My Dating Sim Just Got an Update - Chapter 72

Ability users possessed physical constitutions far superior to ordinary people, with recovery rates to match all the more so now that Mu Ning was a Level 6. Although she had taken a hit from the octopus, the primary reason she had been paralyzed on the sand for so long was extreme energy depletion and sheer exhaustion. After resting for a while, she felt much better. Where moving a finger had felt like an impossible chore moments ago, she was now propped up on her elbows, watching Ren Chenxi scramble across the beach to shovel up more seafood.

Moreover, Mu Ning had the distinct impression that her recovery was proceeding much faster than usual. She wondered if it was a side effect of her recent breakthrough.

After another long rest, she watched Ren Chenxi dash back and forth, successfully retrieving two black plastic bags and both iron buckets. By the time Ren Chenxi returned to her side, both the bags and the buckets were once again filled to the brim.

Heaving the heavy haul, Ren Chenxi walked over to Mu Ning, a bit winded. She set them down and whispered instructions: “A lot of seafood is crawling back now. I’m going to go catch more; keep an eye on these for me.”

Mu Ning looked at the buckets, then at Ren Chenxi, looking confused. “Why don’t you put them in your space? What if a larger creature comes along and knocks them over?”

Ren Chenxi let out a long, regretful sigh. “Trust me, I want to! But my space can’t hold living things. That’s why I need you to watch them. Don’t let any big sea monsters trample my hard work!”

“Perhaps…” Mu Ning looked at the giant crabs in the bucket, which were currently missing their legs and pincers, and offered a helpful suggestion. “You could put some seawater in the buckets and bags, and I’ll freeze them solid? Then you could put them in your space.”

Ren Chenxi’s eyes lit up. “!!!” Of course! How could I forget? Mu Ning was now a Level 6 who had mutated into an ice user! With her help to flash-freeze the catch, they wouldn’t have to worry about how to cram all this seafood into a car for the trip back. While freezing shellfish meant they couldn’t “spit sand” later, it didn’t really matter. These things were so huge they could just be chopped open and scrubbed clean, which was much faster anyway.

However… “Wait, now that you’ve mutated into ice, is your water ability gone?” Ren Chenxi looked at her with a hint of pity. If that were the case, they’d have to go back to being incredibly stingy with water at the villa.

Mu Ning found the conclusion bizarre. “Why would my water ability be gone?”

“Then why did you tell me to go fetch seawater? If you still had your water ability, couldn’t you just fill the buckets yourself?”

“I just thought seafood would be better preserved if frozen in its natural seawater. But if you want me to use my ability to generate water, I can certainly do that too.”

Faced with that logic, Ren Chenxi suddenly agreed that seawater was the better choice for freezing seafood. She grabbed a bucket and ran to fetch some.

Once the initial haul was frozen solid, Mu Ning stretched her limbs and joined Ren Chenxi in the hunt. With Mu Ning’s help, the rate at which Ren Chenxi filled her inventory skyrocketed. They didn’t even need the buckets anymore. Every time Ren Chenxi shoveled up a razor clam, Mu Ning would turn it into a block of ice; every time a crab lunged at them, Mu Ning would freeze it mid-charge. Ren Chenxi then whisked the frozen “seafood blocks” into her space. Conveniently, the inventory treated identical items as stackable. Once inside the backpack, regardless of their scientific genus, they were categorized simply as Mutated Clams, Mutated Abalone, Mutated Scallops, Mutated Crabs, and so on.

The system didn’t just simplify the categories; it also didn’t care about levels for food items. Unlike crystals, where Level 1 and Level 2 stones occupied separate slots, a crab was a crab—whether it was Level 1 or Level 2, they all stacked together in a single slot. It had been quite a while since the Level 8 octopus died, and the beach was swarming with life again. Ren Chenxi had dedicated an entire page of her inventory to seafood, ambitiously hoping to fill all 100 slots.

However, even with Mu Ning acting as a high-efficiency human freezer for the entire morning, she didn’t manage to fill the page. They had cleared every red dot in their immediate vicinity. Seeing that the mini-map was mostly empty near them, Ren Chenxi wanted to push further down the coastline, but Mu Ning finally intervened.

“It’s getting late. We’ve been out for nearly four hours. Zhang Tongqi and the others have probably returned to the base to prepare lunch. If we don’t head back soon, everyone will start to worry. Besides, after a busy morning, aren’t you hungry?”

The reminder finally cooled Ren Chenxi’s adrenaline-fueled brain. Once she settled down, she noticed her stomach was indeed protesting. How could she not be hungry? Between harvesting seafood and the life-or-death battle with the octopus, she had burned a massive amount of energy. Mu Ning, who had fought even longer and harder, was likely starving.

Growl—

As if to prove the point, a soft sound emanated from Mu Ning’s midsection.

Ren Chenxi felt a sudden pang of guilt. This woman had chased after her out of concern, gotten injured fighting a monster for her, and then she had worked her like a rented mule to act as a freezer… it was perhaps a bit much.

Growl—

Mu Ning’s stomach rumbled again. The sound deepened Ren Chenxi’s remorse. She pulled a soft, fluffy bun filled with red bean paste from her inventory and handed it to Mu Ning, along with a thermos.

“Here… eat this for now. The water in the thermos is still warm; I filled it before I left this morning.”

The moment Mu Ning saw the thermos, her lips began to curve upward, and when she heard it was filled with water Ren Chenxi had prepared that morning, her joy was impossible to hide.

This was Ren Chenxi’s personal thermos. Which meant the rim of the cup…

Mu Ning stole a glance at Ren Chenxi’s rosy lips. She swallowed hard, took the bun and the thermos, and whispered, “Aren’t… aren’t you going to drink?”

“Oh, I have another one.” Ren Chenxi pulled out a second thermos and another bun. She didn’t have many of these red bean buns left; they were part of her breakfast stash from her travels. She had been reluctant to eat them, but now seemed as good a time as any. “Hurry up and eat. We’ll head back as soon as we’ve had a bite.”

“…” Mu Ning let out a small, disappointed sigh before expectantly unscrewing the lid of her thermos. Well, she thought, at least this is a cup Ren Chenxi has used.

The two of them ate and drank quickly. As Ren Chenxi stashed the thermoses back into her bag, her eyes landed on the inventory slot containing the octopus—a single icon that represented a truly gargantuan carcass.

“You know,” Ren Chenxi said, instinctively turning to Mu Ning for advice, “if we actually took that octopus back to the base to process it, the moment I pulled it out, our villa would probably collapse.”

“Not just our villa—half the neighboring houses would go down with it!” Mu Ning, who had been secretly delighted because she’d made sure to sip from every part of the cup’s rim, immediately turned serious. She warned Ren Chenxi sternly: “The house collapsing is a minor issue. That Level 8 crystal in your pocket would make you the biggest target in the entire base. Even Qi Sheng, if he couldn’t buy it from you openly, would almost certainly use underhanded means to get it. And if Qi Sheng would do that, the Fan family would be even worse.”

No ability user could resist the temptation of a Level 8 crystal. Ren Chenxi herself had been driven into a frenzy just hearing about a Level 7 monster.

She knew all too well that if the base found out they had taken down a Level 8 beast, their peaceful days would be over.

Since Mu Ning was responsible for half the kill, Ren Chenxi couldn’t bring herself to just convert the crystal into shop points. She actually hoped Mu Ning could absorb the energy to reach Level 7, which would give her the strength to eventually pay back those 5 million Level 1 crystals. Unfortunately, at Level 6, Mu Ning couldn’t directly absorb Level 8 energy.

Normal ability users could only absorb crystals of their own rank. A few powerful ones could jump one level—like Mu Ning. Chen Gu had mentioned that during a zombie tide, Mu Ning had absorbed a Level 5 crystal while still at Level 4 to replenish her depleted energy.

But even the powerful Mu Ning could only bridge a one-level gap. According to her, the resistance when absorbing a crystal one level higher was already significant. Attempting a two-level jump was far more difficult and carried the very real risk of the user’s body literally exploding from the energy overload.

This wasn’t just a theory; it had happened in the base before. A young man from the Fan family, a mere Level 1, had greedily tried to use a Level 3 crystal to level up quickly. He had struggled for a whole day to absorb it, only for his body to burst.

The subordinates who had been guarding him were said to be mentally unstable now, traumatized by the sight of their young master suddenly detonating.

With that precedent, no one in the base dared to risk a two-level jump. Consequently, if the base found out about the kill, they would assume the crystal was still in one of their pockets. To the world, a Level 5 Ren Chenxi and a Level 6 Mu Ning were incapable of using a Level 8 crystal.

Of course, this assumed people knew the Level 7 octopus had evolved to Level 8. Regardless, Ren Chenxi had no intention of letting anyone know that crystal existed in her inventory.

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