Chapter 51: Fortuitous Encounter
On the first day, the milestone intelligence wasn’t triggered, but on the second day it was, for an obvious reason: "Jiang Ten" had met the minimum level requirement to unlock this dungeon milestone.
These milestones didn’t require players to go out of their way; they could be completed just by progressing normally through the dungeon.
Yan Qing speculated that if a player's level was higher, say level 40 or 70, some trickier milestones might be triggered—like requiring players to build only the lowest-tier structures to pass later high-difficulty stages.
If he came to the Mansu Woodland again next year, he’d have a chance to test that theory.
Yan Qing first checked the highest-tier milestone, ‘Master of the Woodland,’ and his eyes immediately lit up.
"Master of the Woodland: When there are more than a thousand trees within a one-kilometer radius, for every 10,000 points of theoretical damage from your token, an additional 1 point of true damage will be added. A single hit can deal up to 10 points of true damage. No cooldown."
It was unexpectedly the precious true damage!
In The Messenger, there weren’t many layers of mechanics—true damage meant real, rule-ignoring damage.
Even a level 1 player could draw blood from a level 99 maxed-out player.
But true damage was extremely rare—almost no tokens could inflict it.
And even if one wanted to deal true damage, extremely harsh conditions had to be met.
Take Master of the Woodland, for example—having a thousand trees wasn't hard for seventh-turn immortal players.
There were plenty of tokens that could grow oases in deserts.
The challenge was how to stop enemies from destroying the trees.
However, if a high-level dungeon happened to be set in a jungle like the Mansu Woodland, this milestone would be practically invincible.
As long as the player equipped a fast-attack token meeting the minimum damage threshold, they could drown all monsters in the dungeon with true damage.
Only time-limited dungeons could afford to have such powerful milestones.
This ensured traffic driven by events while also preventing an overabundance of true damage from disrupting game balance.
Yan Qing continued to check the three simpler milestones, and as expected, their effects dropped significantly.
"Bronze/Silver/Gold Hunter: When there are over a hundred trees within a one-kilometer radius, for every 100 points of theoretical damage from your token, 1 point of true damage will be added. A single hit can add a maximum of 1/2/3 points of true damage, with an internal cooldown of 1s/0.5s/0.3s."
The requirement dropped from a thousand to a hundred trees, and the damage threshold dropped from 10,000 to 100.
But the true damage also decreased to 1–3 points, and a cooldown was added, limiting the true damage output per second.
Unlike Master of the Woodland, which had unlimited potential.
Still, in terms of practicality, Yan Qing thought these three milestones were better than Master of the Woodland.
Because players achieving these three milestones were generally under level 70.
At that stage, most enemies didn’t have large-scale destructive power.
As long as players found jungle terrain, they could reliably trigger this milestone.
By the time he returned to the game, the other three teammates had long disappeared.
They had already divided their collection areas last night.
Now that they were in the Mansu Woodland, every second counted.
Forty-five minutes might seem like a lot, but it wasn’t enough to sweep all the resources nearby.
After a brief search, Yan Qing quickly found a pile of gems and crystals, and even located a stone mine.
Attacking the stone mine caused a large number of collectible stones to fall—at least three times more than wild stones.
However, these resource nodes shifted each turn.
Where he had previously discovered a crystal mine was now empty.
Five minutes later, Yan Qing noticed the distant jungle terrain had changed from grassland into a "super grassland" overgrown with one-meter-tall weeds.
"Jiang Ten’s" movement speed dropped by 70%.
Even running didn’t help much.
This was the watershed between players.
Farther out, resources were certainly richer.
But players without terrain-ignoring or scouting abilities would explore at a snail’s pace.
The higher the player's level, the greater their gains during this phase.
This gave high-level players a sense of superiority in this dungeon.
This was a crucial design for the game.
Even if the dungeon was meant to encourage players of all levels to participate, players still had to invest time and effort to level up.
If high-level players had the same experience as low-level ones, they would inevitably feel frustrated.
As the saying went, “Give a slap and then a sweet date.”
This dungeon already limited all players' output abilities from the start, which was frustrating.
They had to compensate by letting high-level players feel powerful elsewhere.
Although "Jiang Ten" didn’t have terrain-ignoring abilities, she had the White Iron Straight Blade.
With Moonring Slash clearing the path, Yan Qing quickly found a gem mine, followed by a cascade of various resources.
If the resource density of the grassy area was 1, then the weedy area was at least 5.
As he kept collecting, he suddenly saw what looked like a stone altar not far away.
Yan Qing approached and saw that the stone seat had a groove on top.
Below the seat, inscriptions were carved.
The altar radiated a misty purple glow, mysterious and solemn.
"You have discovered the ‘Spirit-Gathering Altar.’"
"Spirit-Gathering Altar: Insert an ordinary token into the altar to upgrade it into a rare token."
Huh?
Yan Qing widened his eyes at the object before him, wondering if The Messenger players were always this spoiled.
This thing would count as a minor miracle even in a single-player game.
And yet here it was in an MMORPG?
And it wasn’t limited to the dungeon—it was a permanent reward.
Although it could only upgrade from white-grade to rare, players could easily obtain high-level white-grade tokens.
Assembling a full set of orange legendary tokens was something to aim for at endgame.
Being able to get a rare token above one’s level made early game progression much smoother.
Unfortunately, Yan Qing didn’t have any high-grade tokens.
Aside from the White Iron Straight Blade in the warehouse, there was only Ye Si’s Ghostly Mask and the Guardian Jade Pendant Jiang Ten had just acquired.
First, he excluded the White Iron Straight Blade—defensive tokens were more important than offensive ones.
Next, he excluded the Ghostly Mask—because it was ugly.
A few seconds later, the altar’s misty purple glow faded, clearly indicating it couldn’t be used again.
A jade pendant glowing with a blue light appeared on the screen—
“Yu Gong Jade Pendant”
“Grade: First-Stage Rare”
“Durability: 80/80”
“Equip Requirement: 10 Spirit”
“Effect · Guardian Spirit Shield: When you receive an attack dealing 20 or more damage, it will automatically activate a Guardian Spirit Shield with 100 HP to block the damage, consuming 2 Spirit Energy. If the Guardian Spirit Shield is triggered 5 times within 5 seconds, the jade pendant will enter a dormant state, and all effects will be disabled for 15 seconds.”
“Effect · Yu Gong Man: When you receive an attack dealing less than 20 damage, the damage is reduced by 5. This effect applies to all extra damage types (bleed, burn, frostbite, etc.). Activating Yu Gong Man consumes 5 Spirit Energy and 1 Spirit Energy every 15 minutes.”
“Effect · Yu Gong Soul: The more damage you endure while in Yu Gong Man state, the greater the Spirit stat increase when you level up.”
“Evaluation: ‘Thanks to the invention of this jade pendant, even the weakest messengers of the Yu Gong Sect can now go mining.’”
How to put it—the jade pendant was a good one.
The first two effects were decent.
The third effect was basically a bonus.
A rare token being this useful—what more could one ask for?
Though the evaluation was a bit absurd, like seeing a children’s protective gear review saying, “Now kids can finally do MMA thanks to this set.”
After discovering the Spirit-Gathering Altar, Yan Qing searched even more enthusiastically.
But by the 35-minute mark, he still hadn’t found a second similar special structure.
He had, however, gathered quite a bit of resources.
With 10 minutes left before the first wave of attacks, he had to head back.
Back at the shelter, everyone had already piled up mountains of resources in the yard.
Without much conversation, Yan Qing began construction—yesterday they’d spent the whole day discussing and had long decided on the build order.
The first to be built wasn’t the statue, nor weapons, nor resource-reproduction buildings—it was the shelter!
With the Blade Warrior Statue around, there was no need to worry about the first wave.
And the higher the shelter level, the more buildings could be unlocked.
Everyone agreed that wooden crossbows and catapults could only handle the first two waves.
Only building advanced statues was the optimal solution in the Mansu Woodland!
“Shelter Level: Level 1 Stone House → Level 2 Bunker”
Yan Qing glanced at the resources and found they had enough to build a higher-level shelter.
After a quick discussion, Yan Qing upgraded the shelter again.
Thus, a small stronghold with brick walls rose from the ground.
In addition to rooms to hide in within the stronghold, they could now walk on the battlements to launch attacks from above.
Walls no longer needed to be built—after each battle, they would automatically repair.
“Shelter Level: Level 2 Bunker → Level 3 Stronghold”
“Build Capacity: 1/18”
“Available Upgrades—”
“Shelter Upgrade · Castle: Requires 50 Wood, 50 Stone, 10 Gems, 10 Mercury, 10 Crystals, 10 Sulfur”
“Defensive Facility · Arrow Tower: Requires 20 Stone. You can now build two arrow towers on the battlement, which do not occupy building capacity. Unless the outer wall collapses, the arrow towers won’t be destroyed and can be upgraded later.”
“Defensive Facility · Moat: Requires 10 Wood. A moat can be dug outside the battlement wall to slow down hostile creatures. Cannot be destroyed. Can be upgraded later.”
“Academic Facility · Study Room: Requires 10 Gems, 10 Mercury, 10 Crystals, 10 Sulfur. The study improves building efficiency. All facility resource costs -10%. Can be upgraded later.”
“Academic Facility · Hall of Heroes: Requires 30 Wood, 30 Crystals. The number of random statue builds per round increases to three. Can be upgraded later.”
“Functional Facility · Market: Requires 10 Wood, 10 Stone. Allows resource conversion.”
“Attack Facility · Bronze Strongman: Requires 10 Wood, 10 Stone, 1 Mercury.”
“Attack Facility · Silver Strongman: Requires 15 Wood, 15 Stone, 1 Gem.”
“Random Statue This Round · Narcissus Mermaid Statue: Requires 5 Crystals, 20 Gems.”
“Blade Royal Guard Statue (Upgraded from Blade Warrior): Requires 60 Crystals, 60 Sulfur. Building capacity usage increased to 3.”
Other previously mentioned structures like wooden crossbows, catapults, and Guardian Stones would not be repeated.
Even after upgrading the shelter twice, there were still many resources left.
Because time was tight, Yan Qing directly proposed suggestions.
Once approved by teammates, he pressed the sacred build button.
“‘Study Room’ construction complete.”
“‘Narcissus Mermaid Statue’ construction complete.”
The Dense Fog descended.
The first wave of attacks arrived, but they didn’t even need to lift a finger.
The Blade Warrior and Narcissus Mermaid easily cleared out the monsters.
The stronghold was far superior to the stone house.
It wasn’t just spacious—there was furniture inside, candles lit in every corner, even a huge fireplace.
They all sat around it.
If not for the occasional sounds of monsters being torn apart outside, it would’ve looked like a group of beautiful girls having a cozy gathering.
“Everyone.”
Qian Gongyu walked to the front facing the group.
It was obvious she was trying to suppress her pride, but the silly smile on her face fully revealed her sacredness as always: “I’ve just completed my second job advancement.”