《The Cardboard Explorer》Chapter 5
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“Should I raise my other stats too?” Cade wondered if he should do that. He deeply considered doing that but decided to focus on his luck first.
The luck stat was the weirdest stat out of all the other stats. It cannot be increased normally by stat point; it won’t increase naturally too and the highest luck stat ever recorded was 76.
That luck stat belonged to a girl from the Cupcake Star Sector and it was 5 years ago that it was recorded. That girl was not an awakener and she was a normal human.
A lot of powerful and influential families coveted her luck stat and tried to matchmake her with sons from their family.
It was common knowledge that children will inherit some of their parent’s stats and that was what the powerful family was aiming for.
If the lucky girl marries into their family, she will be able to produce children with high luck. Having many children with high luck meant that they will be able to make more money.
Luck was the most valuable and money-making stat because of its ability in affecting item drop. Item drop business was the easiest business to be done if someone wanted to become rich faster.
They were too valuable and used in a lot of things. The magic crystals were widely used in many things. Based on the type of magic crystal, it can be used in a variety of things.
Stat based magic crystals like the vitality crystal, strength crystal, endurance crystal, dexterity crystal, and wisdom crystal were widely used in buffed potions for increasing stats for some time.
Elemental based magic crystals like the fire crystal, water crystal, and wind crystal were widely used as an energy source to power up tools, gadgets, vehicles, machines and many more.
It was also used widely in potions and just like the stat buff potions, the potions from the elemental magic crystal will granted the user elemental power for a certain period.
There was also monster based magic crystal like the dragon crystal, tiger crystal and turtle crystal that were widely used in the research of genes.
This crystal helped humans in making the animal meat softer, taste like a certain monster, strong like a certain monster and many more.
There was also recently researched how the monster crystal can help in refining the bloodline of monsters into the human body granting them strength similar to monsters.
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Other than the magic crystal, monsters will also drop equipment. They were random drops. Sometimes the monster will drop a piece of powerful equipment and sometimes it will drop weak equipment.
However, no matter how weak the equipment was, they can be sold at a high price. They were sought after all around the universe because it was much rarer compared to magic crystal.
Monsters will also drop the skill book. Skill books were highly sought after by explorer because they were the only ones that can use the book.
For explorers to do well in a fight, the skill was a must. Having stronger skills meant a higher chance of survival but only those powerful explorers were capable of getting strong skills as they were richer and powerful that others dare not to challenge them.
Lastly, the rarest and most expensive item dropped ever was the puzzle. The puzzle was pieces of big parts of something like a weapon, shield, monster, skill book and many other things.
If someone collected all the pieces of that puzzle, he or she will gain a super strong and powerful thing from that puzzle.
For example, if someone completes a puzzle piece of a sword, that complete puzzle will turn into a powerful sword. The sword was said to be able to kill S grade explorers in one hit.
The part about one hit was merely rumored but it was the truth that everything that came from the puzzle was super strong and super rare.
Every time a puzzle piece appears in the market; their prices will usually reach trillions of space credits. Powerful and rich explorers will usually go all-out in obtaining the puzzle pieces.
There were also once that a huge fight between powerful explorers happened because of the puzzle pieces. Seven planets were destroyed from their fights.
Unfortunately, during the fights, someone sneakily stole that puzzle and the explorers did not get their hands on that puzzle.
---
The day ended but Cade was not able to level up. His killing speed had slowed because his strength had not increased.
However, Cade still felt happy because thanks to his high luck, he got more vitality crystal. Before he leveled up to level 5, he got 2 level 3 vitality crystal.
After he increased his luck to 41, his killing after that got him another three level 3 and one level 4 vitality crystal.
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Cade decided to camp inside the dungeon because he was deep inside the second floor and it will take a longer time to get back to the first floor and out of the dungeon.
Cade did not set up his tent as he was afraid that the slime would attack him without him noticing. The slime was well known to be harmless and dislike attacking but the last few slimes Cade encountered weirdly attacking him.
Luckily, he had his iron round shield to defend himself or else, he would get hit by the slime’s tackle. He found it weird at the beginning that the slime suddenly attacked him but he concluded that it was because he had been killing too many of them.
Cade did not feel discouraged by that and he welcomed that a lot. Killing the monsters without them fighting back was boring.
He also needed some experience in fighting and the slime did not give him any of that. Now that the slime had started attacking him, Cade felt happier as he will be able to get some fighting experience.
Cade took out the vitality crystals he got to level up his linked equipment. He used one level 3 vitality crystal on his black hoodie and raised its magic defense to 30.
Name: Black Hoodie
Level: 2
Next Level: 5 level 1 magic crystal
Durability: 20
Magic Defense: 30
“Though my black hoodie is only a level 2, its magic defense is equivalent to a grade E level 3 equipment,” said Cade as he looked at his black hoodie’s stats.
He was happy that his black hoodie had leveled up but it was useless in the slime dungeon because the slime did not know any magic skills.
Cade decided to increase his cardboard short sword level next. Cade used two pieces of level 3 vitality crystals on it and it instantly leveled up to 2. Cade put 30 stat points to the attack and durability of his cardboard short sword.
Name: Cardboard Short Sword
Level: 2
Next Level: 4 level 1 magic crystal
Durability: 30
Attack: 30
Cade looked at his cardboard short sword and he compared it to his iron short sword he was currently using.
Name: Iron Short Sword
Grade: E
Level: 1
Durability: 10
Attack: 10
“My cardboard is better than this iron,” said Cade and he was quite proud of his cardboard short sword. Cade decided to use his cardboard weapon and stored the iron short sword.
He did not know how well the cardboard weapon will fare against the slime but he had a good feeling about it because of the cardboard short sword’s stats.
With the last two level 3 and one level 4 vitality crystal, Cade decided to invest all of them to his cardboard round shield raising the level of the shield by 2.
Name: Cardboard Round Shield
Level: 3
Next Level: 5 level 1 magic crystal
Durability: 50
Defense: 50
“Haha~” Cade started laughing silently. Looking at the defense of his cardboard round shield, he was getting extremely confident in defending himself against the more offensive slime he will meet the next day.
His cardboard round shield’s stat was equivalent to a grade E level 5 equipment. He was currently on the second floor and only level 3 and level 4 slime presented there.
Their attack won’t even be able to scratch his shield… if it was a metal type shield. Cade did not know how strong his cardboard shield would be but he had high hopes for it thanks to its stat.
Cade had no more magic crystal left in his storage. With nothing else to do, he decided to rest for the day.
The next morning, Cade packed up all of his things into his storage including the iron short sword and iron round shield.
Cade started equipping himself with the cardboard short sword and cardboard round shield. He stared at his appearance and decided to use the cardboard mouth mask too to cover his face.
Who knew? Maybe there suddenly were other explorers coming in and saw him swinging a cardboard sword and they would laugh at him.
He will feel embarrassed about that. Even without anyone seeing him, he already felt extremely embarrassed. He did not want anyone to know his identity and decided to cover his face with the mouth mask. With everything set, Cade continued his exploration in the slime dungeon.
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