Chapter 3: Evolution Crystal Shards

In the forest, Fang Heng followed his zombie clone, moving slowly forward.

Fang Heng stopped from time to time to observe his surroundings, bending down to pick up basic survival supplies scattered on the ground.

【Prompt: You have obtained firewood.】

In a post-apocalyptic environment, many supplies can be picked up directly, such as small stones, firewood, kindling, hay, etc. These items are materials for crafting basic survival tools.

After walking and stopping for nearly ten minutes, the zombie clone in front stopped.

Not far away, a lone zombie stood under a tree.

Fang Heng frowned. He slowly crouched down, concealing his body in the low bushes to observe.

In the apocalypse, zombies are the greatest threat.

Players have a small chance of dropping items after defeating a zombie.

Among them, one type of item is extremely important: the Evolution Crystal.

In the Main God game, Evolution Crystals are the only way for players to increase their level.

Generally speaking, the early stage of the game is a race against time. Finding ways to collect survival supplies to stay alive is the best course of action; wasting a lot of time killing zombies is a very foolish behavior.

After all, the drop rate for zombies is low, and the items dropped might not even be useful in the early stages. If you are accidentally infected during a fight, it’s a dead end.

The risks outweigh the rewards.

However...

Fang Heng’s eyes darted around.

He was different from ordinary players.

If he had the chance to kill zombies and get Evolution Crystals, he could quickly raise his level to 2. By then, he could summon two additional zombie clones, greatly increasing his current strength and his early-game "AFK" efficiency!

Fang Heng narrowed his eyes and opened his backpack to check his supplies.

Enough.

Along the way, he had collected enough basic materials to craft two wooden spears.

Fang Heng ordered the zombie to stand guard on the spot, crouched down, and opened the skill panel.

In the skill panel, the basic construction materials section contained various post-apocalyptic survival tools that could be crafted, including wooden axes, simple beds, simple campfires, and so on.

Fang Heng quickly selected the wooden spear, and a green progress bar appeared above his head.

Five minutes later, Fang Heng had two wooden spears in his hands.

【Prompt: You have completed the crafting of a wooden spear.】

【You have obtained Wooden Spear *2.】

【Prompt: You have learned the Basic Crafting skill. Your Basic Crafting skill experience +2.】

Item: Simple Wooden Spear.

Quality: Crude.

Attack: 4-7.

Description: The most basic survival weapon. The workmanship is rough, but it can cause minor damage to zombies.

Fang Heng weighed the spears in his hands, then threw one to the zombie clone standing nearby.

Let’s fight!

Fang Heng and the zombie clone, each holding a wooden spear, slowly approached the enemy zombie from behind.

"Shing!"

The zombie clone initiated the attack first, the wooden spear piercing into the rotting zombie's body.

"Augh! Ugh!!"

The attacked zombie let out a howl, turned around, and lunged at Fang Heng.

"It was the one who hit you, why are you attacking me?"

Fang Heng grumbled. His muscle memory was still there, and his reaction was extremely fast; he quickly took a small step back to avoid the attack.

He took the opportunity to thrust his wooden spear forward fiercely.

"Shing!"

The tip of the wooden spear pierced into the zombie's body with a dry, raspy sound.

Fang Heng frowned.

This spear felt like it was stabbing into a piece of rotten wood.

Fang Heng quickly pulled out the wooden spear and stepped back.

The zombie's movements were very stiff, but its defense was quite good; even with several holes poked in its body by the spears, it remained full of vigor.

Fang Heng didn't dare to be careless. He worked with his clone to circle the zombie, looking for opportunities to stab it from time to time.

Don't let the zombie's slow movements fool you; if you are accidentally scratched by it, you will be infected with the virus.

In the early stages of the game, once you are infected with the zombie virus, you might as well commit suicide early to end it; there is absolutely no cure.

Fang Heng swung the wooden spear, stabbing the zombie more than twenty times before it finally collapsed with a wail.

【Prompt: You have killed a zombie. You have obtained 2 Survival Points.】

Survival Points are the currency of the zombie apocalypse world. Players can use Survival Points to purchase items through the system store.

Damn it! No Evolution Crystal dropped!

What a morale killer!

Fang Heng shook his head repeatedly.

This kill had cost Fang Heng quite a bit of effort and wasted a lot of his time.

"The drop rate for the lowest-level Evolution Crystal fragments is about 20%. It was expected that it wouldn't drop the first time. If I kill a few more, it will eventually drop."

Fang Heng could only comfort himself with that.

There was still some room for error.

"Worst case scenario, I'll just go hungry tonight and not log off!"

"Ugh..."

The fight had made quite a bit of noise, and a second zombie was attracted by the sound, stumbling toward Fang Heng from a distance.

"Come on! Keep going!"

Fang Heng cheered himself up, raised his wooden spear, and continued to fight the zombies with all his might.

It wasn't until the eighth zombie died under his spear that Fang Heng finally heard the "ding" of an item drop notification in his ear.

【Prompt: You have killed a strong zombie. You have obtained 3 Survival Points.】

【Prompt: You have obtained Evolution Crystal Fragment *1.】

A crystal! It finally dropped!

Fang Heng let out a long sigh of relief and held the Evolution Crystal fragment in his hand to observe it.

The crystal fragment, the size of a pinky finger, emitted a scarlet glow.

Item: Evolution Crystal Fragment.

Item Description: A special crystal fragment containing powerful energy. It can increase a player's character experience (only effective for players currently below LV: 5).

"Pop!"

With a squeeze, the fragment shattered in Fang Heng's hand.

The burst of red mist was absorbed by Fang Heng's palm.

【Prompt: You have absorbed the Evolution Crystal Fragment.】

【Prompt: Your level has increased to LV: 2. You have gained 2 additional zombie clones.】

Two zombies crawled out of the mud, swaying, and stood obediently behind Fang Heng, one on the left and one on the right.

"Haha! It worked!"

Fang Heng threw the spear in his hand to one of the zombies and lowered his head to continue crafting more spears.

With two new zombie clones, the efficiency of killing monsters would be greatly improved!

Find a way to upgrade the talent skill to level 3! Then he would have six clones!

Survival?

No, leveling up is the most important thing right now!

Fang Heng crafted two more wooden spears and ordered the zombie clones to deliberately strike a large tree to make some noise, attracting nearby zombies.

Zombie-grinding leveling plan! Start!

"This game is really interesting!"

Fang Heng muttered, raising his spear to stab at a zombie stumbling toward him from afar.

If anyone were to see Fang Heng's zombie-grinding behavior right now, they would definitely think he was crazy.

How long has the game been open, and he's already grinding zombies?

Isn't this something that should only be considered in the late game?

...

Three hours later, Fang Heng's character level had reached level 4.

A total of 10 zombie clones stood neatly behind Fang Heng.

After reaching level 4, the experience points gained from using crystal fragments decreased significantly.

Fang Heng roughly estimated that it would take about twenty or thirty Evolution Crystal fragments to upgrade his talent skill to level 5, which was not something he could gather in a short time.

Seeing that the sun was about to set, the number and strength of zombies at night would increase significantly.

He still needed to find a way to find a system shelter to settle down.

Thinking of this, Fang Heng took out the survival radio from his backpack.

The survival radio could use the 'Search' function to find the coordinates of nearby system shelters.

The prerequisite was spending Survival Points.

Fang Heng had killed so many batches of zombies along the way that he now had a total of 172 Survival Points.

Such a large amount of points was definitely a huge fortune in the early stages.

After spending 10 points to get the location of the nearest system shelter, Fang Heng didn't delay any longer and headed toward the shelter.

(End of chapter)