Chapter 25: Chapter 25

[Physical Description: A wooden storage chest with 50 cubic units of space]

[Source Energy Conversion: Not available]

The chest couldn’t be converted into Source Energy, and the physical conversion cost was way too high, so she wasn’t going to bother with that for now.

She placed the chest against the wall and organized her backpack, putting the charcoal, raw meat, apples, wheat seeds, and a stone pickaxe inside.

After a day of experimenting, Mu Ying found that everything could be converted into physical items using Source Energy.

Stone, apples, raw meat, wheat seeds, and charcoal—all these common materials had low conversion costs, but they were just ordinary items that also existed in the real world, so it usually wasn’t worth converting them.

But if she collected enough, she could convert them into Source Energy. Using 1 Source Energy as the base, the easier something was to collect, the more she needed—like stone and wood blocks.

Items crafted at the crafting table couldn’t be converted into Source Energy, only into physical items, and the price was usually based on the item’s function.

For example, even though a chest was easy to craft, converting it gave you a wooden storage box with 50 cubic units of space, so the price was sky-high.

Still, items crafted at the crafting table, when converted, might not be as magical as they were in this world, but they’d still have some special effects.

For example, axes, hoes, and pickaxes, once converted, would become tools that increased work efficiency and were as durable as regular tools. Of course, they were much cheaper than the chest, costing only a few Source Energy each, but she still couldn’t afford them.

The more Mu Ying looked, the more tempted she felt, but without Source Energy, it was all just wishful thinking. She quickly calmed down and got back to work.

She crafted all her wheat into bread—ten pieces in total—and put them in her backpack for tonight’s meal.

After finishing up, she was about to mine some more stone to make a furnace for cooking meat when darkness fell completely, and strange noises began to sound outside the cave."

"Mù Yíng peered out through the hole she had left, and saw flickering ghostly lights of varying heights emerging from the shadowy forest.

These ghost lights didn’t illuminate the surroundings at all; instead, they made the woods seem even darker.

That eerie sound was coming from the earth around the ghost lights.

Although she couldn’t see clearly what they were, Mù Yíng had the distinct feeling they were getting closer. Soon enough, she realized it wasn’t just her imagination.

She had already chopped down the few scattered trees around the cave entrance, leaving the grass exposed under the moonlight. A rotting corpse emerged from the forest, two or three ghostly flames circling its skull.

This was nothing like fighting monsters in a game from behind a screen.

The chill of the night wind and the stench from the corpse hit her hard. Ironically, its blocky, pixelated appearance made it less frightening.

Luckily, she was used to killing zombies, so she adapted quickly.

This corpse looked much tougher than pigs, cows, or sheep.

Mù Yíng decided to give it a try. She placed a stone block in the first slot of her left-hand backpack, ready to block the hole at any moment, and gripped her stone sword, preparing herself.

The cave entrance was originally two blocks high—just enough for a person to walk through. Now she’d blocked the lower half, leaving only half the original height.

She’d already tested it herself: with a bit of maneuvering, she could crawl out.

If the zombie couldn’t crawl, she’d be perfectly safe—she could just reach out and attack from inside. If it could crawl, it wouldn’t be able to attack while squeezing through, and she could stab it with her sword, or, if things got dicey, block the entrance with a stone.

Watching the corpse approach, Mù Yíng noticed it moved slowly, but its body wasn’t stiff, and its intent was clear—it was coming straight for her.

As soon as the zombie got close to the entrance, Mù Yíng thrust her stone sword out forcefully, taking off about a fifth of its health.

After being attacked, the zombie staggered back and let out an angry growl, then lunged at her even faster.

Her sword had just returned to her hand, but this time, after the first strike, she barely pulled it back before stabbing out again. The force was different, but the result was exactly the same.

“In that case, it’s better to use less strength and attack more times for higher efficiency,” Mù Yíng quickly adjusted her strategy.

She should have realized this sooner—when hunting, she could only land one hit because the prey ran too fast. Zombies, on the other hand, relentlessly tried to attack her, so the only thing to watch out for was not getting surrounded.

Thanks to her gaming experience, she found a safe and reliable attack method on her very first night.

Before long, three zombies had gathered at her spot, with more approaching from the distance.

After killing three zombies, her stone sword’s durability had dropped by three-quarters. While the next zombie was still some distance away, she quickly dug up some more stone and crafted several new stone swords.

As soon as a zombie got close, she rushed over to attack.

She kept a close eye on her stamina bar. Usually, when her stamina dropped and she started feeling hungry and thirsty, her health bar would slowly begin to decrease.

To avoid wasting food, Mù Yíng always waited until she was just about to start losing health before eating a piece of bread, which would fully restore her stamina.

[Your Block World trial character, Mù Yíng, has reached Level 1. Gained 1 Source Energy.]

Killing zombies gave about as much experience as mining coal, but the zombies at night were much more densely packed than scattered coal blocks. Mù Yíng’s experience bar finally filled up, and she leveled up to 1.

What she didn’t expect was that leveling up also rewarded her with Source Energy, and after leveling up, killing zombies became just a little bit easier.

After a few more waves of zombies, the intervals between attacks grew longer. Mù Yíng guessed that the remaining zombies were either too far away to be drawn in, or were just moving very slowly.

During the lulls, she mined several hundred stone blocks. Each inventory slot could hold up to 100 blocks as one stack.

She also found over a dozen coal ore blocks, which she combined into coal and stored together.

All the meat she’d hunted today was cooked in the furnace. A furnace only required eight stone blocks to craft, so she could afford to use them freely now.

Cooked chicken restored a bit more stamina than apples, and cooked pork and beef were about the same, but none of them matched bread for stamina recovery.

As she got more skilled at mining, Mù Yíng gradually learned to multitask, analyzing the patterns she’d observed that day.

Wood and stone were essentials and consumed the most, but after one night, she had enough stone to last a long time. It was wood that she was still short on.

The experience gained from collecting wood and stone was negligible.

She got more experience from mining ores or killing animals and zombies, but these three activities also consumed a lot of stamina.

Ores were hard to find and took a lot of time and luck. Hunting was safer and provided raw meat, but also consumed a lot of stamina and time. Killing zombies was the most dangerous, but gave the most experience.

Killing a zombie gave only slightly less experience than mining a coal block, while hunting gave even less.

Even with her “waiting for rabbits” strategy tonight, only about a dozen zombies came by, which wasn’t many, but it still consumed a lot of stamina and required caution—one slip could mean injury or even death.

Now she was at Level 1, 10% experience. Nearly 90% of her experience came from zombies and coal blocks.

But compared to mining, killing zombies was more exhausting and dangerous.

Thinking it over, Mù Yíng realized that as long as she had a stable food supply, she could completely give up hunting and zombie-killing, and just mine to level up.

The key to a stable food supply, of course, was farming—like wheat. Bread made from wheat restored more stamina than meat.

About ten apples or two servings of meat equaled one loaf of bread. Tonight, she’d only eaten one bread, but had gone through all her cooked meat.