"Crackle, crackle..."
A massive bonfire
burned in an open clearing.
The flames nearly lit up the night.
Chen Ye and Tang Zichen stood nearby, watching quietly.
Of course, they were not setting a fire for fun.
They were burning the zombies' corpses.
Although Chen Ye had chopped nearly all of the hundred-plus little zombies in half, the little zombies had not died as a result.
They needed to be burned in order to be completely killed.
If Chen Ye knew spells, dealing with them would naturally have been easy.
The problem was, he did not.
Using fire was the best solution Chen Ye and Tang Zichen had.
It was already late at night.
After being on edge all night and then carrying the zombies' corpses, Tang Zichen had expended quite a bit of stamina and looked somewhat exhausted.
Seeing this, Chen Ye said, "Class monitor, why don't you sleep first? I can keep watch."
Tang Zichen did not agree.
She looked at the evolved zombie beneath Chen Ye's foot, frowned slightly, and could not help asking, "Chen Ye, how do you plan to deal with this zombie?"
"I'll keep it for now." Chen Ye smiled. "I have a use for it."
The intelligent Tang Zichen quickly realized what Chen Ye intended to do.
"Don't tell me you're keeping it because it can summon ordinary Jumping Corpses? Are you planning to use its summoning ability to lure in Jumping Corpses and kill them?"
Chen Ye was not surprised that Tang Zichen had seen through his intentions.
His idea was easy enough to figure out.
Otherwise, what use could a man have for keeping a zombie around?
With Tang Zichen's intelligence, it was perfectly normal for her to notice.
"That's right!"
Chen Ye smiled. "With this thing around, over the remaining nine days, I can wipe out every monster in the secret realm!"
"According to Teacher Liu, killing one Jumping Corpse gives around six potential points. By then, the two of us might be able to push our attributes past a thousand!!"
Hearing that, Tang Zichen could not help laughing.
This girl usually rarely smiled and always wore a cold expression on her pretty face. Yet when she smiled slightly now, she was truly as lovely as a flower.
"Chen Ye, you're oversimplifying things!"
"Is there something wrong with that?" Chen Ye looked puzzled.
Tang Zichen continued, "Secret realms have reward caps. Don't tell me you didn't know that?"
Chen Ye was stunned.
He genuinely had not known.
Seeing that, Tang Zichen shook her head. "Think about it. If secret realm rewards had no cap, then with our country's population and strength, couldn't we artificially create gods?"
"As long as we sent in a rookie army, all compatible with C-class hero talents and armed with guns, they could capture Jumping Corpses whenever they encountered them, then let someone with good talent kill them. Isn't that basically the same as what you're thinking now?"
"By then, they could pile up enough rewards to create an unparalleled powerhouse."
"Even I can think of such a simple God-Making Plan. Do you think the higher-ups wouldn't have thought of it? Then why has no one put it into action?"
Hearing this, Chen Ye immediately understood.
Tang Zichen added, "The original purpose behind secret realms was to let everyone share monster rewards equally. Whether it was scrambling teleportation locations or setting reward limits, it was all for that purpose."
Chen Ye could not help asking, "Did Teacher Liu tell you about the reward cap too?"
"No, it's online. I suppose you don't spend much time on the internet?"
Chen Ye let out a slight sigh of relief.
If Old Liu even treated people differently over information like this, that would have been a little too much.
Fortunately, Old Liu was not that kind of person.
Chen Ye had only been transported into this world for less than two months, so it was normal that he did not know.
"The reward cap must have been discovered through testing too, right?"
"Yes. The method I just described was tried by foreign conglomerates a long time ago. That was how they learned that secret realms had reward caps."
"Then what is the reward cap in this secret realm?"
"Every secret realm is different. For Secret Realm 1, where we currently are, the reward cap is 120 potential points per person. It's the same whether you form a team or not."
120 potential points?
That meant killing around twenty little zombies alone would be enough!
Killing more would not grant any additional potential points.
Chen Ye immediately frowned.
That cap was a little low!
More importantly, he had just killed over a hundred zombies. Didn't that mean most of his effort had been wasted?
"That's not right!"
Chen Ye suddenly thought of something and said, "If the reward cap is so low, why did that Li Zhongxi from South Korea keep killing hundreds of people to feed the Jumping Corpses? Why did he create such a tragedy?"
"Do you think reaching the reward cap is easy?" Tang Zichen said irritably. "For you, it really is easy. But for everyone else, merely surviving in a secret realm is difficult!"
"Besides, Teacher Liu also said that after people are killed by Jumping Corpses and turn into new monsters, killing them grants very few potential points."
"Li Zhongxi had quite a few accomplices at the time. If he didn't create more monsters, how would there have been enough to go around?"
"Besides, Li Zhongxi's ultimate goal included the extra reward."
"The extra reward can only be obtained by the person who kills the most monsters. To get it, he had to maintain the lead in monster kills... Only such a vicious plan could meet his needs."
After hearing Tang Zichen's explanation,
Chen Ye understood.
Everything really did make sense now.
No wonder nobody had tried to implement a God-Making Plan.
The secret realms had long since prepared for it, using reward caps to block unfair competition.
Since gods could not be created, teleportation locations were scrambled, and the secret realm maps were enormous, surely no one would be willing to waste so much manpower for a small extra reward.
It simply was not worth it.
Unless they chose Li Zhongxi's path.
However, Li Zhongxi's fate was enough to make those who came after him wary.
"Chen Ye, the Jumping Corpses you killed just now are already enough for us to reach the maximum reward cap. They can even guarantee that the extra reward will be ours."
Tang Zichen said.
Chen Ye was disappointed when he heard that.
He had been thinking of controlling the evolved zombie, luring in large numbers of little zombies, and getting rich in one go!
He had not expected this loophole to have been plugged long ago.
At once, Chen Ye seemed to lose his motivation and became listless.
Pointing at the evolved zombie beneath his foot, he said helplessly, "So this thing is actually useless now?"
Tang Zichen nodded, then added, "If you're worried, you can use it to lure over and kill a few more Jumping Corpses. As long as we secure the lead in monster kills, we'll have a hundred percent chance of getting the extra reward."
"Right, what exactly is the extra reward?" Chen Ye asked.
Tang Zichen said, "As far as I know, the extra rewards for the first three secret realms were also potential points, and the amount was not large—roughly one-quarter of the capped reward."
One-quarter of 120 was 30.
In other words, the most they could obtain in this secret realm was 150 potential points.
After calculating that number,
Chen Ye was quite dissatisfied.
But no matter how dissatisfied he was, there was nothing he could do.
They were already here.
They could not just refuse the rewards, could they?
A transitional chapter to patch up a few loopholes. The zombie dungeon is about to end, and the truly satisfying parts are about to begin. I hope you all can be patient and keep following. Many thanks.
Before you continue