"Brother Dust, is 295 grains of rice considered a lot? Do we still have any hope?"
From the reactions of the adventurers around them, even the naive Xiao Ai noticed that the situation was not too optimistic.
"Well, it depends on the power of your necklace. If it can function normally, there would be no problem in taking the first place."
Ye Chen smiled and did not pay much heed to the news of 295 grains of rice being collected. If Xiao Ai's Blessing necklace was functioning normally, there would definitely be no problem in taking the top position. On the other hand, if the effects did not proc in this mission, it would be impossible for him and Xiao Ai to compete for the first in this activity anyways. Therefore, he did not need to overthink about it at all. He just needed to carry out the mission normally.
"Haha, even such a low-level Botanist came to join in the fun. The last day of each month, the fanfare this place garner here is really not an over-exaggeration."
As Ye Chen took Xiao Ai from the crowd to the paddy field watchman, an adventurer who Ye Chen bumped past turned to see the perpetrator. After turning around to see that it was a Botanist, he immediately scoffed condescendingly.
"You're just a short-legged Warrior yourself."
Ye Chen ignored the taunts of this person, but Xiao Ai glanced back at the adventurer and quietly muttered under her breath.
"Little girl, what did you just say?!" the Warrior adventurer angrily shouted, seeming as though her words had struck a raw nerve.
"Xiao Ai, leave him alone. Come over and prepare to enter the Instance Dungeon." Ye Chen looked at the time and found that he really had to do the task quickly, so he greeted Xiao Ai.
"Oh, you two young adventurers, you received the news and ignored the long distance to travel here to help me get rid of those nasty thieves in the paddy fields! Those thieves are so abominable. Seeing now that the rice is mature, they are currently in the paddy fields, rampantly thieving away the results of my hard work of several months. I will never tolerate their wanton thieving ways! Please, can the two of you help me get rid of the thieves in the paddy fields and take back the rice they stole? I will definitely give you a satisfactory reward!"
The paddy field watchman was a peasant and was standing in front of the farm while wearing a straw hat and carrying an age-worn iron hoe. As Ye Chen walked over with Xiao Ai, he immediately called out joyously to Ye Chen and Xiao Ai.
[System Prompt: You have accepted the mission "Thief in the Rice Field". Will you enter the Instance Dungeon "Golden Paddy Field" now?]
"Yes!" Ye Chen did not spare any words to talk nonsense with the paddy catcher, directly accepting the mission, and entered the Instance Dungeon.
"Fuck! Don't think of running… Haha, a Botanist and a Priest, and they just entered the Golden Paddy Field? What a pointless waste of time!"
The Warrior adventurer obviously didn't want to let Xiao Ai pass by, so he chased Xiao Ai over to where the watchman was standing. However, the result was that he saw Xiao Ai and Ye Chen, both accepting the task and entering the Instance Dungeon.
"Two greenhorns who don't know anything. I estimate that they will be killed soon," one of the compatriots of the Warrior scoffed.
"Hmph, that's true. But then again, they might be afraid of me and deliberately escaped into the Instance Dungeon."
However, the Warrior was still indecisive and wavered between leaving or staying. This reason seemed more plausible to him.
On the other side, the scenery in front of Ye Chen and Xiao Ai's eyes suddenly changed!
An Instance Dungeon of the Golden Paddy Field!
Looking at the vast expanse in front of her, no matter where Xiao Ai looked, a neverending stretch of golden rice crops seemed to stretch into the boundless horizons. Xiao Ai's eyes widened with disbelief and amazement!
"Wow, it's SOO beautiful!"
Xiao Ai rushed into the paddy field in front of her, paying no regard to her dignity and shouted excitedly.
The Golden Paddy Field was indeed an Instance Dungeon that took the concept of a breath-taking landscape to the extreme. Although Ye Chen had been here many times, whenever he saw the beautiful scenery in front of him again, he would still feel like his spirit was being soothed and sink into relaxation.
"Get ready, the Instance Dungeon will officially start soon."
However, their purpose here was not to see the scenery, but to aim to win the championship!
"Alright!" Xiao Ai jumped out of the golden paddy field.
"I will briefly summarize the situation. A large number of rats will appear in the paddy fields later, and our task is to kill these rats. And in the center of each paddy field, there will always be a rat nest. As long as we manage to find the rat nest, the rats hiding all over the paddy field will come out and gather to attack us. The attacks of these rats are quite standard, and we don't need to care too much about them. You just need to maintain your usual standard of healing and usage of potions. However, you still have to pay attention to the HP of the Durian Bomb Tree and restore its health from time to time. The rest of the time, just wait for my order." Ye Chen pointed to a paddy field in front and gave some precautionary warnings.
"Okay, understood!" Xiao Ai nodded affirmatively.
"Then we'll search for the rat nest first." Ye Chen waved his staff, and the two of them entered the paddy field and began to look around for the rat nest within this copious paddy field.
"Brother Dust, over here." After a while, Xiao Ai pointed to a nest made of rice straws ahead of her and waved towards Ye Chen.
"Single Transplant." Ye Chen came to the rat nest and transplanted a Durian Bomb Tree.
BOOM!
Sensing that there was a monster beside it, the Durian Bomb Tree didn't even require any instructions from Ye Chen. A durian dropped from the tree one after another and began the bombardment.
The level of the monsters in the Instance Dungeon for the Golden Paddy Field mission corresponded to the level of the adventurer team. With the lethality of the Durian Bomb Tree, killing monsters of the same level was a piece of cake. The already frail HP of the rat nest was wiped out in a flash.
After the rat nest was eliminated, a tremendous chain reaction immediately spread throughout this wide Golden Paddy Field. The sound of crops rustling was unceasingly transmitted over, and the entire paddy field suddenly became translucent. It was now possible to clearly distinguish the fat, menacing rats, hidden in the paddy field. They began to rush towards the place where the two were, one after another.
"There are so many rats!" Xiao Ai was immediately shocked by the copious number of rats.
"There's no need to care about the rats that are rushing over. Pay attention to the rats that don't come over, take the time to kill them all," Ye Chen commanded.
The rats that were staying put at their positions were the leaders of the mobs. For ordinary item drop rates, those rats that will not run after the destruction of the rat nest were most likely to drop rice. If they decided not to waste time on those rats, and instead just kill those that were rushing over before heading to the next paddy field, the benefits would definitely outweigh the losses.
Although initially, some people said that this was reverse psychology playing tricks on one's mind, after numerous adventurers' experiments, they found that if the same team did not kill these non-running rats, the count of rice after clearing the last paddy field would definitely be less than when the rats were killed. That meant this was a proven fact, and one definitely should not be lazy!
"Okay, got it." There were far more terrifying monsters than rats in the game. Although the sheer number of rats still gave Xiao Ai a scare, Xiao Ai quickly adapted and answered cheerily.
"Spring Rain!" After looking at the rats scurrying over, Xiao Ai's staff waved, activating the Spring Rain skill she had just learned, as well as a Holy Bullet. The Bullet struck a distant rat which seemed nonchalant to the imminent threat of death ahead of it.
The Durian Bomb Tree's killing range was quite broad, worthy of the title of the strongest skill of the Botanist's arsenal. The two merely stood under the Durian Bomb Tree, and those rats rushing over were not even able to land a scratch on the two before they were aggro'ed by the Tree.
The attacks of these mission rats in the Instance Dungeon were feeble, only causing 10 points of damage, but their attacks had the characteristics of ignoring Defense. No matter how high the Defense was, or how low, it was all the same in front of them. Each time one was attacked, damage values that number at least above 10 points would float up above their heads.
This damage would not result in critical damage to most adventurers. Still, if the number of rats was significant, even if each rat only causes a few points of damage, the cumulative damage was considerable.
Therefore, adventurers who enter the Instance Dungeon to complete the mission must still have specific requirements for their equipment. Otherwise, if their HP wasn't enough, and their damage was not high enough, even if there was a Priest, they invariably would be mobbed to death by the sea of rats.
As for Ye Chen and Xiao Ai, their equipment was not a problem. However, the number of team members was too small. The damage output will certainly not be able to keep up. Sooner or later they would be surrounded by rats, but the existence of the Durian Bomb Tree solved this problem, so Ye Chen did not have to worry about it at all.
The Defense of these rats was not high, and their HP gauge was not long as well. As soon as they approached the Durian Bomb Tree, under the massive bombardments that caused grievous damage upwards of 100 damage points each time, they were unable to withstand two or three rounds, collapsing dead on the ground.
"Some rice has dropped!" The rats rushed forward in unceasing waves, but all fell down dead to the Durian Bomb Tree. The sharp-eyed Xiao Ai noticed that after a rat died, it dropped a grain of golden rice.
"There is still one here, and one dropped over there too!"
However, it didn't just stop there, and the grains of golden rice suddenly dropped out in batches three or four!
"Haha, not bad, your necklace is indeed effective!"
Ye Chen had entered the Golden Paddy Field Instance Dungeon many times before, but he had never seen such a crazy drop rate before and couldn't help but have a wide grin on his face.
Based on the rate the items were dropping, even if they wanted to avoid the first place position, it would be extremely difficult!
With them off to a good start, Ye Chen and Xiao Ai's spirits were uplifted. Both of them ignored the rats rushing towards them, instead using their skills to attack the lazy rats outside the paddy field who had no intention to move.
The rats quickly died one after another. After thirty seconds, Ye Chen already had 8 grains of rice in his hand.
"Under normal circumstances, harvesting 10 grains of rice from a paddy field is already considered excellent. The entire Instance Dungeon lasts for 30 minutes, and most teams wipe out a paddy field in one minute, so 300 grains of rice is basically the limit of the mission. But with the Blessing of the White Angel's Necklace in effect, the drop rate of the grains of rice have a noticeable increase, so we can proceed with using that option."
These were the thoughts running through Ye Chen's mind, and with a wave of his hand, he directly transplanted another Durian Bomb Tree over. The transplanted position was about two meters away from the original Durian Bomb Tree.