Chapter 219-1: Deceitful Counterplay (1) |
Just as the Lord of Ecstasy was watching in stupefaction, the intensity of the confrontation on the Emperor’s Mound Mountain Range battlefield rose again.
At the very front of the players’ line.
After receiving Starnet’s orders, melee players released Blood Pull Chains, wrapped them around their own tank players, then swung the chains, twisted their bodies, and initiated a throwing tactic.
They attempted to throw Gargoyle-form players over the defensive wall constructed by natural-catastrophe series units to strike directly at the Black Tide’s rear.
At this moment, at the Abyss of Heaven Territory Node, on the Evil Eye Tower platform.
Seeing the Gargoyle-form players being thrown in, the Earthmind Evil Spirit frowned slightly.
The Evil Eye’s voice sounded at this time.
“Earthmind, something is off. The mysterious commander of the player race doing this undoubtedly leaves their own tank units with no retreat.”
“As long as they cross the natural-catastrophe unit defense line, we will not possibly give them the chance to leave at will. Tank builds are the most important units in the player legion. They cannot be squandered so easily.”
Hearing the Evil Eye’s reminder, the Earthmind Evil Spirit, who also felt something wrong, decisively ran a deduction.
Various data flowed through its mind. Combined with the information in the Player Strategy Database, a simulated deduction image finally formed in its mind.
After leaping over the natural-catastrophe wall, the tank players would turn around midair and release Star Shift on Swarm warriors.
At once, a large wave of Swarm warriors would cross the defensive line constructed by natural-catastrophe units and fall into the Black Tide’s rear.
They would then erupt into a brutal clash with the Black Tide units under its control.
The player race would follow up with a fierce assault, forming a pincer tactic with the Swarm warriors against the natural-catastrophe units from front and back.
Having seen through the opponent’s intention, the Earthmind Evil Spirit decisively raised a Black Tide curtain.
Just as expected, those tank player units thrown over turned around in midair and selected destructive-type Swarm units to perform the rule ability of swapping positions.
Fortunately, the defense was timely. At the instant the Swarm units arrived, they were intercepted in midair by the Black Tide curtain.
After landing, they fell into a ring of natural-catastrophe units and failed to enter the Black Tide’s rear.
The Swarm hive mind reacted quickly as well. The swapped-in destructive units instantly set up a defensive line on the spot to resist the Black Tide Evil Entities’ encirclement.
Swarm support from the flank swiftly rushed in.
But what puzzled the Earthmind Evil Spirit was that the players’ left wing melee units actively moved to meet the Swarm, attempting to intercept the Swarm units’ charge.
Just then, golden bullet screens streaked across the melee players’ livestream rooms again.
At once, the melee players in the first and second lines who were rushing toward the Swarm warriors collectively turned around.
This time their gaze was toward the Black Tide’s natural-catastrophe units.
“Not good.”
The Earthmind Evil Spirit decisively pulled back its own damage output units, opening distance with the front-line natural-catastrophe units.
The unit reclamation tactic was released in advance, but what it reclaimed was not the front-line natural-catastrophe units, rather it was the damage output units that were continuously retreating.
Just as the Earthmind Evil Spirit had conjectured.
The unbreakable natural-catastrophe wall was torn open.
After Star Shift swaps, a large number of natural-catastrophe units air-dropped into the Swarm line, and a large number of melee units of the player race switched to the Black Tide’s front.
“Hahaha.”
Seeing this, God King in the center of the player camp could not help but laugh loudly.
In this three-way melee, Guest No. 1 really did find a way to break the wall.
Borrow the Swarm units and forcibly swap positions through the Star Shift trait.
Now that large numbers of the Black Tide and the Swarm front-line units had been exchanged, the player legion, which had been gradually falling into a disadvantage in combat power, immediately had room to breathe.
But before God King could be happy for long, the Earthmind Evil Spirit had already completed its response.
At the rear of the Black Tide, the damage output-type Evil Entities that were quickly retreating merged into the black mist to complete reclamation. The outlines of natural-catastrophe units emerged from the black mist.
The natural-catastrophe units thrown toward the Swarm were actively abandoned.
Within an extremely short time, the Earthmind Evil Spirit completed a tactical response, and the natural-catastrophe defensive line was reconstructed.
The Earthmind Evil Spirit’s tactics were very clear. To respond to the player race, it would inevitably use natural-catastrophe and plague series units.
To respond to the Battle Swarm, it would mainly use doomsday series units.
The brief chaos was instantly reversed by the Earthmind Evil Spirit, and the war returned from disorder to order.
Then the Earthmind Evil Spirit directed the natural-catastrophe units to launch an offensive against the swapped-in destructive-type Swarm warriors.
At this time, Starnet also issued orders, requiring its own melee players to coordinate with the Black Tide to attack the Swarm warriors trapped in the encirclement.
The Swarm hive mind did not hesitate in the least and also sacrificed some Swarm units caught in the encirclement, providing no further support.
The shift between offense and defense was completed in just 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
Before Starnet issued new orders, the Earthmind Evil Spirit launched a counterattack.
As the black mist surged, curse series units, Bone Eroding Dirge, were quickly generated at the rear of the Black Tide.
Their figures were hunched, emaciated bodies wrapped in tattered black robes that exuded a fetid stench, the hems fluttering in the wind.
Beneath their shattered hoods were sickly gray-blue faces, dry cracks spread across their gaunt gray cheeks.
Driven by the will of the Earthmind Evil Spirit, they extended hands like dried tree branches, with twisted black nails gleaming with black light.
The seemingly useless garments were in fact also part of their life structure. As abilities were released, spirit patterns lit up along them.
As this new unit had not been recorded in the Evil Entity Compendium, Starnet immediately issued an analysis order to the highest-ranked players with Guide clones at the front.
Analysis information appeared at once.
[Bone Eroding Dirge (Black Tide Evil Entity)]
Hunt Level: 63
Target Introduction: A Black Tide curse series damage output unit, condensed from resentment and the power of death within Black Tide energy. It possesses an extremely powerful curse ability and can release a super long-range death-catastrophe shockwave that inflicts a corrosion effect on all targets within its coverage, greatly reducing their Black Tide resistance.
—
After clarifying the introduction of Bone Eroding Dirge, a large amount of information was generated in Starnet’s database.
But it did not make any tactical adjustments.
Bone Eroding Dirge’s ability reduces Black Tide resistance, which proves it was generated to weaken defense.
Player rule resistance was not among the things weakened.
From this, it concluded that the Earthmind Evil Spirit’s target this time was the Swarm units, not its own player legion.
Just as Starnet expected, the long-range curse bombardment of Bone Eroding Dirge instantly fell upon the front line of the Swarm army. Black particles adhered to the carapaces of the Swarm’s tank-type units.
At once, the front-line Swarm warriors whose Black Tide resistance was continually rising during combat had their surface defenses weakened. Carapace hardness changed.
Front-line Swarm casualty rates rapidly climbed.
The intensity of the war rose again.
Starnet opted for an unconventional approach, employing a deceit tactic instead of direct confrontation.
Since the Swarm hive mind and the Earthmind Bully liked to deduce trajectories, it would try interspersing changeable orders to see how they would choose to respond.
Golden bullet screens streaked through different livestream rooms as new deployments unfolded.
It mobilized a portion of the player legion’s strength to carry out meaningless camp shifts.
Then a ridiculous scene occurred.
The Swarm hive mind and the Earthmind Evil Spirit, based on Starnet’s orders, simulated dozens of possibilities and decisively adjusted their own lines accordingly.
The effect brought by invalid orders was exactly what Starnet wanted.
By interspersing valid and invalid orders, it lured the Swarm hive mind and the Earthmind Evil Spirit into the trap of overcalculation.
After several consecutive trials, Starnet issued valid orders again. Bullet screens appeared in some players’ livestream rooms.
[Turn to coordinate point 2938.2824 and wait for my order to release the attack.]
Seeing that some of the player groups suddenly turned, the Earthmind Evil Spirit and the Swarm hive mind simultaneously deduced the strike direction and instantly guessed the idea.
The Black Tide rose into the sky and generated natural-catastrophe flying units to intercept the elemental bombardment.
The Swarm’s giant shell bugs took to the air as well, their spread wings linking in the sky to form a carapace shield wall.
Starnet’s orders were issued again as bullet screens.
However, the striking direction was not at all within the range indicated by the turn. The players who received the orders released a slanted volley of offset strikes.
This deceit-laced valid damage output immediately dealt considerable area damage to the rear of both the Black Tide and the Swarm.
—
At the Abyss of Heaven Territory Node, on the high tower platform.
The Evil Eye’s voice sounded in the Earthmind Evil Spirit’s mind.
“Earthmind, the other side is interspersing deceitful and valid orders through your habits.”
The Earthmind Evil Spirit said nothing, and a thought grew in its heart.
If the opponent could do it, so could it.
Immediately, the Earthmind Evil Spirit replicated Starnet’s deceitful orders and upgraded them technically.
At the rear of the Black Tide, a beam condensed by the Ruinator shot skyward, then suddenly turned into surging black mist, disassembled in midair, and reassembled into dense frenzy tide series assassin units. They shifted their fall points from the sky to stab toward the rear of the swarm tide and the player army.
The Light Shields that Starnet had released in advance were also avoided due to the change in trajectory. Once the frenzy assassins landed, they began slaughter within the player crowd.
But they were soon wiped out by the melee players mixed into the fourth line.
After being repeatedly deceived by Starnet, the Earthmind Evil Spirit also learned to use this tactic. Leveraging the Black Tide’s advantage of arbitrary alteration, it launched a stronger deceitful counterattack.
Starnet then made adjustments in battle formation deployment.
The Black Tide’s legion system advantage was too great. Pure technical contest offered no chance of victory. It had to make good use of the Swarm that had joined the battlefield.
Make it a sharp blade for itself against the Black Tide.
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