Chapter 121: First Experience in the Heavens (Seeking Recommendation Votes)

If given the choice, Huang Yunshuo would gladly pay a hundred thousand copper coins for it. It was like asking a priestess if she wanted the charge ability of a warrior or knight, or the agility of an archer. The answer was obvious; if you offered it to her, she’d be ready to travel a thousand miles to deliver... herself.

"Wait, don't go yet!" Seeing the ecstatic Huang Yunshuo about to leave, Wang Damai quickly called him back. "I mentioned earlier that I would give you an extra reward. Now is the time to make good on that promise," Wang said with a smile.

"There's more?" Huang Yunshuo’s heart skipped a beat. He was already satisfied that Wang Damai had crafted his equipment three times for free. The thrusters alone were worth 90,000 copper coins and 9 silver—even at a 5% crafting fee, that was worth over 10,000 copper coins!

Wang Damai held out a medicine bottle that looked unremarkable. But when he unscrewed the cap, the fragrant red pill inside made Huang Yunshuo swallow hard. It smelled wonderful. "This is a refining pill I found by chance during my travels. It can slightly improve one's constitution. You are no longer weak, but your friends and lover will certainly need it."

After capping the bottle and stuffing it into Huang Yunshuo’s hand, Wang Damai shoved him out of the smithy.

"A refining pill, improving constitution?" Huang Yunshuo felt a surge of excitement, instinctively thinking of the cultivation pills from xianxia novels that enhanced physical attributes. "I’ll give this to Piaoxue. For a knight—whether a battle knight or a holy knight—the core requirement is always the same: you have to be able to take a hit!"

Determined, the moment Huang Yunshuo rushed out of the smithy, he activated his vertical takeoff skill without hesitation. Two wings of flight shot out from his back. *Whoosh!*

Huang Yunshuo let out a yelp as he was launched into the sky at breakneck speed. He soared twenty meters high before the vertical thrust cut out. His body paused for a split second, then came crashing down toward the ground. *Thud.* -120!

Having lost a third of his health, Huang Yunshuo lay on the ground in a pathetic heap, coughing for a long time before he could climb back up. *This is insane!* The takeoff angle and speed were way too brutal. He’d shot up twenty meters in less than a second. It was only because of his pilot physique that he survived; any ordinary person would have suffered such severe neurological shock that they would have been kicked out of the game entirely.

Rubbing his sore body, he ran toward the south of the town, waiting for the cooldown. Once the sixty seconds were up, he tried again. "Here we go!" *Whoosh!*

He shot up twenty meters again. Fighting off the dizziness from the rapid acceleration, he quickly toggled the hover-jet device to keep himself afloat. He tapped the interface to hover, rising another four or five meters. He activated the skill, then canceled it. His body dropped, then he surged upward again. After repeating this twice, his heart sank—he was out of energy again!

"Ah!" With a scream, he plummeted from twenty-five meters up. Since his energy was slowly regenerating, he kept the hover-jet engaged. Even though he kept falling, the tiny bits of energy he regained caused him to stutter in mid-air. By the time he truly ran out of energy, he was only ten meters from the ground.

He hit the dirt with a heavy thud, adjusted his crooked hat, and pulled out a spray to heal himself before running toward the south again. Along the way, he flew and crashed repeatedly. Though he felt like his bones were rattling, he finally began to grasp the basics of the thrusters—at least, the initial basics.

He realized he must never keep the hover-jet active continuously, as that drained energy far too quickly. If he activated and canceled it in rapid succession, his body would bob up and down, maintaining a roughly level flight path. While energy would still deplete, it was a slower process. This could last for about ten seconds before his energy hit zero and failed to recover. He learned not to fly too high during this window; falling meant losing a third of his health. It was life-threatening.

"Dammit, the wings of flight are deployed, so why don't they trigger 'Wind Glide' automatically when I fall?" Huang Yunshuo was puzzled. He had envisioned a perfect scenario: fly high, run out of energy, and then drift down using the wings—how cool would that be?

Unfortunately, such a bug clearly didn't exist. He guessed that Wind Glide and the thrusters couldn't be triggered simultaneously. The logic was simple: if he were using the thrusters to adjust his altitude and suddenly needed to rise five meters, he wouldn't want Wind Glide to kick in and force him into a passive glide. Or, if he needed to drop rapidly to dodge a ranged attack, he wouldn't want Wind Glide to leave him floating in the air like a target.

With that understood, he wondered, "If I can't trigger Wind Glide while using thrusters, what happens if I trigger the thrusters while I'm already gliding?" He suspected it might work, though once Wind Glide was interrupted, it wouldn't reappear unless he jumped from a high place again.

He hurried to the player castle in the south. Looking up at the twenty-meter-high walls, he let out a cackle. "Vertical Takeoff!"

He shot into the sky like a rocket. By repeatedly activating and canceling the hover-jet, he kept himself within a one-meter range of the twenty-meter mark. Before his energy ran out, he reached the ramparts, shut off the jets, and landed firmly on the wall.

"Hell yeah! From now on, if there's a mountain, I'll fly over it; if there's water, I'll fly over it! A real man should be like me—charging forward without ever turning back!"

He had planned to fly all the way from the north wall to the south wall in one go, but after looking at the hundreds of meters of distance, he decided against it. Having just claimed he would never turn back, Huang Yunshuo ran toward the east wall. After all that work, he still had to take the long way around. Damn it.

"The Macaque Knights are starting their attack! Ten-minute countdown until the chickens and humanoid monsters enter the battlefield!" Huang Yunshuo glanced at the defense information, his eyelids twitching. He knew the final phase was approaching, and Ge Ge Luo would soon appear. He wondered if he had the strength to complete the divine artifact quest.

"How should we fight this, Li Nan?" Yu Shiyin asked in the Brotherhood chat group.