Chapter 109: New Equipment
Joo Joowon even suspected that this equipment might belong to a complete set.
Perhaps if all the pieces were collected, they would eventually transform into a full exoskeleton combat suit.
Of course, that was merely speculation.
Equipment drops were closely related to the original form of the zombie that dropped them.
Where exactly was he supposed to find enough zombies of the same type to complete an entire set?
Whether it’s flashy or not, Joo Joowon still decided to retire his old motorcycle helmet and replace it with the Bone Helmet.
The game had apparently added an inner layer of material to the helmet.
The description about being skin friendly was absolutely accurate.
Because touching the inside genuinely felt disturbingly similar to touching actual human skin.
The equipment itself was innocent.
Therefore, Joo Joowon chose to selectively ignore that particular detail.
The other item was an equipment type that Joo Joowon had never obtained before.
Wrist guards.
...
[ Pigskin Wrist Guards ]
[ Grade]: Common
[ Durability ]: 1/1
[ Equipment Slot ]: Wrist
[ Equipment Bonus ]: Physique +1
[ Equipment Requirement ]: None
[ Description ]: Basic wrist guards designed to protect the radioulnar joints and wrist joints.
...
Joo Joowon held the wrist guards in his hands and examined them carefully.
They were not the kind of wrist guards he had imagined, the type that worked like sleeves and simply slid over the wrist in one motion.
Instead, there was a thin strap attached to them that looked as though it was meant to wrap around a finger, while the wider strap behind it was clearly intended to be secured around the wrist itself.
As someone who had never been particularly enthusiastic about sports or exercise, Joo Joowon genuinely had no idea how these things were supposed to be worn in order to properly protect the wrists.
Fortunately, the system could equip items directly, so there was no need for him to waste time figuring it out himself.
He simply let the system handle it.
After equipping the two pieces of equipment he had previously lacked, Joo Joowon’s Physique attribute immediately caught up with his Mental Power.
Seeing that, he decided to simply invest the two free attribute points he had obtained from leveling up directly into Mental Power.
As a result, his Mental Power talent was officially fixed as Enhanced Cognition and the temporary marker beside it disappeared.
The effects of the Spider Web Launcher were far better than Joo Joowon had originally imagined.
Initially, he had assumed it would be little more than a support tool or a method for pulling off unexpected tricks.
Although the launcher occupied the hidden weapon slot and focused primarily on surprise attacks, the fact that it had been able to trap an elite monster and prevent it from escaping for a considerable amount of time was enough to make it the trump card in Joo Joowon’s arsenal.
After all these upgrades and adjustments, Joo Joowon’s attribute panel had become astonishingly luxurious for this stage of the apocalypse.
It truly was the perfect example of risking danger in exchange for wealth.
Even so, if he were given the chance to do it all over again, he would not have chosen such an aggressive approach.
The main reason was that he had never anticipated the existence of psychic zombies.
Otherwise, there was a very real possibility that he could have silently eliminated the majority of the zombies without anyone ever noticing.
After all, the intelligence of Chimera monsters was not particularly high.
Most of what drove them were zombie instincts and animalistic ferocity.
At best, they possessed intelligence comparable to that of a six or seven year old child.
If the psychic zombie had not gathered all of them together and drawn them toward him, then with the way those elite monsters normally kept to their own territories and avoided interfering with one another, Joo Joowon might actually have been able to defeat them one by one.
Unfortunately, there were no "what ifs" in reality.
Because of the Spider Web Launcher’s capabilities and the wall running abilities granted by the running shoes, Joo Joowon had never been particularly worried about being surrounded.
As a result, when carrying out his plan, he had not considered any escape route in the event that he was actually surrounded.
He had simply assumed that he could swing away like Spider Man and disappear into the distance.
Reality had proven once again that people should never become overly confident.
Unexpected situations could appear as suddenly as a psychic zombie.
Although Joo Joowon believed that zombies capable of using Mental Power were probably quite rare, he still decided that he would never repeat the same strategy again.
After all, what if there were other sneaky and underhanded zombie types hiding in the shadows and secretly informing nearby zombies of his location?
Because of that, he decided that next time he attempted something similar, he would choose a location much farther away.
That way, even if zombies could somehow communicate with one another, it would be much harder for his existence to be exposed.
Residential buildings were out of the question.
As long as living humans remained inside, the zombies within those buildings had almost certainly already been cleared out.
What a shame.
The maximum range of the Spider Web Launcher’s threads was only one thousand meters.
Once they exceeded that distance, he would completely lose control over them.
Otherwise, Joo Joowon truly wanted to experience what it felt like to decide the outcome of a battle from a thousand meters away.
After dealing with his equipment, Joo Joowon finally poured some water for the cactus, which had already finished inspecting the surrounding environment.
Before he even had the chance to find a proper "home" for it, the cactus had already found one itself.
It had absolutely no interest in the nutrient rich soil Joo Joowon had brought back.
Instead, it directly buried its roots into the flesh of the mutated rat corpse that Joo Joowon had dragged back from outside the wall.