My Romance Game Updated – Chapter 125
by Little PandaPlunder
On a highway leading to A City, a large armored RV was crawling sluggishly along, its body gleaming with a silver sheen. Inside the vehicle, in a small living area right next to the driver’s cab, several espers led by Zhou Zhilong were huddled together, their faces dark as they murmured to one another.
“What are we going to do, Young Master Zhou? We’ve barely got any drinking water left, but that fiancée of yours won’t give us a single drop! Isn’t that taking things a bit too far?”
“Exactly! We only used our stored water so freely on the way here because we knew your fiancée is a water-system esper. Now that we’re almost out, she suddenly refuses to supply us with any!”
“What’s even worse is that if we want water, we have to pay her in crystal cores! Her rates are outrageous—easily more than three times what the water-system espers back at our base charge!”
“Young Master Zhou, you really need to have a serious talk with your fiancée! She’s going to marry you eventually, isn’t she? If she’s this petty and penny-pinching with you now, who knows how she’ll behave in the future…”
As Zhou Zhilong listened to their relentless complaints, his face grew so dark it looked as though ink might drip from it. These people were only stressing over a bit of drinking water, but what about him? When it came to his own fiancée, not only did he have to pay crystal cores just to get a drink, but she wouldn’t even let him hold her hand! Ha, hold her hand? If he so much as stepped slightly too close to that woman, she’d turn him away with a look of pure impatience and rejection.
Moreover, this woman’s rejection was absolute. She didn’t play hard-to-get like other women did. If he chose to ignore her warning and tried to grab her hand by force… Ha! Before he could even touch her, he’d catch a vicious lash of her whip. Just looking at his luxurious, high-end RV—sleek, cold, and imposing on the outside—the interior told a very different story. It was scarred in dozens of places by the deep gouges left from Mu Ning’s whip.
Though it wounded Zhou Zhilong’s pride, he had to admit that even though her ability level was the same as his, he probably couldn’t beat her in a real fight. Yet the more formidable she proved, the more desperately he wanted to make her abilities his own!
At that thought, the look on Zhou Zhilong’s face turned even more sinister.
Indeed, he was going to take her powers. Her water-wood dual-system and her mutated ice-system abilities—he was absolutely determined to claim them.
To the outside world, Zhou Zhilong was currently a triple-system esper wielding Strength, Speed, and Fire. In truth, his real ability was Plunder! He stole the abilities of other espers. The very first ability he’d plundered belonged to a 1st-order spatial esper who was from a rival faction of the Zhou family. After his family captured him, they beat him half to death so Zhou Zhilong could plunder his ability. To keep Zhou Zhilong’s Plunder ability from being exposed, this esper, who had already lost his spatial dimension, was secretly disposed of by the Zhou family in the end.
The second ability Zhou Zhilong plundered was Speed. That esper was merely a rogue survivor from an independent squad in the base. Unluckily for him, he had clashed with the Zhou family over the same prey during a hunt. Seizing the opportunity, Zhou Zhilong teamed up with his family’s men to ambush the speed esper and plunder his Speed ability. Naturally, that speed esper was also murdered afterward and dumped in the wilderness, his corpse left to be devoured by either zombies or mutated beasts.
As for his third ability, Fire, Zhou Zhilong had acquired it using a similar method with his family’s assistance. Although his Plunder ability was incredibly overpowered, it was not without its limitations. First, he could not plunder an ability from an esper whose ability level exceeded his own. Second, the higher the target’s level, the more difficult the plunder process became. Lastly, and most importantly: because Zhou Zhilong was currently only at the mid-tier, he could hold a maximum of three stolen abilities at a time.
In the beginning, Zhou Zhilong had no idea this limit existed. Thus, when another Strength esper crossed him, he shamelessly plundered that man’s power too. As a result, the newly acquired Strength ability immediately overwrote his original spatial ability! His personal pocket dimension vanished into thin air, taking all the crystal cores and supplies he’d amassed inside with it.
Faced with this outcome, Zhou Zhilong was naturally consumed by regret and rage. His only consolation was that the stolen spatial ability had been low-level and the space itself quite small. He hadn’t stored too much inside, so the loss wasn’t entirely crippling.
After losing his spatial ability, Zhou Zhilong spent a long time reflecting on how his power worked. He could only hold three different abilities at once, but what if he plundered the same type of ability repeatedly? To test this theory, he began experimenting on Strength espers, who were the most common type in the base. Sure enough, he discovered that the more Strength abilities he stole, the higher his own Strength level rose—all without needing a single crystal core to level up!
Therefore, Zhou Zhilong’s current status as a 6th-order esper in the eyes of others actually came entirely from his Strength ability.
Of course, because he already possessed the Strength ability, stealing it from other Strength espers didn’t immediately raise his tier to match theirs. Instead, the stolen powers functioned like experience points. Low-level abilities yielded less EXP, while high-level ones granted much more. Once he’d accumulated enough EXP, his overall tier for that specific ability would advance.
Yet Zhou Zhilong was far from satisfied with his highest-level Strength ability. He’d been searching for an opportunity to plunder a more powerful ability to replace his Strength or Speed, but as the base’s regulations grew stricter and the local survivors’ power levels rose, targeting other espers became increasingly difficult.
Furthermore, Zhou Zhilong was incredibly greedy. Stealing the same ability only stacked his EXP, but stealing a different ability allowed him to seize the target’s power along with its current level intact. Naturally, he looked down on low-level abilities, but high-level targets were incredibly hard to corner. This was especially true for those few water-system and lightning-system espers, who were backed by the base’s other major factions. The water-system espers, in particular, were almost entirely monopolized by the military!
Just as Zhou Zhilong was caught in this dilemma, his fiancée, Mu Ning, appeared. Initially, he hadn’t thought much of her dual water-wood abilities, but after witnessing her actual level and combat prowess, he inevitably developed the desire to take Mu Ning’s abilities for himself.
After all, she was his fiancée! She was bound to marry him eventually. Since she was going to be his, it wouldn’t be asking too much for her to give him one of her abilities, would it? Besides, Mu Ning possessed three distinct abilities. Even if he plundered one, she’d still have two left!
Although he’d never plundered anyone with more than dual-system abilities before, his intuition warned him not to think everything was so rosy. Even when plundering a dual-system esper, he estimated he’d likely only be able to randomly steal one of their powers. Of the three, he was most interested in her mutated ice-system ability. It had devastating offensive power, and on a practical level, melting her ice could supply him with water for daily use. How perfect would that be?
But… For an ability so wonderful, he didn’t even have a chance to plunder it yet!
No, no, no! How could there be no opportunity? This was only a temporary setback. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t get his chance once they reached Ning’an Base. Especially after Mu Ning married into the Zhou family—by then, wouldn’t she be entirely at his mercy?
The mere thought of an iceberg beauty like Mu Ning being his to mess with as he pleased in the future instantly cleared Zhou Zhilong’s foul mood. Furthermore, he realized that if he tried to pressure her into providing free water now, it would only alienate her and potentially cause her to call off their engagement. Suddenly, he had no desire to listen to the people around him egging him on to demand water from Mu Ning.
“Young Master Zhou! We’ve been talking our heads off here, the least you could do is give us an answer! No way, right? No way, right?1 You haven’t even married her yet! You aren’t already afraid of your wife, are you?”
As another man tried to goad and needle him, Zhou Zhilong merely cast a cool glance in his direction. Then, with unhurried calm, he replied, “Exactly. You said it yourself: she isn’t my wife yet. So why on earth would she listen to me?”
“B-but… But you guys are getting married sooner or later anyway!”
Zhou Zhilong’s implication was crystal clear to everyone: he had absolutely no intention of convincing Mu Ning to lower her prices, and they’d just have to let her extort them for crystal cores! How could they accept that? At this rate, the rest of the journey would drain them dry! They’d come all this way on a retrieval mission, and instead of earning a decent haul, they’d end up paying out of their own pockets?
In an instant, the entire group glared furiously at Zhou Zhilong, who clearly wanted to wash his hands of the matter. One spatial esper didn’t hold back, snapping, “If that’s how it’s going to be, then from now on, if your precious fiancée wants any food from my inventory, she’ll have to pay me in crystal cores too!”
The moment the spatial esper finished speaking, Zhou Zhilong shot him a freezing glare. “Let’s get one thing straight: the food currently sitting in your spatial inventory was entirely supplied by the Zhou and Mu families!”
“But your massive stash of food is only staying fresh because it’s stored in my space!” the spatial esper shot back, clearly disgruntled.
“Exactly. And that’s why I paid you a handsome sum of crystal cores to accompany me on this trip, isn’t it? What else do you think I hired you for?”
“But the cores you paid me aren’t even enough to buy drinking water from your fiancée!”
At the spatial esper’s furious roar, the other espers quickly chimed in with their agreement. Seeing that the argument was escalating and the situation was on the verge of spiraling out of control, Zhou Zhilong finally tossed out a chilling remark: “Who told you all to waste so much water in the first place? The domestic water supply we prepared was supposed to be more than enough for a round trip between A City and H City!”
“Oh, as if we’re the only ones wasting water! Young Master Zhou, don’t act like you haven’t been doing the exact same thing! You brush your teeth three times a day and you’ve been taking way more showers than usual!”
“And that’s why I’ve been dutifully paying in crystal cores to buy water from my fiancée! If you don’t want to do that… Go negotiate with her yourselves!” Zhou Zhilong sneered, sweeping his cynical gaze over them. “Everyone here needs water. Why should I be the only one stepping forward to demand water for you?”
Go negotiate with that crazy woman ourselves? What a joke. Was Chen Jie’s end not enough of a warning of how terrifying she was? Chen Jie had left Ning’an Base right alongside them, but now, not only would he never return, but his nearly three-meter-long ice sculpture had also been unceremoniously shattered into a pile of shards by the Nanhai Base espers, swept up, and dumped out in the wild.
The author has something to say:
Oh my, the holidays are over! My Little Cuties, I’m back~~~
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