Chapter 205-1: The Art of Language (1) |
“Done for.”
Seeing Earthmind Bully just hovering there in front of him, God King’s inner shock was beyond measure.
He could not understand how exactly Earthmind Bully had filtered him out from among more than one hundred thousand players.
He had already worried about this issue beforehand.
Earthmind Bully possessed a super wide-range perception ability similar to the Owl-Headed Fiend, as well as a language-recording information library. This had long been proven.
He had considered that because he had exposed too much information, he had been filtered out from the player legion by Earthmind Bully.
For this reason, he tried his best to avoid showing himself.
He required that players in the warband, when facing Earthmind Bully, must not mention him in their communications and should try to keep communication in the chat channel.
During his commanding process he also kept all communication to internal channels and would not speak a single identity-exposing word outward.
His position was not the most central core-protection spot, but rather a caster position leaning toward the mid-rear.
So he could not figure out what exactly had given him away.
Nothing similar had happened before either.
Looking at Earthmind Bully hovering before him with a ferocious smile on its face, God King knew that this battle was likely about to end ahead of time.
As the overall commander of the joint warband, he was actually going to be beheaded by the Bully.
What a disgrace.
It was not that he had never failed before.
One could say he had witnessed Earthmind Bully from its initial greenness when it first appeared to the cunning veteran it was now.
At the very beginning, with a little over a thousand players he could snatch two territory nodes from Earthmind Bully’s hands.
In the early days, the Devilfall Pit node area for spiritual ore and the Cloud Field node for spirit fields were both taken by him leading veteran players.
At the time he thought this was only the beginning.
Earthmind Bully was just a small opponent in his commanding career.
He had not expected that he himself at that time was at the peak.
He was growing, but the AI growth speed of Earthmind Bully was even more astonishing.
From the start where they were evenly matched to now being completely steamrolled, Earthmind Bully’s growth speed was far faster than he imagined.
By now, in every bout against Earthmind Bully he was fully suppressed and had not won once.
He had thought that with the Inherited soul Lord obtained, the situation would take a turn.
In fact it did.
One of Earthmind Bully’s advantages compared with him was the influence on the course of war.
After all, Earthmind Bully was not essentially a war commander. It was the Black Tide itself, and the Black Tide acted according to its thoughts.
This was a significant gap in battlefield influence.
A single thought from Earthmind Bully had to be conveyed by him through communication and then analyzed and understood by players, which was far less efficient than the Bully.
But the appearance of the Lord Inherited soul gave him a significant boost in his influence over war, which made up for a bit of this gap.
In the past few rounds of test engagements, the effect of the Lord Inherited soul had left him very satisfied.
Although the wars against Earthmind Bully still ended in defeat, at least it proved that the Lord Inherited soul had a promising future.
Launching a large-scale joint operation this time, he had planned to consume all his stored lord’s power to attempt a wider-range Lord trait influence.
He had not expected to be taught another lesson.
He was evolving, but Earthmind Bully evolved even faster.
This time it had actually located and locked onto his position precisely and captured him by pulling a behead the commander tactic on him.
Just then, Earthmind Bully hovering in front of him grinned with a ferocious smile.
“The war commander of the player race, correct.”
As Earthmind Bully spoke, the battle it observed through its perception view had already fallen into turmoil.
The course of the war already proved it had caught a big fish.
Earlier it had been tests and conjectures, but at this moment the performance of the players on the battlefield confirmed its thoughts.
Realizing he had already lost, God King sighed in dejection.
He cursed in his heart that the AI of this Earthmind Bully was truly excessive and simply gave him no way to live.
He had worked very hard to improve, but the pace of Earthmind Bully’s progress always pressed him by a head.
Now he only wanted to know one issue. How exactly had Earthmind Bully filtered him out from the player warband and locked onto him with such precision.
Facing the inquiry, God King no longer intended to put on a disguise and nodded calmly.
“It is I.”
“Hahaha.” Earthmind Bully laughed with great joy.
The taste of victory was indescribably wonderful.
It did not even bother to spare a glance for opponents of other races.
But this was the player race.
A sense of achievement never felt before surged in its heart.
Such a sense of achievement could by no means be compared with defeating other races.
Other races in its eyes were nothing but ants. Even if it suffered temporary setbacks, victory and defeat had long been decided.
But the player race was different. It was the opponent he loathed deeply and placed in the position of strong enemy.
This was also why it had not killed the other party directly.
The ant-like races were not worthy of conversing with it. The process of defeating them was as insignificant as crushing a speck of dust.
Just like the living beings in that city a moment ago. Their struggle, despair, resistance… it could not even be bothered to give them a glance and did not care how complex their inner drama was before extinction.
But the player race was different.
This was a race that could let it feel the joy of victory.
Thinking back, it had many times faced desperate situations under the oppression of the player race, nearly losing its life.
In its first battle upon arriving in Monster World, it encountered the player race and almost fell before it could even establish the Black Tide Legion.
Afterward this race lingered like a nightmare in its mind.
Even though it had grown to a height far beyond when it first came, the player race always stuck nearby.
From time to time it made it feel a suffocating sense of oppression.
Several times it fell into a predicament with resources nearly exhausted because of players, which gave it an almost distorted desire for energy resources.
It also often roared out of control because of anger, and the Evil Eye would voice comfort beside it.
Scenes of the past flashed in its mind and finally froze on God King’s face.
Hovering and looking down at the war commander of the player race, the Earthmind Evil Spirit smiled happily.
“What thoughts do you have now.”
Facing Earthmind Bully’s question, God King suddenly understood what this damned Bully was thinking.
The fact that it had not killed him was obviously not to investigate intelligence about the player race, but to enjoy the process of victory.
He had become a step in the emotional sublimation of Earthmind Bully.
“Have you heard that villains die from talking too much.” God King could not help rolling his eyes.
“What is a villain.” Earthmind Bully asked with a smile.
“You are.”
“The definition.”
God King also smiled.
“Our player race defines villains in a very simple way, without complicated moral judgments. We always judge groups with different worldviews from the perspective of our own race. Those who go against us are villains, those who go along with us are righteous. We do not care whether that group formed different ideas from us because of different culture, growth environment, or other factors.”
This statement from God King was truly shameless.
It told Earthmind Bully very bluntly that the player race always uses its own moral outlook to define the behavior of other races. Those who go along are righteous, those who go against are villains.
“Very much in line with the characteristics of the player race, but I like your viewpoint.” Earthmind Bully smiled and nodded.
Before descending into Monster World, it had waged war in small worlds.
It had seen too many who raised self-defined moral outlooks to define others, in the name of righteous judgment.
At the core it was borrowing the name of morality to practice self-interest, standing on the so-called moral high ground to point fingers at the actions of others while never examining their own greed and hypocrisy.
They forcibly imposed their will on the masses and threw all beings that did not meet their standards into the hell of villains.
Such moral standards were merely cages woven to protect their own interests and privileges.
But the thinking of the player race was very straightforward, frankly stating they would judge everything with their own ideas.
God King’s viewpoint aligned with the Black Tide’s idea of conquering and devouring worlds.
But there was one difference.
In the eyes of the Black Tide, those who comply die, those who resist perish.
Weakness itself was the original sin.
The rules of this world were nothing more than being written by the strong and followed by the weak.
The beings of Monster World, were they not operating under the rules once written by the Emperor’s Sign.
“Done enjoying yourself.” God King said with a trace of helplessness.
“Are you eager to die.”
“Very eager, or do you want to torture me a bit and enjoy yourself more. Do you need me to cooperate by begging for mercy or crying.”
Seeing the smile on God King’s face, Earthmind Bully immediately felt displeased again.
It was now in the dominant position, and the other was in the status of a prisoner.
But when it remembered this was the player race, it was relieved.
It had once tormented players.
Back then, to investigate the rule traits on the player race, and even to acquire rule abilities from the player race, it tried capturing large numbers of players for cruel torture and interrogation.
In the end, it was not the players it captured who collapsed, but itself whose mentality exploded.
It knew that no matter how it tortured, it could not obtain any effective intelligence from the mouths of the player race.
But it still did not want to kill this human race commander so easily.