh, Leng Bingyue, have you ever heard of a saying?"
Zheng Mu looked at her with a smile, knowing that with the system's protection, no one could probe his attribute information unless he allowed it.
"A girl should never be curious about the opposite sex, or else she'll fall before she knows it."
Leng Bingyue's face briefly turned a shade of unnatural red, her eyes filled with obvious embarrassment. The hand gripping her water bottle was visibly straining. Her desire to lash out was impossible to hide.
After a long while, she finally let out a cold snort, turned her head, and went straight to the driver's seat.
"Boring!"
Zheng Mu exchanged glances with Cai Shengkun, who was winking at him. The two of them understood each other perfectly, smiling silently as they packed Zheng Mu's things into the rear cargo area.
The truck turned into a makeshift mobile home. In truth, if Zheng Mu wasn't worried about startling the pair and raising suspicions about the truck named Optimus Prime, he could have directly transformed the Mechanical Nest into a luxurious RV.
Optimus Prime started again, heading deeper into the Corpse Town. They took their time, stopping here and there.
Zheng Mu wasn't in the mood for fighting personally, but when Leng Bingyue and Cai Shengkun weren't paying attention, he released a T-800 he had created. He instructed it to autonomously search for monsters in Corpse Town and eliminate them.
Monsters in the wild, even when killed, would respawn after about a week. Wanting to clear the area as quickly as possible without exposing Optimus Prime, Zheng Mu had to keep producing more T-800s and Lickers while paying close attention to his ability's cooldown time.
As night fell, the leaping zombies and corpse eaters in Corpse Town became more than what Leng Bingyue and Cai Shengkun could handle. However, for Zheng Mu, this wasn't a big deal at all.
With the ammunition support from the Mechanical Nest, the T-800's shotguns and electrified grenades showed no signs of running out. Amid the rumbling explosions and muffled gunfire, the monsters that had just emerged were blown to pieces in the blink of an eye, teetering on the brink of death.
[You assisted in killing a 50-year-old Leaping Zombie (Lv19), gaining 211 experience points]
[You assisted in killing a Poison Corpse Mutant (Lv18), gaining 183 experience points]
[You assisted in killing a Poison Corpse Mutant (Lv22), gaining 303 experience points]
[You...]
[You leveled up, current level: Lv9]
Leng Bingyue felt the strength surging through her body and looked at Zheng Mu, who was sitting carefree on the roof of the vehicle, admiring the starry sky. Her stubborn pride made her unwilling to bow to someone she found annoying, like Zheng Mu.
However, being carried by a powerhouse like him felt amazing, and their combined power was truly impressive. The experience points distributed among the three of them were quite considerable.
Finally, after another wave of zombies was eliminated, Leng Bingyue approached Zheng Mu, gritted her teeth, and asked.
"What level are you now, really?"