"To help the disciples move forward, I'll go ahead, scout the terrain, gather intelligence, and draw a map for you!"
"Each disciple should contribute according to their strengths."
"In addition, this Sect Master strongly encourages all disciples to share their insights and discoveries during battle. Only through mutual progress can you all grow stronger," He Yiming said slowly, guiding them step by step.
"Hold the grass. Brother Ming's scouting for us?"
"Wait,is there a map now? Do we finally get a map function?"
"If there's a map and we know where the monsters are, we can dodge powerful ones and sneak around groups."
"With a map, I can just click and autopilot past everything!"
"This is getting even more exciting!"
"I've decided. I'm following the boss. When he kills monsters, I'll just scoop up the loot!"
The players buzzed with excitement. After eating and resting, they all resumed their activities.
Evolutionary Player, along with seven or eight others who weren't suited for combat, arrived at the spirit stone vein.
"These are spirit stones? I wonder how mineral veins form here… It'd be great if my old friends were around. They'd love to study this," Evolutionary Player mused aloud, inspecting the glowing stones.
"Damn, this game's insane. You can eat hotpot, farm, and now mine?"
"Quit yapping. Each spirit stone means contribution points. Start digging. I'm not sleeping tonight!"
"Let's pull an all-nighter!"
Without hesitation, the players became full-time miners, shoveling with wild enthusiasm.
Meanwhile, the Star group launched their second expedition. The original twenty had now grown to a full team of forty.
Twenty-one, including Star, focused on combat. The remaining nineteen, all with large backpacks, followed behind collecting spirit herbs, fruits, and mysterious plants as they went.
Don't ask those nineteen were just here to tag along with Star.
Wang Lufei and Indomitable Bear continued solo, but this time several players trailed them.
Their job was simple: collect and haul back the corpses of the beasts that Lufei and Bear took down.
Back at the chariot camp, more than ten players stayed behind. A few who excelled at cooking gave up on combat entirely. Why bother getting abused by monsters when they could dominate the culinary battlefield instead?
Other players, particularly those with crafting experience from real-life labor courses, began skillfully skinning beasts and crafting bone weapons.
They had chosen their path: logistics.
With the non-combat players falling into support roles, the remaining strong ones formed new squads. With fewer weak links and more battle experience from earlier skirmishes, the newly-formed teams were far more effective.
However, one player had been completely forgotten.
"Why the hell am I lost again?" Beef Noodle groaned, leaning on a makeshift crutch.
Earlier, his squad had been ambushed by a swarm of monsters. Panic broke out, and everyone scattered.
Beef Noodle had no clue what happened to the rest. In the chaos, he fell into a raging river and got washed over ten miles away.
After dragging himself ashore, he was chased by a monster that nearly drained all his PP. By some miracle, he survived, but now… he had no idea where he was.
"Should I just suicide and respawn? No way i spent over a thousand contribution points getting to the sixth stage of Body Forging. I'm not throwing that away!"
Just then, something caught his eye.
"What's that golden… thing?"
A massive blob stood ahead, three to four meters tall. It looked like animal droppings, but it was oddly beautiful. It didn't smell either just shimmered like translucent jelly.
"What is this?" He opened his in-game menu and tried to identify it.
"???" Only question marks.
Suddenly, a bone-rattling roar echoed nearby. Beef Noodle's instincts kicked in. He dove into the jelly for cover.
"Aaaah is this dog shit!" he yelped, accidentally swallowing several mouthfuls of the strange substance.
Heat flooded through his veins. Alarmed, he immediately activated the Azure Emperor Immortal Body to suppress it.
Slowly, the burning sensation faded. What Beef Noodle didn't see, though, was the faint outline of a dragon-shaped phantom hovering behind him. It lasted only a moment before vanishing into thin air.
"Whatever… I'm not wasting any of this." Sticking to his waste-not policy, Beef Noodle loaded as much of the golden jelly as he could into his backpack.
"I better ask for help." He reached for the distress signal stick given by He Yiming and crushed it.
Puff.
A spark of thunder began to rise then fizzled and vanished.
"…What the hell? Did Brother Ming give me a defective distress stick?"
Beef Noodle nearly coughed blood from frustration.
With no other option, he had to find his own way back.
Thankfully, as a lifelong otaku, Beef Noodle had a decent sense of direction. He recalled the chariot's rough location from before the expedition.
"…A dozen miles away? Can I even make it back alive?"
Tears welling in his eyes, Beef Noodle began running.
Right now, the other players were probably enjoying roasted monster meat, hotpot, and laughter around the campfire.
And here he was soaked, lost, half-dead, and covered in goo.
"Fuck this life…" Beef Noodle cried.