[Chubby Legs: If the loyalty of a summoned hero is below 30, it's useless. There's even a risk of betrayal. If you get a card, don't rush to use it. If you're too weak, you might not be able to keep certain strange-tempered heroes in line.]
After seeing those replies, Ye Qian more or less understood.
The odds of getting a golden ancient hero were still extremely low.
Even among golden ones, the differences between types could be enormous.
And Ye Qian thought that hers at least said it was the last dragon egg, which meant this little one was probably the last dragon?
No, not necessarily. It only said it was the last egg. There might still be living dragons somewhere in this world.
But no matter what, Ye Qian had summoned someone who would become incredibly powerful in the future.
Although... she looked a little adorable right now.
"I'm starting to suspect you're the daughter of the God of Luck." Lan Xinyu looked at Ye Qian and the blankly adorable Dragon Loli beside her, unable to stop her teeth from aching.
"Hehe, there's nothing I can do about that. We belong to the same home, anyway. In future battles, Amia will definitely be able to help you too."
As Ye Qian spoke, she stroked the little one in her arms.
"Then let's find a chance to test her combat ability."
Without question, dragons also needed Life Energy to level up. However, her initial strength was already very high. She probably would not gain many levels, yet her combat power would far surpass that of humans.
"There really aren't many creatures nearby anymore. If we want to kill stronger monsters, it looks like we'll have to go farther away. Maybe the next Arrow Towers should be built a little farther out?"
Holding Dragon Loli's hand, Ye Qian began walking northwest, toward the ruins they had found earlier.
After reaching the right side of the ruins, she suddenly noticed that the ground had become somewhat damp.
The moment she noticed it, the spot under her right foot collapsed.
Splat—
Her foot plunged into a puddle. She quickly jumped back, then looked inside and saw that there seemed to be nothing there—just an ordinary pool of water. She immediately sighed in relief.
But now, her shoes and socks were wet again.
When she raised her head, she found a light drizzle drifting down from the sky.
She could clearly sense that the rain carried a faint trace of Pollution.
"Come to think of it, this world itself really isn't suited for people to live in!"
Ye Qian muttered, then turned her head and found Dragon Loli looking back at her.
"Oh my god, she's so cute."
She really did feel as if she were raising a daughter. Every time she saw her, she wanted to pick her up and give her a kiss.
But Ye Qian held herself back.
The rain quickly grew heavier.
Holding Dragon Loli's little hand, she ran beneath a corridor in the ruins to take shelter.
Her dress was soon soaked through.
She shivered, lowered her head to look at her calves pressed against her white thigh-highs and her suggestive short skirt, then could not help but smile bitterly.
"I seem to be... a little tempting. What a pain!"
She hurriedly crouched down and wrung the water out of her skirt and stockings.
Suddenly...
Something stirred in her heart. In another distant place—the real world—time began to flow once more.
It was as though a tick of the clock had passed, advancing by a short stretch.
In an instant, Ye Qian's connection with her clones was restored, though it only lasted around fifteen minutes.
"Is this the time difference between different worlds?"
On the other side, Ye Xin and Alice had already experienced the strange sensation of space-time suddenly connecting and a flood of the main body's memories pouring into them.
"If it's only this short a time, we won't run into trouble from the Insect Blood Society or anything. Whew... this feels so strange. It's like time in these two worlds differs in some indescribable way."
Construction and Cargo Cart Blueprints
Although it felt abstract and bizarre, time on the other side soon froze again. Under those circumstances, Ye Qian could only focus completely on her main body.
After forcefully wringing the water from her white stockings, she stood up, shook her soaking wet long hair, and let out a soft breath.
Luckily, it was daytime and Chen Ning was catching up on sleep. Otherwise, it would have been rather embarrassing for him to see her like this.
Even she found this appearance extremely alluring. Other people probably would not be able to resist it either.
"I should hurry up and fight together with the Skeleton Wolves and Dragon Loli."
After thinking it over, she decided to head out into the rain.
Leaving the ruins' corridor and walking beneath the endlessly falling rain, Ye Qian headed toward a downward slope. Yet before she had taken many steps, she encountered a giant rat more than forty centimeters long, with enormous front teeth.
A Skeleton Wolf spat out a fireball that exploded directly beside the rat.
"Get it."
She released Dragon Loli. With a flap of her wings, the little one let out a fiery breath with an "Awoo!" and burned straight through the target.
Dragon Loli advanced to LV2.
Ye Qian discovered that, as her owner, she also received a share of the Life Energy.
Just as Ye Qian was about to relax, a crazed rabbit suddenly appeared in the distance.
This thing was relatively weak. The two Skeleton Wolves rushed forward, and after a brutal brawl, they beat the target half to death. Ye Qian had the little dragon finish it off.
"With this kind of strength, leveling up is pretty fast. But she's still a little weak right now, so it's somewhat dangerous."
She stepped forward and stored the corpse away, then had one Skeleton Wolf carry it back.
At the moment, she only had the little Ancient Dragon, Amia, and three Skeleton Wolves by her side. That was actually quite strong, but encountering two pangolins would still be very dangerous.
Fortunately, pangolins had only appeared twice so far, and one of them had died to an Arrow Tower's attack.
In order to accumulate Life Energy and level up quickly, she took Dragon Loli on a circuit around the area five hundred to one thousand meters from the territory, raising Amia to LV3.
"An average increase of one point in attributes per level... that's more than three times my own."
Ye Qian realized that this little dragon could make her cry with just one punch, which made her feel terribly defeated.
In any case, after running around with the group for a while, Ye Qian was preparing to return to the territory when another monster dropped something new.
Tool: Iron Cargo Cart Type: Blueprint Construction Materials: Wood ×10, Iron Ore ×80 Other Requirements: Boiler and related equipment, coal Description: A small cargo cart that can be propelled with mental power. It can carry passengers and can also be mounted on tracks, using fuel to propel it forward.
"This seems pretty good."
Thinking about how troublesome it was to carry every monster drop back by hand—and how little she could transport with just her body—she saw the value immediately.
But with a cargo cart, things would be different.
Still, this thing required iron ore. She would have to gather that kind of stone from the mountains, and she did not have a boiler for smelting iron or anything like that.
But that would not be too difficult. The shop should have furnaces. Seeing that the cart could be mounted on tracks, she thought about it for a moment. Wasn't this basically a train?
Of course, there were still too few people in the territory. If they laid tracks over a long distance, they would be easily attacked. For the time being, an ordinary cargo cart would be better.
After bringing the loot back to the territory, Purifying some meat and selling it for money, Ye Qian spent ten Silver Coins in the shop to buy ironmaking equipment.
When a huge boiler, several bellows, hammers, and other tools appeared before her, she nodded in satisfaction.
Ordinary people would be reluctant to buy them even if they had the money. After all, ten Silver Coins required killing quite a lot of monsters to save up.
But on her side, money came quickly from selling large amounts of Purified meat.
She left the actual production work to the Skeletons.
Skeleton Wolves probably would not be suitable. At present, she only had two humanoid Skeletons, but solving that problem was not difficult—it was simply a matter of assembling them. She only needed to pile together the bones of various creatures, and in the end, humanoid Skeletons could be created as needed. They were not actually human.
Because these Skeletons were Fusion products, they were weaker in combat than Skeleton Wolves, but they were better at production work and could completely replace some of the work of three people.
Thus, Ye Qian used up the last of the Life Energy in the pool to create three of them. She gave them hammers and chisels, then led them along with Lan Xinyu to a mountainous area in the northeast to give it a try.
Unexpectedly, Ye Qian found quite a bit of iron ore right on the nearby rock faces.
"That makes things easier. No need to spend money buying it."
On the other hand, there really was no coal nearby, so Ye Qian spent one Silver Coin to buy a large amount from the shop.
Compared to other things, coal was incredibly cheap. One Silver Coin bought two hundred kilograms—two kilograms per Copper Coin.
After feeding these materials into the boiler and guiding the Skeletons through a series of production steps, they soon made a simple cart.
Although the workmanship was crude, the first iron cargo cart perfectly met expectations. It was not large, but it could transport one ton of goods. On relatively flat roads, it could reach thirty kilometers per hour.
"Whew, as long as we have one, it'll do. We'll make do with it."
In the heavy rain, she worked without realizing it until nightfall. One iron-clad vehicle had been completed. In addition, Ye Qian strengthened the territory's defenses. Using the money earned from selling beast meat, she bought materials for a batch of Arrow Towers and built new ones to the north and south of the home, each three hundred meters apart.
Meanwhile, under Ye Qian and Lan Xinyu's guidance, the little Dragon Loli had also reached LV5.
That afternoon, the awakened Chen Ning was stunned when he saw the two girls working in the rain.
When he checked the home interface, its development had become so impressive that it exceeded his expectations.
In just one day, not only had the territory's strength greatly increased, but they had discovered an iron ore deposit at the foot of a mountain eight hundred meters away. Ye Qian had even started laying the foundation for an Arrow Tower there.
He gave a complicated, bitter smile.
He was no longer young and had a wife and children. If this had been before he got married, a cute girl like Ye Qian would have been fatally attractive to him.
Well, strictly speaking, she was still pretty fatal now.
Especially seeing the girl standing in the grass with her clothes soaked through, he felt that he absolutely could not let his thoughts wander. Otherwise, if he talked in his sleep after returning home, his wife would definitely beat him to death.
"I'll keep watch again tonight. I'll help out this afternoon. Once the mine is settled, it feels like we can find a way to explore farther out, right?"
Chen Ning walked over to Ye Qian, who was chopping down a tree, and spoke as he watched her skillfully swing the axe.
At that moment, the little Dragon Loli was lazily lying beside her, hugging Ye Qian's leg and occasionally giving it a lick. The scales on her body formed clothing over the important parts of her little body, while open sections around her arms and abdomen revealed skin in a way that strangely suited the eye.
After looking for only two seconds, Chen Ning felt uncomfortable all over and could only avert his gaze.
"Alright, this tree is yours." Ye Qian tossed the axe onto the ground, curled her lips into a smile, and prepared to head out again to hunt beasts.
Over the course of the day, her Life Energy had risen again.
If she used all ten points on splitting and tried her luck, she could get a whole bunch of beautiful girls, right?
But she still restrained herself. She planned to split off a little after returning and try her luck, while generally focusing on strengthening the main body.
On one hand, the stronger her main body became, the higher the chance of splitting off higher-grade clones.
On the other hand, at her current level, she could basically only create white-grade ones, and they could not gain many levels. If she encountered a stronger enemy, no matter how many there were, it would still be difficult to protect her main body.
Leveling Up Quickly
It rained heavily all day, right into the night.
Once the sky darkened, Ye Qian entered the wooden house and felt herself shivering.
"I didn't notice it before, but now that I've sat down quietly, it's so cold."
Seeing her state, the little Dragon Loli called out, "Mama," then took the initiative to snuggle into Ye Qian's arms.
Dragon scales looked sturdy, but they were actually somewhat soft to the touch.
When she touched Amia's skin, it was unexpectedly warm.
"Mmm, I'll sleep hugging Amia tonight." Ye Qian happily hugged her, only for the little thing to stick out her tongue and give her chest a long lick.
"Ah—"
Before you continue