Chapter Forty-Five: That Night of Passion, Unforgettable and Entwined

He bought a set of crafting materials, and, as it happened, it cost exactly 52 copper coins—not a single coin more or less.

Fortunately, the crafting process was quite user-friendly. A prompt indicated that he could simply synthesize the item directly from his backpack.

Thus, Huang Yunshuo crafted six rocket shells and hefted one in his hand, testing its weight.

“Heavy—must be at least a kilogram. If I load all six warheads, I wonder if my agility will suffer even more.”

He loaded the six 20-centimeter-long warheads into the magazine, closed the hatch, and immediately felt his body slightly bogged down. The rocket launcher had always been heavy in his arms—now it was even heavier.

He glanced at his agility stat: still 56. No drop. That was a relief.

Unable to contain his excitement, he pointed the barrel at a crowd of nearby players, itching to fire.

“Damn it, don’t point that thing at me!”

The group he targeted scattered in terror, their souls nearly leaving their bodies. Who could tell what kind of monstrosity this weapon was? Each round was twenty centimeters long—and judging by his gleam, he clearly wanted to test it out on someone. If he fired, they might not even have a chance to cry before dying.

As time ticked by, level 10 players poured into Stone Terrace Town at a breakneck pace. The crowd had surged from a couple hundred to several thousand, and everywhere, players clustered in groups.

“What is that thing?”

That was the first question on the lips of almost everyone who saw the weapon in Huang Yunshuo’s hands. If a rocket launcher appeared in the real world, many would recognize it instantly. The problem was, this was a game. Could Epoch Reforged actually have handheld cannons operated by single soldiers in exoskeleton armor?

Quite a few players followed Huang Yunshuo as he left town, trailing him all the way to the meadow.

“The moment to witness a miracle has come.”

Huang Yunshuo drew a deep breath, leveled the dark barrel at a docile, adorable white rabbit.

The little rabbit, clueless, blinked its red eyes, its upright ears twitching clockwise, then counterclockwise. It crouched on the grass, nibbling away, making it hard for Huang Yunshuo to pull the trigger.

Bang!

He pulled the trigger. The barrel flared, and the rocket shell shot out, trailing a thick plume of black smoke.

At the same time, a fierce recoil slammed into Huang Yunshuo. Despite his 104 strength, he couldn’t stay upright—he staggered back two steps, landed hard on his rear, and even tumbled over backward before finally coming to a stop.

“Damn, that recoil is insane!”

Clutching his aching backside, he had no time to complain—he hurriedly looked for the little rabbit.

Boom.

A piercing, thunderous explosion. A small blast erupted. The rabbit’s pitiful shriek echoed as it was launched a dozen meters away. Over its head floated a -55 damage number, followed by a series of blood-red -3s, one per second.

When the rabbit crashed to the ground, another -15 floated up. After several rolls, it finally lay still, a “dizzy” icon appearing above its head for a second before fading.

Ten seconds passed. As the final -3 floated up, the rabbit gave a last agonized cry, collapsed, and lay still. Beside its body appeared a giant carrot club.

“Holy—!”

Huang Yunshuo felt as if he were floating among the clouds. He’d known his new weapon was powerful, but not to this absurd extent!

The rocket shell’s direct damage was 55 points. With an attack range of 51–58, plus 1 point of physical penetration, the actual damage was between 57 and 64. Subtracting the rabbit’s 5 defense, the 55 damage made perfect sense.

But the triggered effects were even more outrageous.

First, the knockback effect—a single shot had blasted the rabbit over ten meters, which, combined with the fall, dealt another 15 points of damage and stunned it for a second.

Then came the ten-second bleed effect, draining 3 points per second for a total of 30. Add it up: 55 + 30 + 15—exactly 100. With precisely 100 HP, the little white rabbit was instantly killed!

Without a word, he rushed over and snatched up the giant carrot club. This thing was worth a thousand copper coins!

“It seems that a one-shot kill on the white rabbit guarantees a carrot club drop. I can farm these until the drop rate hits zero!”

He picked up the carrot club, utterly delighted.

Though his body ached from the recoil, the violent rewards made it all worthwhile.

Damn, this was the thrill of absolute dominance.

Frosty Eagle—success!

“Report him! I’m done with everything else today, I’m just going to keep submitting reports.”

“Are we even supposed to play anymore? What the hell is that weapon? If I had it, I’d be in heaven!”

“Never mess with this guy again, or he’ll blast us to the sky from half a football field away, and finish us off before we can respawn.”

Chaos erupted among the players.

Huang Yunshuo looked at the teeming crowd in front of him and snorted. Just a bunch of clowns, unable to accept someone else’s good fortune. Did they have any idea what it cost him to obtain this damn weapon? He might’ve staked his very life—who knew if he’d even be alive three years from now.

Before logging off, he checked the rankings.

On the level leaderboard, he’d entered the top thousand at level 14, ranked in the eight hundreds. The Dimensional Reaper had lost its grip on first place, slipping to second. The top three—Clouds of Sorrow, Dimensional Reaper, and Yuwen Fragrance—all sat at level 16.

A horde of level 15s followed—Huang Yunshuo couldn’t make sense of it.

“I really, really want to know how they’re leveling so fast!”

On the combat power rankings, Huang Yunshuo had stormed into tenth place with a score of 9788. Dimensional Reaper had also lost the top spot, replaced by Sinister Hisoka.

“Isn’t that the guy from the blacklist, the one who’s killed so many?”

Huang Yunshuo checked the Bloodshed List—not enough kills to make the cut himself. Sinister Hisoka, at the top, had racked up over a thousand points—probably a full-blown psychopath.

“With a name like that, he’s probably redder than black. If I run into him, I’ll blast him so hard even his newbie underwear won’t survive.”

A wicked urge coursed through him—he itched to hunt down those notorious names and loot them bare.

On the equipment leaderboard, his rocket launcher had climbed to tenth place. The top weapon was still Dimensional Reaper’s first-entry reward, a rare green ring—far superior to Huang Yunshuo’s rocket launcher, whose score was pitiful by comparison.

Just as he was closing the rankings and preparing to log off, Honest Su from Harmony Through Trade sent a trade request.

“Boss, we’ve sold 7,200 copper coins’ worth. Of that, 3,900 was paid in credits—1.1 million credits in total!” Honest Su reported.

Huang Yunshuo’s lips twitched. “3,900 copper coins for 1.1 million credits? That’s nearly 300 credits per coin. Honest Su? More like Skinflint Su,” he thought, finally seeing through the merchant’s true colors.

“So you’ve got 3,300 copper coins left. You take 2,160—we agreed on that. The remaining 1,140 copper coins and 1.1 million credits go to me,” Huang Yunshuo said.

Honest Su had been waiting all along to see whether he’d be paid in credits or copper coins. Overjoyed, he quickly agreed—they wanted copper coins more than anything!

What a generous, magnanimous, and heroic boss!

With 1,140 copper coins added to his balance, Huang Yunshuo broke the 2,000 mark again. Soon, he could take out 2,000 coins to give (sell) away—delightful.

His account balance now stood at 3.3 million credits.

Unfortunately, he could only submit one technical and data request at a time to the nearby mothership. If he tried more, the Mirrorguard’s trashy AI would crash. He’d have to let the money sit for now, and wait another fifteen hours for the initial AI repairs to finish.