Ashen God
Chapter 388 - 387: Rank Penalty

Chapter 388: Chapter 387: Rank Penalty

"Lucky? How lucky?" At this moment, Zhou Muxi’s heart had gradually started to rise with a bad premonition. She had just recently established a strong psychological defense, and the other party hadn’t even begun their formal attack, yet she was already feeling shaky and unsure.

"It’s not that great, just the kind where if I want, I can win the lottery jackpot every time. Whenever I open treasure boxes in the Ashen World, I’ve never seen fewer than five items, and every item I get is always one quality higher than the treasure box.

So, actually, it’s just like that. This ability can’t really compare to your Chaotic Eye."

As a future goal, Zhang Yanhang really envied the energy defense of the Chaotic Power and the physical defense of the Illusion Projection.

"..."

Defense shattered!

Zhou Muxi never expected that her supposedly solid psychological defenses would crumble like a tofu-dreg project under the other’s powerful onslaught, not even holding up against the first wave of attack.

Thinking about how she only gets purple-quality items from dark purple-quality treasure chests in her everyday life in Asia, Zhou Muxi finally understood why a mere Second Tier Awakened could get a dark purple-quality set.

For someone like her, a commoner thrust into an encounter with sea seals and suffering from ’Leopard Jumping Like Thunder,’ it was truly an injustice. After all, even big spenders sometimes couldn’t compete with sea seals, how could she, a mere civilian, enjoy such an extraordinary experience that would make even wealthy players curse?

If she weren’t in public right now, Zhou Muxi would probably have already burst into tears. Although she had prepared herself slightly beforehand, she truly hadn’t anticipated that self-inflicted humiliation could really come in a second round, which was clearly even more distressing than the first.

Just when Zhou Muxi thought that the other party would temporarily stop the next wave of attack out of pity, the next onslaught came fiercer and more unstoppable than before.

"By the way, I’ve been encountering some minor issues recently when hunting First Tier Monsters. Previously, I only needed to kill seven or eight monsters to receive a treasure box, but now I need to kill twenty monsters to get one. Is this some sort of rank penalty?"

Since he happened to encounter a High-level Awakened, Zhang Yanhang wanted Zhou Muxi to use her extensive hunting experience to help him understand why the treasure box drop rate had decreased.

"Yes, it is indeed a rank penalty. Awakeners, when hunting monsters below their own rank, can still gain normal soul points, but the drop rate for treasure boxes is greatly reduced...

After the reduction, you still manage to maintain a drop rate of about twenty monsters; seems like your luck isn’t that exaggerated after all. I generally need to kill about... fifty lower-rank monsters to get one treasure box."

After hearing what Zhang Yanhang had said, Zhou Muxi almost ground her teeth to dust but still forced herself to give a kind smile and explained the reason for the reduced treasure box drop rate.

At the same time, she inflated her normal hunting same-tier monster drop rate as if it was her low-tier hunting drop rate, whereas normally, she had to kill about a hundred low-tier monsters to get a treasure box.

Zhou Muxi never thought she’d one day become what she hated most - lying out of vanity. What’s more, it was alright to lie, but the feedback she received after lying was nothing like she’d expected.

The other side seemed not to care about her drop rate and simply nodded indifferently, then gave no further response.

This made Zhou Muxi feel like her lie was utterly meaningless, deepening her spiraling despair. She suddenly realized a profound truth, that indeed there existed a deep, invisible barrier between mere commoners and sea seals.

But although her psychological defenses had fully collapsed, Zhou Muxi was determined to listen to all of the other’s abilities today, "Since your First Tier ability is luck, what did you awaken as your Second Tier power?"

"I didn’t unlock any new powers, just became luckier, seeing as the name is ’Heavenly Destiny Master’... To put it simply, I can now completely control my own luck as well as others’. Would you like a demonstration?"

After saying this, Zhang Yanhang didn’t wait for Zhou Muxi’s response and slapped her buttock from the side, "There, from now on, your butt has become a lucky butt."

"Huh?!! A lucky butt?!!"

Being touched on the buttock by a stranger, Zhou Muxi should have been very angry, but the other’s statement that this would make her luckier stunned her on the spot. The intense shock completely suppressed the anger originally brought by being touched. Could it be that her normal-level luck, maintained for twenty-nine years, was going to change today?

"From now on, every time you lift your butt, you’ll find some little surprises, or some bizarre items underneath because you never know what you’ll encounter before lifting your butt, so, I’d like to call it ’Schrodinger’s Butt.’"

Although he was saying some strange flirty words, Zhang Yanhang was actually thinking that perhaps they should turn on the air conditioning in the hall; Zhou Muxi’s butt was indeed soft, but due to the season and temperature, it felt oddly damp.

He figured the reason for this was partly due to the recent humid weather and partly due to the poor breathability of professional skirts causing the sweat on the skin to not evaporate well into the air.

"Is that it? Is that it? Is that it???"

Initially, Zhou Muxi had thought Zhang Yanhang would help her turn her fate around, but the final result was hugely disappointing. It turned out she could only possibly get some strange items by lifting her buttock, which sounded very much like a trick.

Before sitting, Zhou Muxi had quickly glanced at the chair’s surface, which was just a common type with holes and stainless steel material, obviously unable to hide anything.

With a skeptical mindset, Zhou Muxi stood up from the chair and then looked again at the stainless steel chair. At first glance, nothing appeared, but on a second look, she noticed that one of the hollow holes in the chair’s surface seemed to be blocked by something red, like a small ball.

Zhou Muxi was surprised to find out that the little sphere she unfolded was actually a one hundred yuan paper money.

Having found one hundred yuan, Zhou Muxi checked the seat again. This time, there truly seemed to be nothing else, so she settled down comfortably.

To verify the so-called "lucky butt," Zhou Muxi sat down and stood up again within just a second. This time, when she checked the chair, she unexpectedly found a streak of shimmering gold at the edge. With a simple tug at the seam, she pulled out a big handful of golden thread.

"So this really is a lucky butt?"

Zhou Muxi then tried several more times, and each time she managed to find something odd in unexpected places, including but not limited to, scraping a large chunk of silver off the armrest, finding gemstones inside a hollow steel tube, and discovering a black agate wrapped in a black plastic bag under the black horizontal bar beneath the chair...

Once, when she really couldn’t find anything, she pried open the floor under the chair leg and surprisingly found a large jade rough stone, from which she extracted a high purity ice jade after cutting it open.

Looking at the valuable items in her hand that totaled at least several hundred thousand yuan, Zhou Muxi felt slightly conflicted, "Although these items are nice, couldn’t the little surprises include something more useful?"

"Useful stuff? Do you want equipment or heavenly materials and earthly treasures? Those kinds of things hardly count as little surprises. No way, you can’t seriously think a simple touch on your butt would lead to such encounters, right?"

The surprises prepared by Zhang Yanhang generally required only a small amount of Energy Value due to their low consumption. While it wasn’t impossible to arrange for such encounters, he and Zhou Muxi had only met once. Why should he spend a great deal of Energy Value to grant her such adventures? Wouldn’t it be better for him to keep those encounters for himself?

"..." Since his point was quite valid, Zhou Muxi found herself unable to argue.

"Encounters? You can actually manipulate those?"

Ever since becoming an Awakener, while Zhou Muxi had occasionally heard of other Awakeners obtaining heavenly materials and earthly treasures or other good things from encounters, she herself had never experienced them.

"Encounters, huh? I remember last night, when I couldn’t sleep and went out for a run, I triggered three encounters in less than an hour, each granting heavenly materials and earthly treasures that increased my stamina limit, defensive power, and Energy Value limit by fifty points.

Plus, this morning, when I went to Cainiao Station for my parcel, I even completed an encounter incidentally."

As Zhang Yanhang spoke, he pulled out a large cardboard box from his Waist Bag. He had been rushing to school in the morning and hadn’t had a chance to eat, so now was a good time to do just that.

"Half a day... four encounters..."

Zhou Muxi was utterly stunned. She began to wonder if Zhang Yanhang existed in some other dimensional space that she was unaware of, for she had been an awakened being for half a year and had not had a single encounter.

Just a simple encounter could directly increase the Energy Value limit by fifty points? Although she was a Third Tier Awakener, her Energy Value limit was merely about two thousand points. A single simple encounter increased his limit by an amount equal to almost one-fortieth of hers.

While it might not seem much, if such encounters happened daily, the cumulative amount was probably overwhelming, so she decided not to embarrass herself by asking about his Energy Value limit.

Watching Zhang Yanhang hungrily devouring the heavenly materials and earthly treasures beside her, Zhou Muxi once again acutely felt the vast divide between the common folk and sea lions, turning his daily life into fantastical tales in her eyes.

But the more Zhou Muxi watched, the stranger she found Zhang Yanhang’s method of eating heavenly materials and earthly treasures, as he would scratch at the skin of the treasures before biting into their flesh, a practice that greatly puzzled her. Yet soon after, she came up with a strange but plausible explanation.

"What, you eat it like that, but why scratch it? Is this some kind of expertise you’ve developed over the years of eating heavenly materials and earthly treasures? Can this method enhance their efficacy?"

Indeed, due to her lack of experience in eating heavenly materials and earthly treasures, facing this "harvesting machine," Zhou Muxi oddly began to believe that his peculiar eating method might be some unique secret technique.

"Impossible, not at all; I scratch it mainly because ’scratching brings out the aroma.’"

Just by looking at the wrinkled appearance of the mutated Black plum, it was evident that its taste couldn’t be good, and indeed, when Zhang Yanhang began eating, the flavor was truly terrible.

The flesh was not only woody as if chewing on wood, but it was also sour and astringent, reminding him of a peculiar experience from his reckless youth when he chewed an entire packet of dried lemon slices to win a coupon.

"..." Upon learning the truth, a slightly disappointed Zhou Muxi looked at Zhang Yanhang, who continued to scratch the heavenly materials and chew the flesh with complex feelings in her eyes.

She now really doubted whether her mind had been off at the beginning, to have thought of this guy as a serious, aloof type.

No, Zhou Muxi suspected it wasn’t her mind that was off, but rather the significant difference between Zhang Yanhang’s appearance and personality. At first, just based on his appearance, he seemed very serious and earnest, but after removing his helmet, they had only been together shortly before his true nature began to show.

As Zhang Yanhang earnestly chewed on the mutated Black plum, he was naturally unaware of what Zhou Muxi was thinking. But if he knew, he would definitely tell Zhou Muxi that it was indeed her mind that was the problem, as he was certain that there was nothing wrong with him.

After finishing the mutated Black plum, Zhang Yanhang realized that it was also a heavenly material and earthly treasure that could increase his stamina limit.

However, based on the size of the warm current, it could only increase his stamina limit by about 2%-3%, half the effect of the Sky Demon Crimson Crystal Grass, allowing him to release the Death Wave Skill one or two more times under the maximum coverage area.