Chapter 60: Awkwardness

In the end, the things Li Mochen brought back from the Ice Death Mine couldn't earn him the ticket money for one trip in and out. He exchanged them for a total of one thousand two hundred and twenty gold shields at Old Joe's.

The price might be low, but according to Alisa, it was already quite fair.

Li Mochen finally understood why the magic energy professionals in this world looked down on the Ice Death Mine. The returns were far too disproportionate to the investment.

"The advantage of raising magical creatures is that ordinary people no longer have to risk their lives; they can accumulate funds through ordinary work and exchange them for resources to cultivate magic energy. The disadvantage is that no one wants to bother with low-level magical creatures anymore."

Alisa sighed with emotion: "If the government didn't provide subsidies, no one would be willing to go to places like the Ice Death Mine to suffer."

Then Alisa took Li Mochen to her residence.

Since he would be following Alisa on Sunday anyway, Li Mochen decided not to return to the Bright World. After all, going out from here also cost money, slightly more than the entry ticket, as high as 800 gold shields.

So he planned to sleep over in the Ghost district and set off directly from here.

Unexpectedly, Alisa's residence was not in the old city in the east, but in the fortress district in the west. It was about seventy-five square meters, two bedrooms and one living room. She said the original purchase price was four million nine hundred thousand gold shields, but now it had risen to no less than seven million five hundred thousand, with the average price per square meter surpassing houses in Manhattan's Upper East Side.

This made Li Mochen marvel, and he looked at Alisa with a hint of surprise. He hadn't expected this girl to be a hidden rich person.

"What are you looking at? I'm from the Targaryen family after all. Though I can't compare to your Wiltons, I'm still from one of the top hundred famous families in all of America."

Alisa snorted coldly, then said helplessly: "This is the only thing I can inherit from the family now. The one bad thing about the Targaryens is that everyone is too fertile. You probably don't know, but I have six siblings alone. And my cousins are too many to count—three hundred or five hundred?"

As she spoke, she walked into her room and took out a set of light armor including a helmet and boots.

"I left the motorcycle at the consignment shop; we'll pick it up tomorrow. This is the armor I promised to lend you. Take a look first."

Li Mochen's expression turned serious. He first knocked on the armor, felt the inner lining to confirm the material, then placed his hand flat on it to sense the magic arrays.

From the inscriptions on the armor, it appeared to be a product of Nathan Military Equipment Company from 3845, named 'Spark'. That meant it was built over a hundred years ago, during the Second World War era.

However, it was certain that the armor had been extremely well maintained. Although it was second-hand and had been used for a long time, the armor itself was in very good condition.

Then Li Mochen put it on and tried various movements. He found that although the armor was a bit heavy, it didn't affect his mobility, only requiring some extra endurance.

But in return, Li Mochen would gain defense against ordinary bullets and some low-lethality magic bullets, as well as three times his previous strength.

"Not bad!"

Li Mochen turned to look at Alisa: "Do you have any weapons? I might need a good sword or knife."

"Don't you have one?"

Alisa asked curiously, but then she was stunned by what Li Mochen took out of his sword bag: "A training sword? You used this to kill an ice elemental with one strike?"

She felt her common sense collapsing and realized she might have underestimated Li Mochen's strength.

This made Alisa look at Li Mochen with even more fervent eyes: "I used to have a magic sword that I replaced when I reached level five. It's a bit shorter and much lighter than your sword. I wonder if you can use it?"

Li Mochen naturally didn't mind. At his level, he was no longer constrained by the form of weapons; he could hurt people with flying flowers and plucked leaves.

And any magic sword would be better than this unsharpened one in his hand.

...

That night, Li Mochen spent on the sofa in the living room. Alisa's house had an extra room, but it was used as a storage room, and since it was already late, she was too lazy to clean it.

But in the middle of the night, Li Mochen suddenly sat up, his face flushed, looking awkwardly at his lower body. Then he hurried into the bathroom and busied himself for a while.

The next morning, Alisa took him to pick up the motorcycle. It was a light motorcycle that Alisa had used before, somewhat feminine, model 'Polaris' produced by Davidson Company. It was much slower, only reaching 250 kilometers per hour, and inferior to Alisa's current 'Bone Beast' in off-road capability, maneuverability, and defense.

In the Dark World, transportation was important; in many emergencies, it was their lifeline.

The 'Bone Beast's' speed of 380 kilometers per hour, strong endurance, brief hovering ability, and powerful defense array at the rear allowed Alisa to move freely in most areas within 750 kilometers around Ghost City.

But for Li Mochen, this 'Polaris' was sufficient for now. The Arcane Forest they were heading to wasn't too dangerous. Although there were some magical creatures above level eleven, they weren't too densely distributed. With his abilities, he shouldn't need to flee; these magical beings wouldn't be stronger than his Deep Frost Princess.

Then Alisa equipped him with a thermal imaging night vision device that could be worn on the head, which she had borrowed from someone else.

In the densely vegetated Arcane Forest, magic lamps were not very useful and would also startle their prey.

About an hour later, the two rode their motorcycles into a dark, dense forest. They hid the vehicles somewhere, and then Alisa led the way deeper into the forest.

"I saw the group of spirit-blood musk deer here before. I wonder if they're still around?"

Alisa explained softly as she walked quickly. Her steps seemed large, but she remained vigilant, observing the ground and the surroundings.

Li Mochen was curious about how these trees grew without sunlight, and how the creatures of the Dark World survived.

According to scientists, the plants here didn't rely on photosynthesis, and the dark animals didn't need light to synthesize calcium and vitamins or to produce blood. They relied on the ubiquitous magic energy of the Dark World, which also had a strong inhibitory effect on molds and such. Thus, the creatures of the Dark World could thrive here.

It was worth mentioning that biologists had also discovered that all plants and animals in this world originated from the Bright World and gradually adapted to this environment after hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.

But even though Li Mochen understood this, he still found it astonishing and incredible. This world was completely different from his home, the Yuanqiong Realm—a completely distinct world.