Show Me the Money

Liu Lan might seem like she was pampered since childhood, but her cooking was extraordinary. Made from everyday common ingredients, breakfast didn't vary but the dishes were creative and greatly aroused Fatty's appetite.

Smiling as she watched Fatty finish his meal, Liu Lan forcefully dragged him out for exercise before Fatty was allowed to be online.

"Well, well, our happy man is here." Cheng Xiong laughed heartily.

"Tch, you jealous?" Fatty raised his brow.

"After you logged off, we went to scout around for a bit. There are no traps, but the tunnels are tangled and complicated. It's very easy to get lost in here," Xiao Jian informed.

"Of course, it's a maze after all." Fatty nodded in understanding. "Let's explore together when Lan'er gets on."

"I'm here." Logging into the game, Liu Lan walked to Fatty.

"Let's go." Xiao Jian walked at the very front with Han Shen right behind him. Cheng Xiong the Violent Sacrificer was the very center, while Fatty and Liu Lan were last.

One hour later.

"Ugh, this shit is making me dizzy." Cheng Xiong sat on the ground, hugging his head and refusing to move no matter what. "You guys go figure it out. Come back and call me when you find the way."

The sound of something crawling suddenly echoed from the distance. Alert by this sound, Cheng Xiong hurriedly stood up.

At the corner of a turn, a monster the size of a basin appeared before their eyes. This monster's body was crystal clear as if burnished from the best of glass. Standing straight on six legs, the monster brandish its two big pincers and shrieked at the party.

Appraisal.

Fatty quickly received the monster's details.

Crystal Crab

Level: 55

Attack: 105 - 120

Defense: 120

HP: 6000

Notes: A strange monster living in Crystal Maze. Feeding on crystals since birth, it has mutated into the crystalline version of itself.

Fatty shared its information in the party chat. Everyone gasped in admiration.

"So you become what you eat? If one grows up in a dung pit, will they look like dung?" Xiao Jian wondered.

"You can try and tell us when you have the answer." Fatty swept him a glance.

Whew whew! Waving its pincers, the Crystal Crab fearlessly charged at them.

Clank! Xiao Jian parried with his sword. He hacked and repeatedly forced the monster back, dealing small cracks on the pincers.

Bam! An attack hit the crab's shell and shattered it, then pierced in deeply. This skill of Cheng Xiong took more than half of the monster's health.

"Bro, this Meteor Icicle skill isn't so bad, don't you think?" Cheng Xiong asked with a smug smile.

"Mmm." Fatty raised his chin, indicating him to look.

Cheng Xiong glanced over and instantly jumped back with a shocked scream. Upfront, a dense patch of several hundred Crystal Crabs were racing over with brandished claws.

"Baldy, pounce on them one at a time. Look how beautiful they are," Xiao Jian instigated.

"I'll tank." Liu Lan got on her Fire Cloud Panther and stood at the very front with her shield up.

The tunnel was four to five meters wide and so Liu Lan alone was able to keep all of the monsters out.

"Baldy, why aren't you healing?!" Fatty yelped.

"What's with the anxiety? She hasn't lost any health yet!" Cheng Xiong rolled his eyes.

"Master is worried about his wife, alright? Of course he'd be nervous." Han Shen laughed loudly.

Liu Lan blushed as a sweet sensation rose up in her heart.

With Liu Lan tanking and Cheng Xiong buffing, their safety was guaranteed, only that the killing speed was a bit unbearable. After all, they were too few in numbers and severely lacked AoE attacks.

"Wheat, pounce! Inky, you can't be lazy either."

Everybody released their pets. Chaos ensued everywhere on the ground and in the air.

The Crystal Crabs' damage was so-so, and their attack method couldn't be simpler. They only relied on the pincers and occasionally spat out some bubbles that shattered the things they touched and dealt a certain damage. After a while, the party annihilated this cast of crabs.

"Do they have ovaries? I love crab ovaries!" Baldy Cheng Xiong ignored the drops and flipped through the corpses.

"Don't waste your time. They grew up eating crystals. If there are any ovaries, it'd be crystal ovaries. Can you eat that?" Xiao Jian said.

"Who knows, that might just be edible." Fatty grabbed a Crystal Crab and knocked open the hard shell, revealing a huge lump of ovaries within.

"Auntie, I'm hungry!" Putting on a pitiful face, Han Shen appealed to Liu Lan.

Being addressed as 'auntie' by Han Shen, Liu Lan flushed red and shot Fatty a glare.

"Ahh, I'm hungry too. My Vigor is all gone, no wonder my attack was dropping so fast," Cheng Xiong wailed.

"Feed on your dried trail rations if you're hungry." Fatty glared at the two whiny kids.

"I'm out." Han Shen pretended to search his inventory. "I ate them as I cracked the mechanism earlier, or else I would have starved to death."

"I didn't learn Cooking, so you can only have this." Still blushing, Liu Lan took out a packaged food made by one of her guild's lifestyle players and handed it to Han Shen.

"Woah, me too!" Cheng Xiong leaped over, wanting to rob it from him.

"There's one for everyone." Liu Lan took out a few more packages and distributed them to Cheng Xiong, Xiao Jian, and Fatty.

"I'm fine." Fatty waved his arms and returned to focus on the crab corpses.

"That's great. Auntie1

, Master decided to lose weight recently. I'll eat this in his stead," Han Shen gurgled as he chewed the food and received another package.

……

"You guys finishing?" Fatty asked.

"Yep, yep." Han Shen bobbed his head.

"Alright then." Fatty also nodded. He then flicked his fingers, and a strand of fire burned up under the Crystal Crab he was holding. "I've learned Cooking, but haven't touched it for so long it's unfamiliar."

The aroma of cooked crab ovaries quickly filled the tunnels. The rest gawked with mouths agape.

"MASTER/FATTY! I'LL KILL YOU!"

Joking around for a little, everyone hugged a stomach full of crab ovaries. Fatty Harvested plenty more before the group set out again.

"Must be this way."

Stopping at a fork, Xiao Jian point at a tunnel. On their way here, they had quite a great number of scattered Crystal Crabs and harvested many crab ovaries.

"It should be this way, I think." Cheng Xiong declared after some consideration.

"What do you say?" Liu Lan looked at Fatty.

Fatty leisurely took out the X-Ray Mirror. "Lord Fatty will just calculate the way for ya."

"A compass?"

"O' spirit of sky and spirit of land, tell me which path to take. The Grand Supreme Elderly Lord heed my order at once!"

Putting on an act as he activated the function, Fatty scanned the surroundings, then pointed at a tunnel. "This one."

Kah… kah… The party heard a distinct noise as soon as they set foot in the tunnel. After several steps, the tunnel opened up into a hall, where countless Crystal Crabs crawled back and forth. The smallest ones were palm-sized, the bigger ones were bigger than a table, with one of them no smaller than a tank.

"This is the result of your calculation?" Cheng Xiong tilted his head to look at Fatty.

"It's a mistake, a mistake." Fatty smiled fawningly.

Whoosh! Spotting the group, the various Crystal Crabs flocked towards them.

"Withdraw!" Fatty made a quick decision.

The party retreated to the tunnel and employed the old strategy: Liu Lan tanked, Cheng Xiong healed, and the rest attacked.

Whoosh. A golden halo descended. After killing nearly half of the monsters here, Fatty finally reached level 45.

"Oh wow! Level 45 finally!"

It was getting harder and harder to level up from this stage of the game. Level 45 was only half the highest possible level, 90. One could imagine how harsh it was going to be to reach this peak.

The party spent nearly four hours to clean out the mobs until only the biggest one was left.

During the clean-up, Liu Lan and Han Shen also leveled up, while Xiao Jian and Cheng Xiong were only one short step away.

"Let's hope this boss will be generous and give us a superb item. Best be a Celestial one," Han Shen prayed.

"Dream on. If this thing has a Celestial item, Sallip would have taken it already. I even suspect we still haven't reached the real Crystal Maze yet."

"That's right. Despite having walked around for such a long time, we're actually still outside. The Crystal Maze is very big, this is only the outermost layer," said Fatty.

"How do you know?" Liu Lan looked at him in surprise.

"From my miraculous foresight." Fatty pulled out the X-Ray Mirror and accompanied it with the face of a prophet.

"This is your miraculous foresight?" Xiao Jian pointed at the crab boss that was thunderously charging at them.

"Cough, just as horses can stumble, everyone makes mistakes. Then again, I'm doing this for the loot," Fatty replied without feeling any shame at all.

Crystal Crab King

Gold boss

Level: 59

Attack: 120 - 135

Defense: 125

HP: 7500

Notes: A mutated crab living in Crystal Maze. Being the first generation to mutate, it underwent gradual changes and finally became the king of the Crystal Crabs.

By now everyone wasn't afraid of Gold bosses. Liu Lan tanked as usual while the others attacked.

Puff! A colorful bubble over a meter in diameter floated out from the boss's mouth and enshrouded Liu Lan's upper half body. Her health instantly plummeted while Cheng Xiong was caught off guard. After getting over the flurry, he barely managed to maintain her health with a high-rank recovery spell.

"A boss is a boss. Don't make this kind of elementary mistake again." Fatty said with a serious expression.

"F*ck! You dared embarrass me?!" Cheng Xiong vented all of his rage on the Crystal Crab King.

In actuality, as a level 59 Gold boss who was only one step away from advancing to Yao boss, the Crystal Crab King wasn't weak at all. Its physical attack and defense were very high in addition to its ability to fluently utilize water magic. If it was a normal team fighting instead, there was a high chance they'd be annihilated.

Too bad the crab king met Fatty's team. While few in numbers with poor class coordination, every one of them was a powerful expert who could kill it solo.

"What are you doing?" Cheng Xiong asked while he poured effort into healing.

Fatty wasn't attacking along with the others. Instead, he held a book of sorts and was drawing something in it.

"Wanna know?" Fatty looked up.

"Mhm." Cheng Xiong nodded.

"Not telling you." Fatty grinned.

Ba-thud! The Crystal Crab King emitted a final shriek and fell, quaking the ground with its massive body.

Harvest. Fatty wanted to get some crab ovaries.

Whoosh. A pearl that effused a faint mist appeared in his hand.

"Water inner core?" Fatty was stunned momentarily, then overjoyed.

1. 师娘 (lit. master's wife): address for one's teacher's wife. ↩