Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation
Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
“Please continue to organize the teams, Phoenix.”
He looked at the recently resurrected players. Although the players were continuously swearing and had expressions filled with dissatisfaction, they still started to line up in a well-behaved manner.
Meng Yang had handed over the leadership role, but was satisfied with the dominance shown this time around. At the very least, the players would show restraint due to these circumstances.
Meng Yang was well aware of the jackals’ upcoming threat, but he also knew that he lacked commandership. Hence, it would be better off for him to hand these players over to Phoenix to lead.
The female marksman Phoenix was deemed the military force of the camp. If she were the one leading the lines, the players would not offer a lot of scruples.
Furthermore, Phoenix had always been the one responsible for the fortifications of this survivor camp, so she had some capability in this aspect as well. Of course, it did not matter much whether or not she had the abilities as he could always assign the job to any A-grade players if necessary. However, when compared with someone who could properly organize them, the levels of efficiency in the ‘army’ would be completely different.
Despite this, the players were not the only ones Meng Yang needed to consider; there were other people in the camp as well. When faced with this attack, there was a need to save as many old and weak women as well as children as possible.
If Meng Yang were able to find players with organizational and leadership talents, they could probably do it themselves. However, under today’s circumstances, it would be better for female marksman Phoenix to be the one to coordinate and direct them.
After all, he was the summoner and the player’s register machine. He was also the camp leader, so it would be fine if he stayed safely in the background.
“Thank the heavens I wasn’t running around just now!”
At this moment, amongst all the players, Liu Chuanfeng patted his chest lightly as he leaped joyfully, thankful that he had not wandered off. He noticed the pain was now adjustable, but he had not tweaked it yet. Thus, he hurriedly lowered the pain level.
The pain of getting killed by the pig-headed monster for the first time was too realistic, it was as if he had really died once before. This was still fresh in his memory.
“We’re still oblivious toward the nature of this game. The degree of freedom is quite high, but we’re still required to follow the storyline.”
Zhuang Dafa muttered at the side. Even though he had only participated in the closed beta before, his sense of superiority overflowed upon looking at the shocked faces of the other players who had never seen this world before.
Many of the players were wandering around everywhere earlier, but there were quite a few that stood still. For instance, Xu Zhe, Sun Shuai, Zhuang Dafa, and Liu Chuanfeng, as well as Ma Xiaoling had experienced the game’s realism before, so the sense of novelty they had toward the game was not as overwhelming.
Moreover, the five of them were all teammates who had fought together before. Having said that, when the game was forced to close for maintenance, there was no time for them to leave any contact information. Hence, they had quite a few things to talk about during this encounter.
“I feel like this time around it’s a little bit similar to a legionary battle mode, and we’re the little soldiers acting as cannon fodder!”
Xu Zhe looked at the people around him. He began studying the mission the moment he heard the mission announcement, and then he saw some clues from the camp leader (Meng Yang) and the leading general (female marksman Phoenix).
“It’s the fate of the footman,” The taciturn Sun Shuai spat coldly.
“We just don’t know how things are going to develop in the future,” Xu Zhe touched his chin habitually. As someone with many years of experience as a guild president and the wasteland hunting team commander, he always liked to ponder about a game’s development and plot objectives.
“Are we going to fight monsters again? There’s not a moment of peace in this game.” Ma Xiaoling stood in the middle of a group of people, like a crane amongst a flock of chicken. She was especially eye-catching. As she heard the few people’s discussion, she seemed to have remembered the task that was given earlier.
Nonetheless, no one paid attention to her, as it would not be a game if there were no monster fighting.
“What’s the outlook of this world? Why do I see oriental faces, as well as westerners here?” Sun Shuai raised another question, which aroused the interest of several people.
Ever since he stepped foot in this camp, he discovered that although the protagonist of the plot, and the player’s summoner, Meng Yang, was of Asian descent, there were also many black-haired, black-eyes, and yellow-toned skin in the camp. However, there were many western-colored hairs, and eyeball colors as well in here. Furthermore, you could tell them apart by their names.
“When you put it that way, there’s definitely a mixture.” Xu Zhe nodded.
Both of them were regarded as game fanatics who would observe many environmental traits. In addition to what they saw on the surface, they would also speculate on other things.
“The only thing we don’t know is if the world outlook is grand enough. They’ve been keeping it hidden!”
“We’re on storyline mode right now, right? It’s just not a single-player thing, on the contrary, the whole world’s plot is developing. I feel that this is the true meaning of virtual online games.”
“And we don’t know how many chapters there’ll be, or how many bosses there are. In any case, you’re right. According to the current degree of freedom of the game, if it is an adventure mode that opens the world map at will, I think the development won’t be able to keep up.”
Everyone there had played sandbox games before, and generally understood the routines of game developers. They would set a storyline and craft it according to novels or historical myths. Hence, there was never a shortage of purely high-degree-of-freedom modes games.
“Hey… did you guys notice?”
As Xu Zhe and Sun Shuai were speculating on the game’s mode and background, Liu Chuanfeng, who was carrying a bone cleaver, flipped his long hair. “They’ve updated quite a lot of things this time. Not just the costumes, there’s the adjustment levels for pain as well. It seems that the entire beta had been created according to the game protagonist’s development.”
“I feel that it’s to improve the player’s sense of involvement,” Zhuang Dafa thought for a while before saying. Ever since he played ‘Journey to The Other World’, he had put all other games aside; He was wholly immersed in this particular game.
During the previous maintenance period, he had scrolled through the official website every single day. Either that or he was imagining the experience he had in the game. It could be said that he had gone utterly gaga over the game. The feeling was more exhilarating than the first time he had played ‘Infinite Fun’1 in a classmate’s house.
“You, you, you, you, and you. Step out of the line.”
As Xu Zhe, Zhuang Dafa, Liu Chuanfeng, Sun Shuai, and Ma Xiaoling discussed in low voices, Phoenix, who was standing in front, suddenly called them out.
“Huh? Why’d she call us out?”
“Right?”
All of them were a little confused, but after recalling Phoenix’s precise archery skills, they decided to step out anyway.
Phoenix took a closer look at them. As she noticed their relaxed demeanor and complete lack of fighting strength, her two beautiful brows furrowed once more. However, she remembered what Meng Yang had explained to her before, and continued, “The five of you are temporarily appointed as captains. Each of you will choose ten people to form a small team and proceed to follow my command.”
“Based on what grounds?” As soon as Phoenix said this, the discordant sounds of the players were heard once again.
Everyone was merely playing a game, so there was no reason why they had to listen to commands. This was the conventional way of thinking for the lone rangers.
“We’ve killed a pig-headed monster before and saved the protagonist of the camp,” Sun Shuai glanced at the player who was talking and said dimly.
“It’s probably because of the rescue mission we had done to save the protagonist last time out.” Xu Zhe understood and voiced out to explain again, “Anyway, you’ve seen the mission’s reward as well. It’s favorability and prestige.”
The triumphant Liu Chanfeng laughed as well. “Hey brother, us big bros were players from the previous closed beta. The task’s completion enabled us to achieve the NPCs’ favorability bonus,” He said as he shook the bone cleaver in his hand. “Look at this, this is a trophy. Can’t you see you’re all empty-handed.”
“Damn, we really are empty-handed. Are we supposed to use our teeth to bite the enemies later?”
“The game’s so poor and cruel!”
Liu Chuanfeng reminded the players that at this time, none of them had weapons in their hands.
However, the focus of all the players’ attention was still on the favorability and prestige system mentioned before. Because there was no data panel provided, not everyone could figure it out immediately. The prestige and favorability of the previous games they had played merely affected their ability to accept tasks or buy items.
In this game, favorability and prestige were somewhat similar to reality, and it had become an intangible meter.
“So, that’s it!”
“That’s what’s gonna happen.”
Once many other players heard this, they understood what was going on as well.
It seemed like this game was really based on the contributions or NPC’s favourability and prestige to improve one’s ranking.
Although many players were uncomfortable with this kind of grouping, there was still not much resistance. After all, they were all gaming fanatics, so they were well aware of the concept of teamwork.
A total of 54 players came this time, including 42 male players and 12 female players. However, after being punished by Phoenix, two of them quit the game, and three others were temporarily resurrected in “confinement” and were still waiting for their death timers to end.
The remaining 49 people were divided into five teams, led by Xu Zhe, Sun Shuai, Zhuang Dafa, Liu Chuanfeng, and Ma Xiaoling. Among them, Liu Chuanfeng’s team had only nine members, while the other teams all had ten members.
This kind of arrangement might not be reasonable, and when the time comes, most of the fights would get reckless, but at least in this way, the favourability and prestige rewards could be utilized.
When all the teams had been formed, Meng Yang took a few older people and women from the camp and appeared in front of the players with some weapons.
“Adventurers, thank you for coming, but you can’t fight the cruel jackals with your bare hands. I have some weapons to lend to you. However, they need to be returned to me after the war! Our weapons are precious, so if some are damaged, you’d need to compensate us!”
As the camp leader, naturally, he was the one who needed to come forward to announce such things.
After the fall of the City of Despair, the camp actually collected many weapons such as swords and spears. After all, this was once a city with a population of hundreds of thousands. Even Meng Yang and Gustav were able to provide some iron swords and broken guns when they first entered the city. However, many were rusty and broken, and no one here could properly repair them.
Meng Yang’s initial intentions were to use these weapons as mission rewards, but later reconsidered since the materials were too rough and did not take much effort to produce. However, giving each of them a starter weapon for doing nothing felt like a loss.
Now that the City of Despair’s entire financial system had already collapsed, it would take quite a long time to fix them all. Thus, it was more appropriate to classify this as borrowing.
“At least we finally have a weapon now!”
As they looked at the weapons Meng Yang took out, the players present got slightly more excited.
Just now, many of them noticed that everyone was empty-handed, and there were no backpacks or anything of the sort to equip novice weapons. Now that they saw that Meng Yang and the camp’s NPCs were taking out weapons, they breathed a sigh of relief.
Particularly for Xu Zhe, Zhuang Dafa, and Sun Shuai, who had experienced the last pig-headed monster battle. The first time they were met with the monster, everyone went into battle with their bare hands. Even though they found some later, all they got were primitive weapons such as bones, tree trunks, and stones.
This time around, they finally laid eyes upon the real cool soldiers’ weaponry.
The captains of the five teams were assigned iron swords. This was a standard weapon that was once common in the City of Despair, which Meng Yang had also used before. It weighed about one or two catty whilst the others were assigned iron spearheads. The long spear was also a standard weapon, but the length of the spear handles varied from one to another. So much so that four or five people ended up with wooden sticks.
There was no other way. All the weapons available in the entire camp were gathered here. Neng Yang had once heard from Phoenix, and Hera, the healer as well as the logistics officer, that the City of Despair had some sophisticated weapons or weapons enchanted with magic crystals. However, after the City of Despair was destroyed, many of them were no longer in the hands of humanoids, and were instead collected by people from other camps.
After the players received the weapons, they gradually became livelier. They relaxed slightly, which cleared up the awkward atmosphere that had come about as a result of many of them being abruptly killed by Phoenix.
As they held onto the broken spear and rusty iron swords, excitement filled their hearts. In reality, these were mere cutting tools. Even though everyone had seen a lot of magical weapons before when playing games, nothing could compare to the feeling of actually holding them in their hands.
“You can have this sword!”
Liu Chuanfeng rested the sole trophy bone cleaver from the last mission on his shoulder and passed the iron sword assigned to him to a member of his team beside him.
Upon laying his hands on the iron sword, the first thing he realized when he touched it was that not only was the metal rusty, the edges of the blade were also severely damaged. It was redundant even as a novice weapon and was not as sharp as his bone cleaver.
“That… Then, thank you, Captain!”
Li Yuncheng nodded excitedly. He was assigned to Liu Chuanfeng’s team and just so happened to be one of the few people who did not get given a spear and hence only received a wooden stick.
After receiving the iron sword, he threw away the wooden stick without hesitation.
This was the real deal!
Liu Chuanfeng flipped his long hair and smiled. “Don’t sweat it, brother. Just stick with me, and don’t get terrified. Just kill with all your might!”
This was not surprising for Meng Yang as he watched this scene unfolding from a distance. When Liu Chuanfeng appeared, he immediately noticed the bone cleaver that the pig-headed monster had used previously. He speculated that if the player held the weapons, it would not disappear when they were summoned again in the future. The reason for this was unclear. However, he would probably get the idea of it once the players died during the first wave once they faced off against the jackals with the weapons in their hands.
“Don’t you think something is fishy?”
Next to him, Xu Zhe held a decent iron sword and approached the captain of the other team, Sun Shuai, before asking in a low voice.
Amongst all the other players, the two had the most to talk about as they were not someone who looked at things merely at the surface level.
“A little,” Sun Shuai nodded. He continued, “Realistic simulations may prefer to put us in a unique circumstance, and provide us a reason for gifting us these weapons. Otherwise, if everything were handed over for nothing, it would be too unrealistic.”
“That’s true.”
Xu Zhe nodded slightly. He was sure that this was a game. It was just that when he knocked the rust on the iron sword, a bit of rust started falling off. This kind of absolute realism made people feel like they were in a dream, and not in a game.
When all the players received their weapons, the sky gradually darkened.
Many of the players who entered the game were still busy taking in the absurd level of realism when suddenly, above the walls, torches started waving back and forth.
“Enemy attack!”
An older man standing guard, patrolling the fence, suddenly shouted.
The old and weak women and children in the entire camp instantly panicked, and all the players were elated as they screamed out loud.