28. The Drop Rate Is Surprisingly High

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“Deliver the fragments of the World-Ending Flower to the factory?” Li Nuo stared at the panel, seized by an ominous premonition. “Don’t tell me they want us to end the world?”

While he was pondering this, he had already drawn the random reward card he had just obtained.

This time, the reward responded perfectly to his luck.

An [Empty Syringe].

One shouldn’t underestimate a syringe. As someone with a congenital immunodeficiency, Li Nuo knew very well that, used properly, this thing could cause a virus to spread rapidly throughout a small area.

“So where are we going?” 2B asked from beside him.

Li Nuo turned his head. 2B was less than half a meter away. Perhaps because this was their first face-to-face encounter at such close range, Li Nuo found himself staring blankly at the beauty mark beneath the corner of her mouth.

He had once read a book on fortune-telling. It said that a beauty mark at the corner of one’s mouth meant the person was extremely popular and destined for success, whether in work or romance.

Thinking of how popular 2B was in the real world, Li Nuo decided that fortune-telling really did not lie.

“What is it?” 2B asked.

“Oh, nothing. Let’s go to the factory.”

Then he suddenly remembered something. “By the way, you killed every monster here, right?”

2B nodded.

“Even the ones in the sewers?”

2B nodded again.

“Good.”

Li Nuo snapped his fingers at Ma Erjie, who understood his intention from nearby.

“Everyone, come with us.”

They followed a staircase down into the basement. Unlike the upper floors, this place still had lighting. Incandescent bulbs hung from the ceiling, illuminating a huge hole torn open in the wall. The hole beyond was pitch-black, as if an invisible barrier prevented the light from entering.

The Resistance soldier, still being carried by Chen Shou, pointed toward it. “My comrades discovered those monsters here.”

Li Nuo grinned. “Let’s go.”

“Why are we going in there?” Chen Shou asked.

“Whether we came through the sewers beneath the ruined city or followed the route we took, the location of the hidden mission is the same: this retail supermarket. The process, however, is different. If we had read the diary and then entered the sewers, we most likely would have been chased by monsters. If we survived and made it to the supermarket, the difficulty would have been far greater than taking our current route. Both paths lead to the same result, but their difficulty is clearly different.”

He paused, then asked in a low voice, “So where does the difference lie?”

Chen Shou failed to understand.

Ma Erjie answered directly. “Higher difficulty naturally means greater rewards.”

Li Nuo switched on his flashlight and entered the sewer. “Exactly.”

The air inside was damp and reeked of rotting flesh. The passage was barely two meters wide. The flesh of plant monsters clung to the walls, while the sewage underfoot had been stained black with blood.

2B tilted her head in confusion as she watched the group behave so strangely. What were they trying to do?

Having only just left the factory, this simple-minded woman held little suspicion toward allies. After hesitating briefly, she followed them in last.

The injured Resistance soldier noticed her confusion and whispered, “I think they’re strange too, but they’re good people.”

“Good people?” 2B had no real basis for judging human notions of good and evil.

“Ah… never mind.” Realizing the conversation could go no further, the Resistance soldier said, “My name is Raul. What should I call you?”

“2B.”

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“That certainly is concise…”

“Ha! Found it!”

Li Nuo’s voice came from the front, interrupting the two androids’ awkward conversation.

They followed the passage and found Li Nuo moving aside a chunk of rubble. Beneath it was a tiny treasure chest.

The chest would not open.

Li Nuo asked the Resistance soldier for a piece of wire.

Unfortunately, the soldier did not have any. So Li Nuo simply walked over and pulled a short length of fine copper wire from the exposed mechanical part of his body.

In his nearly hundred years of life, the Resistance soldier had never had anyone so amicably extract the copper wire connected to his core furnace. For a moment, he was completely dumbfounded.

A dozen seconds later, there was a click. Li Nuo used the wire to open the chest.

“The lock inside a chest like this isn’t as sturdy as the one on a security door. It doesn’t even have multiple layers of protection, so it’s easy to open.”

Watching Li Nuo pick the lock while explaining what he was doing, Chen Shou finally asked the question he had been holding back for a long time.

“Li Nuo… can I ask what you actually do in the real world outside the Endless Corridor?”

Whenever players discussed matters related to the Endless Corridor, the scenario’s NPCs were unable to hear the content of their conversation.

Li Nuo answered honestly, “I’m a manga artist.”

“…I don’t really believe you when you’re being serious.”

“A patient,” Li Nuo said casually as he slowly opened the chest, hoping a beam of golden light would burst from within.

“For some reason, I believe that.” Chen Shou looked toward Ma Erjie. “What about you, Brother Ma?”

“Hmph. A doctor.”

“You two work at the same hospital, don’t you?”

“What the hell!”

Chen Shou’s retort was cut off by Li Nuo’s exclamation. Li Nuo had taken a spherical green stone from the chest.

Then he projected the panel.

[Summoning Magic Crystal — Insufficient Mana]

[Quality: Epic]

[Minimum Requirement: Spirit Power 30]

[Effect 1: Randomly determines an available summon. The duration of the summoning effect varies according to the summoned creature.]

[Effect 2: Allows the summoning of creatures the user has seen and interacted with. Summoned creatures are uncontrollable.]

[Creatures Available for Effect 1: Diablos, Juvenile Leviathan, Tonberry, Cactuar, Moogle, Chocobo]

[Summoning Condition: Different summoned creatures require different amounts of spirit power. If the summoner lacks sufficient spirit power, ninety-nine percent of their maximum health will be deducted instead.]

[Description: As everyone knows, throughout the journey of challenging eight gyms and becoming the League Champion, six little monsters will always accompany you.]

[Notice: Due to environmental conditions, this magic crystal lacks sufficient mana and cannot be used.]

“What kind of joke is this?” Li Nuo stared with dead-fish eyes. It was undeniably a good item, but it was useless in this scenario.

The Resistance soldier looked at the glowing green stone. “What is that?”

“A kind of… stone.”

Li Nuo placed the [Summoning Magic Crystal] into a backpack slot, then left the sewers with the others and returned to the retail supermarket for one final sweep.

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There was one hour and ten minutes remaining on the main mission.

Chen Shou closed the mission panel and sighed. He never would have imagined that, after fighting and fooling around alongside Li Nuo all this time, he would obtain rewards superior to those from his previous two missions combined.

The feeling was especially strong when he looked at the weapon he had just drawn.

[Handheld Cannon]

[Quality: Fine]

[Equipment Requirements: Strength 11, Ranged Sniping]

[Effect: Comes with three armor-piercing cannon shells. Once all three have been fired, they automatically replenish after six hours.]

[Description: Made in Italy]

The drop rate was truly absurd.

He looked toward Li Nuo, who was crouching nearby.

Following the principle that a thief should never leave empty-handed, Li Nuo cut open the corpse of the demon flower and pulled a palm-sized seed from inside it.

The seed had detoxifying properties—the kind that could cure every illness.

“The item is excellent. Too bad we’re out of time.”

Regretfully, Li Nuo stuffed the seed into his trouser pocket. If there had been five of him, he was certain they could have plundered everything in the area within a short time. Unfortunately, there was only one of him.

The hidden mission and the main mission converged at the factory. No matter how they looked at it, they had nowhere else to go.

Li Nuo stood up, took out a blood bottle designed for androids, and drank another mouthful, bringing his remaining health above fifty percent. With the bonuses from [Melee Combat] and his attributes, the degree of control he had over his body had now reached the limits of what a human could achieve.

To give an inappropriate example, he could now take ten bricks to the head in succession and then perform thirty consecutive backflips without even getting dizzy.

“Let’s go. We’re heading to the factory. Our leader is still there.” Li Nuo spoke to 2B and the Resistance soldier, who was examining a human corpse.

“Is that really a human corpse?” the soldier asked.

“I don’t know.”

2B followed them with her usual concision. The specialized POD unit used by the YoRHa forces was broken, so she could neither scan the corpse nor learn the truth.

Players and NPCs, each carrying their own emotions, walked toward the supermarket’s exit.

The instant they stepped outside, everyone froze at the sight before them.

“What’s going on?”

Li Nuo’s eyes widened. It was rare to see him panic.

Cracks spread across the earth, and countless blue crystals thrust their way up from beneath the surface.

At the same time, the system’s voice rang in everyone’s ears:

[Due to the hidden world setting being deciphered: 1/2. World level increased. Main mission reset.]

[Main Mission Updated: Restore the World to Its Original State]