Chapter Nineteen: The Birth of the King of Strivers
[Ding, you have slain one elite monster above level 10 in the secret realm. Breakthrough quest completed.]
[Ding, your level cap has been raised. You have reached level 11, and your attributes have been enhanced.]
[Ding, you have enough experience. Your level has increased to 12, and your attributes have been enhanced.]
[Strength +10, Agility +10, Intelligence +18, Endurance +12, Spirit +14]
[Ding, you have enough experience. Your level has increased to 13, and your attributes have been enhanced.]
[Strength +11, Agility +12...]
...
[Ding, you have enough experience. Your level has increased to 15, and your attributes have been enhanced.]
...
After Yi Shen completed the breakthrough quest, his level automatically rose to 11.
Earlier, he had slain over two hundred lesser monsters, each granting him an average of more than forty experience points, amassing a staggering total of ten thousand experience!
From level eleven onward, the experience needed to advance grew increasingly substantial.
It took 1,000 experience to reach level twelve, 2,000 for level thirteen, and so on. With ten thousand experience saved up, Yi Shen’s level soared directly to fifteen!
Of course, as the experience requirements increased, so too did the attribute rewards.
From this point forward, the attribute gains with each level became significantly larger.
In the first ten levels, every level up only granted a handful of attributes.
However, starting from level eleven, each level up brought more than ten points to various attributes.
Upon reaching level fifteen, nearly all of Yi Shen’s attributes had surpassed 100, with Intelligence as the highest, even soaring to a remarkable 300!
And that was not all.
As Yi Shen’s level increased, the E-grade equipment he had saved began to prove useful.
At present, he could equip three pieces of E-grade gear suitable for a mage, granting him further attribute boosts and enhancing his spell damage, raising it by a total of 67!
This meant that his Fireball, which previously could only deal 30 damage, now nearly reached a hundred.
Skills like Arcane Impact, with a base damage just over a hundred, now soared to 170 or 180; with four stacks of the Arcane Impact buff, a single cast could inflict as much as 300 damage.
Were Yi Shen to sweep through these monsters again, he would no longer suffer from damage reduction. He could compress the time spent today into a third, making it a routine dungeon farming run!
“There’s still the boss.”
After a brief glance at his attributes, Yi Shen paid them no further mind; his attention was drawn to the corpse of the spider octopod before him.
This was the guardian beast of the Frozen Secret Realm—the true final treasure of the place. Even in death, the octopod’s body glowed with a faint blue light.
Yi Shen spent some effort blasting apart the blocking boulder and finally reached the corpse.
...
[Ding, you have slain the Icefield Octopod (Secret Realm Boss), gaining 762 experience.]
[Ding, you have slain the Icefield Octopod (Secret Realm Boss), gaining 133 contribution points.]
[Ding, you have obtained Octopod Limb (D).]
[Ding, you have obtained Giant Venom Sac (D).]
[Ding, you have obtained Ice Crystal x3 (E).]
[Ding, you have obtained Job Change Certificate (Priest).]
[Ding, you have obtained Serrated Blade (D).]
[Ding, you have obtained Icefield Leather Trousers (E).]
[Ding, you have obtained Icefield Octopod’s Bulwark (E).]
——
This octopod was originally meant as loot for a ten-person team.
But for Yi Shen, all these spoils now belonged to him alone!
Setting aside experience and contribution points, he gained three pieces of equipment outright, and even secured a special job change certificate!
No wonder Yi Shen had seen so many teams lingering around the outskirts of the secret realm.
He’d often read on forums about people camping the area, waiting for the secret realm to refresh.
Currently, a Priest’s Job Change Certificate fetched about 8,000 contribution points on the market—a mid-range price.
The other equipment wasn’t as valuable, but D-grade gear could easily sell for over a thousand points each.
So from this one monster alone, Yi Shen had essentially looted items worth nearly 10,000 contribution points!
If this kind of drop rate could be sustained, Yi Shen would gladly return to farm here even with higher levels.
Unfortunately, data showed that such high drop rates were exceptional.
A typical full run of the secret realm yielded about 4,000 points in total.
If the D-grade gear dropped poorly, total returns might be as low as 2,000, and split among several people, the average per person was even less—better to team up for higher-level secret realms.
One could only say Yi Shen’s luck today was truly extraordinary.
After such a long effort, he finally struck it rich, covering all his expenses for the day.
...
Of the three pieces of equipment he’d obtained, the Icefield Leather Trousers boosted Agility, the Icefield Octopod’s Bulwark was a shield, and the Serrated Blade was a melee weapon.
None were well-suited for mage classes, but for physical professions, they were top-tier transitional gear.
Now, Yi Shen hesitated: since he didn’t need them immediately, should he find a way to sell them, or dismantle them with Spell Specialization?
Selling would earn him some extra pocket money, but dismantling might net him more attributes or skills.
After much deliberation, indecision got the better of him. He decided to leave the secret realm and check prices in the city first.
The secret realm was actually smaller than he’d thought; it took him only seven or eight minutes to return to the entrance.
The realm typically reset every three or four days—that meant Yi Shen would have to wait until the next reset for another lucrative farming session.
Or, he could seek out a new secret realm next time.
With his current power, as long as he didn’t court disaster, he could solo more than half the secret realms across the snowy desert.
He looked forward to that.
In his merged memories, Yi Shen had grown up under his parents’ influence.
They were among the first explorers, reclaiming lost lands and searching for new homes as the city expanded.
His father had always believed Yi Shen to be lazy, not trying hard unless he finished top three at school.
Tomorrow when his parents returned, Yi Shen was determined to make his father see that he was not the privileged young master he imagined, but a true, hardworking champion!