Chapter 12: Player Party

While the number of players logging into Far Shore continued to increase sharply, the number of Starter Villages had not increased. The issue of too many players and too few monsters could not be resolved anytime soon. In almost any decent leveling spot where monsters respawned quickly, Player Kills over monster spawns happened constantly, which also greatly affected leveling efficiency.

The area where the Corrupt Treants roamed was not too far from the Starter Village, just a ten-minute walk away. Each Corrupt Treant was spaced about ten meters apart from the others. It wasn’t that no one had thought of hunting Corrupt Treants, but even hunting them in a party was extremely inefficient. Just the consumption of Blood Restoration Pills during the leveling process would be a huge cost.

Ye Rongfan’s leveling process could almost be described as pleasant. He had even considered attracting four or five Corrupt Treants at once, gathering them together to kill them all at once. Only because he lacked any area-of-effect damage skills, his leveling efficiency wouldn’t improve by doing so, so he gave up on the idea.

When his stomach started to rumble slightly with hunger and he logged out of the game, Ye Rong was already more than halfway through level eight, just a little bit away from reaching level nine.

He wolfed down his lunch, then immediately logged back into the game and opened the Level Leaderboard.

“Damn! Damn! Damn! What kind of cheat is this guy using? He’s already reached level fourteen in just one morning!”

Ye Rong felt like crying. Just moments ago, he had been proud of his own leveling speed, but now all he could do was gasp in astonishment.

The Experience Points needed to go from level thirteen to fourteen were much greater than those needed from level seven to eight. Through normal leveling methods alone, it was simply impossible to keep up with such a leveling speed, even compared to someone like Ye Rong, whose leveling speed was considered incredibly fast among ordinary players.

Such leveling speed could only mean one of two things: either that player had continuously obtained Immortal Mansion Keys and received Experience Points rewards after clearing Immortal’s Cave Abodes, or he had completed an extremely complex Chain Quest.

If it was the former, it meant this player had the support of a very large and powerful guild behind him; otherwise, obtaining Immortal Mansion Keys one after another just didn’t make sense. If it was the latter, it proved that this player was a super player even during the Closed Beta. Probably because he achieved very high accomplishments or discovered a major bug, the game company rewarded him with quest clues.

During the Closed Beta, no fewer than four to five hundred rewards were given out, most of which were quest initiation clues or sources for obtaining Flying Swords and Magic Treasures. These rewards wouldn’t affect the game’s balance in the early stages.

However, in the hands of an experienced super player, just a small clue was enough. High-difficulty Chain Quests were actually a relatively easy part for them to handle.

Rocketing to level fourteen could only be due to these few reasons.

Below this player, the second-ranked player was only level twelve, but the top ten players had all reached level eleven. Compared to them, Ye Rong’s leveling speed was practically nothing.

“Kill! Kill! Kill!”

Stimulated by this, Ye Rong didn’t feel discouraged. Instead, his eyes turned red, and every Corrupt Treant in his sight was seen as Experience Points.

Besides using Fire Talisman and Water Lord Talisman for ranged attacks, he simply stood still without moving, continuously casting Fireballs while waiting for the Corrupt Treants to slowly approach him. He endured several attacks from the Corrupt Treants head-on, then pulled out his Peach Wood Sword and slashed fiercely a few times, causing its body to shatter and turn into ashes.

This way, Ye Rong sacrificed a certain amount of Health Points, but increased his monster-killing efficiency by nearly one-third.

Moreover, the lost Health Points would gradually recover during the next attack sequence, without even needing to consume a Blood Restoration Pill—

Without being in a meditative state and without practicing any techniques, a starting player’s automatic Health recovery speed was very slow. However, Ye Rong had the Crescent Pendant, which had an automatic Health recovery property (slow). It worked out to about one Health Point recovered every ten seconds.

Ye Rong continuously slaughtered Corrupt Treants and had slowly moved into a deeper area where the density of Corrupt Treants had doubled.

“Someone else is targeting Corrupt Treants for leveling too.”

Ye Rong had seen no fewer than ten people trying to kill Corrupt Treants during this time, but none of them lasted more than a few kills before leaving voluntarily. Without sustained ranged attack methods, wanting to level here either required being wealthy enough to spend large amounts of Blood Restoration Pills, or killing one Corrupt Treant and then meditating to recover Health Points.

Far Shore hadn’t opened an official trading platform yet, so the exchange rate for buying in-game items and currency through the black market was practically a rip-off.

As for meditating to recover Health Points, the time required was too much, making leveling efficiency basically nonexistent.

This newly arrived leveling party had four members in total, three males and one female. They were all startled to see Ye Rong already leveling here.

“Stop looking, let’s start killing!”

A tall, thin young man with a somewhat gloomy demeanor in the four-person party spoke while raising the weapon in his hand—a dark red pointed hammer.

“Alright!”

The gloomy young man was clearly the leader in the party, with high authority. The other three all picked up their weapons and surrounded the nearest Corrupt Treant. Apart from the gloomy young man’s pointed hammer, the other three players all wielded ordinary Steel Swords and had no other Magic Treasures on them.

Seeing people charge toward it, the Corrupt Treant excitedly waved its rotten branches, making creaking sounds.

Simultaneously, as soon as the four stepped near the Corrupt Treant, their feet sank softly, as if stepping into mud. Looking down, the soil under their feet had somehow softened and eroded, turning into a muddy, decayed ground. Both their movement speed and attack speed slowed down noticeably. More annoyingly, a System Notification warned them that for every two seconds spent in the corrupted soil, they would lose one Health Point. The more players present, the greater the effect of the corrupted soil.

“Finish it quickly!”

The gloomy young man shouted loudly. He had just been hit by one of the Corrupt Treant’s branches, losing nearly 20 Health Points. This terrifying attack power made him nervous. No wonder everyone preferred crowding together fighting over limited monsters, and no one came to kill Corrupt Treants.

The pointed hammer in his hand was a reward from completing a hidden minor quest. Its damage was one point higher than the Steel Sword, and it added 2 points of fire damage, but its attack speed was really slow.

So, each of the gloomy young man’s attacks was accompanied by a -2 orange-red number floating above the Corrupt Treant’s head, which was the additional fire damage from the pointed hammer.

With the four of them attacking together, the Corrupt Treant didn’t last long. After a frenzy of attacks, it let out a low howl and dispersed into ashes.

“Damn, that thing is tough!”

In just that short while, it felt like they had fought a big battle; they were all panting heavily. The slightly chubby player who looked like a student complained, even using his Steel Sword to poke through the ashes as if expecting to find some treasure hidden inside.

“Dammit, that guy’s kill speed is almost the same as ours!”

The remaining male and female seemed to be a couple. The man saw Ye Rong just finish off a Corrupt Treant with a Fireball, his jaw dropping. He clearly remembered that the other side had started attacking a new Corrupt Treant at almost the same time as their group.

“Let’s go, let’s ask that guy to join our party!”

The gloomy young man stared at Ye Rong’s figure for a long time before uttering these words.

“Join our party?”

The chubby student-like player rubbed his head, looking confused, and asked the guy next to him:

“Radish, do you think he’ll party with us? Has the boss gone crazy?”

“Stop talking so much, just follow!”