Chapter 86: The Grand Spectacular on the Street
It is 3:30 in the morning of October 30th, Earth time, and 6:00 in the morning of July 28th, in the other world time.
The darkest moment before dawn finally passed. The owner of an inn on the main street in the town, closest to the alley, cautiously pulled up a corner of the curtain and looked outside vigilantly.
This family hotel, with only a section facing the street, is a two-story building with nine small rooms, each of which is about the size of a club's toilet... Of course, the accommodation fee is also very cheap, only ten copper coins a night, and it also comes with Mrs. Doyle's handmade black bread breakfast and fresh milk delivered from the countryside by Mrs. Doyle's son-in-law every day.
The hotel run by the Doyle couple in a place like Westham has a very simple customer base. All rooms are rented out on a weekly basis to prostitutes or male prostitutes who have been kicked out of high-end clubs, and they are allowed to bring the guests they recruit back to stay overnight. The owner will not charge any extra fees, and of course, will not increase the amount of free breakfast.
At five in the morning, the commotion on the street outside alarmed the Doyles, especially the screams coming from the club next door, which almost gave Mrs. Doyle a heart attack.
The six long-term tenants were also terrified. Some of them bravely opened the window and looked out. They became even more uneasy when they saw groups of skeletons coming in and out of the lover's club next door. No one dared to stay alone, and they all crowded into the room of the shop owner and his wife.
When Mr. Doyle pulled back a corner of the curtain, the six shivering tenants huddled together craned their necks, as did Mrs. Doyle.
The streets outside didn't look unusual at all, and were not at all as chaotic as they were when they were invaded by bandits before.
But the Doyle couple and the six tenants who could see the street clearly in the morning sun did not feel at ease at all. Instead, their faces became paler than the others...
In the entire hotel, only Mr. and Mrs. Doyle's room could see the street view. Under the dazzling sunshine in late July, more than a dozen undead wearing fish scale armor, steel knives on their waists, and carrying large and small bags on their backs were passing by Mr. Doyle's window.
Mr. Doyle trembled as he lowered the curtains, and turned his head stiffly, his face filled with fear and despair.
The expressions of the other seven people were similar to his...
Although no one spoke, everyone in the room knew that others must have the same idea as they did - the night had already passed, so why were those terrifying ghosts still there? !
"When the day breaks, all creatures of darkness will retreat" - whether it is a bedtime fairy tale for children or a legendary story novel for adults, isn't that what it says? !
"Ms. Gold Coin..." Mrs. Doyle raised her hands and covered most of her face, trembling. "What should I do? What should I do? Honey, Chris will come to deliver milk soon. What should I do?"
Chris is the Doyle couple's son-in-law. He raises some cattle and sheep in the countryside. Every morning he rides his tricycle bought from Innadri into the town to deliver milk.
Mr. Doyle shook his head and stood there for a while, not knowing what to do. He then went to the window again and gently lifted a corner of the curtain...
The group of skeletons we saw before had not gone far. They were all gathered at the street corner, shaking their heads and communicating something.
Mr. Doyle clutched his chest in agony.
Lady Coin - if this is a nightmare, wake him up quickly!
Mr. Doyle prayed desperately in his heart, but... the lady he believed in seemed determined to go against him. He heard a dense and chaotic "click, click" sound, and more undead ran into Mr. Doyle's sight.
Mr. Doyle's eyes went dark and he fainted.
"Dear?!" Mrs. Doyle exclaimed.
Miaobishenghua looked up at the gray second floor with no sign and only a section facing the street, then turned to look at Qin Guan: "There are NPCs here too?"
"Yes, but you can't enter." Qin Guan said, "Not only here, there are also many street-facing buildings with people inside that are not allowed to enter. They are probably civilian residences that have nothing to do with our siege mission."
Miaobishenghua nodded: "It should be."
After her assault team took down the militia headquarters, they headed for the town hall and the public security station. The town hall was fine, as it had the same obvious features as the militia headquarters and was easy to find. However, they had to search several places before they found the public security station hidden in a group of townhouses. During this period, they also encountered a situation where the system popped up a red warning when they tried to break into a private house.
Players have a good acceptance of this situation, no problem. Players can't force their way into the zombie NPC residences and high-level NPC residences in Exile Town. They're used to it...
The Entropy Team was waiting at the street corner ahead of them. Seeing Miaobishenghua, Entropy Team waved and said, "Sister Huahua, how are we going to divide the task of "Capturing the Enemy"?"
Miaobishenghua nodded to Ji Tang beside him and said, "What do you think?"
"The battle results of each team are different, but everyone has contributed to the mission and no one has slacked off. If it were to be like the previous temporary agreement that the battle results belong to which team, I'm afraid there would be disputes." En Buzeng said calmly.
The poet's expression straightened up and he nodded intently.
This problem is also giving Miaobishenghua a headache... You have to know that there are only 300 players in this game. There is no saying that if this group of players cannot cooperate, they will be replaced next time. If the players are unhappy because of the issue of interest distribution, it will be difficult to build a team next time there is a large-scale task.
Apart from anything else, the assault team first captured 141 NPCs at the militia headquarters, then raided the town hall and the public security office, intercepted three militia teams that were returning from patrolling outside the town to take over, and tied up at least three to four hundred NPCs in total. All these achievements should belong to the assault team, and no one else would do it - everyone was pretending to be a ghost to scare people, taking out restraint belts to tie people up, and no one was talking nonsense about who worked harder and harder!
"Let's divide it equally." Ji Tang suggested, "Whether it's a capture mission, a rescue mission, or a captured trophy, gather them all together and divide them equally. This way, there will be the least complaints."
The brilliant penman uttered an "uh" and looked embarrassed.
It's not like she hasn't thought about it before, but it's really difficult to implement -
Ji Tang knew what Miao Bi Sheng Hua was worried about, and said with a smile: "It's okay. Whoever feels that he has made great contributions and is unwilling to hand over the spoils to share, will be blacklisted and excluded from the next large-scale mission. By the way, notify all players who have participated in the mission and let everyone know why this person was kicked out."
Wonderful Writing & Entropy were silent for a moment, then nodded in unison...
Indeed, unity is very important because there are fewer players. Similarly, with fewer players, it will be difficult for those who want to eat more and occupy more to survive, because they cannot move to another place after each shot.
After deciding on the distribution model, the team leader issued a notice in the team channel, notifying each team to count the "results" and arranged for someone to go back to the camp to notify the NPC to come over for settlement...
This team notice system, which can only be posted by players with leader privileges in team mode, was added temporarily after the "siege war" was launched. The stingy dog planner also specifically stated in the yellow-text announcement that the "team notice" function is only open during the siege war and closed after the siege activity is over due to server capacity issues.
This temporary function, which seems to be convenient for players, still caused players to complain wildly - if the server's carrying capacity is not enough, won't they shut down the useless idle maps? Instead of using the built-in chat, you put a bunch of wilderness maps there to eat up resources. What's wrong with you? !
On the other side, Hal left Pansy to watch over the camp and took Tuttle and Jerome on the road in the dark, appearing outside the town of Westham at dawn.
After an intense discussion, Hal had given up on the idea of letting the undead cause great trouble to Yang, and became concerned about whether this motley crowd of undead would be wiped out in a reckless attack - after all, there were dozens of tricycles parked in the camp, and if all the undead died, they alone would not be able to ride so many tricycles back.
As for running away with the vehicles and goods... Hal gave up the idea as soon as it came to his mind. He still had many brothers trapped in Tarantan. If he abandoned his brothers for the sake of profit, it was hard to say whether Tuttle, Pansy and Jerome would become alienated from him.
The moment they saw the town gate... Hal and the others fell silent.
The town gate of Westham was certainly not as majestic as that of big cities. There was a passage in the middle of the two walls that could accommodate three carriages running in parallel, which was considered the town gate. Usually the town gate was completely open, and only when a group of thieves attacked would a winch be used to pull the iron gates fixed on the city walls on both sides to the middle and close them.
As for a curfew... it doesn't exist. Westham's economy depends entirely on night business. If any sheriff proposes to strictly enforce a curfew, he will definitely be fired.
At this moment, in the early morning sunshine, in front of the town gate of Westham Town... there were several undead standing openly.
Besides that… at the base of the wall on both sides of the town gate, there were dozens of dejected people in militia uniforms, arranged like carrots…
Hal, who was originally worried that the undead would be wiped out, suddenly felt a nameless anger rushing to his head -
There are hundreds of people in the Westam militia, plus the thugs from various brothels, which means they can mobilize at least thousands of strong men!
With so many people, they could still let just over 200 undead take care of them overnight. Even the town gate was taken over by the undead - are you all pigs? !
Even if there were more than a thousand pigs, the undead couldn't catch them all in one night! !
It's a disgrace to the human race! It's so embarrassing!
Hal's balls were splitting with pain, but the player guarding the town gate was very happy to see them coming: "Here they come, the NPC is here!"
"Come and settle the task, Halsan~"
Hal: “…”
Jerome, who was just confused, suddenly looked confused and said nervously, "Oh no, I didn't bring those copper coins with me. How many did you bring?"
Tuttle also became nervous: "Damn it! This is a big problem. I didn't bring it with me!"
Jerome was extremely anxious: "What should we do? If we don't give enough copper coins to settle the task, these undead will eat us alive!"
Tuttle was sweating profusely. “Damn it! Who would have thought that these undead could really take down Westram overnight?!”
Hal was extremely annoyed, but he also knew that if there was a problem with the settlement task, the consequences would be very serious, so he could only say, "I'll drag them first, and you guys go back and bring the copper coins."
Tuttle and Jerome didn't waste any time and just turned and ran...
Hal looked at their receding backs, silently withdrew his gaze, and walked towards the group of crazy undead with a heroic expression of generous sacrifice...
There are only two times when the undead are enthusiastic towards their mentors: one is when they accept a task, and the other is when they hand in a task.
Hal was escorted into the town by this group of undead. When he saw the grand scene of the famous red-light district in the South, which he had been to twice... Hal's face almost broke apart on the spot.
On the relatively straight street, from one end to the other, there were three neatly lined up rows of people with their hands and feet tied, some looking dejected, some looking confused, and some looking dazed...
These unlucky guys are basically all adult males, with all kinds of physiques, ages, and appearances, including the old, middle-aged, and young.
What's worse is that only a few of these people are dressed neatly, while most of them are in disarray, and at least more than half of them are only wearing a pair of underwear...
At a glance, at least several hundred half-naked men can be seen, and most of them have very bad figures. What you see are either white, swollen fat or dry flesh like pork ribs. The sight is really terrible - Hal only took a glance and felt like he was going blind!
What's even more annoying is that Hal found that the people on the street were not the only ones tied up like pigs by the undead. While he was watching the undead carry people like pigs...
"Hal, we have to hand in the task of 'Capture the Enemy' first. Please click on the person's head." Miaobishenghua came out from the crowd and went forward to interact with Hal on behalf of all the players in the group.
Hal nodded numbly.
He didn't even bother to ask why these undead souls kidnapped and dragged away even the pleasure seekers to make up the numbers. Anyway, they had to pay with the coins given by Yang, so he didn't feel heartbroken at all.
As for these people who nominally fall into their hands after paying the money, just leave it to Rex to worry about!
When Halma was counting heads mercilessly, they were in the wilderness more than fifty kilometers away from the Westram branch line.
Yang Qiu, who traveled overnight, confirmed through the branding matrix that the "prisoners of war" had begun the "handover" procedure, and he couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief...
The players were playing heartlessly and in a very shady way, which really worried him a lot.
While traveling, he acted as an online GM, monitoring more than 200 stupid players, constantly giving red warnings to players who might "violate taboos", and frantically repairing bugs that might be exposed at any time in the "siege mission" - this level of mental exhaustion was even worse than when he first planned to sneak into the Holy Land of the Fiery Sun Church!
Especially when the crazy brothel owner rushed out to fight with the players, if he hadn't "patched" it in time and popped up a warning to remind the players that killing that guy would result in a loss of 100 points of territory reputation, that guy would have been hacked to death on the spot.
As for the fact that the players were able to take over Westram overnight, Yang Qiu was not too surprised.
Two hundred and twenty-six undead soldiers with certain combat effectiveness, excellent discipline relative to this world, and fearlessness of pain and death, attacked a small town at night in an organized, premeditated and planned manner. Not only did the undead have passive hidden BUFFs such as "intimidation", "mental shock" and "mental confusion", they also cleverly used their own strengths during the attack and adopted a multi-pronged attack strategy to divide the battlefield... It is normal to have such a result.
Even if the enemy's theoretical military strength is more than five times that of the player's side, it is completely useless if an effective counterattack cannot be organized quickly - in this regard, the action plan that the two brainy female players came up with to first destroy the militia headquarters should be credited with the first merit.
If the players ignored the militia, the main force of the defending army, and rushed to the red light district to cause trouble... then this siege battle would definitely not end so quickly, and it might still be a stalemate now.
However, this does not mean that the players' first battle is completely successful. There are still many hidden dangers that have not been resolved. Yang Qiu must rush to Westram as soon as possible to preside over the scene, otherwise... let alone the garrison of Innadli City which is nearby, any escaped fish in the militia team can bring big trouble to the players.
The most important thing is - using the "identification technique" of crazy patching, Yang Qiu secretly robbed the brothel owner and the pleasure seekers of dozens of kilograms of gold coins and gold ornaments! Yang Qiu would not feel at ease if he didn't quickly pocket this batch of gold!
The artwork from other worlds lacks the historical heritage recognized by Earthlings and is worthless. The silver and copper coins circulated in human countries are of no use to Yang Qiu. The silver and copper transactions on Earth are calculated by tons, and you won't make much money by spending so much effort. Only gold is hard currency!
With this batch of gold, he would have no problem feeding thousands of mouths in the town of Westram. Taking over the town as a base and expanding the territory of Tarantan would not be a problem at all!
The black-robed inspector Lowell kept turning his head to observe Yang Qiu, and his expression became more and more... indescribable.
The spellcaster never prayed to God. He believed that no matter how bad this black magician was, he would never degenerate into a cultist. That's right... This guy was really abnormal. He was tired after riding for less than ten hours, which was totally unlike a high-level spellcaster. Now he was suddenly excited as if he had taken the wrong potion. He couldn't understand! He really couldn't understand what was going on in this guy's mind!
"Are you okay, Yang?" Inspector Lowell expressed his concern because the man had been eating and drinking with him for quite some time.
"Of course." Yang Qiu smiled and nodded to the black-robed inspector. "In fact, I have good news to share with you, respected inspector."
"Hmm... I wonder what the good news is?" Supervisor Lowell said cautiously.
"Our undead friends saved Westram." Yang Qiu smiled as if in the spring breeze.
Rowell: “…”
He tried to understand the meaning of these words, and with a twitch of his mouth, he said more cautiously: "You mean... the Tarantan Undeads captured Westram?"
"It's salvation." Yang Qiu corrected the black-robed inspector's wrong wording and said solemnly, "Perhaps you have heard of Westram's nickname, respected inspector. This town was just an ordinary border town decades ago, but in recent years it has gained a blasphemous nickname of 'Man's Paradise'. I'm really surprised that the Gold Coin Church has ignored this."
Rowell: “…”
There is nothing more bizarre than hearing a black magician utter the words "blasphemy against the gods"... But Yang was mocking the Church of Gold Coin, and he, a member of the Prosperous Church, really couldn't say anything.
"You can't imagine the plight of the people there, respected inspector." Yang Qiu said compassionately, "Young men and women came to this place against their will, losing their dignity and freedom, and being manipulated like fish on a chopping board. Many people were infected with indecent diseases, and many did not even live to be 30 years old... This should not be their fate, I think so, what do you think?"
Rowell: “…”
Why would the people of the Prosperity Church care about the territory of the Gold Coin Church? Lowell must not say such things.
Rowell could only endure the strong sense of disobedience and nodded awkwardly: "You are right."
The more hypocritical and pseudo-civilized a society is, the more effective the banner of political correctness will be - as long as this political correctness does not actually interfere with the interests of the upper class.
Yang Qiu was talking about the border cities of the Rhine Kingdom and damaging the Gold Coin Church, which had nothing to do with Lowell, the black-robed inspector of the prosperous church. Lowell certainly had no reason to refute him.
Yang Qiu smiled and nodded, and said with more righteousness and compassion: "Our dead friends have lost their lives before. They understand the value of life better than the living. They can't stand so many people being trampled like animals, so they did what they should do."
"Next, it's our turn to do what we should do. We can't let our undead friends look down on us. I think you think so too, respected inspector."
Rowell suddenly came back to his senses: "???"
Just wait a minute!
Who is with you? ! Don't take me with you, you lunatic! !
Supervisor Lowell roared in his heart.
But... on the surface, he just stared in horror at the black magician who was riding the undead horse parallel to him.
Yang Qiu had a determined look on his face and looked at him with a very trusting expression, as if he was very sure that Lowell would never object.
Rowell: “…”
Is it too late for him to regret now? It's good to stay in Exile Town and drink tea and eat for free every day...
When Yang Qiu coaxed and deceived Lowell into welding him to the chariot, in the town of Westham.
In the Lover's Club, Ms. Shirley and more than 20 waitresses stood expressionlessly at one side of the hall, watching woodenly as the skeletons came in and out, carrying out the guests who were tied up like dead pigs from each room.
A few minutes ago, when the skeletons entered the club again, Shirley and her colleagues were terrified and screamed and ran to the toilet together.
But the skeletons just looked at them curiously and ignored them, which made these hostesses, who were usually considered respectable among the prostitutes in Westham, a little embarrassed...
Then, the skeletons pretended that they didn't exist, entered the rooms one by one, and carried away the guests one by one, seeming to point at the heads as they carried them away...
A dozen guests, including the cook, thugs, manager and boss, a total of twenty people, were all carried away. The skeletons then left the club while talking to each other "KABAKABA" and ignored these women.
The waitresses turned around silently, looking at the neatly arranged, embarrassed guests' thugs on the street outside the window, and became even more silent...
"What on earth are they...doing?" a very young waitress asked in confusion.
"...I don't know." Ms. Shirley said stiffly.
She was also confused as to why these undead were still wandering the streets after daybreak...but since these undead had no intention of harming them, they didn't need to run away in a hurry for the time being.
No one understands better than these waitresses how dark this world is. Women like them will not be in a better situation even if they escape from this nightmarish street.
The waitresses didn't understand what the skeletons were doing, but... that didn't stop them from wanting to see such a scene.
Even in high-end clubs like Valentine, all the hostesses have been humiliated, bullied, or even beaten by customers - the customers who pay a lot of money to buy them always have the mentality of making back their costs, and rarely regard them as living people who need to be respected.
These men, who usually act so arrogant and domineering, riding on them to show off their fists, are dragged to the streets like pigs and sheep for display, and their heads are counted by the skeletons as if they were merchandise... They can't get enough of such scenes.
Not to mention that the boss who completely treats them as dead objects is also among them...the feeling of satisfaction is simply indescribable.
After standing and watching for a while, a waitress pulled a chair over and I sat down to watch.
After a while, they dragged the sofa to the window...
At around seven o'clock, when Rex and a group of players who had received a mission and were going back to ride tricycles arrived at Westram, almost all the prostitutes and men on the street appeared at the windows, enjoying the unprecedented and unique grand scene on the street with relish...
Osrian, Lika and the young Brooke, who returned to Westham with the tricycle convoy, have been talking without stopping since they entered the town gate.
The only embarrassed person was the unmarried girl Mia. She was so embarrassed by the half-naked men lining the street that she didn't know where to look.
Rex asked the players to park their tricycles in the open space near the town gate, got off the tricycles, looked up at the people in the buildings on both sides of the street who looked very unhealthy, and silently issued cooking tasks to the players who were impatiently waiting for the settlement and distribution of money...
