Chapter 21: Equipment and Evolution
It only gave six experience points.
Considering the creature’s terrifying vitality, no matter how he thought about it, the reward should not have been so low.
Joo Joowon could only guess that perhaps the creature was still an underdeveloped elite monster that had not fully matured yet.
Its health and vitality had already increased dramatically, but its abilities and skills perhaps had not fully developed yet.
However, through this Chimera Zombie, Joo Joowon also realized just how troublesome higher level zombies could become.
As long as a Level 1 zombie had its head destroyed, it would immediately die.
But elite monsters seemed to require their brain area to be damaged to a certain degree before they truly died.
Following that logic, would there eventually appear zombies that could survive even after losing their heads?
Could there one day exist zombies capable of remaining alive with only a single organ left intact?
Fortunately, at the current stage, attacking the head was still an extremely effective method.
After all, unless players deliberately sought death, they would not normally come into contact with those kinds of high level zombies yet.
After carefully considering the advantages and dangers, Joo Joowon finally picked up the four cards he had obtained and began examining them.
Three of the cards were gray, while one was green.
The gray cards were Beginner Necklace (+1 Mental Power), Beginner Weapon (+1 Strength), and Beginner Shirt.
Joo Joowon already had a Beginner Shirt, so he had not expected another identical one to drop.
He tried wearing both pieces at the same time, but after discovering that the attribute bonuses did not stack, he decided to keep the extra one either as a backup or for trading later.
As for the necklace, Joo Joowon immediately put it on.
The instant he wore it, a cool sensation spread through his mind in waves, as though his processing ability and thinking speed had both improved to varying degrees.
However, it did not feel like he had suddenly become smarter.
Instead, it felt more like his mind had become far more active.
Mental Power seemed to be the only attribute that did not require support from other attributes to show clear effects.
The changes brought by increasing it were extremely obvious.
It even made Joo Joowon feel that if he returned to the period before the college entrance exams while in this state, he might actually have a chance to compete for admission into top universities.
At the same time, Joo Joowon also developed a strange sense of fullness, like a bucket that had already been filled completely to the brim and could not hold anything more.
This made him realize that perhaps the limit of an ordinary person’s attributes was nine points.
If an attribute broke through and reached ten points, then what would happen afterward?
Would people awaken supernatural powers?
No.
Perhaps it would not be supernatural powers, but talents instead.
There had always been certain people in this world who possessed abilities far beyond ordinary humans.
Some people had unbelievably sharp intuition.
Others possessed terrifying talent in certain fields, almost like cheating.
Back when Joo Joowon was still in school, he had even encountered a classmate who seemed like heaven’s favored daughter.
She could go outside for a week and randomly find money three different times.
Whenever she bought products with lottery prizes from convenience stores, she almost never lost.
Even when collecting cards from instant noodle promotions, she could complete entire sets without wasting much money.
The same was true for exams.
She always somehow encountered questions she happened to know.
Scores with red number never appeared in her life.
Her luck was something ordinary people and the perpetually unlucky could only look up to in envy.
Whether this guess was correct or not, Joo Joowon still planned to test it after leveling up next time.
At the current stage, the single attribute point gained from leveling was honestly not as significant as the improvements provided by wearing a full set of equipment.
Unless someone was naturally weak or sickly, the attribute points gained from leveling were mainly useful for increasing survivability and allowing more room for mistakes.
Because of that, he could completely use those points to complement his equipment setup.
Even if he sacrificed a little efficiency for experimentation, the loss would not be very large.
But if his guess turned out to be true, then the benefits would be enormous.
If his theory was correct, then Joo Joowon would never consider pursuing some kind of balanced build.
He would first raise whichever attribute was highest.
Even if his build became heavily specialized, so what?
At the very least, having stronger specialized abilities would allow him to deal with zombies far more calmly.
As for the Beginner Weapon card, it allowed the user to freely choose a weapon.
There were spears, hammers, longswords, sabers, short blades, daggers, bows, and many other cold weapons.
Almost every cold weapon one could think of was included.
However, there were no firearms.
No matter which weapon was selected, the bonus provided was still Strength.
The attribute bonus would not change depending on the chosen weapon.
Additionally, shields were also included within the selectable weapon category.
After thinking for a moment, Joo Joowon did not rush to make a choice.
He remained very concerned about the durability warnings provided by the system.
What exactly did durability represent?
And what was the true purpose behind Beginner Equipment?
The answers to those questions would directly affect the decisions he made.
Joo Joowon already vaguely had a theory in mind, but he did not rush to test it yet.
Instead, he took out the only green card he had obtained.
The game’s customer service had not hidden the equipment ranking system.
After all, it was not classified information.
The Age of Apocalypse divided equipment quality into Normal, Common, Rare, Elite, Epic, Legendary, Mythic, Divine.
However, customer service had never explained what the actual differences between each quality tier were.
Comments