Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
Explosions rang out one after another.
Black lines were painted across the white canvas of the landscape.
These were the results of the Explosion Potions Lan Qingyou had brought with her.
After flying back and forth and crisscrossing the area in the sky several times, Lan Qingyou finally managed to blast away the snow and ice in this small region.
In the process, she 'woke up' the sludge monsters that had been 'hibernating' beneath the ice.
However, the sludge monsters had changed significantly.
If the previous sludge monsters were made of pure muck, these current ones were messy entities with rotten weeds and gravel stuck inside the mud.
Combined with the remaining ice shards and snowflakes on the ground, they looked like dirty rags.
Calling them 'shabby and filthy' didn't even begin to cover it.
【gravel sludge monster (D)】
【HP: 400】
【MP: 20】
【Skills: (Soft Body) (Gravel Strike)】
【Description: A type of monster living in marshy areas. It is an advanced version of the sludge monster, possessing the ability to launch attacks using the gravel embedded in its body.】
Lan Qingyou used her old tactics to deal with these guys.
Freeze them, blow them up, and then finish them with a dagger.
Only then did she pick up the frozen chunks of sludge and the D-rank monster cores they dropped.
Perhaps because of the weather, Lan Qingyou eventually discovered she didn't even need to freeze them; she could just blow them up directly.
However, the downside was that without being frozen solid, the sludge wouldn't hold its shape, making it impossible to pick up like ice blocks.
For the sake of convenience, she stuck to the three-step method.
Of course.
Besides her usual tactics, Lan Qingyou also had the Soul Siphon skill.
This was her first time using it since acquiring it. She was a bit clumsy, but overall, it worked quite well.
Although the skill description said there was a 'chance' of success, Lan Qingyou found the rate wasn't low at all.
It was roughly a fifty-fifty split.
【Soul Crystal (D)】
【Effect: Alchemy, Rituals】
【Description: A Soul Crystal from a D-rank monster. While not particularly powerful, it is a decent material for novice alchemists, Adventists, and Summoners.】
Looking at the irregular, gray translucent crystal in her hand, Lan Qingyou frowned slightly.
Adventist? Summoner?
This was the first time she had heard these names.
It seemed they were professions similar to her own role as an alchemist.
It was also strange.
These monsters clearly had HP and MP, but in Lan Qingyou's eyes, they were no different from the previous sludge monsters.
One Frost Potion and one Explosion Potion were enough to take them down.
It was as if this combination was specifically designed to counter the sludge monster race.
After filling her herb bag, which had now been nurtured to a capacity of 2 cubic meters, Lan Qingyou finally stopped, satisfied.
Pulling out her Tarot card, she checked the directions and flew toward the gray dot she had seen earlier.
There was still about half an hour before sunset.
It wouldn't hurt to go take a look.
However, when Lan Qingyou reached the location of the gray dot shown on the card, she was speechless with shock.
A collapsed building.
To be precise, it was a wooden cabin with about a quarter of it collapsed.
That wasn't the main point, though. The point was that this wooden cabin was a shelter—a shelter that had lost its occupant.
Based on the floor area, it should have been a Level 2 shelter.
Level 2. It seemed likely that it had been damaged during the first mana tide.
She wondered where the occupant had gone.
They might have escaped, been blown away by the gale, or perhaps torn apart by the chaotic mana during the tide. It was even possible they were among the three people she had killed recently.
After all, everyone's activity radius wasn't very large, and those two thieves had been near her before the forced teleportation.
It made sense that their shelters would be allocated nearby.
Lan Qingyou floated over cautiously, intending to go inside and investigate.
However, she found it impossible to enter.
It wasn't because of any restriction, but because the room was packed with various basic units.
Perhaps it was the support from these basic units that had prevented the entire shelter from collapsing.
Lan Qingyou guessed as much, becoming more certain that the occupant might have been one of those three.
She clearly remembered someone saying that if a person was killed, the items in their exchange would automatically be ejected from their magic desk.
Of course, a guess was just a guess.
Although her herb bag was full, she still had the storage slots in her card.
So, she pressed the card against the materials to absorb them.
Wood * 3816, Stone * 1588, Vine * 2651, Dried sludge blocks * 1597, E-rank monster cores * 181... and plenty of other miscellaneous items.
Since the card only had ten slots, Lan Qingyou had to discard some unimportant things or items used by the previous owner.
Only then did she manage to pack everything in the house.
Lan Qingyou was very careful while collecting these items, fearing that moving too fast would cause the building to cave in.
Fortunately, the shelter's structure was still somewhat intact. Aside from a few wooden blocks falling from the already collapsed section, nothing else happened.
Once inside, Lan Qingyou immediately put the magic desk into the card and hung the magic lantern on her waist.
No kidding—these were top-tier research resources. How could she not take them back to dismantle them, see how they worked, and study them thoroughly?
She had specifically left an empty slot for the desk.
Then, Lan Qingyou began her investigation of the shelter.
Though she called it an investigation, she was mainly looking at the magic patterns of the magic shield.
The patterns on the walls of this shelter were slightly different from those in her own. Upon closer inspection, she realized that not only were the styles different, but even the order of the symbols was different.
If the patterns in her shelter were arranged in an interlocking fashion, the patterns here were extremely neat—the kind of arrangement that would make a person with severe OCD feel comfortable.
Since the energy was long gone, these magic patterns had dimmed, becoming ordinary engravings.
But this was exactly what Lan Qingyou wanted.
Given her current level, trying to study a complete magic shield's patterns would be a pipe dream.
Now that she had an unpowered and partial set of magic patterns to study, how could she let such a great opportunity slip by?
"The pattern pauses here... connects..."
"It seems to use some elements from Baham's Formula."
"I see. Connecting the two through details in the composition..."
"An opening? I think someone discussed this in the group before..."
Lan Qingyou muttered to herself, lying on the floor and studying with all her might. She didn't notice that the sky outside had gradually dimmed until it was completely dark.
At this moment, she was fully immersed in the ocean of learning.
If she were the fourteen or fifteen-year-old girl from a few years ago, she probably couldn't have imagined that she would one day be so passionate about studying.
Rate on N.U.
