Shen Mo walked over and swept his gaze across the table covered in an array of ingredients. The greens were a lush, fresh green, still beaded with clear droplets of water. The beef and mutton had been sliced paper-thin, every strand of grain uniform and even. The red-and-white yin-yang hotpot was bubbling and gurgling away, and with every rolling boil came a wave of rich, mouthwatering aroma.

“You made all this?” Shen Mo asked.

He still had the grime of the dungeon on him, so he hadn’t stepped too close to Bai Youwei.

“Of course! I worked so hard to prepare this whole spread~” Bai Youwei pouted at him and blinked her eyes, as if both claiming credit and waiting for his praise and acknowledgment.

Shen Mo couldn’t help but smile. He gazed at her rosy lips for a moment, then said, “I’ll go wash up. I’ll be right back down.”

The others were also eyeing the unusually extravagant dinner with hungry looks, and one by one they headed back to their rooms to wash up and change before rushing back downstairs.

After day after day of nutritionally balanced meals, no one could resist the allure of hotpot — especially one made with the specially prepared broth and dipping sauces that Yi Zichu had put together.

Everyone at the table ate with great joy, swishing meat and vegetables through the broth. The hotpot was refilled again and again until every last ingredient on the table was gone, not a single bean sprout left behind.

After eating and drinking their fill, it was time for the daily debrief.

But today’s debrief seemed quieter than yesterday’s. For the most part, people sat in silence — either lost in thought, or with nothing to say.

Bai Youwei’s gaze moved from face to face around the table before settling on Shen Mo.

She asked softly, “Today… didn’t go well?”

Shen Mo was quiet for a moment, then replied, “Not too bad. We completed the main mission and found the hidden side quest — we just didn’t score high enough, which is a little disheartening.”

Ada let out a sigh. “Last time we scored 689. This time we found the hidden side quest, and it only added 2 points.”

2 points? That made it 691.

Bai Youwei tried to recall — when they had mentioned the record last time, hadn’t it been 744 points? They were still quite far off…

“Could it be that we were too slow?” Natasha furrowed her brow in frustration. “This time we slowed our whole pace down trying to find the hidden side quest. A dungeon we used to clear in two hours took us more than four.”

“This is rough…” Ada sighed repeatedly. “If you want speed, you have to skip the side quests. If you want the side quests, the speed suffers…”

Yuri, who had been silent throughout, spoke up: “What if… we switched to a different dungeon?”

“Switch dungeons?” Natasha blinked and looked at Yuri. “Which dungeon are you thinking? Right now the Dream Realm Lord is the one we’re most familiar with, and our coordination there is the best.”

Yuri thought for a moment and looked at Shen Mo. “Devil’s Island — is that possible?”

Shen Mo raised an eyebrow slightly, his expression showing a hint of uncertainty. He was, after all, the newcomer — his familiarity with the dungeons didn’t match theirs.

Ada let out a sound of surprise. “Devil’s Island? Yuri, are you serious?”

Natasha also said, “Yuri, Devil’s Island has an extremely high difficulty.”

“The difficulty is high, but by the same token, it’s easier to earn a high score there.” Yuri said evenly. “When our previous captain was still with us, we ran Devil’s Island once — even with our limited experience across the board at the time, just that one run earned us a score of 713. Now we have the newcomer bonus buff on top of that. I think the chances of breaking the record are quite high. Of course, I’m only making a suggestion — whether or not we choose Devil’s Island is something everyone can think over. “

Yuri rarely spoke, but whenever he did, it was always after careful deliberation.

Shen Mo asked, “What’s the current record score for Devil’s Island?”

Yuri replied, “935 points.”

A dungeon where high scores are easier to achieve would naturally carry a higher record than other dungeons.

Ada mulled it over for a while, then murmured, “If we score 713 again this time, plus the newcomer’s 20% bonus buff — that’s an extra 142 points added… which means the lowest we’d walk away with is 855?”

Ada’s eyes lit up as she worked out the result, and immediately turned to look at Yuri. “I think it’s worth a shot — let’s try it!”

—