Chapter 54: Murloc Staff and Player Bloodline

These slippery cave murlocs paid with their lives to provide Xiao Yang with a massive haul of various spoils of war.

Murloc scales, murloc short spears, murloc slime, various gemstones, and a bunch of puncture skill scrolls.

Among this miscellaneous pile of items, aside from the gemstones, everything else was likely to be sold off by Xiao Yang, as none of it was particularly useful. For Xiao Yang, these items now had a much more pragmatic collective term: useless little junk.

However, it wasn't as if there were no good items at all; there was a green-tier murloc staff that came with a spell.

[Murloc Staff
Quality: Fine
Effect: Amplifies water-type spell damage by five points, comes with the Water Bullet spell.
Description: This is a staff used by murlocs. To those not-so-bright murlocs, every priest is immensely precious, bearing all sorts of strange names and titles, and their staves also carry various exaggerated names. But so what? It is just a staff used by a murloc.]

Holding the bone-crafted staff in his hand, Xiao Yang gave it a curious wave. With a flick, a faint blue water bullet was shot forth, striking the nearby cliff face and leaving a small white mark.

To be fair, the power of this Water Bullet technique was decent, but it didn't have much effect on Xiao Yang, who after all possessed all-attribute elemental resistance.

Casting two more water bullets in succession, he simulated the combat style of a distinguished grand mage. Meanwhile, Skeleton was rummaging through the corpses of the murlocs in the chaotic village, taking the opportunity to search the area for any potentially useful loot as well.

Skeleton raised its head, gazing for a moment at its master in the distance, who was happily swinging the murloc staff around. After watching for a little while, it calmly resumed its work.

After firing three water bullets, the water bullet magic inscribed on the murloc staff officially entered a cooldown period, requiring a period of recharging before it could be used again.

The practical combat significance of this murloc staff was limited, but in other scenarios, it might yield surprising results, such as water creation. It could be kept as part of a survival kit reserve.

Next, the gaze shifted to another item: a deep blue scale. Xiao Yang had looted a very interesting item from these murlocs—a bloodline transformation prop.

He was not particularly surprised by such an item; in the Heavens Trading District, these messy bloodline props were actually quite sought after.

[Strange Murloc Origin Scale
Quality: Superior
Effect: Grants a certain percentage of murloc bloodline
Description: Dive into the deep sea, sleep peacefully, witness the ancient god, or blow a bubble.]

Bloodline—a very popular advancement path. For many divine game players, a good bloodline was even more attractive than a good profession.

After all, a profession still required continuous training even after one was successfully employed.

However, a truly good bloodline guaranteed a baseline combat power the moment you acquired it, and transcendent races also came with enviable innate levels.

Take dragons, for instance; a mature dragon is a transcendent creature with an innate level exceeding eighteen.

If a player could acquire a complete dragon bloodline, they could effortlessly and naturally advance to level eighteen upon reaching maturity, simply by lying down and doing nothing else. That in itself was a decisive attraction.

In the realm of divine games, there were many ways to raise one's level: differing innate levels among races, bloodlines, challenging and killing enemies, combat, drawing upon transcendent elements to temper oneself, cultivation, and receiving the favor, gifts, or blessings of supreme tiers.

All of these could grant experience and raise a player's level, meaning leveling was not strictly limited to grinding monsters. Yet, none of these methods were particularly easy.

Xiao Yang had already experienced the hardships of leveling through combat, and cultivation-based leveling was no better, while also being extremely demanding of resources and talent.

The most enviable method by far was receiving a blessing. You didn't have to do anything at all; as long as you pleased a big shot, rising instantly from level one to level fifty was not outside the realm of possibility.

Yet, this was also the hardest path to pursue, for any big shot capable of such a feat had to be at least a divine-level entity.

Going through the options like this, bloodlines turned out to be the smoothest path of all.

Not only was it effortless, but its ceiling was also remarkably high; after all, it was not impossible for innate divine beings to be able to contend with the gods upon reaching adulthood.

Though it was practically impossible to obtain such a powerful bloodline, the hardest part of walking the bloodline path was the very beginning—whether you could acquire a good bloodline in the first place.

Clearly, murloc bloodline was not a top-tier choice, and this scale might even carry some strange, lingering issues, seeing as it was obtained from a multi-armed cave murloc priest.

Still, it counted as a rare curiosity. It could be thrown into the clearance-sale inventory, and if the goods proved hard to move later, he could always set up a stall and shout, "I have bloodline transformation props here!" The value was decent enough.

Stowing away the strange murloc origin scale, Xiao Yang joined in on the looting of the swamp murloc village. After a thorough search, no further yields were found; this tribe of swamp murlocs was practically poorer than skeleton warriors.

With this, the bottom of the fissure had been thoroughly explored by Xiao Yang. It was time to climb back up, and Xiao Yang was already fully prepared to bash the head of that bastard who cut the rope.

Slowly climbing upward along the eye socket of the giant skull, his speed was not fast. As he reached higher elevations and faced increasingly steep conditions, Xiao Yang had no choice but to use both hands and feet to keep moving forward.

Xiao Yang was now positioned roughly at the top of the giant skeleton's eye socket. Upon reaching this spot, a multitude of blood-thirsty bats suddenly crowded the surroundings. This exposed giant skull seemed to attract an extraordinary number of blood-thirsty bats to roost, and they hung upside down in a dense, dark blanket across the upper half of the giant's eye socket.

Every step forward startled several blood-thirsty bats. They flapped their wings in panic as they flew out from the giant's eye socket, then angrily swarmed around Xiao Yang. He had no intention of paying attention to these annoying large bats.

After all, these blood-thirsty bats could not pierce his defense, and given his current state, he could not afford any overly drastic movements. At such a height, any accident would mean playing airborne acrobatics once more, and Xiao Yang had no desire to experience that sensation again.

Besides, he was almost at the top. Everything else could wait until he climbed out.

Just wait; once Xiao Yang made it to the top, he had plenty of methods to deal with these annoying giant bats.