Chapter 16: Finally Able to Top Up

“What is that?” Carissa had also spotted the glimmering speck in the black water—a shard no larger than a fingernail, yet sparkling with the brilliance of a diamond under the faint light.

Such a glow was fatal to women; now, Carissa could think of only one thing: she wanted it.

Fortunately, Ou Xiaolu was already well acquainted with the Cross-World Game System. He knew the functions of each interface, and among the ones already unlocked, there was an appraisal interface—a useful tool for swiftly analyzing the properties of items at hand, perfect for searching for key objects.

With a quick scan from Ou Xiaolu, his expression shifted slightly. Although the thing wasn’t in his possession yet and hadn’t been converted into a card, he already knew its origin.

“Before you ran into the shadow attack, did you cut your hand on a piece of glass?”

Hesitating over how to retrieve the ‘gem’ from the black water, Carissa looked at Ou Xiaolu in confusion. After all this time, who could remember a cut on the hand?

“That’s the very piece of glass that cut you. For some unknown reason, it gained sentience by feeding on your blood. Aren’t you afraid that another entity might emerge and cut you again if you take this thing away?”

“You’re kidding. Something that shiny?” When a woman became stubborn, she was hard to reason with.

“You could take some of the black water for analysis—it’s all your blood.”

At this, Carissa jumped in fright, abandoning any thought of approaching the black water.

Just then, Ou Xiaolu stepped forward, spun a full three-sixty in midair, and landed on the far side of the black water. As he touched down, the shard of glass was already in his hand.

[Spirit Vein Fragment, Special Card, 13.1 grams, Special Material. Originally a fragment of the Heart of the Spirit Vein. Collect 1,000 grams to fuse into a Heart of the Spirit Vein. When ground into powder, each gram can be used to craft three bottles of mysterious potion (200 Combat Power version).]

[Note 1: Heart of the Spirit Vein and Spirit Vein Fragments are standard system equivalents.]

[Note 2: System top-up, Store, and Mercenary Guild interfaces are now open. Please note new interfaces.]

Ou Xiaolu blinked. Time-freeze mode activated instantly, and the promised top-up, store, and mercenary interfaces were immediately brought up.

The first to appear was naturally the top-up interface. Here, there was only a deposit slot and an exchange rate. According to the instructions, each gram of Spirit Vein Fragment equaled one system gold coin; the Heart of the Spirit Vein exchanged at a rate of 1:1.2; above that, the Spirit Vein and Perfect Spirit Vein exchanged at 1:1.5 and 1:2, respectively.

From this, it was clear: when exchanging Spirit Veins for money, the larger and more complete, the better.

There wasn’t much to say about the store interface. Although the store was open, it only held a basic shop with six items refreshed daily at random. Most were item cards, occasionally a world card or character card, all of basic quality and priced rather steeply.

The only advantage was that Ou Xiaolu now had a place to sell extra cards. According to the buyback price for basic cards, each one could be sold for about one gold, equal to a gram of Spirit Vein Fragment.

However, as Ou Xiaolu was just getting acquainted with the system, he was loath to part with any of his cards. After a quick glance, he closed the store interface.

The last to be opened was the Mercenary Guild interface. At first glance, there were two card slots. According to the instructions, each player could place unused avatars, alter-egos, or projections into the corresponding slot for others to hire.

Depending on the card’s power level: professional-grade could be hired for 10 gold per use, supporting role for 50 gold, main character for 500 gold or more, and Children of the World had prices set by the players themselves.

After reviewing the interface for listing character cards, Ou Xiaolu followed the prompt and tapped the Mercenary Guild interface. The screen flipped, and a large number of characters appeared before him.

All these characters were at least professional-grade. Just as he had guessed, character cards weren’t all for combat; among them, Ou Xiaolu saw doctors, fortune-tellers, thieves, programmers, and all sorts of professions.

He also noticed that supporting roles weren’t necessarily stronger than professional-grade cards; for specialized skills, the latter were often more suitable and cost-effective.

After examining the other players’ character cards for a while, Ou Xiaolu remembered he still had Carissa’s matter to deal with. He quickly used the Spirit Vein Fragment for a top-up, gaining 13 gold (the system’s refusal to calculate decimals was worth a complaint).

Only then did he exit time-freeze mode and turned to Carissa. “May I take a look at Room 301?”

“What?” Carissa shrieked.

“You’re safe now—it doesn’t matter where you are. I want to see what’s in 301 that protected you for so long. Whatever gained sentience from your blood was strong, and the more blood it drank, the stronger it became. Something that could keep it out must be impressive.”

“Oh, right.” Carissa suddenly understood, hurriedly opened the door to 301, and beckoned him in. “Come in, quickly! Help me see what protected me.”

Before Ou Xiaolu could step inside, Charles hurried over. “Xihu, I—”

“Don’t say a word. Look at what you bought. I asked for a sword, you bought a kitchen knife—and a clean one at that. Are you trying to get me killed so you can inherit my credit line? Go tidy up everything in here. Disarm all the traps. That black stuff is human blood—clean it up.”

“Xi—”

Before Charles could finish, Ou Xiaolu stepped into Room 301. Once inside, he realized there was hardly space to place his feet: leftovers littered the floor, with underwear and stray hair scattered among them—a scene that left him speechless.

Most absurdly, the rat Ou Xiaolu had pinned to the floor that morning was still there. Clearly, Carissa had no intention of cleaning up.

Facing all this, Ou Xiaolu turned and asked, “How do you usually get inside?”

Carissa, hearing this, immediately felt a sense of mystery. Most people wouldn’t care about how she entered the room; perhaps the method of entry itself held the secret to her protection.

Feeling smug, Carissa puffed out her chest and, as usual, simply strode across the food scraps to enter.

At this point, Ou Xiaolu decided not to watch any further; there was no point in making comparisons. He closed his eyes and followed Carissa into Room 301.

With his eyes shut, his senses seemed to heighten. He saw countless green threads of light converging from all directions, weaving a great net within the room.