Chapter 65: New skill
Qin Hua lazily looked at the two men gossiping about her as if she was looking at a couple of idiots. [Of course, I can hear you! Woof!]
The weird part was that they didn't seem to hate Lu Chen or Guan Ye or Alex or even Xu Meilin. In fact, they looked at Lu Chen and Guan Ye with awe and admiration.
But when it came to her, they all seemed to have a problem.
Qin Hua didn't take their aversion to her personally. Perhaps they simply couldn't bring themselves to trust a beast.
Irrespectively, their attitude towards her was not her concern. As long as they don't hinder her or her friends or do anything to betray them, she couldn't care less what these leeches did.
Woof! Woof! She narrowed her eyes and gave them another glare before returning to the work at hand.
Qin Hua took the small pouch out of her inventory and then emptied its contents on the ground in front of her. The tar road was suddenly dazzling with a small heap of jewelry on top of it.
Both Lu Chen and the Qiang - Luo Zu pair stared at the dog in puzzlement. A dog playing with jewelry? Could this beast get any weirder?? Where did it even get all this jewelry from?
Qin Hua, however, was completely engrossed in her own thoughts. She looked at all the small dots of rubies stuck in the different flimsy chains and bracelets.
They were not too useful in this form, but she had a vague idea of how to make them more interesting.
Qin Hua piled all the rings together, which had the bigger pieces of gems, and then used her toenails to pop out the red rubies and purple amethyst gems, placing all the extracted gems carefully in a white hand towel.
[Hmm… Wait. I should first inspect these.]
<Ding. Ruby. Low-grade shard of mana recovery>
<Ding. Ruby. Low-grade shard of mana recovery>
<Ding. Amethyst. Low-grade shard of mana recovery>
…
…
…
Even though the notifications were the same, Qin Hua still inspected each and every gem meticulously.
After dealing with the last of the rings, she then moved on to other jewelry like earrings, bracelets, and necklaces. In this jewelry, the gems were so small that it was impossible to take them out of the gold and platinum encasing, at least with her giant meaty paws.
So with these jewelry pieces, she broke the chain links that had the gem embedded within and tossed out the rest.
With her strength, this didn't take her long and soon she had a much cleaner pile of mostly gems with some bits and pieces of metal sticking to it.
Having observed her for a while, Lu Chen and the others became even more curious. By now, about half of them had slacked off in loading the truck and were simply looking at her, wondering what she was up to now.
At one point, Xu Meilin had coincidentally seen something that she really liked and had walked over to Qin Hua. "Eh? This bracelet looks really good, little white."
She rubbed Qin Hua's head and was about to lean over and take the bracelet just to look at it but her hand was swiftly swatted away without mercy and with a loud bark.
[Woof! That's mine!]
So the others didn't dare come close to her and disturb her and only observed her from the sidelines.
After pooling the bunch of extracted gems together, Qin Hua then proceeded to take out two lockets and a bottle of industrial-grade adhesive from the pouch, which she had also ransacked from the same jewelry shop.
She clicked open both the lockets carefully with her paw nail and poured a good amount of glue into them. She then separated the small pile of minuscule gems into two groups and lined the inside of the lockets, one pile for each locket.
This part was a bit difficult for her with her huge paws so Lu Chen quickly squatted next to her to help her out even though he had no idea what she was up to.
"Is this alright, little white?" Lu Chen asked. With his help, the work was completed a lot faster.
Qin Hua bobbed her head up and down, grinning in satisfaction. She then closed the lockets tightly shut, with the adhesive holding everything together.
[Woof! Woof! Perfect. Time to check the reward for my hard work!]
[Inspect]
<Ding. Dirty Ruby Locket>
<Ding. Inspect skill has upgraded to Level2>
[Huh?] Qin Hua's ears perked up and she inspected the necklace again.
<Ding. Dirty Ruby Locket - Uncommon Neck piece>
<Effect: 10 mana points(MP) recovery per second>
[Ho! Ho! Ho! I can finally see the details of the items?] Qin Hua smacked her lips and inspected the other chain and locket as well.
<Ding. Dirty Ruby Locket - Uncommon Neck piece>
<Effect: 10 mana points(MP) recovery per second>
Since both were basically the same items that she prepared in the same manner, she wasn't too surprised about the similar notification which popped up the second time.
She carefully hooked both the chains in her hand, the lockets dangling underneath, and looked at them with her eyes twinkling.
This was just too good!
Her current net mana was about 25 and if she wore the two lockets together, her mana would almost fully be recovered in a second!
Did that mean her makeshift locket was perhaps even better than the daggers she looted from the goblins?
Licking her lips she quickly took out a couple of daggers from her inventory to inspect them, when unexpectedly another notification popped up.
<Ding. Your actions have unlocked a new skill>
<Ding. You have now learned Forging>
<Forging - The ability to craft weapons, armors, and trinkets; Can be upgraded for better results and efficiency>
Qin Hua almost drooled looking at the skill description. If she can make better weapons and armor items then their hunting would be a lot faster and safer.