Chapter 145: A Rare Drop
It was better to simply throw them outside.
Eventually some scavenging creatures would take care of the bodies anyway.
As for whether this would pollute the environment or whether ordinary animals might accidentally eat the corpses, those were no longer problems Joo Joowon was capable of dealing with.
Surely nobody expected him to dig graves for zombies or cremate them one by one.
While dragging the giant mutated crab upstairs using spider silk, Joo Joowon also took the opportunity to examine the attributes of the beginner waist accessory.
This piece of equipment was just as difficult to obtain as weapons were.
Its appearance resembled a small sachet.
It looked somewhat like a jade pouch.
There was a small hole near the opening where a red cord passed through, allowing it to be worn.
The whole thing was about the size of a person’s palm.
Considering how fragile jade could be, wearing it around the waist seemed less suitable than hanging it around the neck as a pendant.
After all, it was only slightly larger than a Buddhist amulet.
What delighted Joo Joowon even more, however, were the item’s attributes.
...
[ Beginner Waist Pendant ]
[ Grade ]: Normal
[ Equipment Slot ]: Waist Pendant
[ Equipment Bonus ]: Storage Slot ×1
[ Equipment Requirement ]: Mental Attribute no lower than 7 points
[ Description ]: A rare spatial waist pendant. Fragile and requires careful storage.
Note: Cannot store living creatures, cannot hold more than fifty pounds, and time remains frozen inside the storage space.
...
It was actually a spatial item!
Although Joo Joowon had long suspected that the game would eventually contain something similar to a player inventory, he had never expected the surprise to arrive so suddenly.
Even though it occupied an equipment slot, it could store items!
Joo Joowon truly had not expected the waist pendant to turn out to be storage equipment rather than an item that increased attributes.
No wonder he had never once seen anyone selling waist pendants in the trading market.
Clearly, even if someone actually managed to obtain a waist pendant from monster drops, nobody would be willing to sell something this precious.
It was easy to understand why.
In games, storage inventories were among the most common mechanics imaginable.
In reality, however, the value of spatial storage was self evident.
In novels, anything related to space or time was almost always incredibly precious.
If that was the case, why would something involving storage suddenly become ordinary simply because it only served the function of storing items?
Because of that, Joo Joowon had previously guessed that players might only gain access to storage equipment after changing classes.
He had never expected such an item to exist among beginner equipment.
The drop rate for waist pendants, however, was clearly heartbreaking.
It looked even lower than the drop rate for weapons.
This obviously was not the sort of equipment every player could expect to own.
The description itself made that obvious.
Every other piece of beginner equipment simply had descriptions such as, "An unremarkable beginner item that doesn’t even have durability."
Yet the Beginner Waist Pendant’s description directly referred to it as "rare."
Joo Joowon had already reached Level 7 and had killed well over a hundred zombies by now, yet only today had he finally obtained a waist pendant.
For players with terrible luck, it was entirely possible that they could reach Level 10 without ever seeing a spatial waist pendant drop.
Fortunately, Joo Joowon was not one of those unlucky people.
He silently celebrated his good fortune.
This unexpected windfall also made him wonder whether he should let Byeol strike first more often in the future.
Although Joo Joowon did not consider himself particularly unlucky, the drop rates after Byeol participated in hunts had clearly been surprisingly generous.
If he had been fighting alone, whether these items would have dropped at all remained an open question.
Of course, the final killing blow would still have to belong to him.
After all, his title also increased drop rates and allowed him to obtain one additional item.
Thinking of this, Joo Joowon suddenly scratched his head.
Wait a second, something was wrong here.
There hadn’t been any additional drops at all.
When he thought back to the elite monsters from earlier.
Joo Joowon counted on his fingers for a moment.
Each elite monster had only dropped three cards.
Aside from the guaranteed zombie core, there had only been two pieces of equipment left over.
Joo Joowon could not help opening his status panel to take a look.
...
[ Joo Joowon ]
[ Level ]: 7 (144/640)
[ Strength ]: 5 (+8)
[ Physique ]: 8 (+6)
[ Agility ]: 7 (+3)
[ Mental Power ]: 11 (+5)
[ Buff ]: Blade69’s Blessing
[ Talents ]: Perfect Impact (Temporary), Borrowed Time (Temporary), Body Faster Than Thought (Temporary), Enhanced Cognition
[ Title ]: The First Flame Within Endless Darkness
[ Equipment: Bone Helmet, Pigskin Armor, Pigskin Wristguards, Cat Brand Bottoms, Dog Leather Belt, Spider Brand Running Shoes, Beginner Necklace, Beginner Rings ×2, Compound Repeating Crossbow, Spider Web Launcher
[ Items ]: Omitted
[ Money ]: 2 Silver Coins, 917 Copper Coins
[ Reputation ]: 1
[ Killing Intent ]: 2
...
After examining it carefully, Joo Joowon confirmed that the title was indeed equipped.
However, the title effect had never activated even once.
The title description also did not state that it was only a chance based effect.
Joo Joowon thought about it for a long time and could only come up with several possible explanations.
Could it be that elite monsters only dropped three cards on their first kill and that every kill afterward only produced two cards?
Or perhaps the experience penalty was not reflected in experience gain at all, but instead appeared in reduced equipment drops?
Or maybe the game simply had a bug, or the title effect had not yet been implemented?
All of those possibilities seemed plausible.
He decided that after the marketplace opened tomorrow, he would ask HighlyCultured about it.
After all, he needed a point of reference before reaching any conclusion.
As for testing it himself, if he encountered another elite monster, there was absolutely no way he would remove the title just to experiment.