Chapter 6: Deeper into the Mine

After collecting the spoils of battle, Mo Ming finally remembered that he had just leveled up.

What did leveling up mean?
Attribute points!
It meant Mo Ming could finally escape the embarrassing situation of having all attributes at 1!

Opening the attribute panel, although his five basic attributes were still at 1 point, there was now an unallocated attribute point section next to them, with a total of 5 points—if he added them all, he could instantly double one of his stats!

Strong, invincible!

Looking at his 5 unallocated attribute points, Mo Ming began to consider how to distribute them—

As for the matter of his class, Mo Ming had already decided long ago: he wanted to be a Warrior.

And in a typical game, the attributes related to a Warrior were: Strength, Agility, and Constitution.
Strength increased attack power, Agility increased speed, and Constitution increased health.

Mo Ming first eliminated the option of Constitution—although his health was low, wouldn’t it be fine as long as he didn’t get hit?

That left Strength and Agility.
Logically speaking, attack power was definitely more important in the early game, as increasing attack power meant increasing mob-clearing efficiency.
However, Mo Ming was currently facing monsters of level 6 and above; even with an additional 5 points in Strength, he probably still wouldn’t be able to break their defense.

What’s more, Mo Ming had 【Death’s Pity】 to boost his attack power, so his need for attack power wasn’t that high.

Thus, Mo Ming allocated all 5 attribute points to Agility—now only four of his attributes were at 1 point!

With Mo Ming’s skills, as long as his speed could keep up, no one would be able to hit him.

After allocating his points, Mo Ming moved his body around a bit, feeling the bonus from the 5 points in Agility… Although the increase was subtle, Mo Ming could still feel it.

For a player like Mo Ming who pursued the extreme, any slight change in his body was crucial.

Then, without lingering any longer, Mo Ming continued to advance deeper into the cave, sword in hand.

Along the way, Mo Ming encountered several more Mine Rats, but he didn’t kill them.
Instead, after dodging a few attacks, he found an opportunity to bypass them.
After a while, once he was out of the Mine Rats’ aggro range, they would return on their own.

The reason he chose to flee wasn’t because he thought the full-health, normal Mine Rats had too much HP and it would be too slow to grind them down with 1 point of guaranteed damage, but because he noticed that someone had entered the mine.

A little thought was all it took to guess that the people coming in now were most likely the ones who had been killed by the rats earlier.
To avoid trouble, Mo Ming decided to just run away.

After venturing deep into the mine for a long distance, Mo Ming still hadn’t seen any monsters other than Mine Rats, so he concluded that the mine… at least this floor, probably had no other types of monsters.

It was fortunate that the monster density in this mine wasn’t very high, which allowed Mo Ming to bypass the Mine Rats blocking his path and advance… With his current Agility, if he pulled more than 5 Mine Rats at once, he couldn’t guarantee that he’d be able to escape unscathed.

However, along the way, Mo Ming still spent some time killing two rats to raise his level to 3 and to max out the souls needed for 【Death’s Pity】.
Although the additional 4 attack power still couldn’t break their defense, it was better than nothing… As for the attribute points, they naturally all went into Agility.

Up to this point, Mo Ming finally had one attribute that broke into the double digits.
A truly joyous occasion…

Although this mine seemed to twist and turn everywhere, looking intricate and complex, as a novice map, it was actually very simple to navigate alone—there was only one path with no forks.
Following it to the end led to the entrance to the second floor.

And at the entrance to the second floor, three Mine Rats were chewing on the walls nearby—the main food source for Mine Rats was ore, which was hidden in the walls and had to be dug out by the cave rats themselves.
One of the two rats he had killed on the way had dropped a piece of quality-1 Iron Ore.

Looking at these three Mine Rats that showed no intention of leaving the entrance, Mo Ming found them a bit annoying… Although he could lure them over here and then find a way to get past, he didn’t want to do that.

When Mo Ming entered the mine, nothing like a “zone change” had occurred.
This meant that if he forced his way into the second floor, there was an eighty percent chance that these three Mine Rats would chase him down there—and since he had absolutely no information about the second floor, Mo Ming didn’t want to rush in so recklessly with three rats in tow.

But if he fought them directly, with his current Agility, he couldn’t guarantee victory against these three Mine Rats… This further strengthened Mo Ming’s resolve—to persist on the all-Agility path without wavering!
At least until his Agility was sufficient to handle combat, Mo Ming had no intention of allocating points to other attributes.

Unfortunately, resolve couldn’t change anything, at least not his current stats, which were inadequate for the situation.

“Change the situation…” Mo Ming frowned, then opened his backpack and took out the Essence of Holy Light.

After taking it out for a look, Mo Ming threw it back into his bag… The Essence of Holy Light was only effective when fighting the undead, and Mine Rats were clearly not undead creatures.

So the question was, in a quest that didn’t involve undead creatures, why was he given an item to counter them—was there a problem with the game’s design, or was it just not meant to be used here?

—The answer was obviously the latter: this item would be useful later.

From this, it seemed that undead-type monsters were likely to appear on the second floor of the mine.

Although it was quite normal for a place like a mine to become a dwelling for the undead in previous settings… it seemed a bit strange for them to be coexisting with a group of normal creatures.

Mo Ming thought for a moment, then took out the piece of Iron Ore that had dropped earlier and gently tossed it forward.
The Iron Ore flew in an arc, landed on the ground, rolled a few times, and finally stopped a little over 6 meters away from the rat closest to him.

6 meters—that was the alert… or aggro range of a normal Mine Rat—this was the experience Mo Ming had gained along the way.

However, 【Horizon】 was not a game with very rigid data.
Although the aggro range was 6 meters, it didn’t mean that you would only be attacked if you entered within 6 meters of a Mine Rat—

If a Mine Rat saw you from the front, it would probably attack from over 8 meters away.
If you made a loud noise while walking, the Mine Rat’s attention would be drawn by the sound, and if it saw you then, you would also be attacked.

After throwing the stone, Mo Ming immediately took a few steps back, retreating to a distance of more than 8 meters from that rat.

Because Mo Ming’s control of the distance was very good, only the rat closest to him looked in the direction of the noise.
After seeing the piece of Iron Ore, this Mine Rat immediately abandoned the wall it was happily chewing on and ran over.

Although the monsters in this game also had a certain level of intelligence, a rat in the novice village wasn’t going to be that smart… While it could recognize the Iron Ore in front of it as food, this rat didn’t think about why there was a piece of Iron Ore lying in the middle of the path.

As the rat advanced, Mo Ming also retreated, always maintaining a distance of just over 8 meters from it.

After reaching the Iron Ore, the Mine Rat immediately started to chew on it right there on the spot.

Seeing that the Mine Rat had been successfully lured out, Mo Ming charged forward with his sword, looking as if he was the one with the level suppression… Mo Ming wasn’t sure he could win against three rats at once, but against one or two, he was fearless.

Since the Mine Rat was busy chewing on the stone with its head down, it didn’t attack the moment Mo Ming entered the 8-meter range.
Only when Mo Ming entered its aggro range did the Mine Rat finally drop the Iron Ore in its paws and attack him.

At a greater distance, the Mine Rat’s opening attack was a pounce.
After the pounce, if the remaining distance was short, it would directly attack with its claws and teeth… As for the tail whip attack, that seemed to be something only the elite monster could use; Mo Ming hadn’t seen normal Mine Rats use it.

Due to his many encounters, Mo Ming was very adept at dealing with Mine Rats.
He weaved around the Mine Rat, his Novice Sword constantly scraping across its body, the glint of the blade flashing everywhere… If you ignored the gray “【-1】”s constantly popping up from the Mine Rat, it really looked like he had the posture of a skilled player.

Although the damage was low, the quantity made up for it.
The Mine Rat, which only had 220 HP in total, saw its health steadily decrease under Mo Ming’s attacks, and it was about to lose half of it.

“Squeak—!” However, after the health bar above its head was reduced by half, the Mine Rat suddenly let out an extremely sharp cry.

After the Mine Rat cried out, Mo Ming subconsciously felt that something was wrong.

“Squeak squeak squeak!” Hearing their companion’s call, the two rats that had been chewing on the wall at the entrance immediately scurried over.

Forcing back the half-health Mine Rat No. 1 with a single slash, Mo Ming, without a second word, charged directly towards the passage to the lower level, meeting the two oncoming rats head-on.

Although it was only a distance of a little over ten meters, Mo Ming’s situation was still extremely perilous, especially when he made direct contact with the two charging Mine Rats—although he hadn’t tried it, Mo Ming estimated that if he were to be bitten by a Mine Rat, he would definitely be sent back to respawn.

Twisting his body to dodge Rat No. 2’s pounce, Mo Ming simultaneously raised his sword, using the flat of the blade to block Rat No. 3’s pounce.

“Screech—” With a grating metallic sound, Rat No. 3’s large front teeth bit directly onto Mo Ming’s Novice Sword.

Because the attribute difference between normal and elite monsters was huge, Mo Ming didn’t lose health when parrying a normal Mine Rat’s pounce.

Not content with just biting, Rat No. 3 latched onto Mo Ming’s Novice Sword and began to chew.

In fact, this was the Mine Rat’s only ability—Weapon Destruction.
Since they usually ate metal ores, Mine Rats had a set of extremely strong teeth.
When fighting them, weapon durability would be consumed exceptionally fast.
In a situation like Mo Ming’s, where the weapon was directly grabbed and bitten by a Mine Rat, it wouldn’t take long for the weapon’s durability to be completely depleted.

Weapons and equipment in 【Horizon】 had durability values, and they needed to be repaired when the durability fell below a certain point.
As the quality of the equipment increased, the repair costs would also increase, and if the durability loss was too high, the repair costs would increase even further.
If the durability reached 0, the repair costs would become extremely expensive.

After some time, when the mainstream players’ levels reached 6, they would discover this annoying characteristic of the Mine Rats.
The increased consumption of durability meant increased repair costs, which made many players deeply detest these creatures.

But since this was the only mine in the village, and one had to come here to learn or improve the mining skill, players could only brace themselves and face these annoying rats… Of course, that’s a story for later.

However, as the starter weapon that everyone had, the Novice Sword did not have a durability setting—which meant that the Mine Rats’ annoying characteristic was completely useless against Mo Ming.
Since the Novice Sword in his hand had no durability, it couldn’t be broken by being bitten.

Rat No. 3 just hung onto Mo Ming’s sword, preventing him from swinging it properly.
With two other rats behind him, Mo Ming had no choice but to drag Rat No. 3 along as he ran.

The entrance to the second floor of the mine was a flight of stairs.
Since walking down stairs was slower than running on flat ground, Mo Ming jumped straight down.

Seeing Mo Ming run towards the second floor, Rat No. 1 and Rat No. 2 had followed him, but… halfway there, the two rats suddenly stopped.
They spun in place a few times, then squeaked at Mo Ming again, but showed no intention of coming down.

Seeing the two rats’ actions, Mo Ming immediately understood what they meant—they were afraid.

Rat No. 3, which had been grabbing onto Mo Ming’s Novice Sword and chewing away, had now also given up on its grinding.
It lay silently on the ground, its whole body curled into a ball, not daring to move a muscle… well, if trembling didn’t count as moving.

Looking at Rat No. 3 curled up and shivering, Mo Ming swung his sword down without a shred of pity.

【-1】 No defense break.

Although he still didn’t break its defense, this time Mo Ming had put all his strength into the swing.
The Mine Rat was sent tumbling, and the skin on its back was cut open, revealing a not-too-deep wound.

But the Mine Rat didn’t counterattack.
After flipping over, it started shivering again, its small eyes filled with terror.

Seeing the rat like this, Mo Ming didn’t hold back, grinding it to death one sword strike at a time.

Seeing their companion die, Rat No. 1 and Rat No. 2 immediately turned and fled without looking back, as if they didn’t want to stay a moment longer.

Picking up a white-quality bracer and a white material called a Rat’s Tooth that this unlucky rat had dropped, Mo Ming turned his head and looked into the depths of the mine… Ever since he had set foot in here, a chilling aura had filled the air, making one feel very uncomfortable.