Chapter 135 The Effect of the Gale Set

The uproar surrounding the green hats lasted for a little over a day before the scarecrows stopped dropping them. According to a certain high-level player, scarecrows were never supposed to drop the Prayer Helmets in the first place. The bug was likely caused by a database overflow in the Legend of Mir.

Lin Jia didn't understand. He had no interest in such advanced technical jargon, nor did he care how the warehouse managed to overflow. All he knew was that the alt characters they used for storage were now packed with dozens of greenish hats.

What made Lin Jia rather envious was that, while purchasing Prayer Helmets, the boss accidentally acquired a top-tier green hat with a Taoist attack attribute of 0-1. They had never seen a hat with class-specific stats before and were utterly amazed. Among the equipment in Legend of Mir, aside from accessories, helmets and armor rarely possessed top-tier stats. The Magic Robe Lin Jia had looted from a player named "A Good Guy" was already an anomaly—not only did it grant +1 magic power, but it also added 2 points of defense, making it a luxury garment for a Mage player at the time. No other player had been spotted wearing a top-tier hat, let alone a Prayer Helmet with hidden attribute variations.

Before this green hat frenzy, probably more than half the players didn't even know the Prayer Helmet existed. This massive drop led those unaware players to assume the developers had introduced a new type of standard store helmet for everyone to use, so they hadn't hoarded them like a select few. Consequently, the moment the scarecrows stopped dropping the green hats, those slow-to-realize players were filled with endless regret.

Over the past two days, through a combination of hunting and purchasing, Lin Jia and his companions had gathered nearly 100 Prayer Helmets, all stored away on their alt characters. However, because players everywhere currently possessed them, the hats held no market value yet. They could only be left in the warehouse to appreciate over time. It would likely take a long time for the player base to gradually consume the existing supply of Prayer Helmets, so these green hats would be sitting in storage for a while. Still, the trio wasn't overly worried; even if the hats couldn't be sold, keeping them for themselves or giving them away as gifts would be a fine alternative.

Aside from the forty-plus hats they hunted during the two-day event, competition for the scarecrows became so fierce later on that they could hardly secure a single one. Because of this, they shifted to buying another fifty or so at low prices from shops and other players, paying no more than 20,000 gold coins for the most expensive ones. Once the drops stopped and the price of Prayer Helmets began to climb past 20,000 gold coins, they stopped buying, deeming it no longer cost-effective. Besides, they already had enough Prayer Helmets to last them a very long time, and when prices rose further, they might even turn a neat profit.

The moment he logged in that day, Lin Jia dug out his collection of rare items from the warehouse—the Prayer Necklace, the Paralysis Ring, and the Memory Bracelet—and ran to the first level of the Pig Cave to track down some monsters and test their effects one by one. After equipping the Prayer Necklace, Lin Jia noticed no changes in his status window. Wearing it while hunting did not seem to grant any luck attributes to boost his attack power; instead, his attack power decreased because he had unequipped his 1-4 Magnifying Glass, losing 4 points of magic. Total failure!

The Memory Bracelet only offered 1-1 magic and required level 26 to equip. Had the trio not spent the last two days grinding out the remaining sliver of experience to reach level 26, they probably wouldn't have even been able to wear it. Did this trinket share the same function as the Wen Quxing? To aid memory? Sweat—failure!

They did manage to test the effects of the Paralysis Ring. When Lin Jia equipped it and attacked monsters with Lightning, no noticeable effect occurred. Since the ring itself added physical attack attributes, Lin Jia suspected it was warrior gear and traded it to Fourth Brother for testing. After Fourth Brother equipped it and engaged a Red Wild Boar in battle, the ring occasionally paralyzed the enemy, much like the paralysis effect of a Moth. The paralyzed state was identical to being poisoned by a Moth, turning the entire body gray. However, after Fourth Brother hacked that pig to death with the Paralysis Ring equipped, he angrily tore it off, threw it onto the ground in front of Lin Jia, and ranted bitterly, "What kind of piece of trash is this?! It only occasionally freezes a monster in place, and it can move again in just a few seconds! It would be decent if it triggered on every single swing, but I had to hack that pig dozens of times for it to happen twice, and it even cost me 3 points of attack. What the hell is the point?! Useless! Absolute garbage!"

A nearby novice Mage saw someone drop an item and ran over, hoping to pick it up. Lin Jia hurriedly snatched it off the ground and complained, "Damn it! Even if it's useless, you don't have to throw it away! It looks pretty; it's worth keeping just for the collection!"

The boss chimed in with comfort, "Keep it for fun! The stats are a bit underwhelming; it would be nice if it triggered on every strike, but occasionally paralyzing a monster doesn't do much... Or maybe Fourth Brother's accuracy is just too low?"

While swapping back to his Whirlwind Necklace and Whirlwind Ring, Fourth Brother sneered dismissively, "No way! It's true that a warrior's accuracy isn't high, but I was clearly hitting the monster—you could see its HP dropping. How could accuracy be the problem? If this thing had higher attack power, it might be decent, but it only adds a single point of attack with very little practical utility. Tell me, Second Brother, why are you always collecting such weird junk?! Back when we played Diablo, you loved stuffing your warehouse with trash gear and couldn't bear to throw anything away. Now you're doing the exact same thing in an online game, keeping everything. Doesn't it take up space? Your warehouse is going to overflow soon enough!"

Lin Jia chuckled and said, "I just really like collecting good-looking gear with special functions. It's fun to pull them out and look at them when I'm bored! My warehouse is still empty anyway; if I run out of space, I can just create another alt character to act as a storage mule!"

"So boring!" Fourth Brother rolled his eyes, re-equipped his Whirlwind set, and hunted down another Red Wild Boar to experiment. Fourth Brother had worn the Whirlwind Necklace and Ring before, but had only noticed an increased attack speed without actually testing them in combat, making the effect hard to gauge. Today, he brought them out specifically to run some tests. Fourth Brother's current setup consisted of a Prayer Helmet, Whirlwind Necklace, 0-3 Small Bracer, Ghost Necklace Gloves, Coral Ring, Whirlwind Ring, Heavy Armor, and a Frost-Felling Sword. By swapping out his 0-5 Ghost Necklace and 0-4 Coral Ring for the Whirlwind accessories, which only offered a single point of attack each, Fourth Brother suffered a drop of 7 attack points, leaving him with a meager attack power of 14-30.

The attack speed of the Frost-Felling Sword already felt faster than weapons like the Zhanma Blade or Shura. Once Fourth Brother put on the Whirlwind set, the speed at which he hacked down the pig left Lin Jia and the others startled. It was almost blow after blow. On average, when a Red Wild Boar attacked Fourth Brother five times, the enhanced attack speed would occasionally interrupt the monster's attack animation!

For instance, just as a Red Wild Boar was about to swing its weapon at Fourth Brother, because Fourth Brother's attack frequency was faster, he struck the boar first. That action would interrupt the boar's attack, causing it to grunt, recoil, and freeze in stiffness. This invisibly negated one of the boar's attacks, and combined with the increased attack speed, Fourth Brother seemed to kill a Red Wild Boar much faster than before!

"Wait! Wait!" Lin Jia shouted anxiously, "Find another Red Wild Boar! I'll tell you when to start! I'll time you, and you count your swings!" Fourth Brother lured over another Red Wild Boar, alt-tabbed out of the game, checked the computer clock, and yelled, "Go!"

Fourth Brother immediately swung his blade at the Red Wild Boar. Amidst the grunts of the beast, Fourth Brother muttered under his breath, counting the number of strikes he delivered. The moment the boar shrieked and collapsed, Lin Jia called out the numbers: "Thirteen seconds!" Fourth Brother added, "Fifteen strikes!" (Note: This data is an estimation; I've never played a warrior.)

"Try switching to the Coral and Ghost set and let's see!"

Fourth Brother swapped his gear and tested again: "Seventeen seconds!" "Eleven strikes!"

With a gleam in his eyes, Fourth Brother said, "Even though the difference isn't huge, I found another perk to the Whirlwind set! Wearing Whirlwind costs me less HP when fighting monsters compared to wearing the Coral set!"

Lin Jia paused in surprise, "Really?! In that case, the Whirlwind set comes with a few extra benefits over standard gear: faster attack speed, less HP loss, and lower equipment durability wear! That makes it a great money-saving item!"

Fourth Brother blinked, puzzled, "Why would equipment wear down slower?"

Running back, Lin Jia scolded, "Idiot! Getting hit by monsters decreases your equipment durability. Haven't you noticed that our Mage gear hardly loses any durability, and we only need to repair it every few days, whereas you warriors practically have to repair your gear after every single leveling trip? That's because we Mages attack from a distance and rarely get hit by monsters, while you melee fighters take hits almost constantly!"

The boss and Fourth Brother jogged back alongside Lin Jia's Mage. Fourth Brother said happily, "Damn! Why do I suddenly feel so satisfied? With so many good items, I don't even know which ones to wear! We can switch to high attack when we want high attack, or high speed when we want high speed, and I can even wear two at once... Oh, right! It's a pity we only have one Whirlwind Ring. I wonder what kind of effect we'd get if we had a matching pair or the complete Whirlwind set? I wonder if there are Whirlwind Bracers, too?"

Lin Jia chuckled darkly, "Forget it! I don't think you should wear a full set of Whirlwind. The attack power of a full set is just too low. No matter how fast your attack speed is, zero damage means nothing, unless you can get your hands on top-tier Whirlwind accessories with an extra 4 or 5 points of attack!"

Fourth Brother immediately drifted off into wild daydreams: "Yeah! If the Whirlwind Necklace had 0-5 attack, the Whirlwind Bracers had 0-2 attack, and the Whirlwind Ring had 0-4 attack, wouldn't I be invincible? Wahahaha!"