Chapter 192 : Chapter 192
Chapter : 192
The five-man squad advanced for some distance before encountering another demonic beast. This demonic beast was too high-level—Level 34—while their squad's average level was only 16. It was difficult to fight a monster of such a level gap, and even harder for players.
This was because players had very few skills in the early stages, a pitiful amount compared to natives of the same level.
However, thanks to the foundation laid by long-term training in reality, the five-man squad managed to go back and forth with this Level 34 demonic beast relying solely on physical combat techniques, though it took them half a day just to grind away a sliver of its health.
Captain [Ying Yi] was the first to realize they couldn't continue fighting. Although they were players and death in the game wasn't a real issue for them, the problem was that after a character died in Return, not only would they lose experience and levels, but their game backpack would also randomly drop items, and there was a two-day resurrection cooldown for the game character.
All things considered, death wasn't unacceptable, but a meaningless death for people like them, who were playing the game under orders, would be a major work error.
[Ying Yi] made a hand signal. This was a universal retreat signal within the internal department; anyone who had undergone training within the system could understand it. With the captain's command given, the remaining four did not linger in battle and quickly prepared to evacuate.
The little black cat squatting in the tree also took note of this gesture.
However, how could the demonic beast give these five humans who dared to provoke it a chance to escape? Seeing the humans who had been attacking it relentlessly now posturing to retreat, the demonic beast roared. Possessing little intelligence, it launched an even more violent attack based solely on instinct.
In an instant, the wolf-headed, leopard-bodied demonic beast pounced toward [Wangwang Squad], who was closest to it. [Bin Storm] shouted a warning loudly: "Brother Wang!"
The demonic beast's sudden increase in attack speed caught them off guard, but for a well-trained soldier, this wasn't an insurmountable problem.
[Wangwang Squad]'s reaction speed was also very fast; he held his heavy sword horizontally in front of him to block. As the only one in the team using a heavy sword, he was assigned the only Tank role.
Most of his free attribute points were stacked into Strength and Defense, so he wasn't instantly chilled to the bone by the demonic beast's vicious strike.
[Wangwang Squad] withstood the demonic beast's attack, and the remaining four followed up with damage output. After a burst of skills, the demonic beast was beaten back a little, but this made it difficult for them to continue implementing their retreat plan.
[Ying Yi] frowned, looking at the demonic beast before them which was showing increasing signs of going berserk, and said in a deep voice, "Everyone take your potions, be careful."
Sure enough, the very next second after [Ying Yi] spoke, the wolf-headed, leopard-bodied demonic beast threw its head back and howled.
Its originally pitch-black eyes were dyed with a hint of blood color, turning scarlet. It opened its mouth, which seemed capable of emitting a rotting stench, revealing a row of sharp teeth glinting with cold light. Disgusting saliva slowly dripped down those fangs, falling onto the grass blades in front of it, emitting a sizzling corrosion sound and almost immediately producing black smoke.
This demonic beast's saliva, or rather its body fluids, carried corrosive properties.
They didn't dare to imagine if that stuff accidentally dripped onto their bodies... or if an arm or leg were torn off by that thing; it was enough to make one's Sanity drop wildly.
Even after experiencing the holographic game for over a month, facing such a terrifying demonic beast, [Wangwang Squad] couldn't help but take a step back.
Really... even knowing that one could resurrect after dying in this game, facing a monster that only existed in movies still caused panic.
It really was because this world was too realistic.
[Wangwang Squad] mocked himself in his heart. In that split second of distraction, the demonic beast attacked again, still aiming for [Wangwang Squad]. It seemed to instinctively identify this person as the breakthrough point of the entire team.
And that was indeed the case. As one of the few people over forty in the entire secret operations team, [Wangwang Squad]'s physical fitness had declined somewhat. His acceptance of new things was not as high as the young people, and he wasn't quite proficient in using game skills yet.
He used to use firearms, but now he had switched to cold weapons, specifically a heavy sword. It could be said that his combat concepts were being rebuilt. A month was simply not enough for him to completely master the combination of the heavy sword and game skills.
The current [Wangwang Squad] relied mainly on his skills from years of training and his past combat experience.
Unfortunately, this combat experience was difficult to fully utilize within the power system of the otherworld, making him the breach in the five-man squad.
Even [Demon Prison Cruiser], who had poor physical stamina and chose the Mage class specifically because he wasn't good at close combat, was much stronger than him—at least the Mage's positioning was ranged control and damage output.
The demonic beast's claw went straight for [Wangwang Squad]'s face. At this moment, even if [Wangwang Squad] reacted and raised his sword to block, it was a bit too late, and his surrounding teammates would find it difficult to provide rescue in such a short time.
The turning point happened in that instant.
A fluorescent green arrow turned into a stream of light and pierced through the demonic beast's right claw. Immediately after, the beast's foul-smelling blood sprayed out, simultaneously interrupting its attack on [Wangwang Squad] and making the originally agile and rapid attack somewhat sluggish.
[Wangwang Squad], being closest to the demonic beast, had a few drops of the foul-smelling blood splashed on his face. This made [Wangwang Squad] subconsciously hold his breath; he was afraid that if he smelled it one more time, he would turn his head and vomit.
Stimulated by adrenaline, [Wangwang Squad] raised his sword and slashed down, cutting into half of the demonic beast's claw, leaving a deep gash.
To think he could leave such real damage—did this Swordsman's heavy sword... have armor penetration attributes?
The injured demonic beast was truly enraged now. Its gaze toward the five-man squad was filled with a thick bloodlust. I'm afraid today won't end peacefully; it's a situation where either you die or I die.
[Wangwang Squad] had no time to think about who shot the arrow that just flew over. After all, none of their squad members used a bow and arrow as a weapon. And Captain [Ying Yi], who was positioned slightly further away and paying close attention to the entire battle situation, couldn't have missed this arrow that appeared out of nowhere.
He quickly looked in the direction the arrow came from. A figure stood on a treetop, holding a jade-green bow, his right hand currently pulling the bowstring to its limit.
In the next instant, the person released the hand drawing the string, and a jade-green arrow was shot out simultaneously. [Ying Yi] could even hear the whistling sound as it broke through the air. Swish! It hit the demonic beast's body again, turning into particles of light and disappearing after inflicting a wound.
And a small chunk of the health bar above the demonic beast's head visibly disappeared.
The damage was that high?
[Ying Yi] was somewhat surprised. Although he didn't know if this guy who suddenly popped up was an NPC or a player, his attacks dealt considerable damage to the demonic beast. With his addition, their probability of defeating this beast increased significantly, saving them from total annihilation.
Aside from [Ying Yi] noticing Yan Yunqing's presence, the others—except for [Wangwang Squad] who was at the very front facing the terrifying demonic beast directly—more or less glanced backward and saw the guy standing in the tree continuously firing cold arrows.
They looked at each other, and seeing no further instructions from the captain, they didn't speak, focusing intently on the battle in front of them.
After grinding for nearly half an hour, the Level 34 demonic beast finally had its last bar of health cleared after being pierced through the left eye and brain by an arrow. It crashed to the ground and, after a few breaths, dissipated into particles of light just like other demonic beasts.
Having gone through high-intensity combat, the group almost collapsed to the ground right there.
Half an hour. This time wasn't long; it was even shorter than the time their squad usually took to kill demonic beasts, which could be considered rapid. But this was achieved based on them nearly squeezing themselves dry.
...Well, the sudden appearance of the archer was also the key to them being able to slay the demonic beast.
With the disappearance of the demonic beast, the experience reward for killing a higher-level monster was distributed to the six people present. Yan Yunqing, who landed the final blow, received a particularly large share. However, the kill experience of a Level 34 demonic beast was just a drizzle to his current experience pool; the progress bar didn't even budge.
On the contrary, the five-man team basically all went up a level. The only one who didn't level up, Captain [Ying Yi], had his experience bar nearly full, needing only a tiny bit more experience to reach Level 19.
Yan Yunqing noticed the white light lighting up on them. He paused, then manually pressed the [+] behind his own level.
Level increased 18 → 19.
Good, this looked much more realistic. It just meant he advanced two places on the level leaderboard.
The demonic beast was dead. [Wangwang Squad] finally had a chance to catch his breath. He propped his heavy sword on the ground, using it as a crutch, and leaned on it while panting heavily. "Didn't expect to be able to kill this demonic beast across so many levels. Almost thought I was going to experience my first death in this game today."
[Wangwang Squad] sighed. His health line was currently very dangerous; if he suffered a few more attacks, he really would have ascended to heaven on the spot. Even with all that defense stacked, it was useless against a demonic beast with a level gap of over a dozen levels.
He looked at his health bar and felt he couldn't leave it be. What if another demonic beast came later? He hurriedly rummaged through his backpack, found a healing potion issued by the higher-ups, and downed it.
HP +20 +20 +15 +20...
[Wangwang Squad] watched his health bar rise at a turtle's speed, miraculously feeling a warm current flowing through his body, though it wasn't very obvious.
The game world is great. If he had suffered such severe injuries in the real world, he would have died from lack of treatment long ago. Even if he could be resuscitated by doctors, it would take half a month, or even several months, to recover fully.
If only items from the game world could be brought to the real world. Thinking of comrades who had been injured and died in the line of duty during past missions, [Wangwang Squad] couldn't help but sigh. Immediately after, he heard the squad captain's voice.
"Are you a player?"
Hmm? What player?
[Wangwang Squad] stood dazed. He turned around and saw a person wearing a set of exquisite cloth armor with a dark blue cloak draped behind him, walking over with light steps.
As he walked, the dark blue cloak behind him swayed along, but [Wangwang Squad]'s gaze was attracted by the jade-green bow in his hand.
It was a bow that appeared entirely jade-green, with vines winding up it, dotted with specks of starlight, lush and green. The workmanship was extremely exquisite; one look and you could tell it wasn't an ordinary item—especially when compared to the simple longswords and simple heavy swords in their hands. It was simply heaven and earth.
It looked very expensive.
The only thing that could be mentioned in the same breath was the staff in [Demon Prison Cruiser]'s hand. That was dropped from fighting a higher-level monster some time ago. The tip of the staff was inlaid with an aqua-blue gem and carved with some simple patterns. Its attribute stats were unknown times superior to the weapons they bought from the blacksmith shop.
Among players of the current level, it was already considered a rare treasure. Originally, the higher-ups intended to collect it, but [Demon Prison Cruiser] seemed to have some connection with the higher-ups, and after some unknown negotiation, the staff was given to him to use.
Yet, even such a staff, which could be called a divine artifact so far, paled into insignificance before that jade-green vine bow.
One could tell at a glance which was more precious.
Hmm... Bow? Right, during the battle just now, there seemed to be a green arrow landing on the demonic beast from time to time, causing a certain amount of damage.
It was just that [Wangwang Squad] was fighting the demonic beast very intensely at that time, and under the control of adrenaline, he momentarily ignored the existence of those arrows.
Could it be... that the arrows were shot by the person before him?
Thinking this, [Wangwang Squad]'s gaze finally fell on the newcomer's face. Black short hair, dark red eyes, exquisite features... his temperament was also very distinct. Most importantly, there was no NPC marker or game player ID above the other party's head.
All NPCs in this game had NPC markers, which were names displayed above their heads. Even if the player didn't know the NPC's name or affiliation, there would be prompts like [A Mysterious Visitor] or [A Villager Passing By by Accident].
Suddenly, a person appeared with nothing displayed above his head. There was only one possibility: a player who had hidden their ID.
In the game, one could choose to hide their game ID so that all players they met couldn't see it. However, this function required gold coins. Hiding it for one hour cost 2 gold coins; a whole day would be 48 gold coins.
For players with few ways to earn gold coins, this was simply an astronomical price. No one would be so foolish as to spend such a large sum of unjust money to hide their game ID.
After all, hiding the game ID meant there was nothing above their head. Other players wouldn't mistake them for NPCs; instead, they became even more conspicuous.
Unexpectedly, they met a player hiding their game ID today.
Yan Yunqing walked closer and heard the captain's question. He answered very crisply, "En, I'm a player."
He glanced at [Wangwang Squad], whose health was only a sliver and rising at a turtle's speed, and fell silent for a moment. Why was the healing potion this guy used recovering health so slowly? The small red potions he used before recovered health faster than this.
"I saw you guys being chased by that demonic beast, so I lent a hand in passing. I didn't disturb you, did I?"
Yan Yunqing said with a smile. Although he did indeed help the other party just now, he had taken the last hit. If it were an ungrateful player, they might have accused him of kill-stealing.
Fortunately, the official personnel were not so shameless. The captain said, "Thanks to you this time, otherwise our squad might have been wiped out."
Yan Yunqing felt a bit of surprise in his heart. When he was following behind this squad eavesdropping earlier, he clearly felt that this captain was a taciturn soldier. He didn't expect him to be the one answering, and even using gaming terminology like "wiped out".
Yan Yunqing waved his hand at them. "It's nothing. I saw it while passing by and helped out. I was actually worried you guys would think I was kill-stealing."
"But that was indeed quite thrilling just now." He looked around and said casually, "After all, it was a Level 34 monster. The deeper you go into this forest, the higher the monster levels are. How did you guys end up so deep inside?"
[Ying Yi]'s gaze swept over Yan Yunqing. "We accidentally went in too deep while leveling. We encountered that demonic beast when we were preparing to leave."
Fighting a Level 34 monster and dealing such high damage meant his level couldn't be too low. Plus that exceptionally conspicuous weapon...
[Ying Yi] recalled the player intelligence collected by the higher-ups. Current players hadn't even thoroughly figured out the two basic classes of Swordsman and Mage, let alone the subsequent branch classes like Ranger and Rogue.
Using a bow, high level, yet not much news circulating about him...
The mysterious player who consistently ranked in the top ten on the level leaderboard, occasionally dropping down but quickly returning, and who hid his ID?