Chapter 102: Practicing Traps

Damn, such a powerful title, and it was a passive title!

Chen Mo had a good mindset and wasn’t particularly envious. He knew it was pointless to resent it, as not just anyone could obtain this kind of title. Moreover, having this title might not necessarily be a good thing. If someone had OCD, they might end up spending all their time in the game doing quests and nothing else.

However, the Task Maniac title could unleash its maximum potential on Little Warrior, who loved quests.

“I happen to need to kill monsters in the mining area to level up. You can follow behind me and mine.”

Little Warrior stared at Chen Mo with her dark eyes, as if wanting to say something but hesitating. Chen Mo understood what the little girl was thinking and found it a bit amusing, so he said with a laugh.

“Okay, okay!” Little Warrior quickly nodded like a chick pecking at rice. She did want Chen Mo to take her mining, but she had just been too shy to ask.

The two entered the Blackwood Mining Area, where a large number of Ore Monsters immediately appeared. Chen Mo summoned another Mutant Slime and, together with Big Fatty, started killing monsters with all their might.

To rush his leveling, Chen Mo didn’t team up with Little Warrior. After clearing out a small area, Little Warrior quickly swung her mining pick and started digging. She didn’t mind at all that Chen Mo hadn’t teamed up with her.

After killing monsters for a while, Chen Mo noticed that Little Warrior’s mining speed was unusually fast. Upon asking, he learned that the mining pick in Little Warrior’s hand was no ordinary pick—it was called the “Sharp Mining Pick.” It could speed up mining, increase the chance of obtaining ores, and every time she mined an ore, it randomly added 1 to 3 points to her mining skill proficiency. It was completely a super mining pick.

According to Little Warrior, she obtained this pick after completing a quest given by the miner NPC when she was learning the mining skill.

Chen Mo couldn’t help but marvel—indeed, every trade had its master. Even burying oneself in quests could lead to great achievements.

However, after this conversation, Chen Mo and Little Warrior each focused on their own tasks and didn’t talk much.

Chen Mo buried himself in practicing his trap skills, while Little Warrior concentrated entirely on mining. When Chen Mo brought Little Warrior along to mine, he had thought having someone to talk to would make it less lonely, but in the end, the two hardly spoke.

Still, having someone mining nearby in the dark night of the mining area, even without talking, made it feel a little less lonely.

Time passed hour by hour. Chen Mo continued killing monsters deeper into the mining area, and every so often, Little Warrior would quickly catch up to him, carrying her mining pick.

Ore Monsters did drop ores, especially since Chen Mo had Mutant Plunder. For every twenty or thirty Ore Monsters he killed, he would obtain one ore.

System Notification: You obtained a “Crystal Ore”!

Crystal Ore: A rare ore that can be refined into crystals containing mysterious power.

Crystal Ore?

After a moment of surprise, Chen Mo remembered something.

To ensure his own safety, he had read most of the posts about the Blackwood Mining Area on the forum, especially those about the Second Level, which was still somewhat dangerous for him. It was said that in the Second Level of the Blackwood Mining Area, there was an old NPC who was buying Crystal Ore.

Crystal Ore sounded like a high-level ore that players couldn’t mine at this stage. Many players knew about this NPC, but no one knew what rewards they would get for giving him Crystal Ore.

He hadn’t expected the Mutant Plunder skill to be so awesome. It was worth giving up other talent skills for it. He wondered what benefits this Crystal Ore could bring him!

Thinking about the unknown rewards, Chen Mo felt a bit excited.

But he quickly calmed down. Under the Heinous Crime Title, most NPCs would attack him. Earlier, on the Giant Wood Tray, Eliya and Eve hadn’t reacted much, partly because he had first accepted the quest to save Eliya, and partly because the two little girls were still too young and inexperienced to know what bad people looked like.

Anyway, the rewards weren’t going anywhere. He could just wait a few days until he got rid of the Heinous Crime Title and then go find the old NPC.

Chen Mo wondered if he would get more Crystal Ore, but by 6 a.m., when both the game and reality were about to dawn, he hadn’t obtained any more Crystal Ore. Instead, he got quite a few of the lowest-level ores like iron ore. It seemed that obtaining one Crystal Ore was just a lucky burst.

After killing Ore Monsters all night, Chen Mo’s experience bar had only reached a little over 40%. He wasn’t sure if he could reach Level 15 in three days. There was a reason why player levels were generally not high right now.

“Have you mined enough ores?”

Before logging off, Chen Mo asked Little Warrior, who had been mining beside him all night.

“No, I’m afraid I’ll need another night,” Little Warrior said with a bitter look on her small face, like a porcelain doll, making Chen Mo feel an urge to pinch it.

Cough, that’s not good. Chen Mo resisted the impulse.

“I’ll be here killing monsters again tonight. You can continue mining beside me then.”

“Okay, okay!” Little Warrior nodded happily.

Both of them logged off one after the other. Chen Mo ate some breakfast and then went straight to bed to catch up on sleep.

He slept until after noon before getting up. After going out for some exercise and having lunch, Chen Mo returned to the warehouse and found that Fatty Tian had sent him a message, informing him that the client had confirmed he completed the first assignment. For future new assignments, Worm Company would contact him.

Just like that, he earned 100,000 USD.

Chen Mo felt it was a bit unreal. The money came too easily. Why would that client spend so much money to have him help June Rain, an ordinary player, complete a quest that wasn’t even worth 100,000 USD?

Chen Mo couldn’t figure it out. Although June Rain’s quest rewarded a Heavenly Blessing skill book, buying one directly wouldn’t even cost 100,000 Huaxia Currency, let alone 100,000 USD.

Since he couldn’t figure it out, Chen Mo didn’t bother overthinking it. As long as he was making money, it was fine. There was nothing he could do if people had too much money.

Chen Mo’s focus quickly shifted to how to increase the speed of setting traps.

Setting traps seemed to be a matter of practice making perfect. More practice would help him familiarize himself with the steps of setting traps, thereby improving his speed.

But Chen Mo thought more deeply about it.

He closed his eyes and sat motionless for a while.

“Just as I thought. Actions familiar in real life are easier to perform in the game. But conversely, even actions that can be done skillfully in the game feel quite unfamiliar in memory if they’ve never been used in reality!”

Opening his eyes, Chen Mo murmured to himself.

The Genesis Game was very realistic. Playing it felt like living in a dream.

But Chen Mo felt that fully immersive virtual games were probably really similar to dreams.

After dreaming, people often only retain some impressions; most dreams are hard to remember clearly in detail.

Playing the Genesis Game wasn’t as severe as dreaming, but events in the game, unless they were particularly exciting moments, would feel vague in memory after returning to reality without careful recollection.

For example, the actions for setting traps—Chen Mo could already set them quite skillfully in the game. But in reality, when he tried to repeat the same actions, he found it very difficult and felt very unfamiliar.

Chen Mo had no intention of researching why the game made people feel this way, but knowing this, he found a way to improve his trap-setting speed!

Practicing the trap-setting actions in real life—as long as he could skillfully reproduce the actions in reality, he could perform them faster and more accurately in the game!

Moreover, Chen Mo didn’t just practice the trap-setting actions alone.

He drew out each of the trap skills he currently controlled and began analyzing their similarities and differences.

In the future, he would learn many more trap skills. Normally, each trap skill would require diligent practice to set skillfully.

But Chen Mo thought differently. Just like how writing has strokes and radicals, these trap patterns also had basic lines. As long as he mastered these basic lines, even after learning new trap skills in the future, he could quickly become proficient in setting them up in a short time!