Nawa did a rough calculation. If he had to use a bow to hunt these rabbits, he would need at least 2 silver coins, or about 20,000 baht. Meanwhile, the reward for the mission was only 50 copper coins.
"Hmph… It's true what Ploy said. A level E mission is really not worth doing."
Of course, most players wouldn't choose such a loss-making mission, but not Nawa. He had long-range attacks that didn't require any weapons.
Nawa walked towards a one-horned rabbit. When he was within 50 feet, he stopped.
From his past rabbit-chasing runs, Nawa knew its range and potential dangers. The rabbit continued grazing, ignoring Nawa.
Nawa turned his palm upwards. Suddenly, the air in his palm became intensely hot, almost igniting a fire. However, the flames didn't spread; they fused and compressed into a fireball about the size of a ping-pong ball.
"Whoosh! Whoosh!"
Nawa flicked his hand. The fireball in his hand exploded and flew towards the one-horned rabbit. Like an arrow shot from a bow,
"Foom…" A bonfire several feet high erupted right where the one-horned rabbit had been.
Soon, the flames died down, revealing the charred remains of the rabbit. Beside it, two copper crystals appeared.
Almost every creature in The Oneness, upon death, drops energy crystals. The stronger the creature, the more numerous and higher-quality the energy crystals dropped.
"Looks like I overthought things,"
Nawa muttered to himself, a look of clear delight on his face. He had initially thought that such a small fireball would only severely injure it.
He never expected to defeat it with a single attack. Even though it was a common-level monster, the one-horned rabbit was still a monster, possessing defense and strength many times greater than animals on Earth.
"That fireball didn't even use a fifth of my power. Maybe I could even handle a Pro-level monster,"
Nawa thought to himself. However, Nawa still didn't intend to hunt Pro-level monsters right now, because most monsters aren't alone.
Moreover, the nature of professional-level monsters is quite ferocious. They might swarm and attack before Nawa can even do anything.
"We need to become stronger," Nawa reminded himself not to get complacent with this success.
He knew that if The Oneness were the same land as the Himmapan Forest he once wandered into, his current strength would be no different from a worm in a dinosaur-infested area.
After testing the destructive power of his skills, the next thing Nawa wanted to test was his mana regeneration rate.
Most players have a very low mana regeneration rate. Even mages, who are known for having a very high mana regeneration rate, still take many hours to fully regenerate their mana.
Furthermore, this process requires energy crystals as a power source.
Without energy crystals, players might need weeks or even half a month to recover lost mana. For this reason, each hunt requires players to carefully plan their skill usage and hunting strategies.
Because even if they catch a monster, if they spent a lot of resources on it, it's pointless.
But for Nawa, this wasn't a problem. Five years ago, he wandered into the Himmapan Forest. He learned the art of meditation from the wizard Alfor. It wasn't a direct combat technique, but rather a supportive one.
During his months in the Himmapan forest, Nava mastered meditation to the third of eight levels. This skill allowed him to absorb natural energy to restore his mana, and he didn't need any energy crystals for this process.
However, Nawa wanted to test his meditation skills because when he passed through the dimensional portal of the Himmapan forest back to the human world, his energy was dissipated, significantly diminishing his powers.
He wanted to see how much his meditation abilities had deteriorated.
Nawa opened his status window to check his remaining mana. But when he saw the displayed stats, his eyes widened in shock, and he involuntarily exclaimed,
"What is this?"
The system status window showed Nava's mana at 100%.
He had just fought Somchai and, not long before, unleashed a fireball. It was impossible for his mana to remain full.
"Or could our player equipment be damaged?"
Nawa muttered softly to himself, thinking about the unusually high cost of his title display earlier. This only intensified his concern.
Nawa's face paled slightly, as repairing player equipment was extremely expensive, and he wouldn't be able to access The Oneness during the repair process.
Nawa dismissed his rambling thoughts and decided to try his power again to see if the player equipment system was still functioning properly.
After opening the status window, Nawa used the fireball skill again, this time using twice as much power. While using the power, his eyes were fixed on the status window to see what was happening.
"What is this?" Nawa exclaimed, his eyebrows slightly raised in surprise.
The mana displayed by the system immediately dropped by more than half the moment Nawa began using his power, but in an instant, his mana was fully restored.
In the Himmapan Forest, it took Nawa hours for his mana to recover, or even using meditation to enhance his trance level to increase the recovery rate, it still took almost ten minutes. Mana has recovered, but I didn't do anything. Yet, in the blink of an eye, mana is fully restored.
"Or is it because my maximum mana is much lower than before, but the regenerative power of meditation hasn't diminished?"
Nawa muttered to himself, as if he had found the answer. Like before, Nawa used to be a dam that took a considerable amount of time to fill with water from the river, but now his body was just a small pond that filled up in an instant when it received water from the river.
"I was absolutely right to choose to learn meditation from Grandpa Alfor,"
Nawa said to himself, his face beaming with joy.
Now, not only did he not have to spend money on energy crystals to restore mana, but he also seemed to have unlimited mana. Furthermore, he didn't have to spend a long time restoring mana like other players.
If this continues, soon he'll be able to earn enough money to pay off his debts comfortably, Nawa told himself.
Nawa began hunting rabbits again. This time, he reduced his fire power to avoid damaging the rabbit carcasses too much. In less than an hour, Nawa had hunted more than thirty rabbits. Besides the carcasses of single-horned rabbits, he also obtained 70 copper coins in energy crystals.
Nawa looked at them with delight, but those who witnessed the scene… Nawa looked at them with a mixture of surprise and disdain.
"This guy must be a high-ranking mage, but he's hunting a common-level rabbit? What was he thinking? Why doesn't he team up to hunt higher-level monsters?"
"Yeah, he could make hundreds of times more money than these rabbits."
"He's probably a coward for hunting just a rabbit. What a waste of talent."
As usual, Nawa ignored their whispers. He chose a rabbit to make for his celebratory lunch. He tore off one of the rabbit's charred legs, revealing pale meat with a thin wisp of sun, looking very appetizing.
"It should be cooked by now," Nawa muttered to himself before stuffing a large mouthful of meat into his mouth.
"Wow, it's tastier than I thought. The meat is as tender as roasted fish."
Nawa ate with relish. Before long, only the bones of the rabbit remained. Shortly after, a voice sounded in Nawa's head.
"Ding!"
A status window popped up almost instantly.
(You ate 1 wild rabbit. SPD increased by 3.)
Nawa looked at the system window, amazed by the efficiency of the player's equipment. In just a short time, it could detect physical changes and display them as numbers. For a moment, Nawa felt like he was in a VR game.
After eating his fill, Nawa looked thoughtfully at the large pile of rabbit carcasses. If eating one rabbit increased his speed by 3, then eating this whole pile would double his speed, right?
A look of delight spread across Nawa's face, but then he frowned, realizing he couldn't possibly eat this much rabbit meat in a short time.
Even though monster meat in The Oneness is easier to digest than animal meat in the human world, allowing him to consume many times more than food from that world, it would still take Nawa weeks to eat this pile of rabbits.
This was one reason why players needed high-level monster meat; the amount of meat they could consume each day was limited. Eating the meat of many low-level monsters is no match for eating the meat of a single high-level monster.
"Hmph…" Nawa sighed deeply, feeling regretful. But thinking about the money he would get from this pile of rabbit carcasses made him feel a little better.
Even after giving the guards away the ten rabbit carcasses, he still had more than twenty left. Roughly calculating, Nava could make at least one silver coin, or more than 10,000 baht, which was ten times his daily wage.
Nawa summoned White Snake.
It was now the size of a large baby snake. Normally, he fed it only scraps from the garbage, so he wanted to give it something better to eat. In a split second, White Snake immediately went to devour the rabbit carcasses.
Even though Nava knew White Snakes were fast eaters, he didn't expect it to be this fast. The rabbit carcass, larger than a large dog, was devoured by White Snake in less than a minute; not even the bones were left. At that very moment, the system's voice sounded in Nawa's head again.
"Ding!"
(You ate 1 wild rabbit. SPD increased by 2, MPmax increased by 1.)
Nawa looked at the system window with delight. Although he had known for a long time that White Snake eating monster meat would make him stronger, what Nawa hadn't expected was that the increase in strength was almost identical to when he ate them himself.
It was as if White Snake had lived alongside him.
Suddenly, an idea struck Nawa. A normal player would take weeks to eat this pile of rabbits, but White Snake could finish it in just 10 minutes. That meant he didn't have the quantity he could eat that other players did.
The more Nawa hunted, the more he could eat. His self-improvement would be incomparably faster than other players. Not to mention his mana regeneration rate, which was practically instant.
With these two factors, Nawa was sure to regain his former strength soon. No, it will make him even stronger than before. Thinking this, he jumped for joy.