Chapter 84: A Way to Lift the Curse, Part One

“What are you glaring at me for? Xue Feifei, you really need to fix that habit of firing with your eyes closed! Because of you just now, I nearly died again, do you understand?”

After Kong Zhe finished roaring that out, he looked at Xue Feifei’s face, which was full of confusion and uncertainty, and could not help letting out a sigh. In truth, he knew very well that it was all that curse’s doing; Xue Feifei had simply been caught in the middle of it.

But what exactly had just happened?

By all rights, given the temper of that curse, he should have been dead without question in that situation. The previous two deaths had been much the same as this one; he had not even had a chance to dodge. Yet this time, by some uncanny twist, he had escaped.

He quickly replayed the details in his mind. He only remembered that, in that split-second flash, it seemed he had seen something shine in Xiao Lei’s hand, and then felt his footing slip. As though everything had been calculated in advance, he had narrowly avoided the blade of death.

Could it have something to do with Xiao Lei? Kong Zhe turned his head almost instinctively to look at her.

At that moment, the little girl’s face still held traces of fear. Clearly, she too had been frightened by what had just happened.

Thinking it over, Kong Zhe simply walked over. When he reached Xiao Lei, he patted her on the head to comfort her, and a gentle smile appeared on his face.

“Xiao Lei, why did you suddenly run toward me just now?”

Xiao Lei subconsciously closed her eyes and enjoyed the head-patting for a moment. His hand seemed to carry some strange magic; the large palm resting on her head was warm and safe, and the feeling made it hard for her to pull away.

Then, remembering his question, Xiao Lei opened her eyes in confusion and tilted her head. “Why... um... I’m not really sure either, but I just suddenly felt that Brother Kong Zhe was in danger. If I didn’t run over, you would, you would...”

As she spoke, her face once again showed that same lingering fear, and a layer of mist gathered in her big eyes.

“A sixth sense, then...”

Kong Zhe let out a long breath, feeling that this sort of thing was the hardest to explain. But there was no doubt that there was something unusual about Xiao Lei.

From the very first time he met her, there had already been many things about her that puzzled him. For example, the luck hidden within her seemed to reach an absurd, heaven-defying degree.

In the New World, Awakened did indeed possess a hidden attribute called luck. Luck could not be seen, but it affected many things, such as drop rates from monsters, critical-hit rates in combat, and so on. It was an extremely important attribute.

However, for most people, luck was roughly the same. If 100 was taken as a dividing line, then most would hover between 95 and 105, and within that range the difference was almost impossible to discern. Only through certain rare items or equipment that increased luck could one raise it slightly. Of course, there were also people born with exceptionally high luck, and the chance of monsters dropping equipment for them was obviously higher than for others.

Kong Zhe was not unfamiliar with lucky people, but he had never seen anyone as lucky as Xiao Lei. Not only had he never seen it, he had never even heard of it.

Though Xiao Lei looked utterly frail, like a little rabbit waiting to be slaughtered, the truth was that whenever someone intended to harm her, that person would invariably suffer misfortune first. What had happened before had already proven that more than once. Even when he forced her to kill the fishman, that fishman had died in the most inexplicable way.

Kong Zhe was certain that if she were sent to buy a lottery ticket, it would be a guaranteed jackpot.

Her luck had already gone beyond anything ordinary people could understand, almost as if she were the Luck Goddess’s own daughter.

And there was another thing Kong Zhe still had not figured out. When he first met her, Xiao Lei had actually reacted in some way to his tarot cards. Although the tarot cards had never shown any further abnormality after that, there was no doubt that when they first met, a strange pull had indeed come from the cards.

If there were no connection between the two, Kong Zhe himself would not believe it. But as for what that connection actually was, he simply could not work it out.

Forget it. Something this complicated could not be understood in a hurry. Looking at Xiao Lei’s dazed expression, he guessed he would not get any useful answers from asking her anyway. Better to study it slowly when he had time.

With a sigh, and remembering the pile of loot that had dropped moments ago, Kong Zhe remained where he was and opened the interface, beginning to sort through what had fallen.

This time, killing a monster ten levels above himself was absolutely a massive haul. Aside from the most important bronze chest, gold and silver coins had scattered everywhere, and he had already spent quite a bit of time just picking up the coins strewn across the ground.

If silver coins were converted at a ten-to-one exchange rate, then this one kill alone was equivalent to fourteen gold coins. That was more than ten times the total amount of gold he had obtained in all the previous days combined.

Gold coins might seem useless for now, but that was only because the number of Awakened was still small, and they had yet to encounter any NPCs. In time—indeed, not much time at all—once the number of Awakened among humanity increased, places on Earth where a certain population threshold was exceeded would automatically generate all kinds of NPCs. Weapon shopkeepers, general store owners, appraisers, and so on. For these NPCs, only gold and silver coins had value. Apart from special materials dropped by magical beasts, they did not recognize any other currency at all, and even barter would not be possible.

In the New World, with magical beasts everywhere, growing crops had become a distant dream. The old human way of life no longer applied. It could be said that most food in the apocalypse would, in the end, be exchanged from NPCs.

In the future, gold and silver coins would become the New World’s only universal currency, and those coins could only be obtained from magical beasts.

Thus, even ordinary people would have no choice but to try hunting low-level magical beasts in order to earn money, then exchange that money with NPCs for food and daily necessities so that they and their families could survive.

As for Awakened, though it was easier for them to obtain gold coins, they also spent far more than ordinary people. Most importantly, beyond exchanging for food each day, they also had to keep buying stronger equipment and items to increase their own power. And equipment was far more valuable than anything else; to put it plainly, the value of equipment and the value of everything else were not even in the same league. Even the most well-off Awakened had to calculate carefully when buying gear.

So there would be countless places where they would need gold coins in the future.

Especially for Kong Zhe, who was an enchanter—a profession that burned money with every step. Though an enchanter was absolutely a massively profitable career once fully developed, before that came the excruciating period of dormancy that every enchanter had to endure first.

In truth, it was not just enchanters. After the apocalypse, there were an astonishing variety of secondary professions, their total number even surpassing that of combat professions by several times. Setting aside the more obscure and niche ones, most of the popular secondary professions—such as alchemists, smiths, appraisers, and the like—required huge amounts of gold coins to buy materials and improve proficiency if they were to grow. And the amount of gold required for that was not something an ordinary Awakened could bear on their own unless backed by a major power. The more popular the profession, the more true this was.

So once players gradually formed their own factions in the future, every faction would spare no effort in cultivating several of the most practical secondary professions. Although this would slow the faction’s development to a certain extent in the early stages, once those professionals matured, they could bring back returns several times, even dozens of times, greater in the long run. It was absolutely worth it.

Of course, those were matters for later. Even though the gold coins in hand were not few, they were still far from enough for Kong Zhe.

Besides the coins, the most important gain this time was the massive amount of experience.

Looking at the huge stretch of experience that had surged far beyond the level threshold in the bar, Kong Zhe felt a wave of excitement.

One hydra had actually contributed more than seven thousand experience points to him. Adding the experience he had already accumulated after reaching level five, he now had over nine thousand five hundred experience points. If all of it were used for leveling, he could even leap directly to level ten.

Level ten. It was only the fourth day of the apocalypse, and unless he ran into another rare aberrant beast like the hydra, a level-ten Awakened at this stage would be able to dominate the battlefield.

For an instant, Kong Zhe almost lost control of himself and instinctively reached out to click the level-up button, but just before his finger touched it, he forced himself to stop.

Taking a couple of deep breaths, he steadied his emotions and reminded himself to remain calm.

In Kong Zhe’s tarot deck, a three-star card consumed three thousand experience points. So his original plan had been to wait until he had saved up three thousand experience, light up a three-star card first, and then continue saving for level-ups.

At present, the experience required for him to rise from level five to level six was only a little over twelve hundred points. If his experience this time had been somewhere between three and four thousand, he would definitely have lit the three-star card without hesitation and then continued saving to reach level six.

But now his experience total was a full nine thousand five hundred plus. That was already close to the threshold for a four-star card.

A four-star card required ten thousand experience points, and he only needed a mere five hundred more.

This forced Kong Zhe to revise his plan.

Originally, he had not intended to light a four-star card, because ten thousand experience was simply too much. It was, in fact, more than ten times the experience needed for a level-up. The very likely outcome was that even if he later intended to save up the experience for a four-star card, some situation or another would arise and he would end up spending it on leveling instead.

More importantly, once an Awakened’s experience accumulated to a certain point—roughly three times the current experience bar—the experience they gained would begin to drop sharply.