Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
After having their lunch, everyone logged in after 30 minutes and got together.
Before they logged off, Zhang Yang had killed all the monster around the area. Since elite tier monsters required five hours to respawn, the place was empty and bare when Zhang Yang, Han Ying Xue, and Wei Yan Er came back. All of them continued their journey and reached the end of the first part after three hours.
Technically, the entire tunnel simply followed the shape of the mountain from the inside. The spiral pathway led downwards to the lowest and deepest part of the mountain. Technically, Zhang Yang’s current position was a complete cycle from where they entered. If they could drill upwards, the entrance to the mountain would just be 50 meters up!
Now that he had arrived to what seems to be a gigantic rock blocking the pathway forward. Standing in front of the rock was a huge, mega-sized version of the Hatred Amalgamated. Its innards were spilling out of its rotten body. It had a pair of hands, and an extra hand stitched to its back. Each hand carried a gigantic cleaver. There seems to be green liquid leaking out from all parts of its body. The liquid dripped down, corroding the ground, releasing a visible cloud of gas around it.
[Despaired Hatred Amalgamated] (Gray-Silver, Spectre)
Level: 56
HP: 2,000,000
Defense: 600
"Gimme Strength Crystal! Gimme Strength Crystal! Come! Come! Hoy!" Wei Yan Er clapped her palms together and mumbled something inaudible.
"Ay! Dummy! What are you standing there for? Get going quickly! It’s just a Gray-Silver boss!" Han Ying Xue urged hurriedly.
"Hehehe. Relax b*tch. Keep pushing and you’ll get nothing! I’ll cursed your future husband to be a minute-man1!" Zhang Yang laughed and rushed away before giving any chance for Han Ying Xue to respond to his sarcastic insult.
"[email protected]$%$%[email protected]%^[email protected][email protected]##@" Hatred Amalgamated rumbled incomprehensibly. It stomped forwards with large paces towards Zhang Yang.
‘-2,206!’
The boss landed a strike on Zhang Yang. He purposely allowed the monster to hit him instead of activating {Block}. He wanted to gauge the monster’s attack. He was rather satisfied with the result. If he went all out with the boss, there was hope to defeat him in a solo fight! However, since it’s an indoor environment, he would have to rely on the "combined mode" with the bear to defeat it!
Han Ying Xue swiftly cast a {Regeneration} on Zhang Yang.
‘-0!’
‘-1,000!’
‘-1,000!’
After two seconds, a green, viscous liquid spewed out from the boss and landed on all three of them, dealing different amounts of damage.
"Bleh! Disgusting!" cried Wei Yan Er. This attack was the boss’ {Rot Aura} which will deal 1,000 Natural damage to all targets within a 30 meter radius.
Despaired Hatred Amalgamated was just a one of the guardian bosses of 10,000 Phantoms. It wasn’t particularly difficult. Since the party strength was overwhelming, thanks to their high-tiered equipment, the boss was defeated in just six to seven minutes. The fat-*ss boss wailed and dropped to the floor, oozing out more green liquid after being defeated.
Hideous as it was, the boss was still rather generous! It dropped two Level 50 Gray-Silver equipment and a total of six [Fate Crystals]! One Vitality, two Strength, one Dexterity, one Intelligence, and one Spirit Crystal! All of them were Copper tier and could only add five points each.
After distributing the crystals, Zhang Yang took one Vitality and one Strength crystal while Wei Yan Er took one Strength and one Dexterity, leaving Han Ying Xue with the remainder.
[Fate Crystals: Vitality] (Copper, Usable)
Use: Permanently adds five points to Vitality.
All three of them smiled satisfyingly and used the crystal promptly.
‘Ding! You have gain 5 points of Vitality!’
‘Ding! You have gain 5 points of Strength!’
Along with the crisp clear sound of the notification, Zhang Yang attribute gained a tiny boost. Though the boost was significantly small, it would provide an obvious increase in power after accumulating more [Fate Crystals]!
"There’s this huge rock blocking the road! How are we going to get pass it?" Wei Yan Er strafed to the left and tried to find a possible route through the gaps. She pointed towards a slightly larger gap and screamed to Zhang Yang. "Hey! Noob tank! Use the shrinking potion! We could pass through here!"
Zhang Yang laughed. "Little brat! I think if you force yourself through that, you’ll really flatten your chest!"
"D*mn you! So, how are we going to get past this?"
"Easy as pie. Do you not see the properties of the rocks? We can attack it!" said Zhang Yang as he took out his battle axe and began bunting the rocks.
[Solid Boulders] (Tool)
Level: 1
HP: 1,000,000
Defense: 1,000
Clang! Clang! Bang! Bang!
The two of the melee attackers started to swing their weapons around and eventually smashed the rocks into tiny pebbles. Once the rocks came crumbling down, four arrows flew through the air and struck Zhang Yang and Wei Yan Er.
Out of a sudden, four Skeletal Archers appeared in front of Zhang Yang’s party. Each of the archers had a bow fashioned out of skeletal remains. Their eyes was glowing with green-emerald fiery flames.
[Rotting Skeletal Archer] (Elite, Spectre)
Level: 56
HP: 112,000
Defense: 300
‘-203!’ ‘-217!’
‘-2,321!’ ‘-2,367!’
The archer continued their attacks and dealt very different damage to Zhang Yang and Wei Yan Er.
"Growl!" the bear roared and rushed towards one of the archers. Likewise, Zhang Yang rushed forwards with {Charge} and attacked the other archer.
All Hunter class monsters will automatically try to gain distance whenever someone closes in! With a calculated maneuver, Zhang Yang forced the monster to jump away, towards the second archer which was 10 meters away.
Under Zhang Yang’s manual control, the bear had also forced the third archer to jump towards the fourth archer.
With the one man and one bear tactic, both {Charge} and {Wild Charge} were used intelligently to round up all the archers together. They would usually need to chase the monsters around, but instead, they had managed to herd the monsters like sheep!
Zhang Yang used {Horizontal Sweep}, {Thunder Strike}, and {Blast Wave} to generate a large amount of aggro on all of the archers around. Only then, did he start to unleash hell. Not much later, all four archer monsters were easily defeated by Zhang Yang and Wei Yan Er.
Zhang Yang stuck his axe in the floor and gazed further into the tunnel ahead. Zhang Yang sighed, even though the monsters ahead were crowded. "D*mn. It’s all but Hunter-type monsters. I won’t be able to kite them all! We have no choice but to kill them one by one!" Previously, Zhang Yang was able to control and kill the monsters before because he was mentally multi-tasking. It may look easy to execute but it took up a lot of mental stress! If he were to continually use his multitasking ability, it wouldn’t take long before he himself would be lying on the ground!
Losing the ability to multikill, the team’s pushing power dropped by a significant level. After sometime, it was already getting late. The party then disbanded and went on their own ways for dinner. Until 7.30pm, they came back together and continued on.
Zhang Yang noticed Sun Xin Yu was online and abruptly sent an invitation to her. "Let’s go together?"
Cold as ever, Sun Xin Yu remained quiet as a graveyard and accepted the invitation.
Not much sooner, she cried out. "Put on the accessory!"
Zhang Yang smirked and put on the Lover’s Charm: Yang. He did so intentionally, just to force Sun Xin Yu to open her tightly sealed mouth.
Shush!
A bright light flashed, and Sun Xin Yu materialized beside Zhang Yang.
"Sister Sun! Can I have the accessory? Let me play with it for a few days!" Wei Yam Er complaint to Sun Xin Yu.
Without replying her, Sun Xin Yu remained stoic as ever and did not even move a muscle until Zhang Yang begun to push forward.
With Sun Xin Yu in the party, the party’s offensive power had shot up. The party made it to the second boss before 12 midnight!
[Spectre Hunter, Sven] (Gray-Silver, Spectre)
Level: 57
HP: 2,500,000
Defense: 600
The strongest skill of this boss was {10 Strikes}. Each of its arrows was able to deal 2,000 damage! However, its so-called strongest attack was rendered to be a complete joke when the boss targeted Zhang Yang. Fully clad in Yellow-Gold equipment, Zhang Yang was a super tank with super defense! The boss was barely able to penetrate his defense!
Overwhelmed! Overwhelmingly overwhelmed!
The party of four had only used five minutes to defeat the boss and hauled 10 pieces of [Fate Crystals]
After defeating the boss, a similar wall of rocks was stacked up behind. Zhang Yang party chose not to destroy the wall of rocks and instead, decided to hit the hay stack. Since the boss would only respawn after several days, the party will not be surrounded by monsters when they log into the game the next morning.
Due to Sun Xin Yu’s day job, she had used [Teleportation Scroll], going back to Thunderstorm Castle. The Lover’s Charm, would quickly reunite the party whenever she needed it. Before going off, Han Ying Xue and Wei Yan Er had given all their random items for Sun Xin Yu to sell off! Being true misers at heart, the two sisters had wanted to utilize their inventories to their maximum potentials, for monetary purposes.
The party took four days to reach six floor of the 10,000 Phantoms. All of them obtained [Fate Crystals], none above Copper tier. Zhang Yang had obtained eight pieces of Vitality and six pieces of Strength. The boost it provided was not much, but the altogether they were equal to 14 Levels of AP gain. It’s really a great haul when everything was taken in perspective.
Compared to Zhang Yang, Han Ying Xue and the rest had gained a Level and a little extra experience points. Since Zhang Yang’s Level was way higher than the monsters he killed, the experience points he gained was lowered, however, he was still able to reached Level 62.
On the fifth day, Zhang Yang, Han Ying Xue, and Wei Yan Er broke down the last wall of rocks and arrived at the lowest part of the 10,000 Phantoms.
Since the entire map had a spiral geometry, the top six floors were like the audience seats of a football field. The seventh floor was rather short and small compared to the previous six floors. After walking a mere 200 meters, they had arrived at the pathway that connected them to the lowest part of the map, just like entering the football field.
The huge "football field" did not share the well-groomed attributes of an actual football field! The surface of the ground was extremely uneven, with potholes here and there! There were even storm drains at a few random spots that emitted an extremely unpleasant odor! As they walked, they could only hear the wet squishy sounds of their footsteps. There were no monsters around! The place was so devoid of sound that they could practically hear the sound of a needle drop! Everyone instinctively had their guards up, preparing to react to any movement.
Just then…
Shush! Sun Xin Yu warped next to Zhang Yang with the Lover’s Charm. Zhang Yang, Han Ying Xue, and Wei Yan Er jumped and reacted violently to Sun Xin Yu’s sudden appearance.
"S-S-S-S-Sister Sun! Oh god! Don’t just jump out of nowhere! That scared the daylights out of me!" cried Wei Yan Er as she patted her chest.
Zhang Yang suddenly remembered an ancient funny joke. "Hey, listen. There was this guy,. He was auditioning to be an actor. So, the instructor let him warm up a little. He was supposed to say "A cold eerie wind blew, and I was so scared, that I dropped a brick!". That man was so nervous that he said "A cold eerie wind blew, and I was so scared, that I dropped a d*ck!""
"…Bleh!" All three females expressed their disgust. Han Ying Xue crossed her arm and shook her head. "Dummy…How and why did you learn all the bad habits from that pervert Fatty!"
Zhang Yang laughed mentally. If Fatty Han was here to hear that accusation, he would surely get offended at the slanderous claim! Ever since he was a kid, Zhang Yang had always been very naughty. Even though he was younger than Fatty Han by two months, it was Zhang Yang that led Fatty Han down the "dark side". It was best not to reveal the culprit who started it all!
"Sister Sun, don’t you have work today?" Wei Yan Er asked Sun Xin Yu.
"It’s my off-day!" Sun Xin Yu was ever so direct and simple.
"Oh!"
All four of them proceeded forwards. From afar it would seem as if their heights were fluctuating, one head bobbing over the others at times. The route was extremely uneven.
"This path is so tough to walk on! Hmph! Just like those evil businessmen building random freeways! I can even stomp a hole with my foot!" Wei Yan Er voiced her complaints after walking a few steps.
Ignoring the fact that each circle around the tunnel was 5,000 meters long, the radius of the circles would only be 800 meters. It was a shame there were no shorter routes. After walking down an empty walkway with no monsters to fight, the party had only spent 10 minutes or so to reach the centermost point of the 10,000 Phantoms.
As the party approached the place, which was a few hundred square meters, countless florescence light orbs glowed ferociously, illuminating the entire circular platform.
A spectral monster was seen riding on a skeletal war horse, right in the center of the platform. A huge battle hammer was seen resting on his right shoulder. Fully clad in blood-red metal armor, only two round glowing, green-emerald flames could be seen through the gap in the eye holes.
[Spectre General, Bullon] (Gray-Silver, Spectre)
Level: 60
HP: 5,000,000
Defense: 700
"Why isn’t it a Yellow-Gold tier?" said Wei Yan Er as she pouted her lips disgruntledly.
Zhang Yang smiled. "Little girl, do you really think that Yellow-Gold bosses would be available everywhere like McDonalds?"
Wei Yan Er nodded her head innocently.
Zhang Yang sighed heavily and shook his head. Even though they had defeated a number of Yellow-Gold bosses a few days back, it did not mean that Yellow-Gold bosses would be spawning around like mushrooms after the rain! Zhang Yang had been lucky enough to accept a main story quest in the first place! That was why he could encounter so many Yellow-Gold bosses in the first place! As far as the game progressed, Yellow-Gold bosses were still a rare sight!
"Hurry up and get killing! We have been roaming around this ghostly place for more than four days! Look at my poor Little Petal! Its only at Level 32! We didn’t even have the chance to properly grind!"
"Wait!" Sun Xin Yu suddenly let out a scream. She then vanished with a sudden "poof" and disappeared into the air.
"What’s wrong?" the party asked.
Sun Xin Yu remained quiet. After a few seconds later, two shadowy figures were forcefully revealed. Both of them had star circling on their heads; they were stunned!
"Thieves!" the party gasped.
Zhang Yang mentally praised Sun Xin Yu incredible awareness. As expected from China’s number one Thief. When Zhang Yang was unable to detect any strange activities around him, Sun Xin Yu could, ever so vigilantly! Naturally since Sun Xin Yu was a Thief class herself, she had a far better understanding as to how a Thief worked and how they could strike from within the shadows.
However, Sun Xin Yu’s opponent was also proved to be a worthy fighter! Even though he or she had been caught by Sun Xin Yu, she was also stunned in the process! Not anyone could simply execute such actions!
Zhang Yang shifted his gaze up to the target’s name tag. Luckily, he or she did not hide the profile information.
Lost Dream, Level 54, Human Male, Bandit, {Sheng Dynasty}!
Of all people, it’s him! The guy with the big mouth2!
Zhang Yang clicked his tongue.
Lost Dream was a rather famous player in Zhang Yang’s previous life. He was ranked fifth in the China’s Thief ranking. Many players had shared the same opinion that Lost Dream’s capabilities were at least on par with Sun Xin Yu. However, he had a rather "big mouth" and because of his behavior, he lost some popularity and lost some positions in the ranking list!
TL Note:
1Minute-man: Man who just cums way to fast.
2Big mouth: In China, there is another way to describe a person who can’t keep a secret. It could also be used to describe people that loves to gossip around or talk loud. In this case, Lost Dream belonged to the kind that could not keep a secret and loves to gossip.