《The Cardboard Explorer》Chapter 25
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Three days had passed since Cade entered the big tongue toad dungeon. At the moment, Cade was at the end of the first floor. He still had not leveled up to 10 and thanks to his luck, he farmed quite a lot of magic crystals and at the same time found a problem that came with his high luck.
Cade felt no need for equipment drop. However, his high luck made him get a lot of equipment drop. It was not as much as the magic crystal but there were still quite a lot of them.
Cade did not need any equipment because he had his linked equipment. What he needed the most was the magic crystal. The magic crystals were widely used in strengthening his equipment, skill and growth potential.
However, due to his high luck, the magic crystal that he wanted did not appear and instead he got the equipment.
It was fine if it was the E grade but he needed the D grade magic crystals the most to increase his growth potential. All the D grade toad that he killed dropped equipment or something else. He was frustrated at his fortune.
He knew he could sell the equipment for a lot of money but that was not what he needed at the moment.
Other than that, Cade also got himself about five skill books. Four of them were the big tongue skill and one was the toad skin skill.
The big tongue skill was a skill that let the user increase the size of their tongue based on the skill level. Since the skill was level 1, it can only increase the tongue twice the normal size.
Since skill cannot be upgraded or leveled up, it was fixed like that. In other words, the big tongue skill was useless unless the person has some kind of fetish to the tongue, they might feel like the skill was useful.
The toad skin skill lets the user turn their skin to that of a big tongue toad. It will increase their defense.
However, Cade felt like the skill will be unpopular because the toad’s skin was ugly. It was useful but when someone used it, they would turn ugly. Maybe those that did not mind that might buy it but it was a level 1 skill, so no one might have wanted it.
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“This can still fetch me some money, but I wonder how much will I get for this,” Cade was looking at the pile of raw materials he got from killing a lot of big tongue toad monsters.
There was also something else that changed. Before the changes happened, only magic crystal, equipment, skill book and puzzle pieces will drop.
However, after the changes happened, a new type of drop was added. Material drops. The chance of getting material drops was higher compared to magic crystal.
The material drops made Cade much more frustrated compared to the equipment drop. The material drops took more of his magic crystal drop compared to the equipment drop.
Cade’s storage was now filled with material drops of the big tongue toad. Their tongue, skin, eyes, heart, liver, legs, arms and many more.
They were grossed. If girls saw that, they would scream ‘kya~ kya~’ disgusted at that. Cade wanted to throw them away but he did not know if it would be useful and maybe it had some value.
In games, materials like the eyes, heart, and liver were either being used as the ingredients for potions or as food.
The legs and arms were either used as food or making some kind of equipment. The skin will usually be used as ingredients for clothes or something similar.
However, that was all the games. This was a reality. Maybe it will be useless but since this was new, maybe there will be people who wanted to research the materials.
Due to that, Cade kept them all. However, looking at all of them piling up in his storage, he cannot help but wanted to vomit. He did not know if anyone wanted to buy all of them. There were too many of them in his storage.
Even with all that though, Cade knew that the materials can be used for something because when it was stored in his storage, the storage can appraise the materials.
The materials had stats of their own. Normal things like food, normal clothes, and normal equipment cannot be appraised by the storage and they had no stats.
The things that can be appraised by the storage can be used against the monsters. So, the materials might have its uses. Maybe this time, explorers need not worry about equipment drop as the material can be used to make equipment.
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Cade was currently resting outside the boss room. At the moment, many explorers were resting there too. They were all waiting for their turn to fight the boss.
From what Cade heard from the conversations of the explorers near him, the boss was not that hard to deal with.
The boss was a big toad with the same skill set as all the other toad they found on the first floor. The only difference was the size. That was it.
Due to its big size, it was easy to defeat it as it was an easy target to hit. The big size also restricted some of its movement and it was slower too.
According to some of them, there was one party of explorers who fought the boss toad and the boss toad tried to jump high but it hit the dungeon’s ceiling.
It embarrassingly dropped on the ground and got a headache as well as hurt itself giving chance for the explorers to easily kill the boss toad.
When Cade heard that, he cannot help but chuckled at it. Cade thought that the toad was somehow an intelligent monster much like the slime.
The difference between them was that the slime was nice but the toad was aggressive. It will attack anyone it found without mercy. There was not once Cade met a toad that ran away from a fight. They all would attack him once they saw him.
Due to their aggressive nature, Cade felt no pity for killing them. Cade felt guilty killing the slime but not the toad. If the toad that he found ran away from him, he might consider letting that toad go but if it was attacking him, no mercy.
While Cade rested there, he recognized a few familiar faces. Not like he was an acquaintance to them but he just saw them passing by when he was exploring the dungeon.
As for them knowing Cade, everyone knew him because of his cardboard equipment. He sticks out like a sore thumb wherever he went because of his cardboard.
Some of them already realized that the cardboard was not normal. Some of them even realized that the normal clothes Cade wore were not normal too.
Those that realized that all saw Cade fighting the toad while they were passing by. They were all shocked to see Cade slashed the toad with cardboard.
Cade looked ridiculous in their eyes because of the cardboard at first but once they saw what that cardboard can do, all those thoughts ridiculing Cade were gone.
They all respected him… not because he was good at fighting or something similar but it was because Cade endures the humiliation of equipping something silly like the cardboard.
From what they saw the way Cade was fighting, they all knew he was a beginner. Not like they were any better but they had watched strong explorers fight before and knew how a beginner fought.
From all of that crowd, Cade saw the most familiar face he had seen while he was exploring the dungeon. Cade stared at that man and that man was aware of the stare and tried to pretend to not be aware of it.
That man was Shihoon. The guy who had decided to follow (stalking) Cade. He was true to his words and had been following Cade since he decided to do that.
He had also secretly taken pictures of Cade fighting the toad using the cardboard. He had quite a lot of collection of that. Every time Cade stopped to rest, he would check his genius phone and organize the picture he took.
Cade realized about him being followed a day after he entered the toad dungeon. He saw the same man over and over again most of the time nearby.
He was wary at first but after a while, he realized that the man did not intend to do anything bad to him. He was curious why he was following him but every time he tried to approach that man, that man ran somewhere.
Since the man had no intention of doing something bad to him, Cade decided to not pursue it further. He did wonder why Shihoon was following him.
Since Shihoon sat in the crowd and did not seem to want to go somewhere else, Cade decided to talk to him.
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