Chapter 221-1: It’s over, I can’t get out (1) |
Hearing the Earthmind Evil Spirit say it would imprison him forever, God King immediately lost his composure.
This was simply more unbearable than killing him.
He remembered that the forum had once hotly debated a topic, roughly four months ago.
Someone on the forum initiated a discussion: What are the players’ weaknesses.
In the post, many players gave examples of various ‘weaknesses’ that their own players possessed.
For example.
Players are a newcomer force in Monster World, having entered the game only for a few months. Compared to those powerful races there is still a gap that cannot be bridged in a short time. One can only say their mechanics are strong, but their combat strength is truly worrying.
Any famous force on the forum randomly pulled out could brutalize the players.
Except for the two great bullies of the starter village.
So a short development time is the players’ greatest weakness.
Some players also said that the players’ greatest weakness is that their technique is too poor.
All the races of living beings in Monster World completely crush players in combat technique, and growth in this aspect requires time to accumulate.
There were many other viewpoints.
Not enough sacrificial power to spend, overconfidence, reliance on guides, and so on.
But in God King’s view, these statements could all only be categorized as problems, not weaknesses.
Until one player put forward a viewpoint that sparked heated discussion, saying this:
At the current stage the players’ greatest advantage is not rapid growth after hunting, nor the rule power blessing brought by star vein combinations, inherited soul level, and body tempering level. In fact, the greatest advantage is being able to revive without loss after death, and only then comes the combat power blessing brought by rule abilities like star vein combinations.
Assuming there were no death-and-revival mechanism blessing, even if other abilities were twice as strong they still could not withstand the pressure from the powerful races.
The players would absolutely be beaten into social withdrawal by the two great bullies of the starter village, to the point they would not even dare to leave the Emperor’s Mound Village space.
This is a bottoming mechanism at the source, guaranteeing that players explore Monster World in an ‘invincible’ posture.
Therefore the players’ greatest weakness is: being restricted from reviving.
If one wants to restrict player revival from the source, the various forces in Monster World absolutely cannot accomplish it.
Unless characters in the game descend into reality, pull the plug on the Starnet, and shut down the Lunar Eclipse race’s game servers.
But that hypothesis is obviously impossible to realize.
There is only one feasible method: imprison the players.
And on the basis of imprisonment, satisfy three conditions.
The first condition, restrict player movement, preventing the player from dying through self-harm or other means.
The second condition, maintain the player’s vitality, preventing the player from dying due to hunger or disease.
The third condition, restrict the player from being rescued by external forces, or the place of imprisonment must be somewhere players cannot set foot.
With these three conditions assisting, in theory the player would be like the Primordial Monster Wishmaking imprisoned in the underground caverns of the Ghoul Drifter race.
Cannot escape, cannot die, no hope of returning to the village.
Many other games generally have a setting of ‘forced disengage.’ When a player falls into some kind of immobile situation or gets stuck in a scene bug, they can directly return to the city through forced disengage.
But the game Monster World has no forced disengage mechanism, so being imprisoned by a hostile force is the players’ greatest weakness.
When God King had read this reply, he felt it made a lot of sense.
He had even imagined what he would do if he fell into such a desperate situation.
The fact is, without external aid and unable to kill himself to leave, this predicament simply cannot be broken.
But what he did not expect was that the predicament hypothesized in the post actually happened to him.
The Earthmind bully actually wanted to imprison him, rather than kill him outright like the previous two times.
This made God King feel that something was very wrong.
He feared he would not be able to get away and would have to stay by the Earthmind bully’s side ever after, becoming an eyesore of a hanging ornament.
“Bully, let’s discuss something.”
“No release.” The Earthmind bully hovered in midair, not even bothering to glance at God King. His consciousness continued to control the Black Tide to devour resources.
“Bully, do you really think I cannot run?”
“I am imprisoning you here precisely to see how you will escape. You can display your hidden ability to leave at any time. I am all eyes.”
Upon hearing this, God King sighed in dejection.
It was over. He had truly become the Earthmind bully’s hanging ornament.
Staring at the Earthmind bully still manipulating the Black Tide, God King gnashed his teeth in hatred.
He decided to try to make the Earthmind bully kill him of his own accord.
With that idea, he immediately summoned the star vein interface and decisively purchased the Mental Shockwave inherited soul and the Taunt inherited soul.
Then he fired a blast of Mental Shockwave at the Earthmind bully in midair.
The Earthmind bully, who was operating the Black Tide’s actions, did not even look at God King. He simply raised his hand and waved. A translucent mental barrier formed in front of him, easily blocking the shock impact of God King’s Mental Shockwave.
Discovering that the mental impact could not take effect, he decisively switched to the Taunt trait.
The Taunt domain spread, beginning to assault the Earthmind bully.
The Earthmind bully’s body trembled, then he opened his eyes. The look he cast at God King seemed a bit curious.
“I remember this ability. Back then your player race used this ability to rescue that Anti-Tide new-generation warrior from my hands.”
“Release me or not?” God King asked again.
“I already said, if you have the ability then escape. Want me to release you of my own accord, impossible.”
With that, the Earthmind Evil Spirit placed his consciousness to operate in the cloud layer and let the Evil Eye take over controlling the body.
The Taunt trait was released again.
But this time, the one affected was the Evil Eye.
All sorts of cordial greetings to its mother appeared and reappeared in the Evil Eye’s memory scenes, but they dissipated in less than one second.
However, these woven memory images had no effect on the Evil Eye.
“Earthmind, its memory-weaving rule has a distance limit. You could completely hang it outside the high tower. Why switch me in to bear it?” The Evil Eye asked in puzzlement.
“I want to know whether you have a weakness in terms of emotion. His ability happens to be useful for testing.”
“Oh.” The Evil Eye nodded solemnly.
At this time the Taunt trait struck again, but still the Evil Eye bore it, while the Earthmind Evil Spirit was not affected in the slightest.
After trying repeatedly many times, God King completely lost it.
These two inherited souls could not inflict any effective damage on the Earthmind bully. Continuing to try was useless.
He summoned the star vein interface, opened the inherited soul store, and began to search for an inherited soul trait that could save him.
Before long, God King’s gaze focused on the Bloodburn inherited soul.
This is the only inherited soul in the players’ hands that can directly deal damage to oneself through direct activation.
Without hesitation, he decisively opened another star vein slot and embedded Bloodburn.
To maximize the effect, he temporarily gave up the Owl-Headed Fiend inherited soul and put all the evolution points refunded from dismantling it into Bloodburn.
Bloodburn immediately reached level 67.
Taking a deep breath, he decisively cast Bloodburn on himself.
The level 67 Bloodburn effect instantly ignited the blood within his body.
The blood vessels on the surface of his body bulged in an instant, like a string of fuses being lit. Crimson radiance rampaged within the vessels, and the blood seemed about to break through the restraint of the skin and jet out.
God King’s eyes congested rapidly. His eyeballs were covered with bloodshot lines, then were bit by bit covered over by scarlet.
At the same time, his muscles swelled rapidly as if inflating without air. Under the taut skin, the muscle lines became as clear as coiling dragons.
His skeleton also could not bear the load, emitting dull cracking booms. It was as if a rebirth-and-remolding was taking place within his body.
During this process, his health bar kept dropping.
The intensity of the Bloodburn trait was too high. Using it with pure Bloodburn as the primary inherited soul was simply burning one’s lifespan.
But this was precisely the effect God King wanted to see.
Barely more than ten seconds after releasing the Bloodburn trait, the health bar had already fallen below 50 percent and was still dropping rapidly.
Just as the health bar fell to 20 percent and God King thought he was about to be freed, a pitch-black tendril suddenly attached to God King’s forehead.
Under the Evil Eye’s control, Black Tide energy was converted into a pure life energy that poured continuously into God King’s body.
The damaged body began to heal at a speed visible to the naked eye. The body whose vitality was about to be exhausted received the nourishment of life energy and gradually filled up.
God King’s skin also changed from pale to rosy.
In God King’s despairing expression, the health bar rose at a speed visible to the naked eye.
“No, let me die.” God King decisively applied Bloodburn to himself again, but Bloodburn could not stack, and it could not speed up the rate at which his blood burned.
Unless he upgraded the Bloodburn inherited soul so that he could burn all his blood within a few seconds.
After the Bloodburn effect ended, God King decisively released it again.
But this time there was still no exception. The health bar was firmly stabilized by the Evil Eye, fluctuating between 95 and 100 percent.
Opening his eyes, the Earthmind Evil Spirit crossed his arms over his chest, looking at him with an amused face.
“Go on. Perhaps you can try to exhaust my energy reserves this way.”
Hearing this, God King decisively gave up.
The Earthmind Evil Spirit’s resources could not be exhausted even by war itself; the consumption of a single Bloodburn inherited soul was like a drop of water in the ocean to the Earthmind Evil Spirit. It simply did not care.
If he really kept grinding it out like this, even if the Earthmind Evil Spirit did not control the Black Tide to go out and plunder resources, a hundred years of consumption might still not run it dry.
He had self-awareness in this regard.
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