Talking Them Into It

Just as Yang Yu had expected, after triggering this hidden storyline, all the other Slimes by the roadside were pathetically weak. He completed his first quest without any trouble.

After making a round of the village outskirts and failing to trigger any more quests, Yang Yu decided to leave Novice Village and head to the nearest city to become an adventurer.

On the day he left, both his parents came to see him off at the village entrance.

Kari stuffed a wooden crate into his son's carriage, walked to the front, patted the sturdy horse, and smiled at Yang Yu on the driver's seat.

"Be extra careful on the road."

Kari did not say much, but his eyes held a trace of reluctance. His son had grown up before he even realized it.

Lisa stood beside the carriage. "Once you become an adventurer who can stand on his own, you have to come back!"

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Her voice trembled. She desperately held herself back, clenched her fists through her tears, afraid she would grab Yang Yu and beg him to stay.

"Don't worry, Dad, Mom. Take good care of yourselves too."

Yang Yu waved goodbye to his parents and flicked the reins.

The horse moved along briskly. The carriage carried five or six crates; aside from the last one Kari had given him, Yang Yu had already stored everything from the other crates in the system.

A blob of blue jelly wriggled out of Yang Yu's backpack, crawled up his back to his shoulder, swayed from side to side, and cried out hungrily.

Yang Yu took a flowerpot from the system, pressed in a seed, spent one MP to activate his skill, and a Four-leaf Clover sprouted from the pot.

He Meng leaped down from Yang Yu's shoulder, enveloped the entire flowerpot, and happily enjoyed its meal.

After completing his initial quest, Yang Yu had fought many Lesser Slimes to level up, but He Meng had never once joined the battle.

Perhaps it was because they were both Slimes, and as royalty, it disdained fighting its own kind. But Yang Yu was more inclined to believe that he needed a certain degree of affinity with a monster before he could command it to fight.

After constantly feeding it Four-leaf Clover, He Meng's affinity had finally returned to zero. Yet once it reached zero, no matter how much more he fed it, the affinity never increased again.

He had no clue how to raise He Meng's affinity.

"What a pain. If only there were some kind of ball that could directly capture monsters and make them fight regardless of affinity. Such great stats are going to waste."

He Meng did not fight, but Yang Yu was not in a hurry. When the time came, it would naturally make a move. He was very laid-back about it.

As he leisurely drove the carriage onward, Yang Yu opened the system and selected the newly added lottery option.

Lotteries often tugged at players' heartstrings, trapping them in the delusions of I'll definitely get it next time and I'll change my fate in one pull, making them spend more and more money.

Almost every game used lotteries to retain players, though some unlucky players did get so angry that they quit.

Three lottery draws: 50% skill, 20% item, 20% junk, 10% equipment.

Beginner benefits. With three consecutive draws, there was no way he would pull junk three times in a row, right?

[Congratulations, player. You obtained one Glass Bead (Junk).]

[Congratulations, player. You obtained one Glass Bead (Junk).]

[Congratulations, player. You obtained one Glass Bead (Junk).]

Huh? WTF?

I could probably combine these into one triple... No, that should mean I got a two-star Glass Bead.

He opened the item panel and took them out for a look. The three Glass Beads had nothing special about them. They were exactly like the ones used in Chinese checkers, even identical in size and in the patterns inside them.

If there was anything special about them, it was that these glass beads were much smoother than the ones he had played with as a child.

Even though he had long prepared himself for getting absolutely nothing good, when he really drew three pieces of junk, Yang Yu still felt a chill run through his heart.

Why could everyone else get good stuff with Luck 1, but not me?

Sure enough, some things were impossible without protagonist luck.

Yang Yu did not believe in superstition, because it was genuinely useless. Whether it was rubbing off someone else's luck or drawing at midnight, none of it could change the fate of someone cursed with bad luck.

He had been ridiculously unlucky since childhood. Whenever he drew cards, he always asked someone else to do it for him. If he drew them himself, all he could ever get was the officially gifted title of African Chieftain.

Whenever he still held even the slightest hope that he might be one of the lucky ones, reality would always slap him hard across the face and tell him, "Go to sleep properly. You can have anything you want in your dreams."

Having to rely solely on his own lottery draws was, in a way, another increase in this game's difficulty.

Because his livestream often brought warmth to people's hearts, it was called the friendliest livestream for Africans. That was how it had managed to remain modestly popular without ever truly taking off.

Thinking about it that way, terrible luck was not necessarily a bad thing.

Besides, even if the system had classified them as junk, these three Glass Beads were not entirely worthless. With just a little effort, he could turn waste into treasure.

Like the straw millionaire, some things could only display their greatest value in the hands of those who understood them or those who truly needed them.

A bold idea formed in his mind, and he smiled knowingly. After arriving at the nearest town, Rhodes, and settling the carriage, he immediately headed for the town's jewelry store.

The jewelry store was lavishly decorated, with all kinds of gems shining brilliantly. Yang Yu, dressed plainly, looked completely out of place there.

Yang Yu looked around, carefully guarding the glass beads. He successfully caught the attention of a clerk, and after chatting for a while, he met the jewelry store owner.

Inside a private room, the jewelry store owner, Ge Gen, studied the glass bead for a long time. He put down his appraisal glasses, his fat face revealing no expression, and held up five fingers covered in rings.

"Will you sell it for fifty?"

"Isn't that a little too low?" Yang Yu leaned back on the sofa across from the jewelry store owner, elegantly lifted his tea, and took a sip with complete ease.

"Fifty G is already an offer made out of consideration for the fact that I don't want you to leave empty-handed. Frankly speaking, this thing of yours is junk. Its material is about the same as the glass used for windows. You probably picked up some trash somewhere and mistook it for a treasure." After putting it down, the jewelry store owner changed his tone. "Well, although it is junk, some of my customers like collecting strange stones. Your item may shine in their hands. But as things stand, it is only worth this much."

Yang Yu chuckled, set down his teacup, and said, "I think you should not underestimate me, sir. To tell you the truth, this stone was found in a dungeon by an adventurer."

The jewelry store owner held out the glass bead, looking displeased.

"People often bring in stones they picked up at random and claim they are dungeon treasures. There is no way to verify whether that is true or false. I can only judge according to my own standards. If you're not selling, take it back!"

Yang Yu pushed the jewelry store owner's hand back.

"I understand your concerns. To be honest, that adventurer conducted all kinds of research on this stone but could never confirm what was so unusual about it. In the end, he treated it as junk and gave it to me. But I do not believe it is junk."

It really was junk in my world, but that did not necessarily mean it was junk here.

"What do you mean?"

"Look carefully. This Glass Bead is at least as round as an ordinary crystal ball, if not more so. You should know that the smaller a spherical object is, the harder it is to polish. Even using magic, the precision of magical control would need to reach a particular level."

Ge Gen's gaze sharpened, and he could not help fixing his eyes on the tiny glass sphere in his hand.

"Why are you so certain this little sphere is man-made rather than naturally formed?"

"It is not me who is certain. It is you. If this little sphere was naturally formed, then its value would be immeasurable."

The sudden words made the jewelry store owner's eyes widen at once, as though everything had been seen through.

"Most gemstones are, at their core, ordinary minerals. They only gain special value because they can be made into all sorts of beautiful things, or because they are as rare as gold, attracting attention and encouraging comparison."

Seizing the opportunity, Yang Yu continued to fan the flames.

"Look at the exquisite curves of the three flowing streaks inside this stone. They could not have been formed by something as simple as nature. Let us assume this Glass Bead truly is what you think it is: a genuine man-made object.

Perhaps someone in this world really can create something like this. But someone capable of making such a beautiful Glass Bead, then embedding three differently colored, intertwined curves within it, would never care about the affairs of ordinary people like us. They would not be short on money."

The jewelry store owner fell into thought.

"Even if such a person does appear, that will not be something you or I need to worry about." Yang Yu spoke like a demon whispering in his ear. "To put it more simply, as long as I sell this to you, and you raise the price before selling it once others take notice, it will be a guaranteed profit with no risk of loss."