Chapter 60: Crino Prairie 4
She stored the Sweet Glows in her space, and the surroundings plunged back into darkness.
’These Sweet Glows really are great,’ she thought. ’With them, I don’t even need light bulbs.’
There were plenty of fruit trees in her space, so the Sweet Glows wouldn’t have to worry about food.
Moira Lynch dissolved white sugar in water and made dozens of simple Sweet Catchers.
They were really just clean plates filled with sugar water.
Since she had nothing better to do at night anyway, Moira Lynch set the plates out. Before long, they had attracted a huge swarm of Sweet Glows. She just leaned against a tree trunk, collecting them wherever they lit up.
When morning came, Moira Lynch packed away the Sweet Catchers, ready to use them again next time.
She took her electric scooter out of her space and rode off in the direction the Old Rabbit Beastman had pointed out yesterday.
’Do they even have north, south, east, and west in interstellar space?’
’Whatever, I shouldn’t overthink it. Even if they did, I probably wouldn’t remember them correctly.’
As she was riding along, Moira Lynch’s electric scooter suddenly stopped.
[Dragon Tooth Grass: Its leaves resemble dragon’s teeth. The most common plant on the Crino Prairie. Possesses tenacious Life Energy. Cools the body, detoxifies, and can alleviate symptoms of heatstroke.]
’Cools the body, detoxifies, and alleviates symptoms of heatstroke?’
’Isn’t this a natural remedy for heatstroke?’
Moira Lynch picked a leaf of Dragon Tooth Grass and held it to her nose to smell. An immediate cool sensation shot into her nasal cavity, sending an involuntary shiver through her body.
The scent of Dragon Tooth Grass was similar to mint, but its effect was much milder.
Moreover, a stalk of Dragon Tooth Grass was only about a finger long.
Moira Lynch looked down at her feet. The ground was covered with Dragon Tooth Grass, but pulling it up one by one would be too much of a waste of time.
She knew how to prioritize her mission over the Dragon Tooth Grass.
Fortunately, Moira Lynch had been extremely thorough when she’d stocked up. Time for the fully automatic harvester.
Moira Lynch drove the fully automatic harvester, leaving no blade of grass standing in her wake.
In no time at all, she had collected a full cart of Dragon Tooth Grass.
Moira Lynch stored it all in her space, taking care to also collect plenty of Dragon Tooth Grass seeds.
After all, she knew the saying: give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
No matter how much she collected, it would eventually run out. It was better to grow her own.
After some time, Moira Lynch suddenly spotted a group of people in the distance running toward her, waving as they ran.
After confirming that they were players and not Beastkin, Moira Lynch decisively stored the harvester in her space, activated her Illusion Cloak’s Invisibility, and made a run for it.
From a distance, Misty Cloud saw a large harvester moving across the prairie. Guessing it was another player, she thought about going up to strike a conversation, hoping to get a ride for her group.
But to her surprise, just as they got close, the harvester and its driver vanished completely.
If it weren’t for the tire tracks left on the ground, they would have thought their eyes were playing tricks on them.
Seeing this, Misty Cloud stomped her foot in anger, her expression turning incredibly ugly.
"What is wrong with that person? So selfish! We’re all players who entered the game together. Shouldn’t we be helping each other out?"
A tall, skinny young man beside her tried to console her. "Don’t be angry, Cloud. People like that are just selfish and classless. Next time we run into them, I’ll teach them a lesson for you."
Even so, Misty Cloud’s expression remained foul. The other player had a harvester for transportation, which meant their talent must be quite special.
Her own talent was to make people develop a favorable impression of her through interaction. If used well, it could be a terrifyingly powerful ability.
In the third round of the game, she had relied on this very talent to turn the tables at the last second.
But now...
She glanced at the two people by her side. It was far from enough. She had to recruit more people to use for her own ends.
Moira Lynch didn’t know that the person behind her was Misty Cloud. If she had, she would have run even faster.
She followed the Old Rabbit Beastman’s directions for the better part of the day but still couldn’t find the Twin-Tailed Cat-kin’s village. Instead, she came across a large red door.
Clearly, someone had discovered this red door before her—a Caucasian man, from the looks of him.
She watched as he walked up to the red door, looked around, felt its surface, and then gave it a few hard slaps, but the door remained unresponsive.
Just when Moira Lynch thought he was about to give up, she saw the man place both hands on the door and push with all his might.
Just like that, a crack was pushed open in the middle of the door.
With surprisingly nimble movements, he instantly slipped through the gap.
The next second, the door slammed shut.
Moira Lynch waited outside for a while, but no one came out. Instead, she watched as several more groups of people got in using the same method.
Seeing this, Moira Lynch decided not to wait any longer. Who knew where the Twin-Tailed Cat-kin village actually was? And at this point, even if she found it, she likely wouldn’t be able to complete her task today.
That would just shorten her remaining mission time and increase her risk of failure.
It’s like the saying goes: fall behind once, and you’ll fall further and further behind.
She got up, walked to the red door, and looked around just as the others had. Then, in the upper-right corner, she found the doorbell button.
The only reason she knew to look for one was because back at the Rabbit-kin Village, their houses—though built of stone—also had doorbells.
However, this doorbell button was installed far too high, clearly set for the height of the Beastkin who lived here.
Moira Lynch had to strain with all her might to ring the doorbell.
The tightly shut red door slowly swung open.
After she walked inside, the door behind her slammed shut with a dull THUD.
Ignoring the door, Moira Lynch looked up and surveyed her surroundings. The environment inside was, how should she put it, a completely different world from the outside.
From the outside, it looked like a house built of stone and earth, but the interior decoration exuded sophistication at every turn.
The wainscoting on the walls, the lights on the ceiling, even the patterns on the floor tiles—everything seemed meticulously designed.
It felt like she had been instantly transported from an ancient world to the future. In short, the contrast was incredibly jarring.
Just then, Moira Lynch heard a series of complaints coming from a distance. "What’s going on? Are these people idiots? They can’t even understand what I’m saying. What a bunch of pathetic fools."
Hearing this, Moira Lynch thought to herself, ’Of course they can’t understand. You’re speaking the interstellar language.’
Snarking aside, she quickened her pace.
She passed through a long hallway and entered a bright living room, where she saw the players who had entered before her. They had changed their clothes and were now wearing aprons and masks. Some were cleaning, some were watching children, and others were cooking.