WTYTIAAN Chapter 192

Chapter 192

The five-person squad advanced for a while and encountered another monster. This monster was too high-level, level 34, while their squad’s average level was only 16. It was very difficult to defeat a monster of this level, especially for players.

This was because players have few skills in the early stages of the game, pathetically few compared to the native inhabitants of the same level.

However, with the foundation laid by long-term training in the real world, the five-person squad could fight the level 34 monster evenly, relying solely on physical skills. It just took them a long time to grind down a layer of its health.

The captain, [Ying Yi], was the first to realize that they couldn’t continue fighting. Although they were players, death in the game wasn’t a problem for them. The problem was that after a character’s death in the “Homeward Journey” game, not only would they lose experience and levels, but their game backpack would also randomly drop items, and there would be a two-day resurrection cooldown.

Overall, death wasn’t unacceptable, but meaningless death for those who had accepted a mission and were ordered to play the game was a major work failure.

[Ying Yi] made a gesture, a universally understood retreat signal. Anyone who had been trained in the system could understand it. With the captain’s command, the remaining five didn’t linger and quickly prepared to retreat.

The little black cat squatting in the tree also saw this gesture.

However, how could the monster give these five humans who dared to provoke it a chance to escape? Seeing the humans who had been attacking it incessantly adopt a retreating posture, the monster roared and, with little intelligence, launched a more violent attack based solely on instinct.

Instantly, the wolf-headed, leopard-bodied monster pounced on [Wang Wang Squad], who was closest to it. [Bin Fengbao] shouted a warning, “Brother Wang!”

The monster’s sudden increase in attack speed caught people off guard, but this wasn’t a problem for well-trained soldiers. [Wang Wang Squad] reacted quickly, holding up his heavy sword in front of him. As the only one in the team who used a heavy sword, he was also assigned the role of the team’s only tank. Most of his free attribute points were allocated to strength and defense. Faced with the monster’s fierce attack, he wouldn’t be instantly killed.

[Wang Wang Squad] withstood the monster’s attack, and the remaining four followed up with their attacks. After a series of skills, the monster was pushed back a bit. However, their retreat plan would be difficult to continue implementing.

[Ying Yi] frowned, looking at the increasingly berserk monster in front of him, and said in a deep voice, “Take your potions, and be careful.”

As expected, the next second after [Ying Yi]’s words fell, the wolf-headed, leopard-bodied monster raised its head and howled.

Its originally black eyes were stained with a hint of blood, scarlet red. It opened its mouth, which seemed to emit a decaying and foul odor, revealing a row of sharp teeth that shimmered with a cold light. Disgusting saliva slowly dripped from those sharp teeth, falling on the grass in front of it, making a sizzling corrosive sound, and almost immediately emitting black smoke.

This monster’s saliva, or rather, its body fluids, were corrosive.

It was unimaginable what it would be like if this stuff accidentally dripped on you… or if your arms and legs were torn off by this thing, causing your sanity to plummet.

Even after a month or so of full-immersion game experience, [Wang Wang Squad] couldn’t help but take a step back when facing such a terrifying monster.

It was true… knowing that you could be resurrected after dying in this game, they still couldn’t help but panic when facing a monster that only existed in movies and TV shows.

Sure enough, it was because this world was too real.

[Wang Wang Squad] smiled self-deprecatingly in his heart. In that moment of distraction, the monster attacked again, still rushing towards [Wang Wang Squad]. It seemed to instinctively recognize that this person was the breakthrough point for the entire team.

And the fact was indeed so. [Wang Wang Squad], as one of the few people over forty years old in the entire secret operations team, had his physical fitness declining. He wasn’t as receptive to new things as younger people, and he wasn’t very skilled in using game skills.

He used to use firearms, but now he had switched to cold weapons, a heavy sword, which could be said to be a rebuilding of his combat concepts. One month was simply not enough time for him to fully integrate the combination of heavy sword and game skills.

[Wang Wang Squad]’s current combat relied mainly on his skills honed through years of training, as well as his past combat experience.

However, this combat experience was difficult to fully utilize in the power system of another world, which caused him to become the breakthrough point in the five-person squad.

Even [Yao Yu Cruiser], whose physical fitness wasn’t good and who wasn’t particularly good at close combat, so he chose the mage class, was much stronger than him. At least the mage’s role was ranged control and output.

The monster’s claw went straight for [Wang Wang Squad]’s face, and at this moment, even if [Wang Wang Squad] reacted and raised his sword to block, it would be too late. It was even more difficult for his teammates to provide assistance in such a short time.

The turning point was in that instant.

An emerald green arrow transformed into a stream of light, piercing through the monster’s right claw. Immediately afterward, the monster’s foul-smelling blood spurted out, interrupting its attack on [Wang Wang Squad], making the originally agile and rapid attack sluggish.

[Wang Wang Squad], who was closest to the monster, was also splashed with a few drops of the foul-smelling blood, causing him to subconsciously hold his breath. If he smelled it any longer, he was afraid he would turn around and vomit.

Under the stimulation of adrenaline, [Wang Wang Squad] swung his sword down, cutting the monster’s claw in half, leaving a deep wound.

It could actually leave such real damage. Did this swordsman’s heavy sword… have armor-piercing properties?

The injured monster was truly enraged. The look in its eyes as it looked at the five-person squad was filled with a strong desire for blood. It seemed that there was no way to resolve this peacefully today. It was a situation where either you die or I die.

[Wang Wang Squad] didn’t have time to think about who shot the arrow that had just flown over. After all, none of them in the squad used bows and arrows. Moreover, the captain, [Ying Yi], who was a little further away and paying close attention to the entire battle situation, couldn’t have missed this inexplicably appearing arrow.

He quickly looked in the direction the arrow came from. A figure was standing on a treetop, holding a verdant green bow in his hand. At this moment, he was pulling the bowstring to its full extent with his right hand.

The next moment, that person released the hand pulling the string, and an emerald green arrow was fired simultaneously. [Ying Yi] could even hear the whistling sound of it breaking through the air, striking the monster’s body again, and disappearing into light spots after causing damage.

And the monster’s health bar visibly disappeared by a small section.

The damage was actually so high?

[Ying Yi] was a little surprised. Although he didn’t know whether this suddenly appearing guy was an NPC or a player, his attack caused considerable damage to the monster. With his addition, their probability of defeating this monster had greatly increased, preventing a total annihilation.

Besides [Ying Yi] noticing Yan Yunqing’s existence, the rest, except for [Wang Wang Squad], who was at the very front directly facing the monster’s terror, more or less glanced back, and they saw the guy standing in the tree constantly firing cold arrows.

They exchanged glances with each other. Seeing that the captain didn’t give any further instructions, they didn’t say anything and focused on the battle in front of them.

After grinding for nearly half an hour, the level 34 monster, after being pierced through its left eye and brain by an arrow, completely cleared its last bit of health. After collapsing heavily to the ground, it dissipated into light spots like other monsters.

And after the intense battle, several of them almost collapsed directly to the ground.

Half an hour, this time wasn’t long, even shorter than the time their squad had previously spent killing monsters, it could be called rapid, but this was based on them nearly draining themselves.

…Well, the suddenly appearing archer was also the key to them being able to kill the monster.

With the monster’s disappearance, the experience reward for killing a monster above their level was distributed to the six people present. Yan Yunqing, who got the last hit, got a particularly large share, but the experience from killing a level 34 monster was just a drop in the bucket for his current experience pool. The level-up progress bar didn’t even change.

On the other hand, the five-person group basically leveled up, and the only one who didn’t level up, the captain [Ying Yi], was also close to filling his level experience bar. He only needed a little bit more experience to level up to level 19.

Yan Yunqing noticed the white light shining on those people, paused, and manually pressed the [+] behind his level.

Level increased 18 → 19

Good, this looked much more realistic. It was just that he had advanced two places on the level ranking again.

With the monster dead, [Wang Wang Squad] finally had a chance to catch his breath. He propped his heavy sword on the ground, using it as his cane, and gasped for a few breaths leaning on the heavy sword. “I didn’t expect that we could kill this monster even with such a large level gap. I almost thought I was going to experience my first death in this game today.”

[Wang Wang Squad] exclaimed. His current health bar was very dangerous. If he suffered a few more attacks, he was afraid he would really ascend to heaven on the spot. Even if he stacked a lot of defense, it wouldn’t work against a monster with a level difference of more than a dozen levels.

He glanced at his health bar, feeling that he couldn’t ignore it. What if another monster came along later? He quickly rummaged through his backpack, found a bottle of healing potion distributed by the higher-ups, and chugged it down.

Health +20 +20 +15 +20…

[Wang Wang Squad] watched his health bar increase at a snail’s pace, magically feeling a warm current flowing through his body, but it wasn’t very noticeable.

The game world was still good. If he had suffered such a serious injury in the real world, he would have died long ago. Even if he could be rescued by a doctor, it would take ten days and a half months, or even several months, to recover completely.

If the items in the game world could be brought to the real world, [Wang Wang Squad] couldn’t help but sigh, thinking of his comrades who had been injured and died in the line of duty. Then he heard the voice of the squad leader.

“Are you a player?”

Huh? What player?

[Wang Wang Squad] was stunned and turned around to see a person wearing a delicate cloth armor set, with a dark blue cloak behind him, walking over with light steps.

As he walked, the dark blue cloak behind him swayed. [Wang Wang Squad]’s vision was attracted by the verdant green bow in his hand.

This was a bow that presented a verdant green color overall, with vines winding upwards, and faint starlight appearing on it, full of greenery, and the workmanship was very exquisite. It didn’t look like an ordinary product at all—especially compared to the simple long swords and simple heavy swords in their hands, it was simply heaven and earth.

It looked very expensive.

The only thing that could be compared to it was the staff in the hand of [Yao Yu Cruiser]. That was dropped by killing a monster above their level some time ago. The front end of the staff was inlaid with a water-blue gemstone, with some simple patterns carved on it. The attribute stats were many times better than the weapons they bought from the blacksmith shop.

Among the current level of players, it was already a rare item. Originally, the people above were also preparing to take it away, but [Yao Yu Cruiser] seemed to have some connection with the people above. He didn’t know what he negotiated, but this staff was handed over to him for use.

Even such a staff that could be called a divine weapon so far paled in comparison to the verdant green vine bow.

You could tell at a glance who was more valuable.

Hmm… a bow? That’s right, during the battle just now, it seemed that there was a green arrow from time to time that landed on the monster, causing a certain amount of damage to the monster.

It was just that [Wang Wang Squad] was fighting the monster very intensely at that time, and under the control of adrenaline, he temporarily ignored the existence of that arrow.

Could it be… that arrow was shot by the person in front of him?

Thinking like this, [Wang Wang Squad]’s gaze finally fell on the face of the person who came. Black short hair, dark red eyes, exquisite features… and his temperament was very different. Most importantly, there were no NPC markers or game player IDs above his head.

All NPCs in this game have NPC markers, that is, the name displayed above their heads. Even if players don’t know the NPC’s name or the force they belong to, there will be prompts like [A Mysterious Visitor] or [A Passing Villager].

If a person suddenly appeared with nothing displayed above his head, then there was only one possibility, a player who had hidden their ID.

In the game, you can choose to hide your game ID, so that all players who see you can’t see the game ID above your head, but this function requires gold coins. Hiding it for one hour costs 2 gold coins, and a day costs 48 gold coins.

This was simply sky-high for players with fewer ways to earn gold coins. No one would be so reckless as to spend such a large sum of money to hide their game ID.

After all, with the game ID hidden, there would be nothing above their heads, and other players couldn’t possibly treat them as NPCs, making them even more conspicuous.

He didn’t expect to encounter a player hiding their game ID today.

Yan Yunqing walked closer and heard the captain’s question. He answered very simply, “Yes, I’m a player.”

He glanced at [Wang Wang Squad], whose health was only a sliver and was recovering at a snail’s pace, and couldn’t help but be silent. How could the healing potion this guy used restore so little health? The small red bottle he used before recovered faster.

“I saw you guys being chased by that monster, so I helped out. I didn’t disturb you, did I?”

Yan Yunqing said with a smile. Although he had indeed helped the other party just now, he took the last hit. Some ungrateful players might even bite him back and say he stole the monster.

Fortunately, the official people weren’t so shameless. He only heard the captain say, “Thanks to you this time, otherwise our squad might have been wiped out.”

A trace of surprise arose in Yan Yunqing’s heart. When he was eavesdropping behind this squad before, he clearly felt that this captain was a taciturn military brother. He didn’t expect that he would answer him and use words like “wiped out” that were more inclined to gamers.

Yan Yunqing waved his hand at them. “It’s nothing. I just happened to pass by and helped out. I was worried that you would think I was stealing the monster.”

“But it was really thrilling just now.” He looked around and said inadvertently, “After all, it’s a level 34 monster. The deeper you go into this forest, the higher the level of the monsters. How did you guys get so deep in here?”

[Ying Yi]’s gaze swept over Yan Yunqing’s body. “We accidentally went too deep while leveling up, and we ran into that monster when we were preparing to go out.”

Dealing such high damage to a level 34 monster, his level must not be too low. Plus, this particularly eye-catching weapon…

[Ying Yi] recalled the player information collected by the higher-ups. The current players hadn’t even completely figured out the most basic two basic classes, swordsman and mage, let alone the subsequent branch classes, ranger, thief, and the like.

A player using a bow, with a high level but not much information circulating…

That mysterious player who was always ranked in the top ten on the level list, occasionally falling down but quickly returning, and who had hidden his ID?