GAMMT - Chapter 22

Chapter 22: Time

Fu Chuan said, "You can record this! If I break my word, go ahead and sue me. The signal's gone anyway, so I can't contact my father. No one's coming to save me. If you all pull your weight, you'll get your money. Surely that paltry sum isn't more precious than my life, is it?"

Then she saw the entire group nodding vigorously.

Hmm…

Fu Chuan had intended to pay them all along. This was just an act to maintain her persona as a despicable scumbag and conceal her true abilities. Seizing the opportunity to put on a show was perfect, but she couldn't help feeling a sense of helplessness.

Even while running a dungeon to make money, she had to maintain this negative persona. She was afraid that the Xie Clan would see her as a threat and move against her.

For a noble family, an illegitimate son who suddenly appears isn't a problem. But what kind of illegitimate son poses no threat?

First, he must be useless. Second, his intelligence must be non-threatening. Third, even someone who is exceptionally useless and harmless must be guarded against, because those who feign it are the most terrifying.

The problem was, if you knew this, so did they. Wouldn't they test you?

Having been raised by two old cadres and exposed to the rhetoric and masks worn by her parents' associates, Fu Chuan had learned by osmosis. She knew very well that her current persona was the only safe one.

Not exceptionally stupid, consistent with her upbringing, with mediocre talent and a bit of cunning. A flawed character with a terrible, arrogant personality—the type of person everyone despises and would never support. This greatly reduced the possibility of her gathering followers to seize power.

She was essentially exposing her own shortcomings, cutting off any path to power. This was the only way to truly put the Xie Clan at ease.

Of course, if the identity of a Xie Clan noble wasn't so crucial to her plans, she would have just finished this job and left. Hmph!

After settling things with the workers, Fu Chuan gave two orders.

"First, half of you move all the food from the storeroom to the kitchen. The kitchen is connected to the living quarters, so if disaster strikes, we can hold out there for a while. Also, use wooden planks, iron sheets—any defensive plating you can find—to reinforce and seal the windows!"

"Second, the other half of you, bring out the raw materials from the warehouse…"

"You guards, go out and fight the monsters. The rest of you, defend these two areas. And all you old folks, women, and children, don't you dare run around! Stay hidden! If you get eaten and the smell of blood attracts more locusts, I'll dock your family's wages!"

Fu Chuan gave her orders quickly, and the Green-Brown Locusts arrived just as fast. The people boarding up the windows soon saw a teeming black mass—at least a hundred thousand of them. For a city, a hundred thousand normal locusts would be nothing, but these were dungeon monsters. They were different.

The tenants were terrified but quickened their pace. The guard captain and his men charged out to fight the monsters, looking like they were about to strike it rich…

"Where's the Young Master?"

"The Young Master took a big bag of food and is hiding in his room. He even had me reinforce the outside of his door and told us not to bother him unless it's a life-or-death situation. Oh, and he asked for an iron wok. Said it was for self-defense."

"…"

That damn scumbag was really one of a kind!

Meanwhile, Fu Chuan had already used her spider silk to ascend the chimney. From the roof, she glanced at the guard captain and his men in the fields, then used a high-powered telescope to scan the distant border of the sky barrier. No one had arrived yet. Looking further out, however, she could see nearby farmers approaching, likely out of curiosity, but some were also on their communicators.

Were they panicking?

No, they were selling information. They were probably frustrated, though, because there was no signal nearby. They would have to go further out to find one.

This was a unique feature of this world's civilization. These natives were no fools; first-hand information on a dungeon's location could earn them more than half a year's wages.

So, even though she had cut the signal and bought herself some time, people would still be arriving soon.

"I need to hurry."

Having bought herself some time, Fu Chuan reverted to her true self and slipped into the pitch-black night, making her way into the woods.

Her route avoided the farmland, which meant she also bypassed the swarm of over a hundred thousand locusts. She figured that since most of the crops in the fields had already been harvested, the remaining organic resources were mostly vegetable stalks, leaves, and discarded roots. The Green-Brown Locusts would devour these quickly and would soon be drawn by the smell of food towards the farm.

The farm's supplies were part of her plan, and they were her property. She had to lure at least some of the locusts away.

How to lure them?

She ran to the part of the woods where the Flying Fish Airship was hidden, dropped her backpack, and rummaged through it.

In truth, after entering Xie An's study that day, she knew that the attributes of the body she inhabited, Xie Keli's, had been scanned. Either the study itself had the equipment, or Xie An possessed a skill like Eagle Eye. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been so uninterested in her, nor would he have neglected to praise her for defeating a stronger opponent or ask about her reaching the third level of Arcane. It was because he already knew everything; there was no need to ask, and he wasn't impressed.

Her stats were simply too poor. The main reason she had managed to defeat Xie Lin and his cronies was that they had underestimated her and let their guard down. Secondly, they were also trash, just hollow shells propped up by experience farming.

Furthermore, she had come prepared, carrying an Eagle Eye Gem, while Xie Lin and the others had no such equipment or treasures with them. They had suffered a great loss because of it; otherwise, she would have been no match for them.

Regardless, the information the Xie Clan now had on her was set in stone, which should clear her of any suspicion related to her time on X5 Star. Next… Fu Chuan pulled three S1 Gene Keys from her backpack.

Time to eat.

Fu Chuan expertly consumed the three S1s in succession. The process was familiar: endure, and become stronger!

A dozen or so minutes later, the transformation reached its peak. She could feel the elemental energy in her surroundings gathering and condensing around her with frantic intensity.

Drenched in sweat, Fu Chuan first checked her stats.

Level: 3.

Main Attributes.

Mental Power: 900 (Initial Mental Power 1+99)

Strength: 291 (Initial Strength 1+18)

Constitution: 373 (Initial Constitution 3+15)

Agility: 2232 (Initial Agility 2+25)

Skill Points: Arcane Missile LV3, Flame Blast LV2, Forest Thorns LV1.

A dramatic change! Her Agility, in particular, had been boosted by a factor of more than three times its base by the three S1s. The increase was insane!

But only the second branch of her Gene Tree had lit up.

Because two of them had failed.

This meant that it took three S1s to successfully unlock the second branch, with two being wasted in the process. Otherwise, the growth multiplier would likely have been much higher than just over three times.

This was within Fu Chuan's range of expectations. Successfully lighting up the branches of the Gene Tree wasn't a guaranteed process. The more branches that were already lit, the harder it became to light up the remaining ones, requiring even more S1s.

This was only the 1st Sequence. It would only get harder from here. But as long as she succeeded, no matter the cost, every success was a huge step forward.

"The foundation built during the newbie period is known as the cradle of kings." This wasn't a sudden epiphany for Fu Chuan; she had long held this belief. She wasn't surprised, merely lamenting that she had never managed such a good start when playing games in her past life, yet had achieved it after transmigrating.

"Succeeding with the second branch after just three tries… my luck is decent. Not good, but not bad."

Fu Chuan didn't waste any time. Ignoring the surge of power in her body, she took advantage of the energy spike from her breakthrough to check the airship's detector. Sure enough, a red cluster was approaching her position.

"Sharp, aren't they? They came right over the moment they sensed the gathering of elements and energy here."

Fu Chuan was clearly using herself and the energy from the three S1s as bait to lure the Green-Brown Locusts. She then took some fuel from the airship, poured it into a bottle, and used her spider silk ring to quickly release strands of silk, soaking them in the fuel.

Thanks to the explosive growth of her stats and the massive increase in her mental power, her control over the silk was far more deft. She could sustain it for longer and release more of it. Soon, the entire bottle of fuel was used up.

She manipulated the fuel-soaked strands, suspending them in mid-air to form a dome-like web with herself and the airship at its core. She pulled the strands taut until they were as tight as steel wires.

"Faster, faster, the denser the better…" Fu Chuan did her best to release more silk, weaving the strands into an ever-denser net. The silk itself was nearly transparent, and even in a dense web, it was practically invisible in the dark of night.

But she hooked the silk with the fingers of her left hand, pulling it taut, and with her right, she snapped her fingers.

The incantation had already been silently recited.

Flame Blast.

Flames erupted, racing along the fuel on the silk and charring the entire web.

She controlled the intensity of the fire, keeping it small. The main purpose was just to heat the web.

Fu Chuan could now see the Green-Brown Locusts flying in from all over the woods. There was a dense swarm of them—she silently estimated there were about a thousand.

It was a little scary.

But Fu Chuan was skilled at calculating resources and damage output. She had a good grasp of the situation and didn't panic. As she watched them descend upon her in a buzzing, oppressive cloud, she knew they were drawn to the massive amount of elemental energy she had attracted during her S1 transformation. To them, she was like a meat bun to a starving dog.

To be honest, their flight speed wasn't slow; otherwise, they wouldn't have been able to relentlessly chase the airship.

It was precisely that earlier deadly encounter in these woods and their flight speed that had given Fu Chuan her inspiration. By now, the flames had completely died out, and the silk was once again transparent. Looking up at the thousand-plus plump locusts emerging from the trees, Fu Chuan could almost see them opening their mandibles in the cold moonlight, ready to gnaw her down to the bone.

Bzzzzzz.

Like a hail of small bullets, they swarmed towards Fu Chuan, covering a 180-degree angle with no blind spots… and then, one by one, they slammed directly into the dense spider web.

First, it was fine.

Second, it was tough.

Third, it was scorching hot.

The heated strands inflicted far more damage on organic matter, much like how a red-hot steel wire would slice through human skin more easily, causing greater pain.

And bringing you closer to death.

And so… the terrifying, high-temperature spider web slicer was activated.

Over a thousand Green-Brown Locusts, one after another, fell victim to the dense web within seconds. Once they entered, they were met with slicing strands from every direction.

They couldn't stop in time.

Thump, thump, thump. A massive number of locust body parts rained down to the ground.

The ground was carpeted with a dense layer of severed remains, and among them, she could faintly see some dropped items.

Huh, so dismemberment can trigger drops directly?

Fu Chuan felt like she had stumbled upon a new discovery. At the same time, she was met with a dense stream of notifications.

EXP +1 +1 +1…

Her experience points were skyrocketing.

In just a few seconds, ding.

"Level up to 4. All attributes increased by 20 points. Skill point +1."

Fu Chuan stood her ground in the darkness, flexing her slightly sore fingers. The impact of the large locusts had strained the silk she was holding, and she had to use her strength to maintain the tension. Her fingers were a bit painful, red, and swollen.

But it felt good. Over a thousand experience points had leveled her up directly. Her current level was 4 (300/3000).

Reaching level five required 3000 experience points, which meant another 3000 locusts.

It would be difficult. She had already used up her S1s.

"If I'd known they were this greedy, I would have used the S1s one at a time for three separate lures. Now it'll be hard to attract so many at once. I'll have to use the airship to draw them into the woods."

Fu Chuan glanced at her mental power, which was more than halfway depleted, and went to collect her rewards. The locust corpses themselves were worthless, selling for a dozen copper coins at most. That might be valuable to an ordinary person, but not to her.

So Fu Chuan ignored the bodies. The other drops weren't plentiful, either. Out of more than 1,200 locusts, only 15 items had dropped: 8 small blue bottles, which were clearly level-one mental power potions, and 7 skill books.

"Arcane Missile really is a local specialty. It makes sense, given how rich the wind element is in this area, and these are skill books from level-one monsters."

Fu Chuan had obtained five copies of Arcane Missile and two copies of Wind Blade, which was also a wind-element skill.

Wind Blade was a single-target attack skill, but Fu Chuan wasn't fond of it. It consumed a lot of mental power. At level one, it looked cool—a flurry of wind blades flying past, fast and fierce—but as it leveled up, the mental power cost increased dramatically while the damage didn't scale well. It was a rather useless skill, mainly because it didn't synergize well with other abilities.

Fu Chuan was the type to maximize her gains. She was methodical and disliked skills that were too one-dimensional and lacked long-term potential. So, even though she had an extra skill point, she had no intention of learning it, even if it was as easy to level up as Arcane Missile.

She used four of the Arcane Missile books to upgrade the skill to level 4. Then she chugged a few of the level-one mental power potions, replenishing some of her energy. After re-setting the silk web, she boarded the airship and began luring more locusts to slaughter them in the same fashion…

A level-five dungeon like this was truly a paradise for grinding experience, especially for a capable quasi-elite like Fu Chuan. Leveling was incredibly fast. And while the drop rate for rewards seemed low, with an AoE attack in hand, obtaining several skill books at once was a significant gain.

A few more waves and she'd be rich!

As the airship ascended, Fu Chuan glanced towards the sky barrier, a flicker of worry in her heart. "I wonder if I'll have enough time to run a few more waves and get to level five."

"Once other people arrive, there probably won't be much left for me. I can't compete for resources alone. I'll probably have to team up."

Fu Chuan put on her mask and quickly got back to work.

But what Fu Chuan didn't know was that in a ravine five or six hundred meters away from the woods, a man with a rifle slung over his back was watching this very scene through a telescope.

"Ah, it seems a hunter with better luck than me got here first. But she doesn't seem to be from the farm… If it's just one person, that's perfect."

The corner of his mouth, seen through the telescope, curled into a cruel smile.

"I'll let her use that airship to gather some more resources for me, the cute little girl."

He chuckled and disappeared back into the ravine to deal with other locust swarms, but he kept a close watch on Fu Chuan.

He knew this person would be killing monsters nearby, and he just needed to wait for the perfect moment.

To kill and plunder!

Meanwhile, in a small town near the southern suburbs, the closest high-altitude point to the city, an airship was preparing for takeoff. They weren't heading for the farm; they had just finished dealing with a hidden wild mini-BOSS nearby and were about to return to the city. Suddenly, one of them, looking at the dial on a detector in his hand, called out to the pilot.

"Lao Lin, don't head for the city just yet."

"Huh? What's wrong?"

The young man, with his cold expression and a few freckles that made him look particularly distinctive, tapped the data on the dial. "The fluctuations in the air's pH levels around here have been off for the past two days. According to Biological Reproduction Environments, it could induce physiological changes in certain insect species…"

"What's that mean?"

"It means an insect-type biological disaster dungeon might be appearing."

"Holy crap, where? We haven't seen any news. If it's too far, we won't even get the scraps."

The young man flicked his finger, bringing up a software on the device. "Wait while I calculate the specific pH changes. The area where a dungeon appears will have drastic fluctuations because of the isolated space… Ascend for now, and head towards the suburbs. Biological disasters usually occur in places with a lot of crops."

As he spoke, he input some data. A moment later, he pointed to a location.

"Go that way. There's a small farm closest to us."

"Let's hope no one's already gotten to this fresh meal."

His companions were excited at the prospect of catching a dungeon. One of the girls, who was quite chatty, piped up, "What if someone's already eating?"

"Then let's hope it really is shit," the young man said with a straight face. "Let her eat first. After she's done eating, we'll eat her."

The others: "…"

Who started this disgusting topic?

Fu Chuan was desperately racing against time. While trying to avoid the guard captain and his men, she managed to lure three more waves of locusts in the vicinity over the next ten-plus minutes. This was the third wave. It was a small one, only five or six hundred, but it was enough for her to fill the experience bar for level four.

Just as Fu Chuan was about to fly back towards the woods, she saw the locusts she had been luring suddenly scatter and dive downwards. Puzzled, she looked down and saw an azure glow in the cornfield below.

It was more than ten times the size of a normal locust, as large as a small calf. It buzzed through the cornfield, devouring the plants like a whirlwind.

She was startled, then a wave of delight washed over her.

Oho!

A monster mini-BOSS? No matter how small, it's still a BOSS!

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