Keqing poked the pufferfish in the belly.
It instantly puffed up like a balloon.
So cute~
Her eyes sparkled like she was staring at the world's most precious thing.
"Mason, can we not eat these? Can we keep them as pets?"
"Don't worry, I wasn't planning to eat them either." Mason crossed his arms. "Pufferfish carry neurotoxins in their organs that can't be neutralized by heat the way protein-based poisons can. Only a chef who knows the fish's exact anatomy can prepare them safely. These are beyond us."
"Hmm. I don't really understand all that."
Keqing blinked, utterly adorable in her confusion.
Ahem. Mason composed his expression into something serious.
"Anyway, let's keep fishing. I refuse to believe this entire lake is just pufferfish!"
His face was unreadable. His heart was hammering.
This woman is going to be the death of me.
Fishing always made time disappear. A few more hours slipped by, and dusk rolled in.
Mason's expression had already darkened well before the sky did.
He had, in fact, caught things other than pufferfish.
Seagrass. A Damaged Bow. A Damaged Fishing Rod. A Damaged Leather Cap.
What he had not caught was a single edible fish.
Keqing, meanwhile, had already put her rod away with a perfectly respectable haul: aside from pufferfish and the usual junk, she'd landed over a dozen Salmon and Cod.
Plunk.
The float dipped again.
Mason held his breath. He executed the most perfectly-timed reel-in of the afternoon.
The drop item broke the surface.
It was a bow. Old, battered, and glimmering with a faint purple light.
"Another enchanted bow. Trash."
He'd already hauled up a dozen of these. He had zero interest.
"Wait." Keqing picked up the one he'd tossed aside. "Infinity. That enchantment — I don't think I've seen that one before."
"Infinity?!"
Mason yanked in his fresh cast so fast the line nearly snapped. He seized the bow and checked the item stats.
[Item: Bow]
[Durability: 10]
[Enchantment: Infinity]
"No way. That's actually real." He stared at it. "Okay. I may not have caught a single piece of edible fish today, but reeling in an Infinity Bow might actually be worth it."
"Your face says it's important. It's a bow that generates unlimited arrows?"
"It's not just about 'important' or 'rare.' It's genuinely one of the strongest enchantments in the game. If I can slap Power V on it later, one shot per Skeleton—no problem at all."
Keqing tilted her head, entirely unimpressed.
"That's... it? Ganyu and Yelan can both one-shot a Hilichurl. Or a Hilichurl King, for that matter. Isn't unlimited arrows just the baseline expectation for any Vision-holder who uses a bow?"
The sarcasm landed with the force of a critical hit.
Mason ceased functioning.
She was not wrong, and he knew it.
She was also very directly pointing out that he had spent the entire afternoon being a complete zero.
He refused to accept this quietly.
He rallied. —But can Elemental Energy even be called "infinite"? And can Genshin archers generate Iron Arrows out of thin air like an Infinity Bow can? Can they do that?
Neither of them could finish arguing with straight faces.
The air between them hummed with something warm and ridiculous.
…
That evening.
Dinner was courtesy of Liyue's resident master grillmaster.
At the dining table, Mason ate his grilled fish with the single-minded aggression of a man settling a personal vendetta. Bones went down whole. He didn't flinch.
"Take it slow. I caught plenty today. There's still more in the pond."
Keqing had no idea how devastating that sentence was to an angler who had caught nothing.
Mason made a sound somewhere between a wail and a sigh and buried his face in her chest.
Keqing, still navigating the unfamiliar territory of physical closeness, turned pink. But she was gentle. She wrapped her arms around him and offered the quiet, wordless comfort only a good person can give.
…
A few days passed.
The clock had just ticked past midnight.
[Weekly Random Shop has refreshed automatically. This week's items:]
[Recovery Bin: 100 World Coins]
[Night Vision Potion (20 min) x12: 100 World Coins]
[Water Breathing Potion (20 min) x12: 100 World Coins]
[Village Ranch (Building Blueprint): 500 World Coins]
[Hot Spring (Building Blueprint): 500 World Coins]
[Teleport Anchor (Unbound): 1,000 World Coins]
[Grand Lottery (x11): 1,000 World Coins]
[Grand Lottery (x120): 10,000 World Coins]
[Current Balance: 900 World Coins]
Teleport Anchor?! Wait, no — the Recovery Bin first—
Mason shot upright in bed.
"Mason? What's wrong?"
For Keqing, midnight was a little late. For Mason, it was prime time. His brain was at peak operating capacity.
"Sorry. Didn't mean to wake you."
She shook her head to say it was fine. She'd already noticed the system interface floating open in front of him, so she sat up and leaned her head against his shoulder to read along.
A soft, silky warmth pressed against his arm.
Mason made a quiet mental note: sleeping without clothes was a genuinely excellent cultural tradition.
"A Teleport Anchor," Keqing murmured. "That sounds incredibly useful. It's a pity we're just short on coins."
A week had passed since their arrival. And despite completing achievements and forging a full set of iron gear, their balance had only climbed to 900 World Coins.
The world was simply enormous. It was as vast and physical as the real world — far beyond the scale of any game map.
Distance was the hard wall on all exploration.
They couldn't exactly abandon a fully-furnished luxury estate to go chasing after villages and dungeons on foot.
"And one anchor alone isn't enough," Mason added. "We'd need at least two to make it functional — one at base, one to place wherever we're going."
Keqing followed the logic.
"So we can't earn 1,100 World Coins in a single week. By next time, the Teleport Anchor might not even show up."
"Right."
She frowned. "That's really difficult. You said World Coins only come from clearing achievements. Should we push harder? Dig below the lava layer, like you mentioned?"
Mason waved the idea off and redirected his attention to the first slot — the Recovery Bin. He answered Keqing while thinking it through.
"We've only scratched the surface of this world. It keeps showing signs of genuine, real-world physics that we can't ignore. Lava here is not shallow. In a world modeled on Earth, magma sits dozens of kilometers below the surface. Except near volcanic terrain where the crust is thin — and even there, we're talking ten-plus kilometers of digging."
But more than the lava problem, something about that first item was nagging at him.
Same grid position as the Starter Pack. Same price.
He tapped Buy.
[Purchase successful.]
[Current Balance: 800 World Coins]
[Item: Recovery Bin]
[Description: Place agricultural produce, rare ores, livestock products, and other items of value inside. The bin will automatically convert contents into World Coins each day after 6:00 a.m.]
He sat back.
Exactly as I suspected.
This was the second essential newcomer tool, just like the Starter Pack.
Which meant the Weekly Shop wasn't really random — not at first.
Week One: Starter Pack. Gave a new player everything they needed to survive the opening days.
Week Two: Recovery Bin. Gave a new player a way to generate a steady income.
So what would Week Three bring?
Mason had been holding off on spending his coins. This was the first time he'd ever clicked Refresh.
[100 World Coins consumed. Refresh successful.]
Most of the slots filled with unremarkable filler items. The Grand Lottery slots stayed fixed, as always.
But the first slot changed.
[General Store: 100 World Coins]
Mason bought it immediately.
[Current Balance: 600 World Coins]
[General Store]
[Description: Purchase basic supplies using World Coins.]
His instinct was correct.
The Weekly Shop had a deliberate new-player welfare track built into its early refreshes.
When he hit Refresh one more time, the pattern broke. No more special 100-Coin items.
"Only three," Mason murmured, with a mild pang of disappointment. "But honestly, that's already plenty."
He turned to Keqing.
"Put some clothes on. Let's go downstairs and try these out."
Keqing, who had watched the entire sequence in fascinated silence without a trace of sleepiness left, was already ahead of him.