Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation
Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
“No way. The treasure boxes belong to all of you?”
Mohai feigned ignorance. The treasure boxes were already in his possession, so why would he want to give them back?
Moreover, if the treasure boxes were gone, his plan would be ruined.
“Of course! Lady Isabelle blessed us with the treasure boxes through the Reincarnation Pool. There’s no way we wouldn’t recognize our treasure boxes,” argued bandit leader No. 6.
“Lady Isabelle blessed you guys with the treasure boxes? No way, I found these treasure boxes in the wild yesterday, they are all mine.”
Mohai only found out about the origin of the treasure boxes yesterday and he finally understood why he could not open them.
Although there was a treasure box in every bandit leader’s territory, the contents were not set by the bandit leaders, so even they themselves did not know what the treasure boxes held.
Similar to what the bandit leaders said, all these treasure boxes in the wild came from the Reincarnation Pool. They were the bait that Lady Isabelle had blessed to hunt down the Adventurers. Whenever a treasure box was opened by an Adventurer, one had to simply throw the treasure box back into the Reincarnation Pool and new items would appear in the treasure box after a while.
Of course, even if Mohai knew how the treasure box worked, he would not have admitted it.
“Bullsh*t! Every one of us saw the treasure box come out from the Reincarnation Pool. There’s no way you can argue with that,” said one of the bandit leaders after Mohai tried to trick them.
“Well, I never saw it with my own eyes before. As you might have noticed, I’m a newly promoted bandit leader and I’m still trying to wrap my head around many things. How would I know that you guys aren’t trying to trick me? Why don’t we each take a step back? If you claim the treasure boxes are yours, you should be able to open them, shouldn’t you? If you can open them, you are free to take them back and I won’t say anything.” Mohai shook his head and waved his hands generously.
“Open the treasure boxes? You know Lady Isabelle forbids us to open the treasure boxes!” One of the bandit leaders got mad. If they were the ones responsible for the contents of the treasure boxes, of course, they could open it, but these treasure boxes were bait from Lady Isabelle to lure the Adventurers, so they did not have the right to open them.
“Stop talking nonsense to him! We are bandits. Why should we reason with him? Even if they aren’t ours, we can simply take them away! And since they are ours in the first place, we don’t have to worry at all! He might be a little stronger than us, but we outnumber him! Let’s gang up on him together and teach him some manners. We were here first!” Another bandit leader lost his patience and his eyes were glaring ferociously.
“Yeah, let’s gang up on him!”
Mohai insisted on keeping the treasure boxes. As the bandit leaders instigated each other, their eyes glared and swung their wooden clubs at him. The 36 bandit goons behind them no longer feared him either and charged at him together.
Finally, they decided to fight!
The bandit leaders believed that Mohai was talking nonsense while Mohai also knew that talking to a bunch of bandit leaders who could not even think for themselves was indeed a waste of energy.
The moment the bandit leaders appeared, Mohai already decided to fight them, but in order to verify some of his guesses, he did not want to take the initiative to attack, thus the long and toxic chat.
Mohai did not dodge or move. As though he was a player who allowed the opponent to take the first hit in a player-versus-player match just so he could counterattack, he generously allowed all the bandit leaders to strike him first. He lost hundreds of HP in the blink of an eye.
When the bandit leaders thought that Mohai was not as powerful as they thought, it boosted their confidence and erased the last bit of fear of him within them.
Upon seeing Mohai being attacked, his 15 bandit goons joined the battle without a second thought.
It was 15 against 36. Other than the newly recruited bandit goons on higher levels, the original few would probably die in the conflict.
However, Mohai did not stop them because he wanted to take this opportunity to understand the bandit goons a little more.
He had evolved from a bandit goon, but his understanding of his new identity was limited to how a player viewed a monster.
There were almost 60 monsters battling it out at the moment. In the five years that Mohai had spent in the game, other than some specific mission scenes, he had never seen a monster battle of this scale in the wild, especially among monsters of the same type.
In Origin, different monsters fighting in the wild was not a rare scene, but the same species having an internal conflict was probably the most extraordinary scene out there.
This was also one of the reasons why Mohai did not want to strike first. He did not know what were the consequences of fighting the same species.
[Heavy Bash]!
Under normal circumstances, a bandit leader would only use [Heavy Bash] when his HP had fallen to 50% to avoid paying the cost. No common bandit leader would pay 10% just to use [Heavy Bash] in advance.
Mohai did not care about that. All he wanted was to lower his HP so that he could end the battle quickly. At the same time, he also wanted to test whether he could [Snatch] equipment from the bandit leaders or not.
If he could, he could get the equipment that he desired a lot faster.
The Blessing of Isabelle was still active and he was two levels higher than the bandit leaders. In terms of raw stats, Mohai overtook every single one of them.
[Snatch]!
[Heavy Bash] easily stunned bandit leader No. 6, and when Mohai used [Snatch], he returned disappointed.
He could use [Snatch], but the effect was similar to when he used it on the other mobs. In other words, Mohai did not find any snatchable equipment from bandit leader No. 6.
It seemed like the game setting was fixed. Otherwise, monsters that could think for themselves would have an easy life.
The battle continued, but Mohai did not use [Heavy Bash] and [Snatch] again. He started to command his goons around.
It was actually his second time commanding the bandit goons to battle. The first battle with Rexus had ended a little too quickly since Rexus withdrew from the battle before Mohai could get any useful information.
If there were players around watching the battle, they would see Mohai shouting gibberish at the goons relentlessly.
It seemed like the monster and players communicated in different languages.
Mohai was actually prepared for this. In his past life, he had never seen a bandit goon or a bandit leader that spoke the player’s language. They mostly shouted and grunted furiously.
He captured all the actions of his goons. Then, he realized that the goons’ reaction and execution of his orders varied depending on their levels.
“It’s time to end the battle.” Mohai did not want to waste time anymore since he was near an answer to his question. He lowered his HP further down.
“He’s dying!”
“That’s it? You aren’t that strong after all!”
“The newbie is weak!”
When Mohai’s HP swiftly dropped to 10%, it was like a boost of adrenaline for the six bandit leaders, so their attacks became even more furious.
Idiots! If I don’t let you guys hit me before I use [Powerful Sweep], none of you would be able to lay a finger on me!
Of course, he would never explain that to the bandit leaders.
“There’s only a little HP left!”
Mohai’s HP dropped lower than 10%.
Die? No way!
[Encourage]!
Mohai’s movements paused and he used the [Encourage] skill that he had just learned.
[Encourage]could increase the Attack, Attack Speed, and Movement Speed of all allies within 30 meters by 20% for a duration of 30 seconds, and Mohai himself would also benefit from the skill.
With the effect of [Encourage], he could easily kill the bandit leaders despite having less than 10% HP.
Moreover, the super buff, the Blessing of Isabelle, was still active. It granted him many different increments, including a 50% increase in skill effect, a 50% increase in Movement Speed, and so on. As long as the buff remained active, the bandit leaders could not even catch his shadow.
[Powerful Sweep]!
The enhanced version of [Powerful Sweep] was furiously cast and swept over everything within a 30-meter radius. The six bandit leaders and most of the bandit goons within its range were attacked by a blinding yellow flash.
Many damage counters tallying more than 400 popped up above their heads, and with a single blow, 20-odd bandit goons, who had already lost some health, were instantly killed.
Again! The feeling of wiping out a large group of enemies together, despite them being just some low-level mobs, was exciting and delightful.
Mohai cast [Powerful Sweep] without holding back. He lowered his HP down to 10% just to use the skill to clear the battlefield.
[Powerful Sweep]! [Powerful Sweep]! [Powerful Sweep]!
After a few [Powerful Sweeps], all 36 bandit goons were wiped out.
“Scatter away! Hurry up and scatter away! He’s only got a little HP left. Spread out and attack! We can take him down!”
The six surviving bandit leaders finally reacted to the situation. They tried to spread out and draw a distance from Mohai.
The scattering tactic? It was a good idea. A common bandit leader might not be able to overcome this tactic, but Mohai was extremely powerful in his current form.
With the Blessing of Isabelle, he chased down the bandit leaders and continued tormenting them with [Powerful Sweep] that could further overcome them.
All six of the bandit leaders could not do anything to their enemy despite his low HP. They could not inflict a single damage point on him. On the contrary, their own HPs were dropping like crazy.
A single [Powerful Sweep] damaged them by more than 400 points and even though they had 5,000 HP, after sustaining several sweeps, the fear of death enveloped them.
Finally, one of the bandit leaders lost the will to battle and ran for his life.
After the first one ran, the second followed. Then, all the bandit leaders scattered away in cowardice.
Killing all of the bandit leaders would do Mohai no good and he did not plan on killing them all either. Sacrificing several bandit goons to keep the bandit leaders alive was not a problem for him.
Mohai only chased after bandit leader No. 6.
“Roar! I’ll kill you!”
Bandit leader No. 6 failed to escape and his HP was dropping like crazy as Mohai and his goons ganged up on him.
When his HP dropped to 10%, bandit leader No. 6 shouted furiously. He wanted to retaliate with his own [Powerful Sweep].
If he could cast it, he might be able to bring Mohai down, or at least, kill some goons.
Unfortunately, before he could cast [Powerful Sweep], Mohai stunned him with [Heavy Bash] and he was smashed to death by the other bandit goons.
“Killing the same species of monster won’t cause any monster souls to drop.” Mohai shook his head in sadness. He tried to collect the monster soul with the [Collect] skill but got nothing out of it.
The recruitment recipe was necessary to recruit subordinates from the Reincarnation Pool, but the core of the recipe would still be the monster soul. The stronger the monster soul was, the more powerful the recruited subordinate would be.
Using the soul of an Elite monster in the recruitment recipe would surely get him a powerful subordinate. Since he only had three Free Action chances to use within a week, the easiest way to get his hands on an Elite monster soul would be to kill the other bandit leaders around the area.
Mohai could not take the battle to them, but since the bandit leaders came to him, they gave him the chance to test it out.
The disappointing outcome was somewhat expected. Both the bandit leader and bandit goons did not provide Mohai with any monster souls.
It seemed like his only way to get his hands on an Elite monster soul was to go beyond his own territory.
However, he did gain something out of this fight.
[Notoriety] +1!
After winning the battle against the six bandit leaders, his notoriety in the Monolith Stronghold went up by a point!