Chapter 87: Breakthrough
After a bout of violent shaking, the alchemy cauldron gradually fell still.
Lu Yunxi carefully lifted the lid. Neatly nestled at the bottom of the vessel were five round white pills. Upon closer inspection, they shimmered with a brilliant, crystalline light.
Shen San hurried over, leaning in to study the five perfect spheres with astonishment.
“Master, is this really an elixir?”
Even though he had been grinding his auxiliary skills and was technically a trainee pharmacist, the mechanical difficulty of refining elixirs was exponentially higher than that of brewing simple potions. He hadn’t even fully mastered potion-making yet, so he naturally hadn’t dared to touch the complex matrices of alchemy. In fact, he was the absolute first player across the entire server to lay eyes on a genuine elixir.
“Yes. This is your breakthrough pill,” Lu Yunxi said. She counted the spheres, transferred them into a glass vial, and handed them over. “Because my current crafting scale is altered, the pills came out relatively small. These five combined are equal to one standard-sized dose. Swallow them all at once later.”
Shen San asked a few quick questions regarding the consumption parameters, then found a clear patch of sand and sat down cross-legged. He downed the pills in one go, focused his mind, and began carefully tracing the sudden surge of internal energy flooding his system.
Lu Yunxi settled onto a rock beside him, watching his vitals intently.
Half a day bled away before the nature of Shen San’s internal energy began to warp. The ambient force around him seemed to materialize, casting visible, rippling rings through the water layer.
Yunxi, who had been nodding off from the long wait, snapped her eyes open. She rapidly deployed a fresh set of master-tier barriers around both of them, stepping back a few meters to grant him ample room to channel the energy.
Unlike the muted, organic progression she had experienced when shattering her own level caps, a player’s ascension to the Master rank triggered an entirely different graphic loop. In addition to the initial kinetic ripples, blinding rings of golden light began to flash violently around his avatar.
She took two glances at the display before the sheer luminosity forced her to lower her head, tightly shielding her eyes to avoid taking a blinding penalty.
Tsk, the system visualization for outworlders is ridiculous, she thought to herself. Their level breakthroughs are a literal light show, whereas our native advancements are completely ordinary—just a brief shift in our internal energy paths.
The blinding pillar of light sustained its intensity for roughly five minutes. Only when she could no longer detect the ambient glare even with her eyelids squeezed shut did she tentatively call out, “Shen San, did the matrix clear? Was it a success?”
“Master, I did it! I shattered the cap!”
Before the echo of his voice could fade, Lu Yunxi felt herself violently lifted into the air.
Shen San’s face was painted with a brilliant, boyish grin that made him look remarkably fresh and handsome. He launched her high into the water column, caught her carefully in his palm, and threw her up again, repeating the hyperactive celebration over and over.
Yunxi felt like she was riding a rollercoaster without a safety harness.
“Fantastic! Now we can finally dismantle that fish monster outside!” she laughed, unbridled joy crinkling the corners of her eyes.
The scenery at the bottom of the lake had been undeniably beautiful at first, but no matter how picturesque a zone was, staring at the exact same environmental textures for weeks would make anyone go mad. Furthermore, now that they had completely strip-mined the luminescent flora, the lake floor had turned entirely pitch-black and boring.
Holding her securely with one hand, Shen San used his free arm to paddle upward.
When they reached the center of the instance layer, the gargantuan Level 70 fish monster initialized right on schedule. The creature’s AI seemed remarkably advanced; upon registering their coordinates, it paused for a brief second as if processing their altered parameters.
The exact millisecond they remanifested their flower boat, the fish monster’s aggro loop triggered. It lunged to the surface, unhinging its jaws to violently expel a high-pressure jet of water.
“Hmph!”
Lu Yunxi planted her miniature hands on her hips, letting out a sharp snort. She raised her arms, shouting with immense dramatic flair, “Go! Destroy it, Shen San!”
Shen San had already equipped his highest-tier combat gear. At her command, he lunged from the deck, his blade cutting a sharp arc through the water as he closed the distance. As a quasi-master, his baseline agility metrics remained low, but given the sudden momentum of his sprint, the fish monster’s evasion tracking failed to register in time.
SLASH—
The heavy broadsword carved brutally through the monster’s scales, sending pixelated water effects exploding in every direction.
The fish monster twisted its massive body in agony, rolling through the currents as its predatory eyes flared with a lethal crimson light. Locking its gaze onto the warrior, it accelerated to maximum speed and charged.
Yet, Shen San was no longer a low-tier advanced fighter gridlocked by a stat deficit. He hoisted his broadsword and met the assault head-on, engaging the beast in a brutal clash of raw physical attributes.
Watching the exchange from the gunwale, Lu Yunxi was momentarily dazed. Shen San’s entire build was engineered around raw, unyielding strength, but she hadn’t anticipated that the fish monster’s AI would completely abandon its high-speed evasion tactics and actively choose to match him in a pure power struggle.
Did his opening strike tilt its aggression parameters into a berserk state?
Monitoring the bars, she noted that Shen San’s defense rating was holding perfectly; it was immediately obvious that without its speed modifiers, this boss possessed very little lethal threat. Relaxing completely once she confirmed her apprentice wouldn’t sustain any critical damage, she sat down on the deck and began quietly sorting through her crafting inventory.
By the time she had finished preparing a hot meal to celebrate, Shen San delivered the final blow, shattering the fish monster’s data node and triggering the instance clearance notification.
“Master, look at the clear drop! It’s a bow and arrow. Don’t you utilize ranged weapons?” Shen San knelt beside her, holding up a pristine equipment crate as if he were presenting a holy relic. “You should bind this to your character sheet! You can wield it the second your debuff expires.”
Amused by his sheer excitement, Yunxi peered over the edge of the box. Her eyes widened as she registered the unmistakable golden radiance bleeding from the weapon’s frames. It was a Gold-quality bow!
What is going on with the server drop rates lately? she wondered. Why are Gold-tier items spawning in every single zone we visit? Is the entire global map overflowing with legendary loot except for the Forest Continent? If that were the case, the system developers were being profoundly hostile to the starting zones!
Shen San quickly cut through her internal conspiracy theories, explaining, “Gold-grade weapons are incredibly rare—this is the absolute first time my account has ever triggered one from a boss drop! Master, you must secure this safely in your deepest vault. If another player flags this or loots it, we will never see another weapon of this caliber.”
While their chaotic journey had yielded a substantial volume of Gold-tier items, the absolute majority had been premium provisions or high-yield alchemy materials. Aside from a few armor pieces, this was their first time unlocking a legendary weapon blueprint.
“Shen San… do you perceive a sudden drop in the ambient temperature?” Lu Yunxi pulled her green wool shawl tightly around her miniature frame, enveloping herself entirely as she burrowed deeper into the collar of his heavy robes.
The exact microsecond they stepped through the instance gateway and cleared back into the Water Continent, a bone-chilling gust tore through the marshlands, causing Shen San to shiver violently.
He immediately opened his inventory, pulled out a heavily padded winter coat, and bundled himself up against the wind. He glanced down at the tiny bundle nestled against his neck. “Master, if the frost penalty is too severe, would your station prefer to shelter inside my breast pocket? It should be significantly more insulated there.”
Lu Yunxi peeked out from his collar, evaluated the depth of the dark pouch on his chest, and gave a firm shake of her head. Even though this simulation was hard-coded with an ancient historical aesthetic, the geometric cut of the pocket looked suspiciously modern. Besides, where on earth did ancient people even stitch pockets into their robes? Didn’t they carry everything in silk pouches? Perhaps historical garments didn’t possess built-in storage slots at all?
Regardless of the historical accuracy, she was far too self-conscious to crawl into a pocket directly over his chest.
“I’m perfectly fine here,” she huffed, her voice small but firm. “The line of sight is much better from your shoulder.”
Accepting her refusal, Shen San tightened his outerwear to block the draft. Steering completely clear of the mysterious house anchored in the center of the lake, he picked a random heading across the wetlands and began a rapid march.
As they pushed deeper into the zone, the gale winds steadily intensified, scaling up until the ambient force rivaled the savage blizzards of the Ice Continent. The only saving grace was that the sky remained entirely clear of snow.
Braving the brutal headwind, their initial rapid pace quickly devolved into a slow, agonizing slog as they fought for every inch of ground. After an hour of exhausting navigation, their environmental radar finally detected a thin trail of gray smoke drifting from a distant chimney.
“Master, look! There’s a settlement structure ahead. Let’s go scout it out!”
They hurried toward the building. Shen San rapped his knuckles firmly against the weathered wood.
Knock, knock, knock.
“Coming, coming… hold your horses,” a raspy, frail voice echoed from within. Following a bout of dry, hacking coughs, the heavy door slowly swung inward.
“Who goes there?” An elderly man stood trembling on the threshold, using his shoulder to brace the frame as he slowly lifted his head. His weathered face was heavily lined, and a pair of milky, clouded eyes shifted weakly as he evaluated the traveler.
Lu Yunxi ducked her head deep beneath the folds of Shen San’s collar, remaining completely hidden from view. She reached out and sharply pinched his neck, silently commanding her apprentice to keep her existence entirely secret from the resident. She couldn’t explain the mechanical impulse, but the absolute second her eyes locked onto the old man, a profound, chilling discomfort had rippled through her awareness. Something about this NPC felt deeply wrong.
“Greetings, elder. I’ve traveled across the border from the neighboring Ice Continent,” Shen San said, offering a polite, easy smile. “I accidentally slipped from the high glaciers a few weeks back, and after waking up in the valley, I marched a significant distance before stumbling onto your perimeter. Could you tell me which territory this is?”
“This is merely a village… We don’t possess an official name on the map, seeing as the settlement is so small and entirely isolated from the main trade routes. We don’t see outworld strangers here from one end of the year to the next,” the old man murmured, shaking his head. His speech patterns were slightly slurred and heavy. “If your soul intends to depart this sector, I advise anchoring your boots until the winter cycle resets. The temperature is dropping rapidly, and the sky is about to unleash a massive blizzard.”
“Understood. Could you point me toward the nearest commercial town? If I need to secure long-term lodgings…”
“A foot journey to the nearest city from our boundaries takes roughly three full months,” the old man interrupted, his cloudy eyes squinting as he stared blankly into the distance, as if dragging an ancient data file from his memory. A flash of complex, unreadable emotion rippled through his expression before he let out a heavy sigh, refocusing on Shen San’s armor. “Young man, if your account requires immediate shelter, you are welcome to utilize the guest quarters along the western wing. However… our village has hit a severe resource drought. There are no provisions left in our stores; any sustenance you require, you must harvest entirely on your own.”
