Experience (Seeking Collection, Recommendation!)

Ever since he acquired the attribute panel, Sulu had been attempting to gain experience points.

Facts proved that ordinary reading or physical exercise were basically useless.

Unless... he read books containing special abilities or defeated "red-named" monsters, such as the three coaches at the Combat Club, he could not gain any experience.

However, there were prerequisites: first, the strength gap had to be narrow; second, he could only farm them twice, with the experience halved on the second round.

The final remaining method lay in killing.

This method was too sinister, so Sulu had only tested it on ordinary rats over the past few days.

It turned out that if the disparity in strength was too great, he wouldn't gain a single point of experience.

Until just now, the death of a mutated rat had finally brought him 10 experience points!

"It's not easy, it's really not easy!"

Sulu almost shed tears in his heart.

After the Combat Club, he had finally found a second source for his experience pool!

"Sulu, you're amazing!"

Sean laughed heartily, gripping his pickaxe and waving it at the rat swarm: "Come on, you filthy scumbags!"

"Squeak! Squeak!"

The next moment, a large number of mutated rats shrieked loudly, and a black shadow began to writhe from the depths of the sewer.

Looking closely, one would realize it was hundreds of ordinary rats, manipulated by these mutated rats, forming a rat tide!

"Run!"

Seeing this, Sulu immediately threw away his pickaxe and fled without looking back.

In his heart, he even had the urge to tear Sean's mouth shut.

This "crow's mouth" talent combined with a jinxed constitution must be some kind of transcendent mysterious ability, right? A "disaster incarnate," for short?

Squeak!

The two men sprinted wildly, with a massive swarm of rats chasing behind them.

Fortunately, it wasn't long before a sewer manhole appeared, and Sulu scrambled out with Sean, rolling and crawling to safety.

"Huff! Huff!"

Beside the manhole cover, the two looked at the rat swarm that had stopped chasing and let out a long sigh in unison.

"It seems... that sanitation worker was indeed bitten by a mutated rat!" Sulu said. "If we want to continue cleaning, we need to buy a large number of rat traps and rat poison! The workload will increase significantly, and 10 Silver Dollars will definitely be a loss!"

"That damn profiteer!"

Sean, on the other hand, made up his mind: "I'm going to the student union to report him for contract fraud! Regardless, I am not continuing this!"

He looked at Sulu with an apologetic expression: "Sorry... for dragging you into this, but I promise, everything ends here!"

In reality, even a complaint might not yield results; there were rats in the sewer, and even if the rats were large, it was still within the "normal" range, wasn't it?

Since the man was a profiteer, he surely had a set of excuses ready.

The best-case scenario was the contract being voided; if they were unlucky, they might even have to pay damages.

But Sean had already decided to take all the blame upon himself.

"I think... this job can still be done!"

Sulu, however, did not think so.

To him, that was a treasure trove of an experience pool; he couldn't let it go to waste: "We are human, after all, and we have intelligence. With flooding, fire, and rat poison, it is still possible to wipe out a group of rats. Let's try to keep the costs within a reasonable range!"

"Brother!"

Sean was moved, almost to the point of tears: "Thank you for everything you've done for me, but you really don't have to..."

"No! I insist!"

Things had reached this point; even if he had to pay out of his own pocket, Sulu was going to do it.

The two discussed it further, and eventually, Sean was persuaded by Sulu. They decided to rest for the day, and then Sean would find a way to purchase a batch of rat poison to kill those disgusting bastards in the sewer.

Sulu, meanwhile, went back to upgrade his equipment, especially his protective suit.

With the sharp teeth of those mutated rats, he feared that ordinary leather clothing wouldn't be enough to stop them.

Seven days later, inside the sewer.

Sulu, clad in a thickened protective suit and holding a pickaxe, left a trail of chaos in his wake.

Over the past few days, he and Sean had racked their brains and come up with every devious plan imaginable—flooding, fire, traps, and poison—and had finally managed to wipe out most of the ordinary rat swarm in the sewer.

As for those mutated rats?

They seemed to possess a certain level of intelligence; after being tricked once, they refused to take the bait again.

Sulu also took this opportunity to prove one thing.

"Kill experience only counts if I land the killing blow personally? As for schemes, tricks, or traps, as long as I don't personally step in to finish them off, no matter how close I am, I get absolutely nothing!"

He had already figured out the mechanics of his attribute panel.

Now was the time to seize the opportunity and perform the final harvest.

"Come on, little darlings, there's only one of me!"

Arriving at the spot where he had been ambushed that day, Sulu shouted a provocation.

Hmm, one couldn't rule out the possibility that these mutated rats possessed intelligence; perhaps after suffering heavy casualties, they wouldn't stay here to fight to the death, but would instead relocate?

Sulu walked for a long time without encountering anything unusual, and he couldn't help but miss Sean.

With that guy's jinxed, crow-mouthed constitution, if he had been brought along, something would surely have happened by now, right?

"Squeak!"

Just as this thought crossed his mind, a massive mutated rat lunged at him from the darkness.

"Die!"

Sulu swung his pickaxe, striking the creature's exposed belly squarely, sending blood spraying everywhere.

"If there were achievements for killing rats, I'd probably have completed tasks like [Rat Bane] or [Rat Slayer] by now..."

He shook the pickaxe, letting the corpse of the mutated rat slide off, and as he looked at the [XP+10] appearing on his attribute panel, a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth: "They still won't leave? Something's fishy!"

Seeking advantages and avoiding harm is the instinct of all living things; to persist even to this extent meant there was definitely something suspicious going on!

"Just now... it seems I was attacked right when I reached this fork in the road!"

Sulu stepped back a few paces, arriving at a junction: "They attacked me, but they didn't realize they were just leading the way for me!"

Thinking of this, his spirits lifted, and he followed this branching path downward.

Whoosh, whoosh!

All around, the sound of the sewer churned.

The oil lamp he held cast a dim, yellowish light, illuminating a small area.

Sulu held the lamp in one hand and the pickaxe in the other, when his ears suddenly twitched and his body spun: "Crane Style, kill!"

His right hand moved so fast it left only a blur, the pickaxe swinging rapidly as two large mutated rats fell to the ground, twitching and covered in blood.

At this moment, the experience points on his attribute panel had impressively reached 40!

And behind Krav Maga Combat Arts, the long-awaited '+' sign finally appeared.

[Consume 40 XP to upgrade Krav Maga Combat Arts? Yes/No?]

"The first upgrade only cost 10 XP, the second 20, and the third has become 40... but it's still cheaper than [Corpse Maiden Creation]. Yes!"

Sulu immediately chose to confirm.