Morning of the third day.
Xu Tao stared at the rising sun from the top of the Log House, contemplating life—or not. He was cultivating. The Qi at the exact moment of the sun's appearance couldn't be any purer.
The entire night, he intentionally didn't cultivate, leaving the Qi available to the five disciples. He'd rather not contend against them for the puny amount of Qi in the air, after all. With the new realizations they received, the Qi in the air was barely enough to help them break through.
Now that morning arrived, and the five had completely broken through their bottlenecks, it was the perfect moment for Xu Tao to do his own cultivation.
"Phew…"
But as expected, with how low the Qi in the air was, his cultivation ended in just a few breaths.
After reaching Body Refinement 9th Stage, it had been hard for him to progress. The main reason was, of course, the thin Qi in the surroundings. Even the sunrise barely added to the present amount of Qi—just about two drops gathered all together.
"Still far from being back in shape…" he sighed, shaking his head.
Judging from the activity inside the Log House, the rest should've already woken up too. Xu Tao jumped down, landing silently on the ground.
"Oh, I was just about to call you."
He was welcomed by a surprised Jehanne in the same apron as last night, and Pepe floating by her shoulder. Both stood by the door just about to step out.
"It's fine, I can hear everything from up there." Xu Tao shrugged. "Anyway, what's the menu?"
"The same."
Jehanne shrugged.
They couldn't be picky, anyway. With their limited resources, it was hard to even try improvising. With everything available, Jehanne's Potée de Lait was the best they could get right now.
But just as their breakfast was about to be over...
[Alert! The first wave is about to arrive in sixty minutes. Please make sure your defenses are well prepared before then!]
"First… wave?"
Xu Tao was flabbergasted.
There wasn't even any warning beforehand, or any announcement at all. And now, the Lost System just told him there was only one hour before it arrived.
"But defenses… what kind? Do I even have any craftable defense fortifications?"
Rather than getting angry at these delayed notifications, Xu Tao decided to just focus his energy on preparing for it. Unfortunately, he was clueless about what he could or couldn't do.
First of all, he checked his crafting recipes. However, he quickly reached the end of the list—it was just a few items, after all. And none of them could be considered "fortifications" in any way.
"Which means, I can only make those manually…"
Xu Tao finished his meal quickly before standing up. He didn't have time to waste now, after all.
He went straight toward the nearby forest and pondered.
If he were to make fortifications, then the easiest to make would definitely be wooden palisades. They worked both as defense and as a wall, after all. But the problem was that doing so took too much work. Palisades needed to be made with as few gaps as possible, so it would require tons of wood materials too.
"I could dig a moat around the house, then use the dug-up earth as a wall, but…" Xu Tao placed a hand to his chin, thinking. "As expected, we lack hands to go around."
He pulled up the main menu, turning to the Gacha almost by reflex. In it, there was one last banner that remained: the sword-wielding man, Arthur Pendragon.
"Should I…?"
Xu Tao muttered, conflicted.
But his hesitation lasted for but a moment. "I have over 15 thousand points anyway. A few hundred wouldn't hurt…"
As such, while praying for some useful items to pop out, Xu Tao started to roll the Gacha.
The results… were more than he expected.
After all, on the 490th roll—
"A UR appeared!" Xu Tao rejoiced.
With it, the few hundred rolls where nothing over Rare appeared felt well worth it!
He quickly checked the new item he got and… found that it was another ring. But it wasn't a Storage Ring.
[
Item Name: Ring of ??????
Rank: UR
Effect: ?
]
"…Eh?"
But to his surprise, all information on it was censored.
"The fuck is this item…?" he complained. "Is the system messing with me?!"
Without knowing what it was for, there was no way he could use it. There was a high chance it could be cursed in some sort, after all.
"Ugh… And the person I'm trying to summon didn't come out until the last moment either," he lamented. "My luck today sucks…"
With his luck down in the dumps, he made sure to stop right after the next roll—or so he planned. Until the next thing happened.
The final, 50th 10x roll. The one including the guaranteed UR pull.
But this one… went way too well. Of the ten items, eight were SSR, while the last two were UR! It was like a blessing from the heavens—a rain of rare rolls!
"T-This is…!"
Even Xu Tao was shocked, quickly changing his idea of being unlucky. No, he now realized all his luck got loaded into this one lucky pull!
"Ugh… This place is…"
He was so in shock that he didn't pay a single glance to the handsome man who just arrived, appearing from within a bright flash of light. Instead, he turned to look at the Gacha once more and checked for another banner.
"Damn! No more banners?!"
And got frustrated that there were no other banners available.
Although he was now feeling lucky and wanted to pour all his points into rolling while his luck held, he unfortunately lost the opportunity to do so.
A short message was written instead of a banner, saying:
[New banners coming in 71:59:47...]
Three days. That was how long before a new set of Gacha banners would appear. In short, until then, Xu Tao would be unable to roll Gachas!
If he knew how the usual Gacha games worked, he would definitely complain to the developer that there's no normal banner that stays no matter what. But it was as if the Lost System predicted such explosive behavior beforehand and added a limit to the banners themselves.
"Excuse me? Can you hear me?"
"Huh?"
Right then, the pissed Xu Tao turned to the voice calling to him. Only then did he notice—a new person was standing before him.
"O-Oh… I almost forgot." He sighed, trying to get back to his usual attitude.
As if putting on a mask, his expression changed to neutral in an instant as he cupped his fists in respect. "I'm Xu Tao, a humble cultivator. May I know your name, sir?"
"Oh, how polite of you." The other party smiled.
He took a step back, allowing Xu Tao to see his entire figure.
A tall man clad in silver full plate armor, etched with gold vine motifs and glowing blue runes. A royal crimson cape hung from his shoulders. His hands were covered with elegant-looking gauntlets, fitting each of his fingers snugly.
His long blonde hair—barely reaching his back—despite being unkempt, looked fabulous when combined with his smile.
A handsome man with blue eyes, whom every lady would've dreamed of waking beside. With his golden hair messy under the sun's rays, and greeting with a sweet "good morning, my princess" whispered to their ears.
Just from a glance, he was a noble through and through.
"I'm King Arthur Pendragon. It's a pleasure, good sir," he introduced himself.
At that time, Xu Tao was clueless about what level of chaos would follow just from adding this one person to their lineup.