Chapter 52: Poison Mist Swamp
Currently, players who have completed one transformation only have four skills.
The reason why there are so few skills is that if the player has too many rune skills, the player's mental strength will not be able to sustain it...
Of course, even if there are only four skills, it is a huge improvement for players who have completed the job change.
Yang Qiu himself is a high-level black magician, and no one knows better than him what level of rune skill consumption the players' mental strength can withstand. Under this premise, he must be able to equip the first-level mages with the most reasonable rune skills.
The rune skills of non-legal players are based on the runes used by alchemists' alchemical puppets... The unintelligent puppets equipped with runes can participate in the battle, not to mention using them on characters controlled by players.
During the day, players can easily take down sixty or seventy noble private soldiers, and it's not just because their skeleton appearance is scary enough - rabbits will bite when they are cornered, and it is impossible for the private soldiers to not resist at all.
That's right... Even if the players' current combat power can compete with private soldiers who are slightly stronger than street thugs, or even defeat these private soldiers, when it comes to team battles, they are still messy and chaotic, with no order at all.
After all, the players are all law-abiding citizens who grew up in a peaceful country, and it is impossible for them to have any experience in street fights...
In addition, these players all looked the same, and their equipment was not much different, so the "watching" priests couldn't tell which side was which; all they saw was skeletons chopping skeletons, and skeletons scolding skeletons, and soon they felt dazzled and dizzy...
A white-robed ascetic monk complained expressionlessly: "I have seen villagers fighting over water in the countryside of Kmir. Those villagers knew how to tie strips of cloth on their arms to distinguish between enemies and friends... Can these undead really tell who they are attacking?"
"It's just nonsense." Another holy warrior said with dead eyes.
The priests were silent for a while.
Everyone was thinking, “Is this what you call yearning for order? That’s it?!” But after all, they had eaten two meals from them. Besides, no matter how chaotic these undead were, they were not evil. Out of self-cultivation, no one said it out loud…
"...Forget it." Andre looked at the others blankly, "Everyone go back and rest. I'll ask Supervisor Lowell to set up a soundproofing array for the camp."
Ji Tang led Yang Ying, Jia Luo, and a group of individual players out of the base and saw a large group fighting outside from a distance.
"Are they still fighting?" Yang Ying asked in astonishment, "Are they not done yet? They've been fighting all night."
"It's definitely not over yet." Sister Jialuo said in a nonchalant manner, "Earlier, someone from Mingfeng Chunpu's group lured monsters to harm Vanilla, causing their group to be wiped out. Although it wasn't intentional, Vanilla still holds a grudge against them. When I logged off to have a midnight snack, I heard someone say that giving me medicine also lured monsters to harm Mingfeng Chunpu and his group once."
Yang Ying didn't know whether to laugh or cry: "Is it that serious? There are so many monsters in such a big swamp that even if all the players come, they can't kill them all. There's no need to fight for them."
"It's not about fighting over monsters, it's about fighting over the monopoly of high-level materials." A casual teammate said, "Didn't Ji Tang brush up a lot of territory reputation during the day? It would be strange if Brother Lahong and Big Boss Vanilla weren't anxious."
Yang Ying still couldn't agree and shook his head repeatedly: "If you want the materials, you can either brush them yourself or pay for them. There's no need to make it so that no one can play."
"Hey, you don't understand, Sister Ying. Fighting with others is fun, you know? In the game, there is a group of enemies, and fighting with them is also part of the fun of the game." Jia Luo said nonchalantly, "In the game I played before, the two big gangs were fighting since the server was launched. Our server was so lively during those two years. Later, one of them transferred to another server, and our server was destroyed after only two months."
"Yes, competition is a good thing. A game can only be lively if there is competition." The casual players also agreed , "Otherwise, it would be meaningless to go online in a lifeless environment."
Yang Ying: “Uh…”
"Let's not go this way, let's go around." Ji Tang turned around and said, "While they are busy fighting, let's go find elite monsters to kill."
"Walk, walk!"
There is abundant water resources around the desolate wasteland. If you walk about 800 meters south from the stronghold, you can see a swamp that seems to have no end.
For living people, this swamp is definitely a life-forbidden zone - the poisonous fog and miasma are more exaggerated than the outer area of the Sorenson Mountains, and the water plants are densely packed with poisonous insects and snakes; the blood-sucking mosquitoes everywhere are bigger than a child's fist. When they fly, they are all over the sky and can suck a bison dry in a few minutes.
But for the players... no matter how poisonous the snakes and insects are, their only effect on the undead is to make them feel sick.
The "monsters" here, as identified by the players' identification skills, are roughly in the range of level one to level four.
The players are not able to defeat the level 4 monsters yet. When Mingfeng Chunpu and his team were wiped out, they posted this painful lesson on the forum.
Fortunately, there are not many level 4 monsters. After paying the price of several annihilations, the " pioneering " player team has been able to confirm that the two level 4 monsters currently discovered only move around in the mangrove area in the center of the swamp. Just don't get too close to them.
Monsters from level one to level three are within the player's hunting range.
The small group of four players led by Ji Tang entered the swamp from the northwest. Not long after walking in the dark and foggy poisonous mist, the players who took turns using identification skills to explore the way scanned a monster.
"It's the Demonic Clam, a monster we have killed before." The individual player who discovered the target was so excited that he lowered his voice to remind his teammates.
"Level three monster? Can we defeat it?" A player who had repaired the resurrection point and used the teleportation function to come over from Exile Town asked nervously.
"Don't worry, we can beat it. We beat it on the way here." Yang Ying said confidently, "The monsters in this game are not determined by level. The same level 1 spider monster, a spider with octopus legs is easier to beat than a spider with sickle legs. This demonized clam is different from the rat king in our town. It moves slowly and its defense is not that high."
The leader Ji Tang looked around and said, "The terrain here is not good. If we attract monsters during the fight, we won't be able to escape. Let's retreat the same way and lure this demonized clam outside to fight."
The individual players were all very obedient and responded one after another.
Ji Tang said again: "I need a few walkers to cooperate with me to lure out the monsters. Who will come?"
"I'll do it, I'll do it!" The Walker players immediately rushed to sign up.
Because mages are difficult to change jobs, knights are vulnerable, and warriors are very fragile... the most popular job among players right now is the walker job. Among ten players who have successfully changed jobs, at least six are walkers.
Ji Tang asked a few walker players to help, and then said to Jia Luo: "You don't have to come to lure the monsters. You and Yang Ying take the people out first and wait at the grass we just passed by."
"Okay." Sister Jialuo didn't say anything and immediately called on the main force to follow her.
After the main force left, Ji Tang led a few walker players who had volunteered to set traps among the dense bushes.
Watching Ji Tang using a knife to cut some vines, branches and other things to create traps, these individual walker players were stunned...
"Ji Tang... Brother Tang, are you a hunter in real life?" a player asked in surprise.
"No, I served in the Southwest War... in the Southwest." Ji Tang said with a smile, "Come and help tie this vine to the tree trunk over there."
“Okay, okay!”
After being surprised, the group of wanderers felt something was wrong: "Hey, Brother Tang, the demonized clam is quite large. Will this trap work?"
"This is not for fighting monsters." Ji Tang said with a smile.
The individual traveler who was helping to set the trap paused.
These players were not stupid. They thought about it and understood what Ji Tang meant...
"The precedent set by Mingfeng Chunpu and his team is really bad. They have started a trend of harming people by pulling monsters. I don't know how many people will suffer in the future." An older individual player sighed.
"Yeah." Another player responded, "The monsters in this game are pretty ferocious, and there's no way to get away from them. In the future, the Blood Alliance won't have to PK to clear the field. Just pull in a few waves of monsters, and then the group will have to disband."
"Oh my god, it's already difficult for a single player to kill monsters in a group, and you have to be on guard against being pulled by others all the time. It's too difficult!"
Ji Tang smiled and said nothing.
He knew very well that because En Bu Zeng urged him to work hard to get the position of Mayor of Exile Town, those players who played games had a lot of opinions about him...
But this mayor does have the idea of fighting for it.
It wasn't for the sake of glory in the game, but seeing that the settlement of "civilian NPCs" in Exile Town was inevitable, he really didn't feel comfortable letting players be the mayors of these "civilian NPCs".
Otherwise, he wouldn't be so active in leading the team to kill monsters and collect materials all night long - as the only person in the player group who knows the truth, Ji Tang must shoulder the responsibility.
"...It would be nice to have a few more helpers." Ji Tang, who was working silently, sighed in his heart.
Players play games with an entertaining mentality. Even if they get killed, they can be back online after half an hour. There is no psychological burden no matter who they kill.
During the last "Carnival Night", players fought for equipment and got black skins. Ji Tang, who had accompanied them all night, was worried all night long...
The "high-level NPCs" were quite good at fighting, and they didn't bleed much even when stabbed by players, but the "civilian NPCs" couldn't compare to the "high-level NPCs". Ji Tang had observed that all of these civilians had severe symptoms of long-term malnutrition, and they would probably get injured if they were pushed, let alone stabbed.
But he couldn't tell the players directly that they should treat these civilians with caution, which made Ji Tang feel like vomiting blood.
Just when Ji Tang was worrying that his shoulders were not strong enough to carry the burden, two naked skeletons emerged from the earthen platform in the center of the exile town...
