Scourge Messenger

Chapter 51 Adventure
The milestone information was not triggered on the first day, but was triggered on the second day. The reason is obvious: "Jiang Shi"'s level meets the minimum threshold for unlocking this copy milestone.

These milestones don't require any extra effort from the player; they can be achieved simply by progressing through the levels normally. Yan Qing speculates that if the player's level were higher, such as level 40 or 70, they might trigger some more complex milestones, such as requiring the player to only build the most basic buildings in order to pass the later, more difficult levels.

If I come to Mansu Woodland again next year, I will have the opportunity to verify this guess.

Yan Qing first checked the highest-level milestone, 'Lord of the Woods', and his eyes immediately lit up.

"Lord of the Woods: When there are more than one thousand trees within a one-kilometer radius, your token attack will gain 1 point of true damage for every 10000 points of theoretical damage, up to a maximum of 10 points of true damage per attack. There is no cooldown."

It's actually noble true damage!

The game "The Courier" doesn't have that many nesting dolls. When it comes to real damage, it means real damage that ignores all rules. Even a level 1 player can bleed a level 99 player. But real damage is also extremely rare. There are basically no tokens that can cause real damage. In order to cause real damage, you often need to meet extremely stringent conditions.

For example, for the Lord of the Forest, a thousand trees are not difficult to satisfy for immortal players above the seventh level. More tokens can create an oasis in the desert, but the difficulty lies in how to prevent the enemy from destroying the trees.

But if there happens to be a high-level dungeon in the jungle like Mansu Woods, then this milestone is simply invincible. As long as the player changes to a token with a fast enough attack speed and meets the minimum damage threshold, he can use true damage to kill all monsters in the dungeon.

That is to say, only limited-time copies will have such powerful milestones, which not only ensures the traffic driven by the event, but also avoids the excessive spread of real damage that affects the balance of the game.

Yan Qing continued to look at the first three simpler milestones, and sure enough, the effect dropped significantly.

「铜/银/金牌猎人：当你方圆一公里内存在超过一百棵树木，你的信物攻击理论伤害值每有100点，就会附加1点真实伤害，单次伤害最多可附加1/2/3点真实伤害，内置1秒/0.5秒/0.3秒冷却时间。」

The requirement was lowered from 1,000 trees to 100, and the damage threshold was lowered from 10000 to 100. However, the true damage was also reduced to 1-3 points, and a cooldown was added, limiting the true damage output per second, unlike the unlimited possibilities of the Woodland Lord. However, in terms of practicality, Yan Qing believes that these three milestones are better than the Woodland Lord.

Because players are basically below level 70 when they reach these three milestones, most enemies at this time do not have the destructive power of a clean-up level. Players can trigger this milestone as long as they find jungle terrain.

When he returned to the game, the other three teammates had disappeared.

They had allocated their respective collection areas last night, so now they had to race against time when entering the Mansu Forest. Although 45 minutes seemed like a long time, it was not enough to clean up all the resources around them.

After a quick search, Yan Qing quickly found a pile of gems and crystals, as well as a stone mine. The stone mine only needed to be attacked, and a large amount of lootable stones would fall, more than three times the amount of wild stones.

However, these resource points will change every round. The place where Yan Qing discovered the crystal mine before has now disappeared.

Five minutes later, Yan Qing discovered that the jungle terrain farther away was no longer grassland, but super grassland covered with one-meter-high weeds. The movement speed of "Jiang Shi" dropped sharply by 70%, and even running could not increase the speed much.

This is the watershed between players.

Going further afield will undoubtedly yield even more abundant resources, but without the ability to ignore terrain and scouting, exploration efficiency will be very slow. The higher the player's level, the greater the benefits in this phase, allowing high-level players to feel a significant advantage in this dungeon, thus gaining a sense of superiority.

This is a crucial design decision for the game. Even if players of all levels are encouraged to participate in an event dungeon, they still need to invest time and energy in leveling up. If high-level players experience the same experience as low-level players, it will inevitably lead to frustration for high-level players. As the saying goes, a slap in the face is worth a sweet treat. This dungeon has already been very unsatisfactory for limiting the output capabilities of all players from the beginning, so there must be other ways to make high-level players feel refreshed.

Although Jiang Shi doesn't have the ability to ignore terrain, she has a sliver of iron.

With Yuehuanzhan paving the way, Yan Qing soon discovered a gem mine, and various resources also appeared one after another. If the resource density of the grassland area is 1, then the weed area is at least 5.

As he was picking up items, he suddenly spotted a stone pedestal not far away that resembled an altar. Yan Qing approached and saw grooves on the stone pedestal, with an inscription carved beneath. The stone pedestal radiated a hazy purple light, a mysterious and solemn aura.

"You discovered the 'Spirit Gathering Stone'."

"Spirit Gathering Stone: Placing ordinary tokens into the stone base can enhance them into rare tokens."

what?
Yan Qing stared at the thing in front of him with wide eyes, wondering if players of "The Messenger" eat such good food?

This thing would be considered a small adventure in a single-player game, but it actually appeared in an MMORPG? And it's not just valid in dungeons, but a permanent reward.

Although you can only upgrade from base to rare, it's easy to get high-level base tokens, and a full set of orange legendaries is a matter of graduation. Getting a rare token that exceeds your level makes exploring new lands much more comfortable.

Unfortunately, Yan Qing didn't have any high-level tokens. The only items in his warehouse were the slivered iron blade, Ye Si's demon mask, and Jiang Shi's newly acquired protective jade pendant. First, he ruled out the slivered iron blade; defensive tokens were more important than offensive ones. Secondly, he ruled out the demon mask, as it was ugly.

After a few seconds, the purple light from the stone base dissipated, and it was obvious that it could no longer be used.

A jade pendant emitting blue light appeared on the screen——

Yugong Jade Pendant

"Grade: First-level rare"

Durability: 80/80 Equipment requirement: 10 Spirit Points

"Effect: Guardian Shield: When you are attacked with 20 or more points of damage, you will automatically activate a Guardian Shield with 100 HP to block this damage, consuming 2 points of Spiritual Power. If the Guardian Shield is triggered 5 times within 5 seconds, the jade pendant will enter a dark state, and all effects will be lost within 15 seconds."

"Effect: Foolish Man: When you are attacked with an attack that deals less than 20 points of damage, the damage is reduced by 5 points. This effect applies to all attached injuries (bleeding, burning, frostbite, etc.). Activating Foolish Man consumes 5 points of spiritual power, and 1 point of spiritual power is consumed every 15 minutes."

"Effect: Yugong Soul: The more damage you take while in Yugong state, the greater the increase in your soul when you level up."

Comment: "Thanks to the invention of this jade pendant, even the weakest messenger of the Yugong Sect can now work in the mines."

Well, the jade pendant is a good one, the first two effects are good, and the third is just a bonus. But if a rare token can be so practical, what else do you need?

It's just that the reviews for this token are pretty sparse, like seeing a review on children's protective gear saying that with this set of protective gear, children can finally participate in free fighting...

After encountering the Spirit Gathering Stone, Yan Qing's search intensified. However, after 35 minutes, he still hadn't found another special structure similar to the Spirit Gathering Stone. He did manage to pick up quite a few resources, but with only 10 minutes left until the first wave of attacks, he had to turn back.

Back at the shelter, everyone had already piled a mountain of resources in the courtyard. Without much conversation, Yan Qing immediately began building—they had spent a whole day discussing the construction yesterday, and they had already decided on the order of construction.

The first thing to build is not a statue, not a weapon, nor a resource reproduction building, but a shelter!

With the Blade Warrior statue, you don't have to worry about the first wave of attacks. The higher the level of your shelter, the more buildings you can unlock. Everyone agrees that equipment like wooden crossbows and catapults can only handle the first two waves of attacks. Only building higher-level statues is the optimal solution for the Mansu Woodland!
Shelter Level: Level 1 Stone House → Level 2 Bunker

Yan Qing glanced at the resources and saw that it was perfectly acceptable to continue building a more advanced shelter. After a brief discussion, Yan Qing upgraded the shelter once more, and a small fortress with a masonry wall rose from the ground. In addition to hiding in the rooms within the fortress, they could now walk up to the battlements and launch attacks from above. There was no need to build walls anymore; the walls would automatically repair after each battle.

Shelter Level: Level 2 Bunker → Level 3 Fortress

「Buildable capacity: 1/18」

"You can choose to upgrade—"

"Shelter Upgrade: Castle: Requires 50 Wood, 50 Stone, 10 Gem, 10 Mercury, 10 Crystal, 10 Sulfur"

"Defense: Arrow Tower: Requires 20 stone. You can now build two arrow towers on the ramparts without occupying any building space. Unless the ramparts' outer walls collapse, the arrow towers will remain intact. They can be upgraded later."

"Defense Moat: Requires 10 Wood. A moat can be dug out of the outer wall of the fortress to slow down hostile creatures. It is indestructible and can be upgraded later."

"Academic Facility: Study: Requires 10 Gems, 10 Mercury, 10 Crystal, and 10 Sulfur. The Study makes your buildings more efficient, reducing resource requirements for all facilities by 10%. It can be upgraded later."

"Academic Facility: Hall of Valor: Requires 30 Wood, 30 Crystals. Increases the number of random building statues per turn to three. Upgradeable later."

"Facility Market: Requires 10 Wood, 10 Stone. Allows you to convert resources."

"Attack Facility: Bronze Warrior: Requires 10 Wood, 10 Stone, and 1 Mercury."

"Attack Facility - Silver Warrior: Requires 15 Wood, 15 Stone, and 1 Gem."

"Random statue this round: Narcissus Mermaid Statue: Requires 5 crystals, 20 gems."

"Blade Guard Statue (upgraded from Blade Warrior): Requires 60 crystals and 60 sulfur, and increases building capacity to 3."

There are also the wooden crossbows, catapults and guard stones mentioned before, which will not be described here.

After upgrading the shelter twice, there were still a lot of resources left. Because time was tight, Yan Qing directly gave suggestions and pressed the sacred construction button after getting approval from his teammates.

"'Study' is complete."

"The Narcissus Mermaid Statue is complete."

Thick fog descended and the first wave of attack arrived, but they didn't need to take any action at all. The Blade Warrior and the Narcissus Mermaid were enough to clear out the group of monsters.

The fortress was much better than the stone house. Not only was it spacious inside, it even had furniture. Candles were lit everywhere, and there was even a huge fireplace. Everyone sat around the fireplace. If it weren't for the occasional sound of monsters flying around outside, one would have thought it was a party of beautiful girls just by looking at the scene.

"Everyone."

Qian Gongyu walked to the front, facing the crowd. It was obvious that she had tried her best to suppress her pride, but the silly smile she wore as she spoke still fully revealed her saintly nature. "I just changed my job for the second time."

(End of this chapter)