[Captain of the Wonder Zoo]

Players on server 3145 were stunned.  

As the typical “XP packs” roaming around in the Roaming Zone, they were used to running away at the first sight of danger—but this time, it was the enemies who fled first. And it wasn’t just a fluke. Multiple players from 3145 experienced the same odd treatment—opposing players ran even faster than them, as if they were some kind of monsters.

[World Chat]  

Money Matters Most: [What’s going on? Did the Roaming Zone change tactics…]  

Bubble Ball: [What change? Haven’t you noticed our server’s Stability Points has gone up?!]  

Ups And Downs: [Who’s the Bodhisattva contributing to our server?!]

Even the other players in the Roaming Zone wanted to know what was up with 3145!

In the Roaming Zone, IDs don’t show and appearances can be changed at will, so no one can tell who’s predator or prey. Sometimes they’d foolishly let spies slip by, and other times they’d blindly charge at mysterious players only to lose everything.

The game forums were abuzz. Once word got out that 3145 had knocked top-ranking teams off their pedestals, the stories about major server teams flopping started to spread. Combined with some players’ exaggerated retellings, the whole thing quickly turned into a sensational event.

Some players began digging through the 3145 Roaming Zone leaderboard to figure out just how many mysterious powerhouses were in that server, sharing all kinds of screenshots and info. Eventually, people were combing through the rankings, analyzing nearly every high-ranking player.

3145 was supposed to be at the bottom of all servers—but thanks to a few mysterious players, the whole server had taken on an air of secrecy.

The forum hype didn’t affect 3145 players one bit. In fact, because of all the buzz, the number of new players joining the server had doubled in just a few days. The Roaming Zone gameplay had only recently been unlocked, and somehow some experts had carved a golden path forward for the server. The local “slacker” players suddenly found themselves filled with motivation.

“Whoa, how did we climb up the rankings?”  

“Turns out the Roaming Zone is actually playable! I tried a few rounds, it felt great!”  

“Who’s the Bodhisattva? Our Stability Points went up—we can mine now!”

The Roaming Zone had become easier to survive in, so players from 3145 jumped into action, forming teams in world chat. Since enemies would run at the sight of them, grouping up and lying low felt like a perfect strategy.

The 3145 players were having the time of their lives. The more they participated, the better things got. Stability Points contributions were anonymous, but the rising server-wide Stability Points was very real, as were the Divine Fragments awarded. As more players put in effort, the rankings kept climbing.

By the time they checked the Roaming Zone leaderboard again, they were no longer at the bottom—they had somehow climbed into the midst of top servers, surrounded by heavy-hitters, a lone dark horse among fire-tier servers.

While they couldn’t yet compete with the very top-tier servers, this was still a huge win for 3145.

In smaller, backwater servers, wild resource competition was less fierce. Once their wilderness stabilized, the living conditions transformed. Just a few days ago, 3145 players were struggling—but now, life was suddenly good. That shift in fortune gave them an undeniable glow.

Newbie servers had rankings influenced by big-name teams, and some players hired traders to farm materials in them. The Roaming Zone was a key method for acquiring tradable resources. Among the fire-tier servers who’d flopped, there were even leaderboard squad members—so although newbie servers didn’t impact high-level zones much, losses in the Roaming Zone meant fewer materials for some top-tier players.

“Fierce Tiger 123”, a.k.a. Mage Alt 123, was annoyed when he saw the news. He had failed to add Cycle of Eternity as a friend the other day and, under Ragdoll Cat’s orders, had camped out in 3145 for days, staring at the Cycle of Eternity’s profile for three days straight without any sign of him logging in. After finally giving up and returning to the high-level zone, he saw the news about 3145.

“How was I supposed to know 3145 had some famous squad? Who farms materials in that server anyway?”  

“A ten-man squad? If 3145 had something like that, I’d definitely remember!”

Other players: “???”  

‘You stayed in 3145 and didn’t learn a single thing?’

Ragdoll Cat leisurely scrolled the forum as the others got fired up in discussion.

The forum screenshots of Roaming Zone matches were limited, but a clear pattern emerged from the ones involving 3145: they gained massive amounts of Divine Fragments each time, often doubling the second place total. Most of these encounters happened in medium or large Roaming Zones.

“Doesn’t 3145 have someone like that?” he suddenly said.

Only players with high personal ratings or team players could consistently rank in the Roaming Zone. By carefully examining the individual player rankings on Server 3145, you could find some clues.  

For example, right now, the rank of Cycle of Eternity, who had vanished since the Tiandi Temple event, was rising.

“Wait, isn’t Cycle of Eternity a lone wolf?”  

Fierce Tiger123 asked in confusion, “Didn’t people say it was a small team operating in the Roaming Zone?”

Ragdoll Cat pointed at the leaderboard. While looking at Cycle of Eternity, he also spotted another ID not far ahead—Little Bunny 123.

“Not necessarily. And it’s likely someone else has already noticed.”  

With that, he forwarded the information about the team to his own captain.

—-

While the world channel was flooded with thanks to the mysterious benefactor, Zhou Sui had just woken up. He stared blankly at the artificial sun rising behind thick curtains. He had woken up three hours earlier than usual.

Doctor Wu had strictly mandated a regular sleep schedule lately, sending alarms and reminders he couldn’t avoid.

Fortunately, Dr. Wu had noticed Zhou Sui wasn’t interested in talking and had passed the daily check-in duty to the mechanical cat instead.  

However, just because Dr. Wu didn’t contact him didn’t mean others wouldn’t. Director Li from Capital University had just messaged him.

That’s when Zhou Sui remembered—the new semester was starting in a few days.

Because his rehab ended late, the university had processed his documents after most dorm arrangements were already done. They had placed him in a popular major, but there were no single rooms left.  

The fact that Zhou Sui preferred not to stay in a communal dormitory was also within the school’s considerations. However, the school was doing temporary dorm building planning today, and single rooms were tight this year. It wasn’t very convenient to adjust for students with special circumstances, so they came to ask Zhou Sui if he could accept a double room.

“The double room we arranged for you is near the staff area—quiet and not noisy. You’ll be sharing it with a graduate student who only returns occasionally for research. Most of the time, he won’t be there. It’s basically like having a single room. It also has a private bedroom, so you won’t be disturbed,” Director Li explained, worried Zhou Sui might have trouble adjusting. “Don’t worry, once dorm restructuring is complete after the term starts, we’ll move you to a single.”

Zhou Sui wasn’t that eager to go to school, but he wasn’t good at turning down the kindness of older folks like Director Li. “Anything’s fine.”

Director Li let out a breath of relief. “Then I’ll go ahead and confirm things. Don’t worry, I’ll inform your roommate in advance.  

If there’s anything you’re uncomfortable with, you can contact me directly.”

After ending the call, Zhou Sui exchanged a look with the mechanical cat beside him.

Although Zhou Sui thought commuting was also fine, the distance between Capital University and his current home was a bit too much.  

On days with heavy classes, living on campus would be more convenient. The only downside was that the school probably didn’t have a training room like the one at home.

“We’re moving!” the mechanical cat was clearly excited about this new experience. “Are we bringing a lot of stuff? Should we buy anything new?”

Zhou Sui thought about it. He had no concept of how much to bring. As long as he had clothes and food, it should be fine. “Just bring whatever, I guess.”  

Rather than worrying about luggage, he was more concerned about having to interact with someone. He hoped the new roommate would be easy to get along with… though, ideally, they wouldn’t show up for weeks.

While the owner wasn’t concerned, the cat definitely was.

When Zhou Sui left his training room, he found the cat rushing in and out, even dragging out his old rice bowl—looking every bit like a little housekeeper preparing for a move.

When Zhou Sui tried to get closer to watch, the cat scolded him for getting in the way and told him to go find something else to do.

Zhou Sui had no choice but to sit in the living room and stare off into space.  

After zoning out for a while, he grabbed two nutrient tubes from the fridge, drank them, and then picked up his login device.

He was logging in earlier than usual today. Lately, he had spent a lot of time in the Roaming Zone, and his logout spot was inside Slack Bro’s territory.

The team’s shared homestead was stable and provided buffs. Recently, with increased Stability Points and the ability to mine and forage, whenever they weren’t running the Roaming Zone, Slack Bro would drag Rich Bro all over the wild. One was obsessed with gathering and mining, the other with catching wild pets.

After a few days, the homestead had grown significantly larger. Several new fields had been cultivated, and Slack Bro had even unlocked some passive buffs.  

Now, simply idling in the homestead could trigger random buffs, so when the team wasn’t busy, they liked hanging out there doing nothing.

As soon as Zhou Sui logged in, he heard the lively chatter from the homestead—everyone else in the team was already there.

“Gotta say, the spots Brother Bunny told me about really had some good stuff. Rich Bro got a pile of gourmet pet food out of it.”  

Slack Bro, wearing a new outfit for farming, chattered away as he worked.

Rich Bro wasn’t like the others who used tree food to upgrade skills. He used all his tree food to feed his pets. It gave less EXP, but it still worked. “Those guys tried to trick me into wasting money on low-value items, but thankfully there’s Brother Bunny.”

On this poor countryside server, the marketplace was full of overpriced forage dug up by players. Only Rich Bro could buy without blinking, single-handedly pushing up 3145’s pet food prices.  

This attracted a swarm of merchants chasing after him, but Rich Bro wasn’t some gullible whale. He was sharp and, together with Slack Bro, once even scammed a batch of goods out of the merchants.

Zhou Sui had lost interest in farming after learning that growing crops and tilling fields didn’t increase his tree food. Slack Bro had tried to explain it all to him, but all Zhou Sui remembered were the fancy names of the vegetables. He had zero interest in crafting or alchemy.  

Luckily, Little Bunny 123 knew a ton—from map layouts to farming and gathering. Asking him was way faster than searching strategy guides online.

Slack Bro’s plants and Rich Bro’s pets had benefited a lot from Little Bunny 123’s advice. He was like a walking treasure bag.

For instance, right now, Little Bunny 123 was poring over some detailed documents—official patch notes and storylines unearthed by lore-driven players.  

Zhou Sui had zero interest in that wall of text.

Rather than reading it all, he preferred looking at marked key points.  

Useful info could help him quickly pinpoint a breakthrough. As long as he found a single lead, he could work from there.

Truly a strange person, he thought vaguely, zoning out while wondering if he should go out later to buy more nutrient tubes.

When he came back to himself, he suddenly realized the person across from him was no longer reading—and was now quietly looking at him.

Zhou Sui: “What is it?”

“You were staring at me,” Little Bunny 123 said, tapping his panel and sliding it over. “Wanna see?”

As the panel moved closer, Little Bunny 123 also shifted his seat sideways.

The two of them, originally sitting across from each other, were now side by side.  

Zhou Sui instinctively leaned back and placed his hand behind him to gain distance, but Little Bunny 123 suddenly paused his forward motion. Instead, he simply pushed the panel toward Zhou Sui for them to look at together.

At this distance, the panel was much clearer. All of Little Bunny 123’s materials were right there to see.  

Zhou Sui’s gaze paused—he ignored the lore and looked at the skill tree.

“My skill tree’s pretty simple. I’ve only invested in a few support skills.” Little Bunny 123 noticed and openly displayed his skill build. “Once you reach higher-level areas, it’s better to set privacy settings. Don’t let others see the core skills—they might analyze and counter you.”

“There was a player in Skyward Ascent who exposed their skill tree. After that, others figured out how to counter all their moves.”

The Divine Tree system emphasized personalized builds. Skills were intentionally obscure and only activated in specific conditions.  

Other players could only guess skill effects from what they saw, not the underlying mechanics. So for high-ranking players, keeping their builds secret was essential to maintaining the element of surprise.

Zhou Sui didn’t respond, continuing to study the skills.

Little Bunny 123: “Any questions?”

Zhou Sui didn’t think there was any harm in revealing builds. “A skill with flaws is useless anyway.”

If regular players could see the flaws, the intelligent game core would definitely consider them too.  

If a skill had flaws, it wasn’t the optimal solution.

Little Bunny 123 stared at him thoughtfully, then suddenly smiled. “You’re right. It is kind of useless.”

Zhou Sui glanced over his skill tree and noticed that none of the skills were particularly useful. He said bluntly, “Your items are garbage.”

“This is just my alt,” Little Bunny 123 explained. “Once I hit level 40, I’ll transfer the stuff to my main.”

This guy really has time to spare… Zhou Sui had opened a few loot crates before and knew the drop rate for tradable materials from the Roaming Zone was under 10%.  

And considering this guy had ties to other leaderboard players, his staying in the newbie zone clearly wasn’t just for fun.

But, if he knows the skill tree is a vulnerability, why show it to him?

Weird.

Zhou Sui didn’t bother thinking about things that had nothing to do with him. Playing online games was different from full-immersion competitive games.

Teammates were necessary, and mutual assistance was important too—but what his teammates were thinking wasn’t something he needed to worry about.

However, because of what Little Bunny 123 said, Zhou Sui opened the rankings. Ever since he started playing the game, he had only checked the rankings at the very beginning; lately, he hadn’t paid much attention to them.

In the rankings for the newbie server, he had a low level and few enhanced skills. Even after grinding so much in the Roaming Zones, he had only just climbed into the top 200 of the overall combat power leaderboard for the newbie server—and that was nothing compared to the rankings in higher-level zones.

A long time ago, Slack Bro had told him that the rankings were based on a comprehensive evaluation.

Right now, since he hadn’t entered any advanced zones, his comprehensive evaluation lagged far behind others. That meant that once he did enter a high-level area, the competition would become much more intense.

The higher the comprehensive evaluation, the tougher the challenges. In this game, Divine Tree, only by growing stronger could one encounter more challenges.

Zhou Sui was thinking about the gap—the gap between himself and other players.

The gap was too big. There were many things that couldn’t simply be made up for with good gameplay… To raise his overall evaluation more quickly, he still needed a lot more.

At this point, experience was actually the least urgent thing.

Ever since he started farming materials in the Roaming Zones, Zhou Sui had stopped actively leveling up. But he had managed to gather a full set of equipment.

Leveling up only gave you attribute points and skill slots, which didn’t matter much to Zhou Sui. Normal skills didn’t impact gameplay much. The most important thing was the mutated skills gained after skill advancement. The Roaming Zones had a ton of materials to farm. After five straight days of farming and piecing together scattered materials, he finally managed to max out the skill Incense Ash Fire.

[Upgraded Effect – Bone-Penetrating Fire (3/3): Burn effect can stack; combos increase burn duration. For every three seconds of burn accumulated, gain an additional 5% effect. Within 12 feet of attack range, two extra targets can be affected. Triggers extra effect once every 20 seconds.]

The first level upgrade had only increased Incense Ash Fire’s armor-break effect by 2%. After two more upgrades, the extra effect rose to 5%. Still, it only triggered once every 20 seconds for a 5% armor break, and the persistent effect was just the accumulated 3-second 3%. Zhou Sui had consumed a massive amount of tree food just to max it out.

After maxing it, it gave Zhou Sui an unexpected bonus: the Bone-Penetrating Fire effect now became an AoE attack. Originally, this medicine-type skill had AoE properties, but ever since it turned into an armor-breaker, Zhou Sui could only use it for combo stacking on a single target—basically, it had become a single-target skill.

Now that it was maxed out, the Bone-Penetrating Fire was once again effective in group attacks. This was especially useful when fighting players who liked to group together. With a 12-foot range—roughly 4 meters from the core target—any enemies hit by his combo could also be hit with armor break.

Zhou Sui was very satisfied with the upgraded result. Compared to the brief crowd control of the original Scatter Powder, he needed explosive power more to make up for his lack of raw attack.

But this also raised a new problem: the higher the skill level, the more materials it required.

“You’re not planning to keep upgrading skills?” Little Bunny 123 asked, catching a glimpse of Zhou Sui looking at the skill tree.

Zhou Sui wanted to invest in a basic attack skill from the weapon branch. He often used it as a bridging skill. But without enough tree food, he wouldn’t proceed. “Not enough food.”

The two people farming nearby looked over when they heard this.

Slack Bro said, “Bro, a master I met once said everything’s a trade-off—it’s all about balance… Old Rich! Watch your cow! Don’t let it eat my crops!!!”

In their homestead, a cow was running wild. Slack Bro grabbed his gear and ran off to chase it. Rich Bro had to drag his own cow back. “But Brother Zhou really is short on feed. Incense Ash Fire is a fire-type skill, and it needs fire-type materials to upgrade well. He didn’t get many of those at all.”

That was the crux of the issue. Feeding mismatched attribute materials to Incense Ash Fire reduced the experience gain significantly.

Even though the Roaming Zones dropped a lot of tree food… Zhou Sui had terrible luck. The skill materials he opened barely contained any fire-type items. Every time he opened a box, the rest of the team would fall into speechless silence—and then awkwardly reassure him, “Next time will be better.”

Slack Bro tried to comfort him. “Bro, think about it—you got a powerful armor-break skill. It’s normal to be a bit unlucky for a while.”

But Little Bunny 123 picked up on the deeper meaning in Zhou Sui’s words. He said, “You have something else on your mind.”

“A loss,” Zhou Sui replied.

The two nearby looked over when they heard that. They were already grinding in the Roaming Zone every day—that was one of the fastest ways to gather resources. How could it still be a loss?

Zhou Sui didn’t say anything more after that, leaving Slack Bro and the others thoroughly confused.

In the newbie server, there was no concept of level suppression—once you had enough experience, you’d automatically level up and enter the higher-level zones, where competition was tougher. Some players would avoid gaining experience to delay leveling up, which meant sacrificing certain gameplay options. Right now, Zhou Sui was level 35, while Slack Bro and the others were already level 37, even after deliberately controlling their XP gain. If Zhou Sui wanted to stockpile enough tree food before heading to the higher zones, he needed to manage his remaining XP bar carefully.

Especially because he wanted to gain the initiative after hitting level 40—so figuring out how to farm more food before maxing out that XP bar was a problem he had to solve.

All’s fair in war—early on, they could get a lot of Divine Fragments in the Roaming Zones. But later, as more players became cautious, the returns would drop. That meant their income would soon start declining, and it might be impossible to reach his goal before level 40.

Just then, a team join request popped up.

The applicant had an unfamiliar ID and was only level 13.

Little Bunny 123’s eyes paused slightly. He recognized the unfamiliar name. “Well, maybe there is a way.”

“There’s a join request. Should we accept it?”

Zhou Sui and the others looked over in confusion as a stranger suddenly appeared in their team list.

The ID was “Dog 456”… a very familiar naming style.

The Wonder Zoo?

“Sorry to intrude,” said Dog 456. His voice had an unfamiliar quality—deep and firm, like that of a middle-aged man.

The moment he spoke, Slack Bro felt like he was facing the school’s disciplinary head and instinctively turned to Little Bunny 123. “Brother Bunny, who is this?”

Little Bunny 123 replied simply, “Captain of the Wonder Zoo.”

The moment he finished, Slack Bro and Rich Bro both jolted in shock.

Zhou Sui was puzzled. Who is that?

The Wonder Zoo’s captain—a rarely seen player in-game—was said to be a hardcore story enthusiast who often ignored the team’s missions. However, he held first-hand knowledge of key storylines and was one of the most mysterious players on the rankings. Slack Bro, who often browsed the forums, remembered that this expert had supposedly been absorbed in some story mission for ages. What was he suddenly doing in the newbie zone?

“Long story short—I’m here to talk cooperation.”

The Wonder Zoo’s captain got straight to the point. “Cycle of Eternity, are you interested in world exploration?”