I Live on the Land in Global Games

27: Chapter 26 Character Upgrade 27: Chapter 26 Character Upgrade Mu Ying peeked out through the opening she had left, and in the dim forest, she saw flickering ghost lights at varying heights.

Not only did these ghost lights fail to illuminate the surroundings, but they made the woods even more gloomy.

The eerie sound was emanating from the dirt blocks surrounding the ghost lights.

Although she couldn’t clearly make out what they were, Mu Ying felt that they were drawing nearer to her, and soon she realized that it was not an illusion.

A few trees scattered around the entrance had been chopped down by her, leaving the grasslands exposed under the moonlight; a rotten corpse emerged from the forest, with two or three ghost lights swirling around its skull.

This was completely different from the feeling of fighting monsters through a screen while playing games.

The cool night breeze and the odor emanating from the rotten corpse delivered a great shock to her, but its appearance wasn’t too frightening due to its blocky nature.

Fortunately, she was accustomed to killing zombies, and she quickly adapted.

This rotten corpse seemed more troublesome to deal with than pigs, cows, or sheep.

Mu Ying decided to try to handle it; she placed a stone in the first slot of her backpack on the left, ensuring that she could block the hole at any time, and held the Stone Sword in her hand, ready for battle.

The entrance was originally the size of two stacked blocks, just large enough for a person to walk through, but now she had blocked off the lower half, reducing it to half its original size.

She had tested it herself, and by adjusting her posture, she could crawl out.

If the rotten corpse couldn’t crawl, then she would be extremely safe.

She could reach out her arm to strike at the entrance.

If the rotten corpse could crawl, then while it was trying to get in, it wouldn’t be able to attack, and she could use her sword to poke it out—or, if all else failed, use a stone to block the hole.

Watching the rotten corpse slowly approach, Mu Ying noticed that its walking speed was very slow, but its body wasn’t stiff, and it was headed straight for her with a very clear purpose.

As soon as the rotten corpse got close to the entrance, Mu Ying thrust her Stone Sword out with force, reducing its blood volume by about one-fifth.

After being attacked, the rotten corpse staggered backward, emitting an angry growl, and lunged forward with increased speed.

Mu Ying’s sword had just returned to her hand; after the first strike hit, the sword had only come back a little before she thrust it out again.

The force of the two thrusts differed, but the effect was exactly the same.

“In that case, it’s better to use less force and strike as many times as possible for higher efficiency,” Mu Ying quickly adjusted her attack strategy.

She should have thought of this sooner; during hunting, she could only hit her prey once because it ran too fast.

However, the rotten corpses were persistent in their attacks, so the only thing she needed to be careful about was not to be surrounded by them.

Thanks to her past gaming experience, she found a safe and reliable way to attack on her first night.

In just a short while, three zombies had accumulated at her location, and more were approaching in the distance.

After killing three zombies, Mu Ying’s Stone Sword’s durability had decreased by three-quarters.

Taking advantage of the fact that the remaining zombies were still some distance from the entrance, she hurriedly mined some stone to make several Stone Swords.

As soon as a zombie drew near, she rushed over to attack again.

All the while, she was mindful of her energy bar; generally, when energy decreased to the point where she felt hunger and thirst, her blood volume would start to drop slowly.

In order not to waste food, Mu Ying would eat a piece of bread just when she was about to lose blood, which would just fill her energy back up.

[Your Square World trial character, Mu Ying, has leveled up to level 1, received Source Power ×1]
The experience gained from killing zombies was about the same as mining coal, but the zombies at night were clearly much denser than the scattered coal blocks, and Mu Ying’s Experience Bar finally filled up, bringing her to level 1.

However, what she hadn’t expected was that leveling up also rewarded Source Power, and after leveling up, it became slightly easier for her to kill zombies.

After killing several waves of rotten corpses, the intervals between them grew longer.

Mu Ying guessed that it might be because other rotten corpses were too far away to be attracted, or because they came very slowly.

In the meantime, she mined several hundred stone blocks; the storage limit for one grid was 100 blocks, which counted as one group.

Besides that, she also mined more than ten coal blocks, which she combined into coal and stored together.

The meat she obtained from hunting today was also all cooked in the smelter; the smelter could be crafted with just 8 stones, and now she could afford to use one and discard one.

Cooked chicken replenished energy value a little more than apples, and cooked pork and beef were about the same, but they didn’t restore as much as bread did.

As she became proficient in mining, Mu Ying gradually managed to multitask, calculating the patterns she discovered that day.

Wood Blocks and stones were essential and consumed the most, but in one night, the stones she mined were almost enough for a long time, while her wood block reserves were still not sufficient.

The experience gained from these two activities was basically negligible.

Activities that gave more experience were mining ores or killing prey and rotten corpses, but similarly, these three drained a lot of energy as well.

Ores were hard to find, requiring a lot of time and luck.

Hunting was relatively safe and one could obtain raw meat, but it consumed a great deal of energy and also needed quite some time.

Killing rotten corpses was the most dangerous but provided the most experience.

Killing a rotten corpse gave only slightly less experience than mining a coal block, and hunting gave even less experience.

Like tonight, staying in one spot to wait for rabbits, she only attracted just over ten rotten corpses, a small number, but it cost her a lot of energy and required great caution, for a moment’s inattention could result in injury or even death.

Now her level had reached 1 with 10% towards the next level, and the experience gained from rotten corpses and coal blocks had accounted for nearly ninety percent of it.

But compared to mining, fighting rotten corpses was risky and consumed more energy.

Thinking this way, Mu Ying realized that as long as she had a stable food supply, she could completely give up hunting and killing rotten corpses, and level up through mining alone.

A stable food source, of course, had to be cultivation, such as wheat, which made bread that had an even greater effect on restoring energy than meat did.

About 10 apples or 2 pieces of meat equated to one loaf of bread.

This evening she had eaten only one loaf of bread but had consumed all the cooked meat.

Continuous hard physical labor for a day would consume about 5 loaves of bread.

Wheat seeds could be planted, but with a growth cycle of 5 days, it was somewhat long; however, bone powder made from bones obtained by killing rotten corpses could accelerate wheat growth to just 2 days.

But if she decided not to kill rotten corpses, she would need a large wheat field to meet her daily needs, and the few seeds she had on her were far from enough; she needed to gather more.

Additionally, she wanted to find sheep.

After collecting wool to make a bed, she could use it to skip the night quickly, saving on Trial Time, and energy value wouldn’t decrease when sleeping through the night.

But these things all required going out to find, which easily led to getting lost.

Mu Ying quickly decided to give up this mine, as there would be no danger of getting lost if she didn’t treat this place as one she must return to.

This mine was just excavated on a whim, and she didn’t have many valuable items on her, nothing she couldn’t afford to leave behind.

It would be better to first look for wheat and flocks of sheep.

After collecting enough wheat seeds, she would then find a suitable place nearby to settle down and live off mining and farming.

Having planned all these things, the sky gradually began to brighten, and her Trial Time was also coming to an end.