Cannon fodder in the Interstellar

Ruo Manni found a high-security inn room in the city and spent two gold coins to stay there. After activating the door lock, she took out a very generous level-up gift pack from her system inventory.

It truly was a very generous gift pack. Inside were five pieces of green equipment, five mecha components, and three jade slips.

Having already received nine level-up gift packs before, Ruo Manni felt that out of all the level-up gifts, the jade slips were always the most valuable. Seeing that there were three jade slips in this level-up gift pack, her eyes lit up.

Without hesitation, Ruo Manni picked up a jade slip and pressed it against her forehead, excited to discover that it contained an extremely complex sword technique. Just by looking at the moves, she could tell it was completely different from the basic swordsmanship she had learned before. This set of sword techniques was called: Flowing Cloud Swordsmanship.

In this world, cold weapons like swords and knives were predominant, so it was often necessary to use a long sword. However, Ruo Manni’s sword skills had many flaws — so many that she didn’t even want to talk about them. She had been distressed about her poor swordsmanship for a long time.

Ruo Manni had been worried about not having enough credit points to buy good swordsmanship manuals for training, so she didn’t expect that the War Realm would deliver exactly what she needed, like sending charcoal in snowy weather. How could she not be excited?

However, Ruo Manni no longer naively believed that these were skills configured by the War Realm system itself. She suspected that this was the handiwork of either Hua Deqi or the Crown Prince.

Feeling both touched and happy to have her wishes fulfilled, Ruo Manni picked up another jade slip. After “reading” it, she became excited again. It was an exceptionally refined whip technique, and once she mastered it and combined it with her mental power, its lethality would surely increase significantly.

But why was it also called “Flowing Cloud”? The flowing Cloud Whip Technique doesn’t seem to sound very imposing.

Before “reading” the third jade slip, Ruo Manni already had a guess, and sure enough, after she “read” it, it was indeed a throwing knife technique.

Ruo Manni’s skill with throwing knives was actually the best because she had learned techniques taught by Li Qixing and had developed a deep understanding of them through practice. The reason her damage value wasn’t high was that her cultivation level was still low, preventing her from fully unleashing the true power of the throwing knife technique.

After “reading” the throwing knife technique given by the system, Ruo Manni confirmed that this technique was no ordinary one. However, it couldn’t quite compare to the one taught by Li Qixing, as he was something he had innovated through real combat experience. Nevertheless, some good techniques within it could be integrated into her learning.

But why was this throwing knife technique also called “Flowing Cloud”? Flowing Cloud Throwing Knife Technique.

Why were all three of these skills named “Flowing Cloud”? Ruo Manni was genuinely puzzled. Was it because the system was too lazy to come up with names, so it just slapped the name “Flowing Cloud” onto every skill? Or was it because some “person with intentions” instructed the program staff responsible for “delivering” these techniques to her, and that person was just terrible at naming things, so they randomly chose a title?

However, the War Realm’s claim that the skills players learn are tailor-made wasn’t a lie. These three martial techniques were ones Ruo Manni had been practicing since her rebirth. The War Realm hadn’t given her any new skills but rather upgraded versions of her original training techniques, which Ruo Manni could practice both in the War Realm and in the real world.

After learning all the techniques, Ruo Manni finally turned her attention to the five pieces of equipment.

Among the five pieces of equipment, three were weapons: a willow-leaf longsword, a magical weapon that was a long whip, and a set of ten willow-leaf throwing knives. It was clear at a glance that these three weapons were provided to complement the techniques.

However, unlike before, these three weapons were no longer basic equipment; they all had damage value bonuses. Each of the three weapons came with an additional 10 points of damage value, and the rarest feature was that they could be inlaid with gems to further increase their damage.

In the novel, there is only one source for such attribute-enhancing gems — they might drop after killing a dungeon boss, and even then, the drop rate is very low.

Aside from the three weapons, one of the other two pieces of equipment was a delicate-looking fan, which left Ruo Manni puzzled. Why would she need a fan?

The temperature in the residential areas of this world can be automatically regulated, and clothing can also automatically adjust its temperature. People rarely feel too cold or too hot, so a fan would serve no practical purpose.

After “reading” the information, Ruo Manni realized she had misunderstood—the fan was not an ordinary fan from Earth’s era. It was a piece of defensive equipment, configured to reduce the player’s received damage by 10% in one use, with a cooldown time of ten seconds.

The fan was also a growth-type piece of equipment that needed to be refined with certain special ores from the War Realm to be upgraded.

Ruo Manni had no impression of any information regarding this piece of equipment, so she would have to slowly search for more details about it later.

The other piece of equipment was a set of defensive robes, styled similarly to their battle suits.

Before reaching level ten, the War Realm players’ robes didn’t have any attribute values, and the wide robes were like sacks—extremely ugly.

Unexpectedly, after reaching level ten, the robes came with attributes. Although the 20 points of defense value weren’t high and there was a limit of 200 uses, the robes’ defense did not have a cooldown time and could be used continuously, which would be quite practical when clearing dungeons.

The most important thing was that the robes were in the combat style they were accustomed to wearing, which made them look quite pleasing to the eye.

Ruo Manni immediately changed into this set of robes. Since the system automatically adjusted the size of the clothes, Ruo Manni felt they were a bit too form-fitting. However, it didn’t hinder her movements at all, so she decided not to be too picky about it.

After thinking for a moment, Ruo Manni removed the veil covering her face and reset her appearance to normal. Now that she had disabled the anonymity setting, covering her face or making herself look ugly would seem overly pretentious. If her companions saw her like that, they would definitely tease her.

Ruo Manni was very pleased with the skills, techniques, and equipment she received, but she was quite dissatisfied with the mecha components. From the level-up gift packs for levels one through nine, she had only received eight mecha components. Adding the five she got this time, she had a total of thirteen, which was only one-fifth of the parts needed for a level-one mecha.

At this rate, she had no idea how many levels she would need to reach to collect enough parts for a complete mecha. Buying them from the War Realm system shop would be far too expensive. Yet, mechas could be used in dungeon battles, which made things quite frustrating.

Originally, Ruo Manni planned to apply for a personal room once she reached level ten. This way, when she wasn’t doing quests, she could train her skills in her personal room.

However, Hebrew Adam suggested she move to the Imperial Capital and establish a guild. For someone like Hebrew Adam, he would definitely set up a grand and fully equipped guild base. At that time, if Ruo Manni contributed enough to the guild, she could apply for a dedicated personal room without spending any gold coins. Therefore, Ruo Manni decided to put this matter aside for now.

There were still two hours until logout time, and since Hebrew Adam hadn’t sent any messages yet, Ruo Manni wasn’t going to waste time waiting for him. Instead, she decided to take on a gold coin quest. This way, she could practice the new skills she had just learned and earn some coins at the same time.

Some things were quite strange. Before anyone broke through to level ten, everyone had been holding back and staying at the same level. But once someone led the way, there was an explosive rush of breakthroughs.

Within the hour that Ruo Manni was grinding monsters and practicing skills, the world channel announced three more times that three young players had reached level ten.

The IDs of these three young players who reached level ten were never mentioned in the novel, or at least Ruo Manni had no recollection of them.