Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
“I put the setting for the cost of resurrection too low. You guys are not cherishing your lives!”
Meng Yang stood on the wall. As he watched one player after another howling as they jumped off the wall, he felt his head hurting.
He did not want to fight in this disaster that started for no reason. If they relied on the wall for defense, these giant scorpions would probably leave soon.
Although the giant scorpions were ferocious, they did not have a fixed intelligence like those gnolls. Besides, the survivors and players in the camp had not been prepared. The loss would be too great if a battle started suddenly. It would be better to just sit tight and grow properly.
It was a pity the players’ actions had once again spoiled Meng Yang’s fantasies. Once the players got into a craze, it was something he could not control at all.
“Every time they die they use magic crystals!”
Blood dripped in Meng Yang’s heart. The players just had to be newcomers. They had poor foundation, and there was no equipment dropped. He could not give any effective punishment for death either, so the only thing he could do was extend the resurrection time as best as he could.
However, this punishment tactic had its pros and cons. After all, he could not possibly restrict these people from going online for the long-term because of this. It was just a matter of waiting a while.
“Uh-huh, when there are a little more people, perhaps I should emulate those queueing modes in servers. If they die, they’ll go to the back of the line…”
Hearing each of these self-important players go mad and shouting misappropriated slogans, what he considered in his head was that he should get up to a hundred more players and use the resurrection queueing method. He could then reasonably delay the resurrection time, and it would also prevent too many players from entering the current camp and going beyond the camp’s capacity.
“I think I can try this idea out.” Meng Yang felt that putting a queueing quota was a good idea. Not only could it let the players wait in a sort of countdown, it could also create some nervousness. It seemed this could be considered hunger marketing too!
“Summoning Pixie, record everything happening now, then upload it onto the official website.”
Meng Yang settled on the idea and gave an order to the Summoning Pixie in his head. He had received feedback from the Summoning Pixie earlier that the number of people who had registered to enter his ‘three internal tests without deleting files’ had already reached four or five hundred people.
However, this number of people was still not quite enough. In order to maintain the current player pressure in the game, he felt that he had to expand his influence. He did not have to do anything like pop-up windows either. He only had to upload a few videos of the players’ actions in the game.
Though Liu Chuanfeng’s action of jumping off the wall to help his comrades was self-important, it was still inexplicably exciting.
Although he had attracted quite some attention through having pop-up windows on the official website, what truly attracted players’ attention was still the Summoner Pixie recording him meeting a pig-headed monster in the cave and putting it up on the official website. It made many people feel curious.
“Say, should I also let players have this recording function?” Meng Yang suddenly thought of this problem. To players, it would be a pity if they could not record how cool they were in the game.
Right after Meng Yang muttered this to himself, the ball of light that was the Summoning Pixie in his head flashed and gave him the answer. “Summoned creatures can have this function.”
“Oh? They really can?” Meng Yang had only been asking casually. He did not think the Summoning Pixie would give him an affirmative answer.
Next, the Summoning Pixie gave a simple explanation. The Summoning Pixie’s recorder was actually a kind of recording function. It was also in this Other World’s memory. There was no way for Meng Yang to investigate the specific principle of it. Its principle was probably just that it was a mysterious thing.
Still, these recorded video contents could not be directly extracted and downloaded by players. They could only display it on the official website that the Summoning Pixie controlled or on the player’s own login page.
About this, Meng Yang felt it was not a big issue. Players who knew how to play games could rip it themselves.
“Still, there’s no rush. I’ll add it in after my next update or patch. I want to expand my influence a little, but I can’t handle it at the moment if too many people come unless I liberate the entire City of Despair someday. Then even if hundreds of thousands or even millions of players enter, there’d be no problem. Won’t this become the Matrix then?!”
Thinking of how he could establish players’ transitions in the Other World, some excitement rose in Meng Yang’s heart.
Just as Meng Yang’s thoughts flew to who knew where, the players at the camp gate below the walls were in a riot.
“Pro bro, you sure are interesting!”
After seeing Liu Chuanfeng take the lead in jumping down and causing a crowd of players to come down the wall, he instantly gave Liu Chuanfeng a thumbs-up.
“Liu Chuanfeng, I freaking love you!”
Zhuang Dafa was even more over the top than Xu Zhe. Seeing players leap down one after another, he dashed over to Liu Chuanfeng’s side, his round stomach jiggling. He gave Liu Chuanfeng a strong bear hug.
Li Yuncheng beside them also had a smile on his face. That feeling of being abandoned just now and suddenly getting the support of many comrades inexplicably produced some passion in his heart.
It was to the extent that when the players were reciting their poetic slogans, Li Yuncheng even managed to think of a verse that he previously tossed into a corner of his head.
“Who says we have no clothes to wear? I wear the same armor. The emperor sends us to fight and fix our weapon.” (TN: This verse is basically about brotherhood in battle.)
“Bro Shuai, you came too!” Xu Zhe had just finished giving Liu Chuanfeng a thumbs-up when he suddenly saw a pale-faced and slightly trembling figure. He instantly laughed and ran to the figure’s side.
Sun Shuai forced out a smile. “You’re all here. Of course, I have to come.”
“Haha, Bro Shuai, don’t get so scared that you start crying now!” Hearing Sun Shuai’s words, Liu Chuanfeng ridiculed him from afar.
In one roaring howl, about seventy or eighty players jumped down from the wall like dumplings floating to the surface. In reality, not many would dare jump off a four or five meter tall wall, but in a game, none of them minded it.
Only one or two unlucky ones who had not mastered landing ended up twisting their feet, making it a little harder for them to move. Everyone else quickly formed a line, prepared to face the attack of the giant scorpions that were close at hand.
“Kill them!”
“Damn it, these scorpions are really motherf*cking huge now that we’re seeing them up-close!”
“These huge pincers! I think I won’t ever dare to eat crayfish after this!”
“Crayfish is nothing. Bugs have to be roasted to be tasty!”
“F*ck, anyone who has weapons, give one to a brother!”
“You can’t expect us to just fight emptyhanded like this, right?”
“We’re going to have to fight anyway. It’s too f*cking thrilling!”
A good twenty or thirty of these players were players from the previous second test. Many of them held weapons such as snapping spears, iron swords, large sticks they had gotten from the gnolls, and axes in their hands. The rest of the players were all purely newcomers to this game. Many of them had just followed along and jumped down when they saw others jumping down earlier.
Consequently, these people only realized they were emptyhanded after jumping down the wall. They did not even have a basic weapon.
Still, even so, there was no way to turn back now. Their passion was ignited, and nobody would retreat. The two who had hurt their legs lowered their pain levels. Although they were half-crippled, their gazes were incomparably fiery.
To many of them, a battle like this was something they had never experienced in their lifetime!
Creak—
Creak—
Odd friction and rustling noises sounded. Hundreds of giant scorpions gathered from every direction. It was unknown if it was because these giant scorpions were large in size, but their movement speed was not especially fast. However, at close distance, their waving pincers, shaking stingers, and six long, symmetrically-distributed legs were enough to break someone’s courage.
However, what astonished everyone was that these giant scorpions did not rush for the kill at the first opportunity. Instead, they came one after another, seemingly confronting the players.
“What’s this situation?”
Meng Yang watched the dense mass of giant scorpions gathering but did not make an attack at the first opportunity. His gaze revealed his confusion.
“They’re testing our power.”
Standing beside him, Phoenix gave an appropriately-timed explanation. Her clear eyes swept casually over the swarm of giant scorpions before she slowly opened her mouth and said, “These giant scorpions have not been at the camp surroundings for long. Rian and the others told me before that there were mostly locusts in that hole in the ground originally, but these giant scorpions have already kicked the locusts out to other places.”
“Are they fighting for territory?” Meng Yang asked tentatively, then shook his head. “No, that’s not right. Why do I feel like these creatures are determining where they are on the food chain?”
Meng Yang recalled what Gussa had told him last time. The monsters around the City of Despair were always changing. They did not just attack humans. There were many attacks among the creatures themselves as well. Often when one type of monster defeated another, a stronger opponent would appear.
This feeling made Meng Yang think of ecology’s food chain. He remembered a rebooted dinosaur movie he had once watched where a dinosaur who was raised with humans escaped its captive land. The first thing it did when it appeared at the park was to kill all animals it met.
There was only one explanation as to why it did this. It wanted to find its position on the food chain—whether it was a predator or prey, what was food, what were its enemies, and what were creatures that could be a threat to it.
Now, Meng Yang felt that these creatures in the City of Despair seemed to also have this element. Normally, an ecological food chain would probably be more fixed in the long-term evolution process of a world, but because of the Magic Tide, many creatures became irritable. These creatures all mutated or evolved.
However, even if they went through the same mutations or evolution, when it came down to different creatures or Extraordinary Species, their feedbacks were not exactly the same.
For example, with a snake and a goshawk, this snake would originally have been the goshawk’s food, but with the influence of the Magic Tide, the goshawk’s size and strength doubled or tripled whereas the snake transformed again. Its size and strength increasing more than tenfold. Their positions in the relationship might then have to be swapped.
Moreover, this was a pack species. A few individuals could awaken Extraordinary Seeds to become Extraordinary Species in a single leap. This kind of power would completely destroy some balance.
Meng Yang did not know if what he was currently thinking was right or not, but he felt that perhaps it was really due to this.