Chapter 42: Mocha Forest 13
After clearing the area, Moira Lynch left.
Every morning, a wide variety of mushrooms sprouted in the Mocha Forest.
This was also the time one encountered other players most frequently. After all, mushrooms were everywhere, more than enough for everyone to gather, so mornings were the most harmonious time between players.
Even when they ran into each other, they would at most exchange a nod before continuing to pick mushrooms.
They didn’t need to worry about telling the mushrooms apart. They just had to toss them into their baskets; the edible ones would be teleported away, while the inedible ones would be left behind.
Of course, that didn’t stop some from using this opportunity to hunt for prey.
These people found collecting ingredients too slow, believing it was much faster to just steal points from others.
Moira Lynch collected mushrooms and Water Wood Stones as she went. With her spiritual power and dimensional space, her journey was nothing short of a clean sweep.
She also occasionally knocked on the trunks of trees she passed. If one sounded hollow and was full of nuts, she would stop.
If anyone had passed by, they would have seen a girl in a tracksuit and mask standing before a large tree, occasionally letting out a "hehehe" chuckle.
However, her luck was bound to run out eventually.
Moira Lynch had been gathering from the crack of dawn until noon. She’d lost count of how many tree hollows she had emptied, and had even figured out a pattern to finding them.
She had successfully grinded her way to first place in the rankings the previous night, so Moira Lynch felt absolutely no pressure today.
It had to be said, the feeling of working for herself, rather than for someone else, was completely different.
Her stomach rumbled, so Moira Lynch stopped to take care of lunch.
She had eaten nuts gathered from the Mocha Forest for breakfast. Although they were fragrant and very filling, she still thought rice was the best.
She scanned her surroundings, looking for a hidden patch of tall grass to eat in.
Just then, she sensed something falling from the sky and sharply dodged to the side.
A walnut the size of a human head slammed into the spot where she had just been standing, leaving a deep crater in the ground.
’Such a familiar scene.’
Moira Lynch looked up. This time, she finally got a clear look at the culprit: a large, furry squirrel.
It was perched on a branch right above her, its tail bristled with rage as it chittered furiously.
Of course, Moira Lynch couldn’t understand the squirrel’s language, but it wasn’t hard to tell from its frantic squeaking that the creature was about to explode with rage.
Moira Lynch snatched the walnut off the ground, hugged it to her chest, and immediately turned and ran.
A squirrel’s teeth could easily crack open a hard shell, so getting bitten by one was no joke.
Besides, this wasn’t Caelus. The squirrels here were bigger and stronger. A bite from one would probably go through her flesh as easily as a hot knife through butter.
Seeing this, the large squirrel on the branch was so enraged its eyes looked ready to pop.
Raiding its pantry was one thing, but now she was stealing right in front of it!
The large squirrel was about to give chase when a puff of smoke suddenly blocked its path. By the time the smoke cleared, Moira Lynch was long gone.
Meanwhile, after running a good distance, Moira Lynch’s spiritual power detected no sign of the large squirrel. Knowing it hadn’t followed, she breathed a sigh of relief.
As she looked around, a sudden glint of light in the distance caught her attention.
Driven by curiosity, Moira Lynch cautiously approached.
She parted the dense undergrowth.
What came into view was... a lake?
But Moira Lynch didn’t approach right away. She remained hidden in the brush, observing carefully, because she felt there was something strange about the lake.
The water was clear, but it gave off a faint, strange odor. Most importantly, a scan with her spiritual power revealed that there was not a single living thing in the lake.
Not even a fish, not so much as a single blade of waterweed.
The old saying goes, "Water that is too clear has no fish." This is because clearer water contains fewer nutrients and thus cannot support life.
But she looked at the surroundings—dense trees and weeds were everywhere, which meant the soil was rich in nutrients.
’If that’s not the reason, then there’s only one other possibility: the lake appeared very recently and hasn’t had time to develop life.’
’But it hasn’t rained recently, has it?’
Moira Lynch thought for a moment and decided to leave. She wasn’t short on water; if she needed more, she could always go back to the stream she found earlier. This lake gave her a strange feeling, and then there was that smell in the air.
’If the water were really as clean as it looked, why would it have a strange smell?’
’Time to go, time to go.’
’I’d be better off using this time to check a few more trees,’ she mused. As she walked, she downed a bottle of Nutrition Supplement.
"Ugh, this is disgusting. Who actually eats this stuff?"
Moira Lynch stuck out her tongue. Her taste buds felt like they’d just been sucker-punched, and her face twisted in disgust.
It was strange. You couldn’t say Starfarers ate well when their Nutrition Supplements were so disgusting. But you couldn’t say they ate poorly either, since they only consumed the very best parts of their ingredients, discarding the rest.
Today was already the sixth day of the game, and it was nearly afternoon. That meant there was just over a day left until the game ended.
It might sound like a lot of time, but for those who had their points stolen, once you factored out time for sleep, it was nowhere near enough.
And some people had been robbed more than once.
Those players were like a field of crops, harvested again and again, yet they were helpless. What could they do if their innate talents weren’t combat-oriented?
Moira Lynch could sense how desperately these people were scrambling for points to qualify, and the proof was right in front of her: a rabbit with only its legs missing.
This was the seventh one she had come across.
In addition to rabbits, there were pheasants and even wild boars.
They were all the same—only the legs were taken, while the rest of the carcass was tossed aside like garbage.
As Moira Lynch’s spiritual power detected these carcasses, she collected them as well. ’It’s still meat, after all,’ she thought. ’Can’t let it go to waste.’
She was incredibly thankful her awakened talent was spiritual power. Otherwise, she would have had to run over and collect each one individually.
Not only would that be exhausting, but it would also risk exposing her dimensional space.
This was much better. She could be a hundred meters away and still collect things before anyone else saw them.
Just before evening, Moira Lynch finally returned to the stream.
By now, Water Wood Stones were piled up everywhere inside her dimensional space.
Ever since she’d gotten these Water Wood Stones, the crops in her space had been showing noticeably good growth.
Moira Lynch even took out an apple that had ripened before she started using the Water Wood Stones and compared it with one that had ripened after.