Chapter 65: The Fishing Cave

As expected, had the comfortable environment made him lazy? Lying in bed, Kong Zhe couldn’t help but ponder this. He silently reminded himself that he must not allow this in the future. In the past, he had always risen before dawn to train. Even in this life, no matter how powerful he became, he intended to maintain this habit. Otherwise, he would inevitably be overtaken one day.

Pulling back the curtains, he glanced outside; the sky was already growing light.

The morning is the most precious time of the day.

Stretching lazily, Kong Zhe got up, ready to head out and level up.

The living room was quiet. Xue Feifei was still curled up in her little nest, sound asleep, with various small tools and metal parts scattered nearby—she must have been busy late into the night. The other three girls were nowhere to be seen, likely still sleeping in their respective rooms. After all, they were still ordinary people, and their need for sleep hadn't diminished.

After a night's rest, Kong Zhe's mana had fully recovered.

He had no intention of waking them and prepared to leave on his own.

But the moment he opened the door, Kong Zhe was startled. The little dog was crouched right outside, and upon seeing him, it started whining, looking at him with a pitiful expression.

At this moment, the little dog had two makeshift dog heads hanging from its neck, crafted from some unknown materials, and its face was covered with bizarre symbols drawn in ink. Someone had even applied eyeliner and black lipstick, making it look for all the world like the legendary three-headed hound of the underworld.

Kong Zhe nearly burst out laughing. There was no need to guess—this was surely the handiwork of that eccentric kid.

"I mean, aren't you a level three magical beast? Letting a mere level one Awakened bully you like this… Isn't that a bit pathetic?" he couldn't help but scold the little dog. But then it struck him: the girl did have that aura-mimicking ability. While he knew it was all show, the little dog certainly didn’t. No doubt it had been so frightened that it dared not move, letting her do as she pleased, which led to this result.

Amused, Kong Zhe nonetheless gave the dog a quick wash. He couldn’t let it go out looking like this—both the dog and its owner would lose face.

There were even more monsters in the community than yesterday. Magical beasts would continue to descend upon Earth over time, and their landing spots were random, so Awakened never had to worry about running out of monsters to hunt; if anything, they needed to worry about not killing them fast enough to prevent an outbreak.

Fortunately, compared to the streets outside, the monsters in the community were still relatively sparse. Most of them were below level two; occasionally, a level three would appear, but Kong Zhe had yet to encounter anything above level four.

He himself was a level four Awakened with excellent attributes, honed skills and combat experience from his previous life, and the little dog, a level three magical beast, at his side. Unless he was surrounded by a swarm, these scattered monsters posed no threat.

Using the cover of heavy snow and his spatial card, Kong Zhe calmly hunted down beast after beast. Soon, he had cleared a safe zone right below Xue Feifei’s building.

Along the way, he occasionally found the corpses of monsters. Judging by the wounds, they’d been killed by other Awakened. However, these people clearly lacked experience: they took only the drops and left the monster materials untouched.

While materials from monsters below level three weren’t worth much, they were still magical components with special uses. For example, scales from mermen could be used to craft armor, and kobold wizard candles could slightly restore mana to nearby units when lit.

With his spatial ring, Kong Zhe collected all the useful materials from these corpses without hesitation. Even if he couldn’t use them, he could always sell them to NPCs for gold.

After gathering the materials, Kong Zhe wasted no time. It was prime time for hunting, so he immediately dashed toward another building…

About an hour and a half later, Kong Zhe had wiped out all the monsters in the community. At that moment, he was hiding in the small clinic. The twenty-square-meter room still contained some medicine and medical supplies, but it was clear someone had already looted the most useful items—vitamins, glucose, hemostatics—all gone. Luckily, the remaining medicines and tools were still plentiful, and Kong Zhe took them all.

In the middle of the now-empty clinic, a level three merman blood mage was tied to the table, its limbs severed, mouth stuffed with a filthy rag. No matter how desperately it struggled, it couldn't move.

Kong Zhe sat nearby, a blue mana link stretching between them, steadily replenishing his mana.

His recent hunt had netted him nearly 900 experience points, enough to push him past the threshold for level five. But he wasn’t in a hurry to level up. After all, leveling up instantly restored health and mana—a potential game-changer in a dangerous fight. And since he had no new skill cards to unlock, the only benefit would be a handful of attribute points. With his total stats now around seventy or eighty, an extra six points was a drop in the bucket.

Besides, with the little dog’s healing spell, his health was full, and his mana could be endlessly replenished with the Water Wave card. So he decided to save the experience for when he truly needed it.

Soon, his mana overflowed and the mana link snapped.

He stretched and glanced at the merman on the table, which was now glaring at him with hatred, howling through the gag—clearly, having its mana drained was torture. Kong Zhe spared it further suffering, finishing it off with a single blow.

After stripping the scales from its body, the system prompt chimed.

“Ding, regional quest released…”

Checking the time, it was 8:10—just as it had been in his previous life. Kong Zhe opened his panel and quickly scanned the quest details, confirming that nothing had changed from before. That was a relief; to be honest, he’d worried the anomaly with the box might have altered history, costing him a chance at the golden treasure chest.

Leaving the clinic, he decided to return and bind the quest candidates as soon as possible. Once he bound the three of them, no other Awakened could claim them unless they killed him first.

Xue Feifei’s neighborhood was huge—comparable in size to a university campus, complete with gardens, playgrounds, a gymnasium, and even an outdoor swimming pool.

During his hour-long hunt, Kong Zhe had traversed from one end to the other. Now he was some distance from Xue Feifei’s building.

Passing by a landscaped garden, Kong Zhe suddenly paused. He had seen a faint glimmer of light by the small lake up ahead.

Kong Zhe’s heart stirred. In this game-like apocalypse, a glimmer often meant treasure. After making sure no one was around, he walked straight toward the lake.

But when he got closer, he found nothing out of the ordinary—the light had vanished. Had he imagined it?

He shook his head and was about to search the area more carefully when something caught his eye. His gaze locked, and a smile broke across his face.

Near the edge of the small lake, amid what should have been a snow-covered, frozen surface, was a pitch-black hole in the ice.

This opening, barely ten centimeters wide, was unfrozen, revealing the rippling blue water beneath. If one looked closely, a faint glow shimmered at its edge—so dim it would be missed unless you were paying close attention.

But don’t let that faint light fool you into thinking this was something ordinary. Kong Zhe recognized it—no, soon, every Awakened would recognize it.

This was a Fishing Hole. The name might sound mundane, but in some ways, it was even more valuable than a golden chest.

After the apocalypse, these holes would randomly appear wherever there was water around the world. Through them, Awakened could use rods formed of mana to fish, and the catches had all sorts of wondrous effects: bluefish that permanently increased attributes, fighting fish that could turn pets into battle beasts, ornamental fish that could be traded for large sums of gold, and sometimes, even Treasure Fish.

As the name implied, Treasure Fish contained all kinds of loot inside—just cut them open. The key was that the quality of the loot was random; there was even a chance to obtain artifact-level items. Thus, Fishing Holes became, alongside golden chests, one of the few ways to obtain artifacts.

But just like golden chests, it was extremely difficult to get a golden item from a Fishing Hole. In fact, catching anything at all was hard.

In theory, any Awakened could fish here, but fishing required skill. Without it, the success rate was dismal—about thirty percent for the average Awakened. Those with pre-apocalypse fishing experience could reach fifty percent, but usually would only catch ordinary fish. The odds of landing a Treasure Fish were slim.

On the surface, the Fishing Hole seemed rather underwhelming. However, after the apocalypse, a special secondary profession emerged: the Angler.

This profession existed solely for these Fishing Holes. Even the lowest-level Angler had a success rate above seventy percent, and the highest levels could reach one hundred percent, with an astonishingly high chance of catching Treasure Fish.