As the saying went, walk enough night roads and you were bound to meet a ghost.
After fighting across the Gray Rabbit Plains all day, Lin Yuan finally encountered a different kind of Fierce Beast near dusk.
"Grrr—"
A low growl sounded, punctuated by short, guttural rumbles.
It carried the bloodthirsty ferocity unique to predators.
Lin Yuan narrowed his eyes at the crimson figure slowly descending the hillside.
It was a fox.
Its fur was fiery red from head to tail, like a living flame.
It was over a meter and a half long. Its long crimson tail was especially striking, swaying gently with an almost bewitching allure.
"A Red-Tailed Fox..."
Lin Yuan recognized it at once: a common predatory Fierce Beast, the Red-Tailed Fox.
Red-Tailed Foxes were frequent visitors to the Gray Rabbit Plains. Ferocious Gray Rabbits were their favorite prey.
That was why they often came here to hunt.
But as mutated Fierce Beasts, Red-Tailed Foxes were nothing like ordinary foxes. They were as large as boars, with long, sharp claws and pointed teeth.
Their strength far surpassed a Ferocious Gray Rabbit's, reaching over a thousand pounds. Quick and cunning, they were among the predators novice Hunters least wanted to encounter.
Lin Yuan was a novice Hunter too.
But he was not the least bit afraid of the Red-Tailed Fox.
What a joke. With seven Talent Traits at his disposal, being afraid of one little fox would be the biggest joke of all.
In strength, I'm at roughly twelve hundred pounds now. I have a slight edge.
In technique, my swordsmanship has reached the Micro-Insight Realm. I can attack or defend as I please and stop at a thought.
And that's without counting my other Talent Traits...
The advantage is mine!
Lin Yuan's eyes shone. He gripped the Blue Ice Battle Sword and stared straight at the Red-Tailed Fox coming down the slope, eager for a fight.
And the Red-Tailed Fox?
It did not hesitate for a moment.
Its eyes glowed red. Like a ball of flame, it charged straight at Lin Yuan.
"Fierce Beasts really are ferocious."
Lin Yuan frowned.
Though the beasts had also been bathed in the energy of the stars, mutating into stronger forms, the little reason they had possessed was corrupted too.
They had no minds capable of thought.
All that remained was an endless urge to destroy and kill.
Whoosh!
The Red-Tailed Fox was fast. It sprang into the air.
Its claws shot out, sharp enough to tear through any Ferocious Gray Rabbit's hide and grievously wound flesh and blood.
Unfortunately, it had met Lin Yuan.
A sword immortal in the making, the only player in this world, bearer of seven Talent Traits, the future strongest being in the universe...
Whoosh!
Another blade cut through the air.
Lin Yuan drew his sword. Its keen gleam was like a river of stars across the heavens, reflecting a boundless chill.
Slice...
The flash of the blade vanished as quickly as it appeared.
Swordsmanship in the Micro-Insight Realm was beyond the understanding of a little Red-Tailed Fox with no mind left to speak of.
So it died.
Quite peacefully, at that...
It had scarcely felt any pain. Lin Yuan's precise, elegant strike had severed its throat.
One sword. An instant kill.
The corpse remained intact. His strike had been so fast that even the blood had barely had time to spray.
"You have killed a Red-Tailed Fox. Experience +2..."
Only when the Game Panel's notification sounded in his mind did Lin Yuan come to his senses. He had still been savoring how cool that sword strike had looked.
Two experience points!
Just as I thought... Killing higher-level monsters gives more experience.
Lin Yuan had confirmed his earlier guess once again.
The string that had been pulled taut in his heart finally eased.
So those damn game designers did leave me a way forward. If every kill gave only one experience point, I'd be hunting monsters until the end of time...
"This Red-Tailed Fox pelt is worth something, though. I should collect it."
Lin Yuan took the gathering tools he kept in his backpack and carefully cut away the pelt of the fox that had practically delivered itself to him.
Most mutated Fierce Beasts were worth little. The weakest, Ferocious Gray Rabbits, had almost no valuable materials. Their heads and meat had a small food market, but that was about it.
Rabbit heads sold for twenty apiece.
Rabbit meat sold for five a pound.
Ferocious Gray Rabbits were Fierce Beasts and larger than ordinary rabbits, but once the inedible organs and bones were removed, only the leg meat could be gathered in usable cuts.
An adult Ferocious Gray Rabbit yielded about thirty pounds of meat, worth a hundred and fifty.
Add twenty for the head, and a whole Ferocious Gray Rabbit was worth only around a hundred and seventy or eighty, never more than two hundred.
For most Hunters, that was not worth the trouble. They could not be bothered to hunt them.
Lin Yuan had killed over a hundred Ferocious Gray Rabbits, but only for experience and Talent Traits. He had no time to harvest them one by one.
The Red-Tailed Fox was different.
Its meat was poor and yielded little, so hardly anyone wanted to eat it. But its fiery red pelt was valuable.
A nearly undamaged, complete pelt like the one in Lin Yuan's hands was worth at least several thousand. With the right buyer, even ten thousand was possible.
One pelt was worth as much as a hundred Ferocious Gray Rabbits. Of course Lin Yuan was not going to leave it behind.
After all, he still had hundreds of thousands to repay on his Hunter Loan...
"Compared to a Red-Tailed Fox, Ferocious Gray Rabbits really are easier to hunt. They barely take any effort."
Lin Yuan's thoughts raced.
Red-Tailed Foxes gave more experience, but they were harder to kill. His instant kill might have looked effortless.
But how could he have dared let his guard down?
He had used his full strength. It was nothing like the ease with which he hunted gray rabbits.
Besides, the difference between two experience points and one was small, and Red-Tailed Foxes were rare and hard to find.
So Lin Yuan promptly set his sights back on Ferocious Gray Rabbits.
They were easy to kill, and there were plenty of them.
"My dear little rabbits, here I come again..."
Lin Yuan put away the Red-Tailed Fox pelt, rolled up his sleeves, and charged at the rabbits with his sword.
One day...
Two days...
Three days...
For a Hunter, spending nights in the Wilderness Zone was perfectly normal.
After all, finding suitable Fierce Beasts to hunt required not just strength, but luck.
Though Lin Yuan was a novice, he adapted quickly.
The nights were dangerous, and he was still weak. He did not dare grow careless, so he found a safe place to hide.
At daybreak, he first practiced the Starry Sky Body Tempering Art to advance his Body Tempering. It was tied to the all-important path of Stellar Martial Path, so he could not slack off in the slightest.
Then came the much-anticipated rabbit hunt. Leveling up the Game Panel and drawing new Talent Traits depended on it, so he could not neglect that either.
Over three days, he ranged across more than half the Gray Rabbit Plains.
Only then did Lin Yuan finally bag 128 rabbits and reach level eight.
"These rabbits have gotten smarter. They're all hiding in their burrows now."
Lin Yuan shook his head, deeply disappointed.
The Gray Rabbit Plains did have plenty of Ferocious Gray Rabbits, but he had hunted them too quickly.
One sword, one rabbit, from morning to night without a moment's pause.
The hunting itself was hardly worth mentioning. Each rabbit went down in one strike. Finding them took far more time.
Otherwise, he could have leveled up even faster!
"Let's see what my eighth Talent Trait will be."
Lin Yuan put the rabbits out of his mind and eagerly began drawing a new Talent Trait.
"You have obtained a golden legend..."
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