chapter 104
Holding their breathing down by sheer force of will, the Players darted aside to hide.
They could judge the Monsters’ movement paths by where those glowing eyes flared up.
But the speed was too fast.
Already beyond human reaction time.
The Players did their best not to make a sound, yet when a Monster suddenly lunged at them, they would still instinctively step back or dodge.
When people clustered together, all those overlapping footsteps made their position glaringly obvious.
Lu Li tilted his head to the right.
Judging from the footsteps, there were about four Players on his right, and they were still edging closer to him.
Now was not the time to bunch up.
They had to scatter.
Not far away, two Players kept flicking open their Wristbands to check the Shop interface, and the tiny bit of light that created wasn’t attracting the Monsters.
Lu Li opened his Wristband as well and browsed the Items in the Shop.
[High-Intensity Flashlight] (Hot Item)
Price: 3000 Points
Battery Life: After redemption, can be used continuously for 1 Instance, remains fully charged and on high brightness
Brightness: Extremely high
All light-producing Items were sorted by battery life and brightness, and the High-Intensity Flashlight had maxed-out stats across the board.
For a map shrouded in darkness where you still had to push forward and explore, it was absolutely the Players’ first choice-aside from being a bit pricey.
Lu Li switched to reverse sorting. The interface refreshed and a new Item page popped up.
[A Very Dim Light Bulb]
Price: 10 Points/small, 20 Points/large
Battery Life: Flickers on and off, looks like it’s about to die at any moment (Unstable current, 0.1% chance of redeeming an extremely poor-quality one that will spark and then explode)
Brightness: Extremely low
The redemption count for the light bulb was in the single digits.
It wasn’t needed in Instances that were even slightly more difficult or complex, and in lower-level Instances there were Items at the same price that offered much better value.
Lu Li squinted through the dark to make out Mirella’s face, moved closer, and whispered, “Run left as fast as you can. Count to five as you run, then stop.”
With that, he grabbed Luo Jia Bai and took off.
Luo Jia Bai’s body suddenly lifted off the ground, his stomach lurching.
He had no idea what Lu Li was planning, but he was afraid that yelling would cause trouble, so he simply shut his eyes, clenched his teeth, and bit down on his own hand, swallowing all his cries.
Running was countless times louder than walking.
The Monsters that had been drawn over by the four Players now found an even bigger disturbance.
In an instant, every glowing eye swung toward Lu Li’s direction.
Lu Li stared back head-on.
There were too many eyes.
He focused his attention on just one pair.
He listened and calculated.
Hear the sound, change attack target: 2 seconds.
From changing target to starting to move at high speed: 2 seconds.
Last, the chase distance.
When those glowing eyes were already within arm’s reach-
Lu Li had also finished counting to ten. He came to a halt and tossed Luo Jia Bai to the ground.
At the same time, he hurled the ten large light bulbs he had redeemed as hard as he could in the opposite direction.
They scattered all over the ground with a clattering crash.
Of the ten bulbs, two sparked and exploded as soon as they landed, startling the nearest Monsters into leaping back.
He had thrown the bulbs far enough, and the light they produced was incredibly faint.
With the fog, the glow barely reached anywhere.
Within two seconds, most of the Monsters’ attention had been drawn away to the bulbs-except for the one that had already rushed up to the two of them.
Lu Li went completely still, one hand pressing down on Luo Jia Bai’s shoulder.
Luo Jia Bai suddenly felt a chill above his head.
He slowly reached up to touch it.
Wet and sticky.
It was the Monster’s rank-smelling drool.
Forcing down the urge to twist his face in revulsion, Luo Jia Bai silently shed tears and slowly wiped his hand clean on the ground without a sound.
The Monster sniffed around Lu Li in all directions.
It was puzzled.
The sound had clearly come from right here.
So how had it suddenly disappeared?
Behind them, another bulb exploded as it hit the ground, ringing out with a crisp pop.
The last Monster also shifted its target and charged toward the bulbs.
Roars echoed through the Black Mist as the Monsters hunted down the light bulbs and crushed them all in their jaws.
Lu Li watched the frenzied silhouettes of the Monsters in that brief flare of light.
If it hadn’t just been his imagination-
That last Monster, when it had gotten extremely close to him, had made a gurgling digesting sound inside its body.
Were they starving?
The Monsters clustered around the bulbs, searching the area for their next target, when a Wooden Stick wreathed in flames suddenly dropped from above.
A wide splash of oil followed.
Fire roared up in an instant.
One Monster took the flames straight to the head. It let out a sharp, ear-piercing screech and hopped backward.
The suffocating stillness from before was finally shattered. The fire temporarily disrupted the Monsters’ thoughts, buying the Players some time.
And at last, they could clearly see the Monsters with the round eyes in full.
They also had inhuman ears and tails, but compared to the non-human creatures queued up in the cramped lines of the world of happiness just now, these looked far more wild and far more powerful.
Its face swelled, the mouth splitting open all the way back to the base of its ears, crushing the space where its nose and eyes should have been.
Razor-sharp teeth clacked together, biting at empty air as if it were chewing.
Every Monster stood on two legs, walking upright like a human.
The two hind limbs were especially thick, twice the size of a human thigh, the joints bent into a bizarre curve. The feet that landed on the ground were flat.
One burning Wooden Stick after another fell from above. The Monsters shrieked and scattered to avoid them.
Luo Jia Bai muttered, “Their legs are so thick. Why do I feel like… they can jump really damn high?”
The red firelight didn’t just illuminate the Monsters’ entire bodies; it also lit up the Players throwing down the Wooden Sticks.
Lu Li looked up.
Four Players were clinging awkwardly to the iron mesh above. One of them kept tossing Wooden Sticks down, and every time a stick brushed past his left hand, it suddenly burst into a flame that couldn’t be blown out.
As expected, it was a group of four Players sticking together.
They’d also quietly talked things through earlier and found another breakthrough:
Climb higher.
After being attacked by the Monsters once, they’d learned their lesson. By the time the firelight exposed them again, the four of them had already climbed a good distance up in complete silence.
Seeing that the Monsters were indeed afraid of fire, the four Players finally let out a breath and dared to raise their voices. Their voices drifted down from above:
“Who threw that lightbulb just now? You actually threw it in our direction, I was almost scared to death! Flashlights are so useless-break in one hit, what a waste of thousands of Points.”
“Good thing my Evil Spirit Ability is fire. Now with the Items from the Shop, I can keep scaling up my Evil Spirit Ability. Once we reach a safe spot, we can just burn everything in our way!”
“The Instance actually does give hints, they’re just really cryptic. Luckily Xia Le was smart enough to tell us to climb up along this iron mesh. At this height, those Monsters probably can’t reach us.”
“Headcount-four of us. There were eight when we first entered the Instance, right? No idea where the other half went.”
“Why care about them? Just worry about ourselves! This is already a B Grade Instance; there’s no way everyone makes it out alive. We just follow the Instance’s hints and keep climbing up… Stop shaking! This iron mesh isn’t that sturdy. Damn it, who the hell is shaking it!?”
One Player looked down in horror. “Brother Hai, it’s not us shaking! The Monsters down there saw us and they’re jumping up!”
“They saw us! You idiot, stop throwing Wooden Sticks down! Put the fire out now, it’s too bright-they can see us clearly!”
The four Players started redeeming barrel after barrel of water, dumping it down in an attempt to douse the flames.
The Monsters pushed off hard against the ground, the muscles in their thighs bulging with veins as they jumped higher and higher each time.
“Ah-!”
The slowest climber suddenly had a cord tighten around his neck-no, a claw. A Monster’s talons clamped around his head and brutally dragged him down several meters.
The one in their group who looked the most like the captain-Brother Hai-slashed down with his knife, slicing open the Monster’s arm and hauling his teammate back up.
“Putting out the fire like this is too slow. Climb, now!”
–
Lu Li’s group of three was far enough away from them, and the fog kept the light from fully reaching over.
Lu Li lugged Luo Jia Bai another dozen steps to the left. Only after he was sure they were completely cut off from the lit area did he stop.
Luo Jia Bai clicked his tongue and analyzed, “These Monsters aren’t blind or stupid. They were relying on sound to locate us earlier only because it was too dark all around.”
“The safest thing is making sure they can only see the light source, not the person holding it. If they can’t guess where you actually are, they can’t grab you. In a situation like this, wide-area lighting just gets you killed. Lu Li, if this wasn’t a total accident on your part, you’re a damn genius.”
His admiration for Lu Li was sincere. He really wanted to know if this guy’s brain had been custom-built for the Necromancer Game.
How was it that only Lu Li’s thought process always lined up with answers that sounded ridiculous but were absolutely right?
Lu Li was studying the iron mesh.
The Monsters kept slamming into it.
Aside from the terrifying thuds of pursuit, there were several faint, metallic clinks.
Using the firelight, Lu Li peered at the mesh.
The iron mesh really did stretch on and on, without an end.
But at regular intervals, just a short distance above their heads, there hung a square object that looked like a lock.
The Monsters crashed into the mesh again and again.
The locks clanged against the mesh again and again.
He pressed his body flat against the iron mesh, pushing his ear through one of the gaps, and listened beyond the mesh in the midst of all the noise.
The sound of water dripping came through, barely audible.
The Monsters were starving.
Outside the mesh…
There might be food and water.
Constantly diverting the Monsters’ attention was only a stopgap measure. To truly end this hunt, they’d have to open the locks and get outside the mesh.
Would opening a single lock be enough to get out?
Or would they have to open every lock here?