Chapter 100: Burning Experience
He watched as his Mental Power briefly flickered between four and five points before finally stabilizing at four.
Seeing this result, Joo Joowon could not help staring blankly for a moment.
His total Mental Power was thirteen points.
A common grade recovery item was supposed to restore fifty percent of his maximum state.
By all logic, that should have restored six points.
Why had it only recovered four?
Fortunately, his partially restored mind was finally capable of functioning again.
After a moment of thought, Joo Joowon guessed that perhaps attributes granted through equipment bonuses were excluded from the recovery serum’s effects.
As for why his Mental Power had fallen all the way to two points, that was probably thanks to the psychic zombie’s skill and the Cat Chimera’s ability afterward.
The Cat Chimera’s skill was likely not a purely mental attack.
Instead, it probably only involved Mental effects to some degree.
That was why Joo Joowon’s body had stiffened after being struck by it instead of suffering the intense headache caused by the psychic zombie.
Using game terminology, he had probably been afflicted by a [ Pressure ] or [ Fear ] debuff.
Joo Joowon shook his head, which still felt heavy and sluggish, like his brain after being forced into endless overtime work.
Then he raised the Compound Repeating Crossbow and aimed directly at the psychic zombie that had collapsed motionless on the ground.
Joo Joowon had no intention of giving the enemy any opportunity.
The psychic zombie had already exhausted its Mental Power using its final move against the Chimera attacking it.
Even without being able to see its HP bar, Joo Joowon knew its condition could not possibly be good.
Naturally, he had no intention of missing the chance to kick an enemy while it was down and immediately fired at it.
[ Ding! ]
[ Level 5 Zombie has been killed (Lord Boss Candidate) ]
[ EXP +40 ]
[ Silver Coin +1 ]
Joo Joowon was slightly surprised.
After thinking about it for a moment, however, it made sense.
"Mage" type classes were already extremely rare.
Having the potential to become a Lord Boss was not strange at all.
Perhaps it was precisely because this psychic zombie was still only in the preparatory stage that the pillar of light that appeared after its death was neither fully blue nor fully green.
Whether it would drop something valuable seemed to depend entirely on luck.
Now was not the time to collect loot.
Joo Joowon turned the Compound Repeating Crossbow toward the Cat Chimera that had ended up in mutual destruction with the psychic zombie.
This Cat Chimera clearly had mediocre Mental Power.
After being hit by the psychic attack, it still remained unable to move.
The Pig Chimera had already proven that once a Chimera lost its head, its vitality would weaken drastically.
It was essentially equivalent to receiving a continuous damage debuff.
Because of that, Joo Joowon did not waste any bolts.
He wrapped spider silk around the Cat Chimera’s neck once more and tightened it.
[ Ding! ]
[ Level 6 Elite • Cat Chimera ]
[ EXP +64 ]
[ Copper Coin +20]
Once again, the reward was a stingy amount of copper coins.
Joo Joowon genuinely did not know how this game developers had configured the currency drop rates.
With his current level, which should already place him near the very top globally, he had only accumulated a little over eight hundred copper coins.
The drop rate was honestly painful to look at.
There was nothing he could do about monsters refusing to drop money.
After reloading his crossbow bolts, Joo Joowon aimed at the Cat Chimera that was still lively and in relatively good condition.
The Dog Chimera was clearly a zombie that specialized in Physique and Strength, so Joo Joowon chose to deal with the Cat Chimera first.
He had no idea what the cooldown period for Chimera skills was.
At this moment, he wanted nothing more than to end the fight as quickly as possible.
Rare grade spider webs were not so easy to destroy.
The reason they had been broken apart so quickly earlier was entirely because several Elite monsters had worked together.
Even so, Joo Joowon did not dare let his guard down.
After all, zombies with skills and zombies without skills were two completely different things.
Joo Joowon repeated his previous tactic.
He attacked from two directions at once.
On one side, he used the crossbow to shave away as much of the Chimera’s health as possible.
On the other side, he controlled the spider silk and tightened it around the creature’s neck.
[ Level 5 Elite • Cat Chimera has been killed! ]
[ EXP +32 ]
[ Copper Coins +5.]
[ Ding! ]
[ Level 6 Elite • Dog Chimerq has been killed! ]
[ EXP +64.]
At last, all of the elite monsters had been dealt with.
As Joo Joowon recovered the spider silk, he simultaneously used it to retrieve all of the loot and rewards scattered around the battlefield.
Because he had been completely focused on fighting the elite monsters, only now did he notice that several additional notifications had appeared in the system log regarding ordinary zombies dying and granting experience points.
When he turned his head to look, he discovered that despite the ordinary zombies greatly outnumbering the elite monsters, they had actually never managed to escape from the webs.
Because low level zombies possessed extremely limited intelligence, the alleyway had instead turned into a chaotic pileup of zombies pushing and squeezing against one another.
As a result, rather than dying down, the flames had actually grown even stronger thanks to them feeding the fire with their own bodies.
The entire street had become bathed in an orange red glow.
The smell of burned protein drifted through the air for what felt like miles.
Low level zombies had indeed gained a certain instinct for survival.
Unfortunately, it was obvious that they had not gained very much.
Although the shafts of the crossbow bolts were not made from wood, shooting into those flames would clearly result in losing every bolt fired.
The intense heat was enough to make even Joo Joowon uncomfortable.