Chapter 113-1: A Journey That Ends Only in Death (1) |
Colorful Mist Coast, Azure Star Sea Region.
Crystal Hall Node.
The great war that had lasted four days was still ongoing.
The Shadow-Scale Shrimp Guards, which grew by absorbing the node’s energy, launched a counterattack against the players’ offensive.
Hordes of Shadow-Scale Shrimp Guards, armored in hard scales and adept at group combat, used their numerical advantage and rapid underwater movement to form layers of nearly impenetrable barriers. Every strike of their sharp pincers could easily sever a player’s body, sending them back to Emperor’s Mound Village in an instant.
By rights, with the Shadow-Scale Shrimp Guards averaging around level 25, the player legion should have been able to take them down with ease.
After all, the Shadow-Scale Shrimp Guards did not possess the terrifying talent of the Swarm or the Black Tide to birth new units endlessly.
But without Inherited souls proficient in water offering support, human players could not adapt to the rhythm of underwater combat at all. Several waves of joint offensives were easily routed by the Shadow-Scale Shrimp Guards.
On the side of the alien players, though the Gill-Fish race and the Abyssal Mermen were proficient in water, their average Inherited soul levels were low, and they lacked sufficient body tempering levels to inherit Inherited soul attributes. In terms of strength, they were completely crushed by the Shadow-Scale Shrimp Guards.
But in the short term, it was obvious this Territory Node could not be taken.
At this moment, from behind the scenes, Qi Sheng used Guide’s analysis to roughly understand the rule trait effect of this Territory Node.
When he first saw the analysis introduction for Crowd Gathering, the effect he imagined was that the more players gathered, the stronger the ability’s effect would be.
Like a formation, where each player could serve as an energy node within it, linking to one another to generate additional attribute bonuses.
But Guide shook its head and said that was not the case.
It knew something about the rule trait of this Territory Node and had even witnessed with its own eyes a dominator-class lifeform, pardoned by the Emperor’s Sign, using it.
So-called Crowd Gathering was not the gathering of lives.
It was the gathering of abilities.
In Guide’s conjecture, this trait could bring stacked effects of ability traits to the player legion.
Suppose there were 100 players using the Black-Scaled Serpent Inherited soul. Once the Crowd Gathering rule was embedded into Emperor’s Mound Village, all players using the Black-Scaled Serpent Inherited soul could gain an extra bonus of Black-Scaled Serpent attributes of plus 1 percent.
The more players used the Black-Scaled Serpent Inherited soul, the stronger the bonus effect would become, producing a Crowd Gathering effect in terms of traits.
Beyond sheer numbers, this conversion might also involve a calculation of Inherited soul strength.
After hearing Guide’s explanation, Qi Sheng could already foresee the players’ performance after containing the Crowd Gathering rule node.
The forum would inevitably fill with a large group of players shouting for others to play their own preferred builds.
The rule trait of Crowd Gathering would grant higher extra bonuses to the Inherited souls used by more players.
The more niche the Inherited soul, the lower the bonus effect.
But as for the exact bonus, before the rule node was contained, even Guide could not provide a detailed explanation.
Even so, this rule trait aroused intense interest in Qi Sheng.
As player numbers continued to climb in the future, the bonus effect of the Crowd Gathering rule trait would continue to rise.
It was simply a late-game divine skill.
In Qi Sheng’s eyes, the priority of containing this Territory Node rose sharply.
As for when containment could be completed, it was merely a matter of time. He only needed to wait patiently.
He no longer paid attention to the guaranteed war of attrition. Qi Sheng’s consciousness began switching at high frequency between the forum and the players.
—
While the main force of players were grinding themselves to the limit at the Crystal Hall Territory Node.
Azure Star Sea Region.
At the first break of dawn, the horizon turned orange-red, and a thin veil of mist lay over the sea like gauze.
Gu Chen sat on the edge of a self-made raft, holding his rod in one hand, his feet slapping the cool seawater as he drifted with the waves, wearing an utterly content expression.
He looked up at the golden disc rising at the horizon, narrowed his eyes, and could not help but praise the beauty of the scenery.
For nearly a month, he had followed his guild’s friends-and-family group to battle the Black Tide and the Swarm in the Emperor’s Mound Mountain Range. During that time, he had also participated in the Skyfire campaign, finally raising his body tempering to level 2.
Today, he planned to give himself a vacation.
To go on a sea fishing trip that would end only in death.
For this, he had spent half a day beforehand felling trees near the coast, tying them with vines into a log platform, making a simple raft five meters long and three meters wide.
On this trip, he had no intention of coming back alive.
Opening the map showed he was already far from the coast.
At this distance, trying to swim back would be less convenient than dying to return.
Humming a tune and browsing the forum, Gu Chen found the feeling of solitary angling on the ocean indescribably delightful.
Just then, the fishing rod in his hand sank sharply.
Realizing a fish had bitten, his gripping arm jerked into force. Pale gold and pale blue light intertwined and surfaced over Gu Chen’s body.
This was precisely the manifestation of bodily amplification inherited from the Force Savage axe and the Shatter saber.
His heartbeat quickened.
He could feel that the fish beneath the surface possessed tremendous strength, almost enough to yank him into the sea.
Gu Chen decisively stood up, quickly adjusted his posture, gripped the rod with both hands, and engaged in a contest of strength with this unknown marine life.
The raft heaved with the waves, skimming forward along the big fish’s track as it cut through the swells.
Gu Chen did not rush to exert his full strength. He planned to wait for the big fish to tire before hauling it up, yet his mind was already imagining what kind of underwater creature it might be.
This was precisely the charm of fishing in the game.
Unlike the known fish species of reality, the ecosystem of the Monster World was extraordinarily complex.
Marine life in the ocean was vast and varied. You never knew what kind of ocean life you would reel up.
If luck was good, pulling up a low-level Primordial Monster would mean this trip had paid off handsomely.
Though the probability was small, it was not impossible.
Furthermore, aside from Primordial Monsters, many precious fish could fetch high prices at the Trading House.
One could say that every cast was a spin of the Lucky Wheel.
With good fortune, it could bring enormous wealth.
“Whoa!”
The raft’s speed as it cut through the waves grew faster and faster, even starting to skip like a stone across the surface. Gu Chen let out an excited cheer, the muscles in his arms taut, with no intention whatsoever of letting go.
In his eyes, gaming should be indulgent.
If you are timid even when fishing, you are simply not a man.
Twenty minutes later, the rapidly moving raft was almost being yanked into a kite. Each time it hit the water, it would shoot more than ten meters forward.
The big fish’s energy was still abundant, but there was a tendency to slow down, and it no longer continued to accelerate.
Gu Chen finally began reeling in, turning the self-made simple spool to shorten the fishing line bit by bit.
The contest of strength officially began. The muscles on Gu Chen’s arms bunched into solid blocks as the power of the Force Savage axe Inherited soul and the Shatter saber Inherited soul erupted within his body.
“Get up here!”
The brute force trait was unleashed, and his strength surged sharply.
Every time the rod lifted, Gu Chen would hurriedly turn the spool.
He was worried about only two problems now.
How much longer the already bent homemade fishing rod could hold out, and whether the fishing line made from the Iron Shell Bug’s silk would be snapped.
But since it had already entered the stage of a strength contest, Gu Chen could not care that much anymore. He planned to haul the fish onto the raft in one go.
Another fifteen minutes passed.
Under the high-intensity struggle, Gu Chen was gasping for breath, sweat on his body glittering under the sunlight, and his hands gripping the rod were trembling.
“Here it comes!”
With a loud shout, a bulge rose on the sea’s surface. A huge fish head broke through the water and flew into the air. Its black scales glittered under the golden disc, its massive body lashing its tail again and again in midair, crystalline droplets spraying in all directions, and Gu Chen squinted on reflex.
But reacting quickly, he decisively switched the rod to his left hand. With his right hand he summoned a golden Force Savage axe and lunged to hack at the black fish still in the air.
This strike was powerful and heavy. With the Shatter saber’s trait added, one blow burst open the fish’s head and embedded in the flesh.
What surprised Gu Chen was that the big black fish did not bleed. Its mouth, full of sharp teeth, gaped as it struggled fiercely.
He and the big fish fell into the water at the same time. He kicked hard against the big black fish’s head, used the leverage to yank out the Force Savage axe, then brought another chop crashing down toward the big black fish’s head.
Gu Chen knew he had no advantage in underwater combat. After falling into the water he had to finish it quickly.
After several consecutive chops, the already weakened big black fish completely stopped moving and turned into a mass of black mist that swept toward him.
“Eh, where’s the fish meat?”
Seeing that after the big black fish died there was actually no disassembly prompt and no fish meat dropped, Gu Chen was instantly dumbfounded, and a nearly unbelievable thought surfaced in his mind.
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