Game’s Dogma

It gave Drako Yau a headache. Money wasn’t an issue at all, but it was a matter of whether the expenditure was worth it or not. Paying Zephyrwolf a monthly ‘salary’ counted as an investment, just like how he had paid his game developers back in his days as chairman, but purchasing equipment was an entirely different story.

He could afford an entire set of Level 15 epic equipment without much difficulty, yet it was no different from pouring money down the drain. In a week, or two weeks to be conservative, their prices would plummet when Level 20 epic equipment started rolling out. He simply couldn’t keep upgrading his set whenever a new tier of equipment came out!

To buy a full set of epic equipment, 500,000 dollars was the bare minimum. If an epic item had extraordinary attributes and stats, it could even cost that much alone. Only spendthrifts would waste money in such a pointless way, not to mention that Drako Yau was now stuck in the game without a steady source of income.

He looked through various items rapidly, flicking over to the next page from time to time. His gaze was now stuck on the list of rare items instead. Suddenly, a familiar name came into sight.

‘Fire crystal giant… Hm?’ His fingers hovered above a particular piece of equipment. ‘Fire Crystal Warrior Boots, Level 10 equipment. An equipment worn by fire crystal giant warriors, it greatly increases their defence.

Set Effects: ???’

He plucked out another piece of equipment from his item bag—Fire Crystal Warrior Leggings.

‘Set effects…’ Drako Yau scratched his chin, then took out his phone to search for the effects of the Fire Crystal Warrior set. It wasn’t much of a surprise for players to have collected a full Level 10 set at this point. As expected, he soon found someone sharing the set effects.

‘Fire Crystal Warrior Set Effects: +150 Defence for three pieces, +200 Attack for five pieces.’

For a Level 10 set, it was considered fairly strong. Before the Demon City dungeon became available, a full set could fetch a pretty decent price, which of course had been plummeting over the days.

Drako Yau decisively bought the Fire Crystal Warrior Boots and Fire Crystal Warrior Chestplate. As for the Attack buff, he wasn’t really bothered about it. Defence and survivability was his main concern. He, unlike other players, only had one chance at life in the game.

Also, he bought a Level 15 rare helmet—Turtle Helmet. It had extremely high defence, much like a turtle’s shell, but it had no additional stats at all. Rare and epic equipment typically came with stats which increased one’s attributes, such as increasing Intelligence, Strength, or Constitution. Yet, the Turtle Helmet had absolutely nothing in exchange for Defence which was on the level of epic equipment.

Its price was very low, but for an entirely different reason… Drako Yau frowned at the helmet. It really looks like a turtle’s head…No wonder people didn’t buy it…

[Note: ‘Turtle head’ means dick head in Chinese.]

As for himself, it wasn’t much of a concern because his life mattered more than his appearance. Also, he had the Mask of the Hidden Dragon. Like the Strategist’s Feather Fan owned by Chau Yu, it replaced the appearance of the item which belonged to the same category, which was the long staff in Chau Yu’s case and the helmet in Drako Yau’s case.

After spending a good while looking for a good piece of arm equipment, he ended up picking a non-mainstream piece as well. Level 15 epic equipment, Sacred Vambraces.

One could guess from its name that it was somewhat peculiar compared to typical armour pieces. While it was a Level 15 epic equipment, its Defence only ranked below average among equipment of the same quality. It also didn’t come with any Attack stats like most vambraces. However, it had a special effect.

‘Ring of Purity: Increases Health recovered by 50 per cent.’

The thing was, Sacred Vambraces belonged to the heavy armour category, which meant only warriors and paladins could equip it. But paladins didn’t have any recovery skills until Level 20, nor was recovery rate a major focus for paladin builds. They valued Defence and maximum Health more, which was why Sacred Vambraces wasn’t the first item of choice for paladins who could afford epic items. On the other hand, players who weren’t that well off couldn’t afford to buy it. It was basically stuck in between two tiers of players, making it unpopular among both.

Even so, Drako Yau still decided to purchase it as his second piece of epic equipment. It was cheap, and its Defence wasn’t really at an unacceptably low level.

Another reason was his skill, Bandaging. He only invested one point in the skill, but its effects had been really helpful, especially when farming monsters in the wilderness alone because he didn’t have to worry about getting scratches from monsters. He really looked forward to testing out the skill after adding a 50 per cent buff to its recovery effect.

Finally, he took out a longspear which gave off a gentle lustre from his item bag.

Moon Gazer! Level 15 epic equipment, now ranked second on the Weapon Rank list! After getting himself geared up, Drako Yau ran to the teleportation array and teleported back to the demon city of Evergrand.

They all thought Drako Yau looked pretty weird in his new armour set. His torso and lower limbs mimicked the bulky and chunky appearance of fire crystal giants, yet his arms were covered by a slim vambrace which looked completely out of place.

Of course Drako Yau couldn’t care less. Did looking cool matter? At least it ranked below his life!

After settling down everything, they challenged the Demon City dungeon in Hard difficulty. The monsters that spawned this time were considerably stronger, but that wasn’t enough to stop Drako Yau.

Hades and Zephyrwolf’s jaws dropped to the ground as they simply watched Drako Yau who wielded Moon Gazer. Even Soulsmith twitched the corners of his eyes upon witnessing the spearman in combat.

Before class progression, Drako Yau was a powerhouse who received a triple buff from Might, Spear Mastery, and the Weakness Exploit system. The thing which made the biggest difference was that skills had cooldown but his basic attacks didn’t.

A skeleton warrior lunged at the masked man, but it turned into ash and disappeared before the other three could blink. As someone who had always been proud of his eyesight, Soulsmith couldn’t be sure if Drako Yau had made eight or nine thrusts within that short timeframe.

Anyways, they easily tore their way through the dungeon and reached the skeleton king. It didn’t last long under the barrage of attacks from the four-man squad and died under five minutes.

‘Team “Dual Coalition” has set a new team record for clearing Demon City (Hard). The new record is 28 minutes, 08 seconds.’

Such speed… They broke Age of Scholar’s record by over seven minutes, not to mention that they only had four members, which was one less than Age of Scholar’s squad!

Seeing that the reward for breaking the record was a rare item, Drako Yau casually looked at its stats before quickly tossing it into his item bag. Even if he didn’t need it, it was better to sell it instead of letting it go to waste.