After clearing out the 1,900 newly respawned Crimson Iron Ants from the small Crimson Iron Ant Nest Dalaguli, Zhang Yanhang prepared to first open a treasure box, and then go clean up the new area. However, before opening the treasure boxes, as per usual, he briefly tallied up his loot.

Of course, saying he was tallying them up, since there were not many treasure boxes, Zhang Yanhang merely glanced over and already had the specific number in mind: a total of sixty-five drop treasure boxes.

Among these, the drop treasure boxes from the Crimson Iron Worker Ants naturally made up the largest portion, contributing a total of fifty-seven drop treasure boxes.

Next were the Crimson Iron Flying Ants. Due to their smaller numbers, coupled with a reduced drop rate, even with the addition of the one obtained from the Lucky Slot Machine, there were only seven drop treasure boxes. The last drop treasure box was obtained from the third-prize pool of the slot machine—a green quality drop treasure box from the Crimson Iron Soldier Ants.

Of course, since the possible loot within the drop treasure box from the Crimson Iron Soldier Ants, whether items or soul points, is actually the same as that from the Crimson Iron Flying Ants, this particular drop treasure box could also be seen as a drop treasure box from the Crimson Iron Flying Ants. This meant that he ended up with a total of eight Crimson Iron Flying Ant drop treasure boxes.

After briefly reviewing the drop treasure boxes, Zhang Yanhang looked at his soul points balance without any expectations to see how many soul points he had acquired from killing the Crimson Iron Ants.

[Soul points: 1388244 (+6898)]

"Um, how should I put this, it's really not worth the expectation at all. Nearly two thousand monsters only added 6898 soul points, an average of 3.5 souls points per monster, which is pitifully low, merely increasing my soul points balance from the original 1381346 to 1388244."

The mere 6898 soul points, let alone for the now Third Tier Zhang Yanhang, they were not even considered much even for a First Tier Zhang Yanhang; after all, even back in his First Tier Period, upgrading a LV.MAX skill would require tens of thousands of soul points.

And for the now Third Tier Zhang Yanhang, it was utterly insignificant; after all, he could easily gain five-digit figures of income by releasing a single Death Wave while cleaning the Permanent Teleportation Channel.

However, in the small Crimson Iron Ant Nest Dalaguli, after casting forty-five Death Waves, he only harvested such a small amount of soul points, the difference between the two was like night and day.

But fortunately, Zhang Yanhang didn't clear the Crimson Iron Ants in the small Crimson Iron Ant Nest Dalaguli solely for those measly soul points, but rather for the E-grade Talent Ant Power and the Crimson Iron Ring.

Therefore, after checking the slight change in his soul points balance, Zhang Yanhang quickly picked up a drop treasure box from the Crimson Iron Worker Ants and commenced to officially open the treasure box.

[Would you like to open the 'Drop Treasure Box (Crimson Iron Worker Ant)'?]

"Yes, open it." After Zhang Yanhang made his selection, Time Pause immediately descended upon the small Crimson Iron Ant Nest Dalaguli and, at the same time, a text option box, which he had become all too familiar with after having seen it a thousand times, appeared before him.

[Please select the specific contents of 'Drop Treasure Box (Crimson Iron Worker Ant)']

[Item One: ?]

[Item Two: ?]

[Item Three: ?]

[Item Four: ?]

[Item Five: ?]

...

After spending three to four minutes to open all sixty-five drop treasure boxes, Zhang Yanhang even began feeling the time it took to open the treasure boxes was getting somewhat lengthy, likely due to the change in his perception of time after his promotion.

Although Zhang Yanhang wanted to speed up the process, he had long since discovered an issue: the opening of treasure boxes, like their refresh rate, had a fixed time, so even if he wanted to hurry, he couldn't.

This meant that despite his increasing speed, whether he was at the First Tier, Second Tier, or Third Tier, the speed at which he opened treasure boxes remained remarkably stable.

While it wasn't a big deal currently, Zhang Yanhang had no doubt that later on, a situation might arise where the time taken to open treasure boxes would be even longer than the time spent hunting monsters.

Of course, such a situation was unlikely at the Third Tier and possibly even at the Fourth Tier, and it would probably only become a reality at the Fifth or Sixth Tier.

So, there was no need to worry for the time being. It was a distant future concern, especially since he hadn't even advanced to the Fourth Tier yet, let alone the Fifth or Sixth Tier.

After briefly worrying about such distant issues, Zhang Yanhang quickly discarded those overly remote concerns and immediately started tallying up the items just obtained from the treasure boxes. The first were the Talents, which were the most crucial loot for Zhang Yanhang.

This time, in the talents department, Zhang Yanhang had opened a total of sixty-five E-grade Talents of the Ant Power. If counting the three hundred eighty-six Ant Power Talents he had previously accumulated in his Waist Bag, he now had a total of four hundred fifty-one Ant Powers.

"To upgrade an S-grade Talent like Bear Power to SS-grade, if I only use E-grade Talents like Ant Power for the upgrade, I would need to spend a total of 729 Ant Powers. And if subtracting from what I currently have, that leaves me needing an additional two hundred seventy-three Ant Power Talents.

Considering my current treasure box drop rate, I would need to kill eight or nine thousand Crimson Iron Ants to gather that many Ant Power Talents, equivalent to a completely new small Crimson Iron Ant Nest Dalaguli for me to clear out once more in order to collect that many Ant Powers."

By the way, since he had killed roughly two thousand Crimson Iron Ants, Zhang Yanhang had thoroughly calculated his current Third Tier drop rate for killing First Tier Monsters: approximately thirty-one Crimson Iron Ants had to be killed to drop one treasure box, which was again doubled compared to the previous rate of one treasure box per ten Crimson Iron Ant kills at the First Tier.

Of course, since the sample size was not very large, he guessed that the rate of one treasure box per thirty-one Crimson Iron Ant kills might be slightly overstated. If the sample size were larger, it's entirely possible that it would settle down to one treasure box per thirty kills, but well, the difference isn't significant; both rates are quite high.

The most important aspect was that the drop rate from the Crimson Iron Ants made Zhang Yanhang realize that the Rank Penalty was most likely not a direct doubling but an accumulative relationship, where each tier surpassed added another layer of drop rate penalty. That's why there was a situation where the Second Tier drop penalty was twice that of the First Tier's, and the Third Tier drop penalty was three times that of the First Tier's.

It could only be said that this was indeed a very good setup. It meant that he wouldn't have to worry about having to kill dozens or even hundreds of low-level monsters to get a treasure box like other Awakeners fighting monsters of the same tier.

Once the gap in Rank really became that substantial, he would have long been prevented by Rank limitations from entering such low-level areas, unable to kill monsters even if he wanted to, let alone experience that frustrating drop rate.

"But although clearing out the First Tier Crimson Iron Ants requires killing thousands to obtain so many Ant Powers, the new region I'm heading to, being a high-level area, will surely allow me to easily gather this portion of Ant Power."

Zhang Yanhang was indeed quite looking forward to the new region, or rather, looking forward to the gains in Soul points and Talent.

After counting the most important Talents, Zhang Yanhang immediately began to count the gains from the equipment.

First was the Crimson Iron Ring aspect of the gains. This time, Zhang Yanhang had once again obtained fifty-seven Crimson Iron Rings. Along with the one ordinary Crimson Iron Ring he originally had, that made a total of fifty-eight Crimson Iron Rings.

But plain Green quality Crimson Iron Rings were of no use to Zhang Yanhang. Only a +4 Blue quality Crimson Iron Ring could provide a Charm attribute bonus, and a +4 Blue quality Crimson Iron Ring required sixteen ordinary Crimson Iron Rings to fuse. So, Zhang Yanhang immediately counted out forty-eight Crimson Iron Rings to begin fusion.

After five rounds of fusion, Zhang Yanhang soon had three brand-new +4 Crimson Iron Rings before him. Because he had done so many fusions, he was now extremely skillful at it, without any possibility of failure, and so he didn't bother to check the attribute list again.

Looking at the blue glow flashing on these three +4 Crimson Iron Rings, Zhang Yanhang nodded in satisfaction and then immediately put the three +4 Crimson Iron Rings on the index finger, middle finger, and ring finger of his right hand's first arm.

"Now I have seventeen fingers adorned with rings, and thirteen ring slots are still empty."

The bottom pair of Zhang Yanhang's arms was almost full, with only the two thumbs and the little finger on the right hand still not wearing rings.

After putting on the three +4 Blue quality Crimson Iron Rings, Zhang Yanhang quickly opened his attribute list for a glance.

**Strength: 75 ([+3][-3])**

**Agility: 75 ([+3][-3])**

**Constitution: 75 ([+3][-3])**

**Intelligence: 75 ([+3][-3])**

**Charm: 70 ([+29])**

"Good, those three +4 Blue quality Crimson Iron Rings each provided me with one point of Charm attribute bonus, which in total gave me a three-point increase in my Charm attribute value, bringing my Charm attribute from the original sixty-seven points up to seventy.

After a hard struggle (of 20 minutes), my Charm attribute has also been raised to above seventy points, and my next little goal is to bring the Charm attribute up to a Tier limit of seventy-five points."

In the past, Zhang Yanhang's Charm attribute usually increased quite slowly, but this time it was different. Not only did he raise all main attributes to the Tier limit in just four and a half hours, but even his Charm had reached over seventy points in less than twelve hours—as close as one step away from the Tier limit.

Without a doubt, this missing portion of the Charm attribute value would likely be raised very soon.

"This increase of my Charm attribute value fully proves that the prior recovery of the health level of my Charm attribute was indeed a complete resurgence.

Before, the equipment bonus in my Charm attribute value had dropped to thirty-nine percent, and now, the bonus provided by the three Crimson Iron Rings has increased the equipment bonus in my Charm attribute value to over forty percent again, reaching forty-one percent.

While this is but a small step in the progression of deformity, it represents a big stride towards acquiring increasingly more equipment bonuses in the future."

Of course, although Zhang Yanhang would undoubtedly continue to advance his Charm attribute boldly through equipment bonuses, he would not at all resist drops that could permanently increase his Charm attribute value; he would definitely use what should be used.

After all, he only cared about the outcome of raising the Charm attribute value. Exactly how it increased truly wasn't important—it was just to provide a Fixed Damage boost for Death Wave.

After checking the attribute list, Zhang Yanhang quickly put the remaining nine ordinary Crimson Iron Rings into his Waist Bag. Considering the one Crimson Iron Ring already in the bag, he now had a total of ten Crimson Iron Rings and needed to gather six more to fuse another new +4 Blue quality Crimson Iron Ring.

However, given that this should be his last visit to the small Crimson Iron Ant Nest Dala Gu to hunt monsters and that it was highly unlikely—even impossible—for the Lucky Slot Machine to refresh and help him acquire another six Crimson Iron Rings after another six and a half hours, he would probably never get a new +4 Blue quality Crimson Iron Ring again.

Because of this, the ten remaining Green quality ordinary Crimson Iron Rings he had were also of no use, which was why Zhang Yanhang didn't bother fusing them just now—pointless.

Despite being pointless, Zhang Yanhang would not just throw them away, since what if he returned to acquire more Crimson Iron Rings later? Although the chances weren't great.

"Alas, if I want to get more rings to fill the other thirteen fingers in the future, I'll only be able to look for other new rings. But I have no idea when I'll be able to find them. It would be nice if the new region had new rings, even though the chances are slim..."

If he obtained new rings, Zhang Yanhang wouldn't want those that just added attribute points; he'd prefer those that provided percentage bonuses.

After all, rings that added attribute values would quickly lead to an overflow of attributes, which for him now meant a real overflow; every bit of the excess was completely wasted, as if wearing the ring brought no benefits at all—what was the point of wearing it?

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