Chen Guo, who had been secretly wiping away tears over Ye Qiu's retirement not long ago, was now back to her usual self. After giving Ye Xiu a detailed rundown of everything he needed to know, she casually picked a computer and went off to play Glory.
Ye Xiu stood a short distance away and glanced over a few times. He saw that Chen Guo had entered the Arena to PK against others, but she was clearly distracted, making major mistakes repeatedly during the fights, some of them remarkably low-level. After losing three matches in a row, Chen Guo slapped her keyboard, quit the game, and turned around to see Ye Xiu picking his teeth and acting as if nothing had happened. She shot him a glare and ran back upstairs.
Ye Xiu checked the time. It wasn't long until eleven, when his shift started. The girl at the counter clearly had excellent control of the clock as well—the Korean drama's progress bar was just right. As the episode ended, the time clicked over to exactly eleven. The girl stood up and smiled at Ye Xiu: "Brother Ye, I'm heading home then?"
"Go, go!" Ye Xiu had been waiting for this. She wasn't the only employee whose shift ended at eleven. The daytime and evening hours were never as dead as the overnight shift, so one person definitely couldn't handle it all. The internet cafe staff weren't familiar with Ye Xiu yet, but they knew him by now; after politely saying their goodbyes, they left one by one.
The internet cafe became exceptionally quiet. The sounds of keyboards and mice echoed clearly—a completely different scene from the bustling opening of the new server the night before. Thinking of how all of this had come about because of his own retirement, Ye Xiu let out a soft sigh and took a seat at the counter.
He inserted his account card and logged into the game. The moment he came online, messages flooded in. Ye Xiu opened them and found Tian Qi and the others queuing up to greet him.
"Expert, you're here!"
Tian Qi, Mu Yunshen, and Qiansheng Li—three people, the same greeting. No Yue Zhongmian.
"Everyone here?" Ye Xiu replied to all three.
"Ah, Yue Zhongmian didn't come," Tian Qi replied.
"Having another tantrum?" Ye Xiu thought of that kid.
"No, he's in a bad mood. Didn't Ye Qiu announce his retirement today? He's a big Ye Qiu fan, so he's feeling down. He said he wouldn't come play tonight," Tian Qi said.
Ye Xiu didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Who would have thought that kid was actually his fan? If he found out that Ye Xiu was Ye Qiu, what would he think about his idol having been so despicable and shameless toward him?
"If we're short a person, it'll be hard to handle a hidden boss in the Spider Cave," Ye Xiu said.
"Should we just find someone else to fill in?" Tian Qi asked Expert's opinion.
"How about we go to the Skeleton Graveyard instead?" Ye Xiu said.
"Sure, sure!!" Tian Qi agreed immediately.
The Skeleton Graveyard was a level 15–20 dungeon. Tian Qi and the others had long wanted to go, and they'd been hoping that under Ye Xiu's leadership they could grab a few more first clears. But Ye Xiu's thoughts and needs were different from theirs. When it came to the glory of dungeon first clears, Ye Xiu didn't care about them at all. Besides, to get a first clear, you had to keep your level in the top group—and that was something Ye Xiu simply couldn't do. Not because his skill was lacking, but because his time was.
When he'd logged off that morning, Jun Mo Xiao at level 18 had stood prominently among the top five of Server 10's level rankings. But now? Ye Xiu opened the rankings and looked again—Jun Mo Xiao's name had vanished without a trace. The top of the level board was now a solid wall of level 22s.
Why? Because the big guilds came to grind levels and snatch first clears in an organized fashion. A single account was operated by two or three people in shifts, keeping the character online twenty-four hours a day, playing a relay tactic, compensating for lack of talent with diligence. No matter how strong Ye Xiu's skills were, he couldn't out-compete them on that front.
For all these reasons, first clears in the normal servers generally weren't worth much. Aside from having your name displayed looking nice, it reflected a team's leveling speed more than their skill and strength.
What better showcased a team's skill and strength, by contrast, was the dungeon clear time record.
This record was time-based. At first, it was a benchmark set uniformly by the system; when a team beat it, the team's roster and the new record time would be posted, and the listing would change again whenever it was beaten anew. This record-breaking reward could be claimed repeatedly, and the rewards were generous—unlike the first-clear reward, which was just a pittance of experience and money. It was a one-hundred-percent guarantee of at least one piece of purple-quality or better equipment for the team, plus various random rewards.
This honor system didn't exist in the beginner zones; it only applied to dungeons of level 20 and above, after leaving the beginner areas. Ye Xiu took a casual look. The first clear of the level 20 dungeon, Frost Forest, had long been completed, and the original system benchmark had already been broken—the notation after it showing the number of times it had been refreshed. It had currently been broken three times. The record currently on the board belonged to a team from the Herb Garden guild: 26 minutes, 12.48 seconds, set at 6:23 in the afternoon.
Ye Xiu scratched his head, feeling a little ashamed. His memory of that dungeon was fuzzy at best, but he knew this record would definitely be broken again. The highest-level players right now were only 22, and the final result would generally come from a team of level 25 players. Moreover, if even one member of the team was above level 25, the dungeon record would be invalid.
"Expert, we're already at the Skeleton Graveyard," Tian Qi messaged just then. The group's levels were the same as when they'd logged off, so it seemed they, like Ye Xiu, had slept through the day.
"Great, I'll be right there." Ye Xiu hurriedly had Jun Mo Xiao run toward the Skeleton Graveyard. By rights, they could have entered this dungeon back at level 15 that morning, but Ye Xiu's current upgrades for the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella demanded a huge amount of Reinforced Silk. Yesterday, after he'd made his needs clear—meaning he didn't plan to switch dungeons at level 15—those four guys had ultimately stayed behind anyway, grinding the Spider Cave to death alongside Ye Xiu.
Even after all that grinding, the Reinforced Silk still wasn't enough. This material dropped guaranteed from the hidden boss, the Spider Lord, with a certain chance from the normal bosses—the Spider King and the two lesser ones. They had ground painstakingly until eleven. The hidden boss had spawned three more times—once the Lord, yielding 5 Reinforced Silk; the other two times both Spider Warriors, which never dropped the stuff. Add in the scattered drops from the lesser bosses—7 in all—plus the 4 from the first clear, and they had only collected 16 so far, still 24 short of the 40 Ye Xiu needed.
At yesterday's pace, he'd have to keep grinding like this for two more days. Ye Xiu mentally calculated. Tian Qi's group had already been dragged up to almost level 18 in the Spider Cave by following him. Once they passed 20, grinding the Spider Cave would put them 5 levels above it. In Glory, 5 levels was always a critical threshold—for equipment, for skills, for monster experience. Exceed a dungeon's level by 5 or more, and the experience gained would plummet; at that point even "grinding" would stop making sense. Ye Xiu certainly wouldn't have the nerve to keep bringing Tian Qi and the others to the Spider Cave as his unpaid laborers.
Relying on luck and brute grinding like this wasn't sustainable. It seemed he'd have to find another way. As Ye Xiu was thinking, Jun Mo Xiao had already arrived at the Skeleton Graveyard. He found Tian Qi in his friends list and sent a party invitation. Right after Ye Xiu joined, Tian Qi's message came: "Do we still need to add one more person?"
"We can manage without," Ye Xiu replied. Come to think of it, the Skeleton Graveyard also had a required material he still hadn't obtained. The Myriad Manifestations Umbrella hadn't been mighty for long, and it was already dragging him down. Leveling an alt was no easy thing, Ye Xiu sighed, stepping into the Skeleton Graveyard.
========================================
Chapters updated early get votes, right?