Loot

The baby-faced girl widened her eyes.

At a time like this, she hadn't run away. Instead, she was sailing openly through public waters, with a mysterious skeleton steering the ship and a skull emblem on the sail...

Ling Chu's identity was practically obvious.

No way, no way! The pirate who had killed four people and frightened the entire Nearby Channel into silence was actually a girl?!

Ling Chu noticed the baby-faced girl's gaze. She had probably realized that Titch was a skeleton. Would she scream and run away, or attack her in a panic? Ling Chu quietly waited for her reaction.

To her surprise, the baby-faced girl cupped her face with both hands, her eyes sparkling as if she had spotted a novel toy.

"That skeleton... Is he your summon? That's so freaking cool!!!"

"Uh..."

Ling Chu honestly hadn't expected that reaction. Come to think of it, she also thought Titch looked pretty cool.

She nodded. "I guess so. I have something to take care of, so I can't chat for long."

She only had ten minutes to remain in public waters, and she was in a hurry.

[Squid Ball requested to add you as a friend.]

Squid Ball... Wasn't that the sharp-tongued debater who had fought everyone in the channel?

Ling Chu had a favorable impression of her, so she accepted the friend request.

Squid Ball watched Ling Chu leave. When Ling Chu had approached her earlier, she had also been on guard. As someone with a Special Profession, she had her own unique life-saving methods.

However, her intuition told her that Ling Chu wasn't a bad person—or rather, that she wasn't the kind of person who would kill innocent people indiscriminately.

Her intuition had never been wrong.

But honestly, a pirate who could summon Skeleton Henchman was just too cool. She instantly felt that her Astrologer profession wasn't appealing at all anymore.

Ling Chu sailed openly through public waters without concealing her fluttering pirate sail in the slightest.

She was already famous in the Nearby Channel anyway. Revealing her identity at a time like this could instead drive away players who wanted to linger.

The effect was obvious. The players who had remained in place to dig up more Sea Urchin saw her ostentatious sail and immediately lit up with white light one after another, wishing they could teleport out of the public waters on the spot.

Ling Chu first found an unoccupied raft. It should have belonged to the first person who had ambushed her.

[You dismantled an unoccupied raft and obtained 10 Wood and 2 Cloth.]

[The raft's storage contained Wheat Bread*200g, Cabbage*2, Rotten Fish Meat*100g, Mineral Water*1 bottle, Seaweed*13, Wood*21, Cloth*15, Old Grappling Hook*1. They have been automatically sent to your ship's storage.]

So poor?

No wonder this person had ambushed her. He must have been at the end of his rope.

Ling Chu took the Rotten Fish Meat out of storage and threw it away. That thing was honestly contaminating her storage.

Without the other players' sailboats getting in her way, she quickly found the remaining three Small Sailboats as well.

[You dismantled a Small Sailboat and obtained Wood*20, Cloth*5, Seagrass*10, Iron Ore*1, and Dim Pearl*1.]

[The resources in the sailboat's storage have been automatically sent to your raft's storage.]

There was less than a minute left before she would be expelled, so Ling Chu hurriedly dismantled all three Small Sailboats, then teleported out of the public waters.

The sudden darkness and the force of the wind and waves beneath her feet made Ling Chu realize that she had clearly been teleported to an unfamiliar stretch of sea.

Ling Chu first placed the Pompom Sea Urchin ornament she had obtained this time inside the cabin. It was a simulated plush toy with a wonderfully soft texture, and it could also be used as a pillow.

The ship's Durability Value had also reached 13, which made her feel much safer.

Ling Chu took out and ate the Mysterious Fruit she had received as a Public Challenge reward.

The Mysterious Fruit was yellow, a color she had never seen before.

Of the six character attributes, the only fruits she hadn't eaten were the Constitution and Charisma Fruit.

She took a bite. Surprisingly, it tasted a little like a northern fruit called a ground cherry. It was pretty delicious.

[You ate a Mysterious Fruit. Constitution +1]

Ling Chu's Constitution had been the lowest of her attributes, at only 5 points. After eating the fruit, it reached 6 points, the passing level for an ordinary person.

In common terms, she was a fragile glass cannon who couldn't take a hit.

Ling Chu felt that compared with Agility and Strength, this attribute wasn't very important. If she had enough strength to kill an enemy instantly, or enough speed to dodge attacks, why bother enduring the enemy's blows?

Unfortunately, Mysterious Fruits couldn't be used to choose an attribute. Otherwise, she definitely wouldn't have prioritized Constitution.

After finishing the fruit, Ling Chu began counting the loot she had seized from the storage of those three unlucky players' ships. After all, they had Small Sailboats, which were bound to be richer than rafts.

There were four pieces of Iron Ore, over three hundred each of Wood, Seagrass, and Cloth, over a hundred pieces each of Charcoal and Glass, five Dim Pearls, over a hundred Pompom Sea Urchin, and over a hundred Long-spined Sea Star.

The food consisted of more than a dozen pieces of Wheat Bread, five Tomatoes, seven or eight Common Sea Fish, two squid, one Smoked Ham, two baskets of Cherries, two baskets of Peaches, and one basket of eggs.

Compared with fish and ordinary staples like Wheat Bread, which she could catch or make herself, Ling Chu hoped more for fruit. Aside from finding islands by sheer luck, fruit could basically only be obtained from System Blind Boxes, making it extremely rare.

Even more surprising was that there were also two fruit tree saplings: one Cherry Tree Sapling and one Banana Tree Sapling.

Besides that, there were also two blueprints and one recipe.

[Automatic Fishing Platform Blueprint]

[Place a fishing rod and bait on it to fish automatically. After catching a fish, you must manually place the rod again.]

[Crafting requires 30 Wood, 20 Seagrass, and 10 Cloth.]

[Automatic Fishing Net]

[Installing it along the edge of the deck allows it to automatically collect floating objects passing across the sea. Maximum stack: 50 units.]

[Crafting requires 30 Wood and 30 Seagrass.]

[Paralysis Potion Recipe]

[Effect: After use, the target will enter a brief paralyzed state. The duration depends on the potion's quality and the consumer's Constitution. It can also be applied to weapons.]

[This recipe can only be viewed and crafted by an ordinary-profession Herbalist or a Special Profession Alchemist.]

Ling Chu remembered that the first two blueprints seemed to have come from dismantling one of the Small Sailboats. So, was there a chance of obtaining blueprints for installed equipment by dismantling sailboats?

The third was a recipe that required a specific profession to use, which explained why it had remained unused in the storage. Ling Chu first put the recipe into her Ring Space, planning to find a trustworthy Herbalist to make it later.

For a resource tycoon like Ling Chu, the materials required for the first two items were insignificant.

She immediately crafted ten Automatic Fishing Nets and two Automatic Fishing Platforms. She had the Lucky Frozen Octopus Fishing Rod, as well as a beginner's fishing rod, so the two platforms were just enough.

She took out two Planting Pots and planted the Cherry Sapling and Banana Sapling in them, placing them together with the Ghost Thorn Seedling. Both the Cherry Tree and Banana Tree showed that they would mature in fifteen days.

Ling Chu assigned Titch some work, telling him to remember to water the three young saplings every day and regularly collect whatever the Automatic Fishing Nets caught. The nets' maximum stack was only 50, so anything over that would be wasted.

"Aye, Captain."

Titch readily agreed.

The Public Challenge had consumed a great deal of energy. By the time Ling Chu finished counting her gains, she was already starving.

She directly took out and ate two Supreme Wagyu Pizzas. In her Ring Space, the pizzas had remained warm. She also took out some of the Cherries she had obtained this time, washed them with Freshwater, and opened two Pompom Sea Urchin to eat as sashimi.

The pizzas were warm and filling, the Cherries were large and plump, bursting with juice the instant she bit into them, and the Pompom Sea Urchin tasted fresh and delicious, melting in her mouth with a gentle press of her tongue.

She now had nearly eight hundred Pompom Sea Urchin in storage. Even if she ate them every day, they would last a year. But they were delicious, and Ling Chu had no intention of selling them. She had discovered that the creatures here seemed to grow in specific regions. What if she never encountered an area with Pompom Sea Urchin again but craved them? It was better to stockpile them.

She also had over two hundred Long-spined Sea Star. She wouldn't want to eat the things even if they were given to her, but she didn't know what other use they had. Throwing them away would be a waste, and her Ring Space was large anyway, so she piled them in a corner for now.

Before she knew it, night had fallen.

After eating her fill, Ling Chu was about to open the Blind Boxes and Treasure Chest while the Double Luck effect was still active. Just as she took out the Treasure Chest, a system notification suddenly sounded.

[Congratulations to all players on safely surviving the three-day Novice Protection Period. The game difficulty, the probability of players encountering anomalous creatures, and the probability of Public Challenges will increase substantially.]

[A Sea Storm will arrive in ten minutes. Ships with a Durability Value below 5 will be destroyed by the storm. Please make defensive preparations.]