I summon the heroic spirits of China in the infinite world.

"【Cube Stone Upgrade Card】!"

Li Ming had handled this card countless times and recognized its pattern at a glance.

Adding this one will give you a total of 3, enough to upgrade your main cube once more.

"Straw man, go."

"Grass!"

Under his command, the scarecrow rushed out of the city wall and picked up the card.

But what it didn't notice was that a flash of red light appeared on the card just a second before it picked it up.

"hastily!"

The scarecrow ran back, holding the card, and handed it to Dawn.

[You have been marked by a gourmet.]

[Nearby gourmet followers will be able to accept quests to defeat you.]

"What?"

This surprised Li Ming.

Then, after a quick search of my memory, I finally found the reason.

There is indeed a chance that some unbound portable cards will drop after a summoner kills another summoner.

Some followers of demon gods possess the ability to cast spells on their own relics. If one touches or picks up these relics, one will be affected by the spell.

"So this person is a follower of a demon god, and now I'm marked by that demon god?"

"It doesn't seem to matter much. Isn't it said that the demonic karma and aura on your body will be washed away when you leave the dungeon?"

"That means once I leave the instance, I won't be targeted anymore."

"But is 'Gourmet' the name of this demon?"

After thinking for a moment, Li Ming went to the communication stone and turned on the public channel.

"They actually charge for searching keywords, phrases, and sentences."

"The price for a three-word keyword is 100 cubic coins..."

"Fortunately, the fee will be refunded if no results are found."

Spend 100 cubic coins to search for the keyword: 【Foodie】.

To my surprise, a result actually appeared. After clicking on the context, I saw several chat records.

Judging from the timing, it was roughly shortly after I turned off the communication channel last night.

[Expert, do you know which demon is behind these altars?]

I've summarized the information you mentioned. Although the bosses are different, the altars are all the same shape.

This kind of altar belongs to gourmets.

[A gourmet? Is it the gourmet I've heard about?]

That's right, gourmets are the most gluttonous eaters and drinkers, hence the name.

But it doesn't just eat ordinary food; it can also eat wind, thunder, earth, rocks, and all sorts of other things.

Rumor has it that its most formidable feat was once devouring an entire instance world.

In recent years, food connoisseurs have been frequently spotted near our Chaobei city, so it's not surprising that some of you have heard of them.

I've heard that gourmets love eating Heroic Spirits the most, and they're extremely picky about their food.

Its criteria for selecting Servants have nothing to do with rank, grade, or appearance; it seems to only consider pure chemistry.

Oh my god, that sounds terrifying.

What's there to be afraid of? Do you really expect to encounter it?

[That's true, it's already unlucky enough that our newbie dungeon was opened in the Wasteland, it can't get any worse, haha.]

After closing the chat history, Li Ming's expression turned somewhat serious.

I was originally thinking of considering whether to tone it down and try not to provoke those altar bosses.

Now look what's happened! It seems I've defeated someone even more troublesome than the altar boss, and now I'm cursed.

"In other words, if there really are demon servants beneath this area, then they will definitely come looking for me."

"Or perhaps... there are other demon god followers in this instance?"

"Anyway, it's all good now, no more multiple-choice questions."

He shrugged and accepted the fact.

What do demonic servants matter? Can they compare to the heroic spirits of our own Chinese nation?

All we can do right now is continue to develop, develop, and develop some more.

So he went to the main cube and slapped down the three upgrade cards.

Your main cube has been upgraded to LV4.

Please choose one of the following effects.

[1. Increase the radiation area by 20 square meters.]

2. Slightly weakens monsters within the area.

[3. Randomly obtain one permanent effect, with a small chance of obtaining a rare effect.]

"Option 1 has a larger radiation range. It seems that the increase brought by 3 upgrade cards is indeed stronger than that of 1 upgrade card."

Seeing the change in the option, Li Ming felt somewhat relieved.

之前他还担心要是LV1升到LV2是扩大10米，LV10升到LV11也是扩大10米的话，那之前自己错过的选项1可就亏大了。

Choose option 3.

Now that this worry is gone, he can choose to gamble on the upper limit again.

[Random options loading...]

[You have gained a permanent effect: Fog of War Map.]

When you touch the cube, you can obtain relevant map information.

However, this time, they still failed to achieve the rare-level effect.

"map……"

Li Ming wasn't sure what extent this function could achieve, or whether it would be useful to him.

So he placed his hand on it again and silently recited "map" in his mind.

hum…

A faint blue light rose from the surface of the cubic stone, forming a projection screen in front of me.

"It's much more detailed than I expected."

Li Ming's eyes lit up.

In addition to the territory, it even shows the wild areas that the user has visited.

Outside the explored areas, there is a black fog, as shown on the game map.

"No, these routes were taken by the scarecrow, I haven't taken them."

He quickly discovered the secret.

In other words, the scarecrow can now have another scouting task.

Zooming in on the map reveals various small dots within the territory.

Soon, dawn distinguished the meanings represented by these colors.

Red represents monsters, blue represents heroic spirits, yellow represents territory buildings, and green represents himself and the straw doll.

Then zoom out the map to the maximum panoramic view.

At dawn, he discovered that the map was actually circular, with a circular line firmly enclosing it.

The area inside the circle is one's own exploration zone and territory, while the area outside the circle is an unidentified pattern resembling a mosaic.

"It seems this circle marks the area of ​​this instance."

"But is this all the area I've explored?"

"I wonder if there will be milestone rewards if the entire map is revealed."

After visually estimating, he felt that he had only unlocked about 1% of the dungeon maps so far.

Five days have passed since the start of the instance, but only four days have passed since the time travel began.

If we've only explored 1% in 4 days, it'll probably take 400 days to explore the whole thing.

Just as Li Ming was pondering this, several lines of prompts suddenly popped up on the map.

[A summoner has accepted your quest. You can spend 1000 cubic coins to activate location tracking.]

Please note that location tracking information may be delayed by 6 hours.

"Um?"

This unexpected event made Li Ming's expression tense.

……

……