After accepting the quest, I strode toward the outskirts of the village and noticed that quite a few people were already busy killing monsters. However, their targets of choice were the chickens raised by the villagers—their attack power was low, but correspondingly, the experience gained was pitifully small.
Shaking my head, I continued deeper into the woods outside the village. After walking only a short distance, I saw a pack of stray dogs wandering around the trees in twos and threes.
Drawing the battered sword from my back, I picked out the stray dog closest to me and slashed at it!
"6!"
A bright red number burst above the stray dog's head. It seemed I had landed a critical hit this time; otherwise, given my maximum attack power of 3, there was no way I could have dealt that kind of damage!
Sure enough, my subsequent attacks hovered between 2 and 3. Fortunately, the stray dogs were only level 2 monsters, and with each dog having 30 health points, I found them relatively easy to fight.
"Clang!"
The first stray dog collapsed. I hurriedly ran over and rummaged through its carcass, managing to find three copper coins and a piece of fur: Dog Skin: Quest Item!
It seemed this was the dog skin needed by the guard, Haike. The rest was much simpler. After killing each dog, I would sit down and rest for a bit. Resting restored HP; although it was rather slow, it saved money after all, and I figured no one could afford to buy potions for leveling up right now.
Before long, I had collected twenty pieces of dog skin. Killing stray dogs after that no longer yielded quest items, and I had already reached level 2. My attack power had increased by a bit, and my health points had gone up from 60 to 80. It appeared that each level-up added a substantial amount of HP. After leveling up, I received 5 attribute points and immediately, without hesitation, poured all of them into strength. In the early stages, nobody was going to carry you; you had to rely entirely on yourself for kills. How could you get by without high strength?
Seeing that I was getting further and further away from the village, more and more players were coming here to kill stray dogs. However, I noticed that most of them were not collecting the stray dog skins, which suggested that quite few people knew about this quest. After all, that guard merely wandered back and forth at the village entrance with the word "Quest" nowhere written on his face.
I immediately ran back to the village, turned in the quest, and discovered that the guard was quite generous after all: killing twenty dogs rewarded me with 80 copper coins. Money was extremely important at this stage. Who knew how much coin would be required when changing classes at level ten? It might be nothing, or it might cost a whole gold coin! (1 gold coin = 100 silver coins = 10,000 copper coins)
With my previous experience, I took a stroll around the village, making a point to talk to NPCs whether I had business or not. Sure enough, I successfully accepted a quest!
[Quest: Bloody Counterattack]
Quest Description: Help the village chief exterminate the wolf pack in Wild Wolf Valley to the east of the village, and bring the village chief 50 wild wolf teeth! Be extremely cautious; it is best to find some companions before going. The wild wolves there are quite fierce, and many of the village's strongest youths have already died beneath their fangs!
This quest was relatively difficult, because the description showed that the wild wolves' level was not low, and the village chief had also prompted that a party was needed to complete the quest. Well, I would leave it for now; other quests could be done first.
[Quest: Gathering Tomato Fruit]
Quest Description: Ah Hua in the village has planted quite a few tomatoes on the hillside, but recently wild wolves frequently appear outside the village. Please gather 10 tomatoes for Ah Hua.
[Quest: Village Defense]
Quest Description: Kill the ferocious stray dogs outside the village and obtain 20 stray dog teeth to hand over to the guard Haike!
……
Gathering fruit and killing stray dogs should not be a problem. Killing stray dogs wasn't slow for leveling up anyway, and grinding while doing quests was a pretty good choice. The previous quest had rewarded me with 200 experience points, whereas killing a level 1 monster only gave 10 experience points. Turning in a quest doubled your leveling speed compared to everyone else~
Glancing at the distant players who were enthusiastically grinding, I decided not to disturb their good mood (mainly because they were obviously a group, and losing face if a PK broke out over a contested monster kill wasn't worth it). Instead, I walked halfway around the village and entered the woods from the east, where I could still see the spot where Ah Hua grew her tomatoes from afar!
After killing over a dozen stray dogs in a row without a single wild wolf tooth dropping, I instantly felt a bit depressed. Was the quest messing with me?
I walked a bit further into the woods, and only then did I realize that the ones I had been killing earlier were still level 1 stray dogs, whereas the creatures before me now were level 3 monsters: Ferocious Stray Dogs!
Speechless, I brandished my battered sword and charged forward, delivering a direct slash to the head!
"3!"
The bright red number reminded me that the defense of these level 3 stray dogs was much higher than that of the level 1 ones. With my current level 2 attack power, hitting a level 1 monster usually took off over five health points at once.
The level 3 stray dogs had a total of 50 HP, which meant I had to hack away with 17 strikes to finish off a single monster. Furthermore, their frequency of lunging and biting me was quite high; although each hit only drained 2 HP, by the time I finished off a stray dog, my own health had already dropped to the danger line.
Experience +30!
Squatting down to rummage through the stray dog's carcass, I discovered that besides 14 copper coins and a fang, there was actually a tattered piece of armor. Picking it up to inspect its stats:
Wild Dog Leather Armor (White Equipment)
Defense: +5
It was much better than the beginner clothes on my body, raising my defense by a substantial margin. I put it on immediately. Since it happened to be leather armor, I would still find a use for it later after I changed my class to Thief. On second thought, if I was still wearing this when I changed classes at level 10, I would be in a pretty pathetic state.
With my defense increased by 3 points, I could basically fight two stray dogs before having to sit down and rest. As for the dog fangs, they didn't drop from every stray dog. When I had killed nearly 100 stray dogs, I finally managed to collect all 20 wild wolf teeth!
I had to admit that the drop rate in Yueheng really wasn't high. When I killed over 100 stray dogs and reached level 3, aside from a pair of leg guards, no other equipment had dropped at all. Moreover, those leg guards turned out to be cloth armor—Wild Dog Shorts, Defense +1. Their stats were identical to the beginner leg guards, and they were also shorts with a very unique design. I wondered what kind of expression Xu Lin would wear if I were to gift her such a piece of equipment?
Now at level 3, both my attack and defense had received some enhancement, which meant it was time for me to challenge higher-level monsters!
At this point, my 7-9 attack power could deal up to 8 damage against level 3 stray dogs, allowing me to take down a level 3 monster in under ten strikes. The leveling speed was definitely something the newbies killing chickens at the village entrance couldn't possibly match.
I continued pushing toward the hillside behind the woods. Along the way, it was eerily quiet, and not even the shadow of a stray dog could be seen!