Chapter 20 – Cat Dad’s Dungeon Diving (2)
Critical Damage!
190!
The gnoll whimpered as its HP decreased by two-thirds. His noise alarmed the other gnolls.
But it was too late for them to come and help him. Xiaomao’s cut up the stomach of the gnoll, causing its innards to gush out of the opened wound.
The gnoll cried before it vanished.
Ding
<You have slain a Dirty Gnoll Level 22.>
<You have gained 33,000 EXP!>
<You have gained 13 gold coins.>
<You have earned Gnoll Fangs x 4.>
<You have earned Fine Gnoll Hide x 1.>
<You have earned Gnoll Hide x 1.>
<You have earned Tattered Gnoll Hide x 1.>
<You have earned Fine Gnoll Meat x 3.>
<You have earned Average Gnoll Meat x 3.>
<You have earned Smelly Gnoll Meat x 3.>
<You have earned Dirty Gnoll Card x 1.>
<You have obtained Boots of Hyen x 1.>
The loot was mostly food and craft ingredients. However, the EXP reward was worth the investment..
This amount of EXP came from level difference bonuses and the reward from the gnoll dungeon’s difficulty. However, it was not enough to increase Xiaomao’s level right away.
This was the downside of using an Ultra Rare NFT character. The EXP requirement for leveling up was a lot higher than other NFTs with a lower rarity.
Still, Xiaomao didn’t come out empty-handed. He scored one of the rarest items that normal monsters here could potentially drop after being killed.
It was a gold-named item.
…
Boots of Hyen (Hyen Set)
Type: Equipment
Requirement: Level 20, Humanoid Race.
Equipment Effects:
DEF + 20
AGI + 10
Movement Speed + 10%
Set Effects:
(3 of 6 Set Items Equipped) Increase attack speed by 10%, DEX + 10
(4 of 6 Set Items Equipped) All monsters drop 100% more gold coins upon death.
(5 of 6 Set Items Equipped) AGI + 10, Increase movement speed by an additional 10%.
(6 of 6 Set Items Equipped) Enable [Blood Tracker] passive skill.
…
It was not something that Xiaomao could use. However, it could fetch a lot of gold coins had Xiaomao put it in an auction.
But before Xiaomao could do anything to the item, he sprinted out of the cave with all his might as the angry gnolls chased after him. They barked like dogs and ran on all four while Xiaomao jumped like panicking bunny.
.
A few minutes later, Xiaomao concealed himself on top of a tree. A group of gnolls sniffed around, searching for Xiaomao. Even the elite captain barked and roared in anger.
After 10 minutes of hiding, the group of gnolls gave up and returned to the cave.
Xiaomao let out a sigh of relief. Currently, he was too weak to take on the gang of gnolls, so he could only fight like a coward.
Again, Xiaomao covered himself in dung and sneaked into the cave again. Soon, he ran into the same group of gnolls, who had chased after Xiaomao.
However, another group of gnolls patrolled toward the area. Two elite gnolls sniffed and bared fangs at each other. Their subordinates also glared at their rivals and barked.
The two groups started getting noisy. The loud monsters looked like two packs of hyenas, fighting over their turf.
At that moment, Xiaomao pulled out a stone from his inventory, which he had picked up in front of the cave.
He aimed and threw it at one of the edgy gnolls.
PA
15 Damage!
The gnoll growled in anger and frustration. It looked around to find the culprit.
But the other gnoll party sneered and laughed at him.
“ROAR!!”
Being angered and humiliated, the gnoll attacked his rival in front of him.
A group brawl ensued. Both elite monsters attacked each other with their clubs while their minions clawed and mauled their opponents.
Xiaomao held back his laughter. He patiently waited for them to duke it out.
Strangely, their HP didn’t decrease much. Everybody’s HP bar was reduced by 50%, but the progress stopped there.
After a while, they stopped fighting. The subordinates whimpered while the elite monsters simply scoffed at leading their men away.
After the fight, two groups walked away. The first group walked toward the entrance of the dungeon and rested there. Six of the monsters panted in exhaustion and lay down to sleep, including the elite gnoll. As for the other three, they separately looked around the cave to hunt for some rats to eat.
Xiaomao had been waiting for this moment. He stalked after one of them, who was walking out of the cave.
“Rrrr?”
The separated gnoll sensed something. He turned around and noticed a white pile of poop.
He got closer to the white ball of poop. Then, he sat down, leaning over to sniff it.
At that moment, the white poop revealed its true form. Xiaomao opened his eyes and pulled out his trusty cleaver. Then, Xiaomao sliced horizontally, cutting the gnoll’s neck and artery veins.
Critical Hit!
190!
<You have slain a Dirty Gnoll Level 22.>
<You have gained 33,000 EXP!>
The gnoll vanished without letting out a sound. Even the trace of blood and the smell were gone.
Xiaomao turned around to check at the others. Fortunately, no one noticed the deed.
‘I’m agent 47, munya!’
Xiaomao ignored the spamming messages of the item rewards. He sneaked closer to the other patrolling gnolls.
One of the two patrolling gnolls was busy chasing after a cave rat while the other circled around a stinky corner and squatted down, taking a poop.
Xiaomao crept closer to the one pooping. While the nasty thing came out of the gnoll’s butt, Xiaomao hopped on its back and chopped the nape of the gnoll.
Critical Hit!
190!
<You have slain a Dirty Gnoll Level 22.>
<You have gained 33,000 EXP!>
As its HP was left with 50% after the brawl, Xiaomao’s critical hit was enough to kill it in one blow!
He rushed to a cover as soon as the gnoll vanished.
But it was too late. The elite gnoll suddenly sat up because it sensed the blood scent of its subordinates.
It howled!
“Time to bail, munya!”
Again, Xiaomao ran for his life as the pack of gnolls woke up and chase after him.
…
20 minutes later, the gnolls stopped searching for Xiaomao and returned to the cave.
Xiaomao sighed. He grumbled as his hunting method wasn’t very efficient with his current level, strength, and equipment.
He had the urge to put all his allocable attribute points to STR and increase it to 75 to increase his damage output or AGI to increase his running speed.
‘No. Until I max the free attributes, I’ll keep the free points as it is.’
In order to maximize the status points, Xiaomao planned to increase all stats to 200 with [Protein from Fish] skill first. Then, he would allocate free attributes to the stats.
Had Xiaomao increased it now, he would have wasted the points as the highest bonus from Protein from Fish was limited to 200 points.
For example, if Xiaomao added STR to 200, he wouldn’t be able to gain any point in STR by eating fish. But if he didn’t add stats to the attribute, he could keep eating it until the STR reached 200. Then, he could use free points to increase the STR attribute!
‘It will be annoying, but it’s just time-consuming. I can’t allocate my points yet.’
Xiaomao refrained from adding any attribute to his permanent stats. He reentered the cave and tried to separate the gnolls again.
He had already killed three of them. Logically, there should be only seven gnolls in the group, including the level 30 elite monster.
However, the dead gnolls were respawned. The group of 10 moved around together once again.
Xiaomao clicked his tongue as the dungeon’s mechanic was different than field monsters in the wild.
Wild monsters would never respawn unless a thousand of them were killed. Then, two thousand monsters and one additional elite monster would be respawned to replace the lost mobs. After the two thousand newly spawned monsters were killed, four thousand would be respawned, including two elite monsters.
They kept multiplying until they spawned over 20,000 monsters at once. Then, a global event quest would be triggered to reset the respawn number back to 1,000.
On the other hand, Dungeons repeatedly spawned monsters after they died for a few minutes. Unless the elite monster was killed, the group of monsters would continue to come back to haunt the players.
Still, elite monsters always reappeared after an hour. The same as the field monsters, the number of spawned elite monsters and normal monsters would multiply.
The highest number of newly spawned elites was their level. A level 30 elite gnoll could only multiply up to 30. After all 30 were killed, the number would remain the same until no player could kill all of them within a day. If such as case happened, a dungeon break would occur to encourage players to clear the dungeon. And once the dungeon’s final boss was killed, everything would be reset to the default number.
At a glance, the system encouraged players to form a party to hunt many monsters together to prevent mishaps and dangers. But Xiaomao knew that it wasn’t the case here.
In the future, once Heavenly Dao Patch came into play, this mechanic would become a nightmare for common players and a wet dream for the supermen and elite players.
Xiaomao stared at the newly respawned gnolls. They still behaved the same as usual, but their HP bars were full. As for the others, their HP bars slowly recovered as they regenerated their health back every second.
‘Again. I have to repeat this until I can eliminate the level gap penalty. Once my level catches up to the Dirty Gnolls, I can start fighting them properly.’
Xiaomao hid and waited for the gnolls to repeat their patrol route.
After waiting for 20 minutes, the gnolls ran into the same patrolling unit again.
And once more, they bore fangs and snarled at each other.
Xiaomao threw the rock at one of them again.
BARK BARK!
As soon as the rock hit, they fought among themselves.
Xiaomao inwardly sighed as he patiently waited for them to stop fighting and go back to rest. After that, he would repeat everything that he had done up until now.
The grinding continued.