[First-time acquisition: Obsidian]
[Achievement Unlocked: Ice Bucket Challenge]
[Reward: 300 World Coins]
[All base minerals of the Main World collected. Game updated from Beta 0.9 to Official Release 1.0]
[The Start of an Adventure & A New Challenge?]
[Game Modes Unlocked: Easy, Normal, Hard]
[Default mode is Peaceful. Players can change it, with the update taking effect at 00:00 the next day]
Did I just wake up to a patch note?
Gong Qu tossed the obsidian into his backpack and rubbed his eyes.
He blinked again, nope, what he saw in front of him wasn't a dream.
"Aqing, come here for a second!"
Keqing, who was off to the side practicing her diamond sword swings, quickly came over.
"What is it?"
"I think I can change the world difficulty now."
Gong Qu pulled up the system interface and showed it to her.
"Change the difficulty… so we can actually fight those monsters now?"
"Yeah. But honestly, staying on Peaceful mode might still be a solid way to grow. Once we load in some mods, we can just raid dungeons and loot treasure chests, easy money."
Gong Qu exited the system notification panel and opened up the mod and modpack interface.
After a bit of thought, he decided to load up the Dragon Quest Modpack.
Better to rip the bandage off. Now that they had pretty much reached diamond freedom, it was time to get a little bold. Hiding in the Nether wasn't going to help much anymore. Might as well power-level through the modpack instead.
[Modpack Loading... Will take effect at 00:00 the next day]
"Whew… Aqing, let's head home first. Time to stock up on some diamonds!"
Outside the General Store.
Gong Qu was organizing his current finances.
It had been three weeks since they finished cultivating the farmland. In addition to harvesting crops, they'd earned miscellaneous income here and there. Altogether, they had raked in 36,000 World Coins.
Of that, 10,000 went toward buying a Vision, and another 4,000 on two Teleport Anchors, leaving 22,000 coins.
Diamonds at the shop were sold individually, 50 coins apiece.
That morning, he and Keqing had gone mining and dug up five diamonds.
Three were turned into a diamond pickaxe, which he used to mine some obsidian.
The other two were crafted into diamond swords, a little gesture to please the missus.
If they both wanted full sets of diamond gear, they'd need two full suits of armor, one pickaxe, and one sword, a total of 51 diamonds.
"Let's buy 80, keep a buffer just in case."
He allocated 4,000 coins, leaving 18,300 coins in the bank.
[Achievement Unlocked: Diamond Armor On!]
[Reward: 500 World Coins]
"Nice. Got a bit of a refund."
Then, Gong Qu opened the Daily Random Shop.
[Bottle o' Enchanting: 1 World Coin]
[Enchanted Book - Protection IV: 50 World Coins]
[Enchanted Book - Bane of Arthropods IV: 50 World Coins]
[Enchanted Book - Smite IV: 50 World Coins]
[Enchanted Book - Sharpness IV: 50 World Coins]
[Lottery (1 ticket): 100 World Coins]
[Lottery (11 tickets): 1,000 World Coins]
[Lottery (120 tickets): 10,000 World Coins]
Clearly, today was Enchanted Book day.
Protection and Sharpness were standard for armor and weapons. Bane of Arthropods was for bugs like spiders; Smite worked on zombies, skeletons, wither-type mobs. Specialized enchantments couldn't be stacked.
As the saying goes: "Type advantage beats everything. One good counter can take down a god."
Considering how the modpack might unleash waves of undead mobs, Gong Qu figured it was worth splurging on the Smite enchantment.
He didn't hesitate, bought three copies of each book. Spent 600 coins in total.
"Diamonds are free anyway. I'll make three weapons, Sharpness for everyday use, and swap in the others for specific enemies."
Then he turned back to the shop interface and eyed it suspiciously.
And with a totally unintentional click... he bought 11 lottery tickets.
A flash of white light, and now he had 11 scratch-off coupons in hand.
"So the method is... just tear them open, huh?"
Reading the instructions on the back, Gong Qu went ahead and tore all 11 open.
In an instant, the tickets dissolved into beams of light, which floated upward and formed eleven glowing orbs of various colors in front of him.
The effects were impressive, but the abundance of plain white and pale blue light? Slightly demoralizing.
8 white, 2 green, 1 blue.
[Congratulations! You've received—]
[World Coins ×20]
[World Coins ×20]
[World Coins ×20]
[World Coins ×50]
[World Coins ×80]
[Flight Grandmaster Sword ×1]
[World Coins ×80]
[World Coins ×20]
[Enchanted Book - Sharpness V ×1]
[World Coins ×50]
[Cute Maid Outfit ×1]
"My only blue-tier reward… and it's a cosmetic?!"
Gong Qu was crushed.
He had already lived through the absurdly low probability of getting isekai'd. Was he seriously going to be unlucky in this world too?
"Well then, let's see just how 'cute' this rare-tier maid outfit really is."
Tucking away the rewards, Gong Qu headed into the villa.
Into the kitchen.
He was greeted by Keqing, humming the melody he'd taught her, happily cooking lunch.
"Aqu, you're back. Finished prepping supplies?"
"Not much to prep, actually. Just, uh…"
The words caught in his throat.
How was he supposed to explain the maid outfit?
"Hey honey, I spent our hard-earned money on a gacha pull and the best thing I got was a cosplay costume, can you try it on so we can see if it's worth it?"
Yeah, if he said that out loud, Keqing might very well draw her Mistsplitter and buff his skull.
She may act sweet and gentle, but once she put on her housekeeper hat—ferocious.
"Hmm? What is it? You've been staring. Is there something on my face?"
Gong Qu looked at her beautiful, delicate features and gritted his teeth, might as well commit.
"I, uh... just now in the Random Shop, yeah, it refreshed an outfit. I thought it looked good, so I bought it for you. Here!"
Poof
A ribbon-tied gift box appeared in Gong Qu's hand.
Keqing blinked at it for a moment, then glanced between the box and him.
With a soft "hmph," as if she'd guessed something, she accepted the gift and stored it in her Vision's inventory space.
"Hmph! Fine. You cook then, I'll go try it on."
Gong Qu took the spatula and began half-heartedly flipping the food in the pan.
What he didn't see was the sly smile curling at the corners of Keqing's lips as she turned away.
She thought to herself, what a lovable fool.
It never mattered whether Gong Qu spent money recklessly or not.
Money, or how much they had, was never the point.
What mattered was the little roles they played, her the strict housekeeper, and him the scolded husband.
In other words, this was called romance.
Around fifteen minutes passed.
Lunch was ready, two meat dishes and one veggie.
As Gong Qu was untying his apron, he heard footsteps behind him.
He turned, and saw Keqing enter his field of view, wearing her new outfit.
The black-and-white maid uniform wasn't the modest kind you'd find in traditional European styles. Instead, it leaned more toward Lolita fashion, ornate and elegant.
Off-shoulder sleeves trimmed with rose lace contrasted beautifully with her fair skin.
The skirt was short, barely covering her thighs, revealing just enough of her silken white stockings to tease the imagination.
Below that, a pair of dainty leather shoes in matching black and white completed the ensemble.
Feeling Gong Qu's burning gaze, Keqing twirled a strand of her twin-tailed hair and blushed.
"So... how do I look? Pretty?"
Gong Qu's voice took on a poetic lilt:
"As the moon veiled by clouds, as snow whirling in the wind,
Compared to my Aqing... even the goddess of Luo in Cao Zhi's verse falls short."
Keqing didn't know who Cao Zhi was, nor who Luo Shen referred to.
But growing up in Liyue, a land steeped in literary tradition, she could still appreciate the elegance of his words.
And in that moment, she basked in the joy of being praised by the one she loved.
Gong Qu reached out to gently pat her cat-like head.
All he could think was, that 1,000 World Coins? Worth every bit.