Chapter 16 (1/2)

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Bell was in excellent physical shape. Even though he had drifted for so long in the ocean, exhausted and on the brink of dehydration, when given enough food and drink, proper rest and favorable environment, he bounced back to full strength in less than two days’ time.

Even so, Zhang Heng was in no hurry to leave. The island’s acreage was neither large nor small; walking around the island’s entire periphery only took Zhang Heng about eight hours. Going into the virgin forest would take a longer time, but even then, it would only take about three days to get from the hut to the center of the island.

If his assumptions were right, Bell had nineteen days to live, which meant that they still had more than enough time to prepare.

After being in each other’s company for two days, Zhang Heng had a basic understanding of his new companion’s abilities.

Bell’s survival expertise was indeed different from Ed’s and the lad in shorts’; his leaned towards hunting and self-preservation—precisely the kind of skills necessary for exploring the virgin forest.

At the present time, Zhang Heng was capable of making a large variety of tools, equipped to seek out a place to stay, water, and many other basic survival skills.

From the simple variety of vegetable in his garden and the bareness of the breeding garden except for Micky Mouse, it was obvious that Zhang Heng did not understand too much about the nature that he was living in.

This was especially true in species identification—a weakness that Zhang Heng and most city-living modern people possessed.

There were many types of plants in the forest, but not knowing which ones or which parts were edible, and afraid of falling victim to food poisoning, Zhang Heng had only taken the potatoes and onions—which were the only things that he recognized.

It was pretty much the same with animals. All this while, he had thought that Mickey Mouse was ugly as sin; never once did it cross his mind that it was actually the extinct national bird of Mauritius.

This explorer that he rescued could finally help him make up for this shortcoming of his.

Seeing that there was not a lot of time left, Zhang Heng decided to bring Bell on a tour around the island.

Bell taught him how to identify and obtain a variety of resources from the forest.

Zhang Heng could not help but be surprised. For the past one year, he had been recklessly wasting natural resources—he had been sitting on a pile of treasure-trove and he was completely clueless as to how to use them.

But the more Zhang Heng listened to his companion, the more uneasy he felt because it seemed that Bell was deeming practically everything that he laid eyes on to be ‘edible once the head is removed’.

On the afternoon of the tenth day, both men returned to the house. Zhang Heng was very pleased with the yield of this short little trip. Even if there was nothing in the heart of the island, he had learnt a lot in the past ten days.

Beyond that, Bell was also very good listener and conversational partner.

After taking a day’s rest, Zhang Heng planted the seed they had collected from the trip in the vegetable garden. As he was doing so, he suddenly received another message.

[Successfully collected more than ten varieties of vegetables. Wilderness Survival Skills advance from level 1 to level 2. Game Points +5. You may refer to the character panel to view the information…]

Until now, Zhang Heng still had no idea how the game points were used in the game. Including what he had accumulated previously, he now had a total of 16 points, which was displayed on his character panel.

It seemed to him that this was a sort of reward system. Once certain criteria were met, points would be rewarded, just like previous 11 points which came from starting a fire, building a house and hunting.

Anyway, Zhang Heng was not too caught up in these sorts of things. He had always been the kind of player who let things run its course as long as he completed a level; definitely not the hardcore-bigot kind who had to attain complete dominance of the game. This time, it was only because he had played this game on his own for too long, he had to attain those achievements even if he did not want to.

In addition to that, he also noticed that some changes had been made to the evaluation portion on the panel.

It read,

[Evaluation: The player is unremarkable with no quality worth commending, but has some wilderness survival skills and archery skills. He is not expected to be able to last longer than the first five rounds.]