Close-Quarters Combat!

Chapter 20: Close-Quarters Slaughter!

"Next time" was just a tactful way of putting it.

Skeleton Soldiers could be summoned again after they died, but if the Demon God Statue got overrun, he would be finished along with it. There probably wouldn't be a next time.

Clearly realizing the seriousness of the situation as well, You You immediately responded.

"Roger!"

Meanwhile, on the first floor of the maze.

Inside the grand hall blanketed in spiderwebs, two Skeleton Soldiers were using slick footwork to kite lone Cave Spiders to the limit.

Simply put, Hu Wan would step up to lure the monster, drawing the Cave Spider beside a pillar. Then, taking advantage of the creature's inability to move except in straight lines, One Leaf Knows Autumn would ambush it from the side with his spear.

According to their tests, Cave Spiders with body lengths under two meters could generally be killed with three thrusts.

Compared to their hard heads, the Cave Spiders' abdomens—especially the sides of their abdomens—were relatively soft spots where their defenses could be pierced more easily.

The only troublesome thing was that these Cave Spiders could spray thick webs from their mouthparts. Once immobilized, death was practically guaranteed.

Fortunately, the spiders had an obvious wind-up whenever they "spat."

The moment he saw the target's cheeks bulge, One Leaf Knows Autumn, hiding behind the pillar, would tap the ground with his spear to warn Hu Wan, who was luring the monster, to dodge.

The two had worked together all afternoon and farmed nearly twenty Cave Spiders without a single mistake.

One Leaf Knows Autumn did the math. Ignoring the Hell Money earned from spider eggs, the two of them could split 100 Contribution Points from twenty spiders.

As long as they killed another twenty ratmen on their way back, then spent some Hell Money to purchase 1,000 jin of coal from life-profession players at a price slightly above the official buying rate, they could claim all 100 Contribution Points offered by the daily activity mission.

That way, while most players could only obtain 50 Contribution Points per day, their daily earnings could reach 200 points! They could rush to Black Iron-level in five days! That leveling speed would be enough to leave other players far behind right from launch.

Looking at One Leaf Knows Autumn, who was busy calculating, Hu Wan pondered for a moment before speaking.

"I'm planning to give you all the Contribution Points from these twenty spiders. If we farm a few more later... you should be able to reach Black Iron-level by tomorrow night at the latest and raise your level cap to Lv. 10."

Hearing his teammate say that, One Leaf Knows Autumn froze for a moment and blurted out instinctively.

"Why?"

Hu Wan shrugged indifferently and said as if it were only natural.

"Rather than slowing down our pace by splitting everything between two people, wouldn't it be more efficient to get one person to Black Iron-level first, then have them help the other level up?"

That was true.

One Leaf Knows Autumn understood what he meant. It was also standard practice for many guilds pursuing strength when pioneering a new game.

That was, to concentrate every advantage on developing a few chosen players first, then use those players to snowball their advantage and feed it back to the others...

But that sort of thing generally only happened between acquaintances. Until today, the two had been complete strangers.

One Leaf Knows Autumn didn't believe the other man failed to see this game's future potential, or the value of an early-game advantage.

"Aren't you afraid I'll go back on my word?"

Hu Wan smiled faintly and said without concern.

"I've always been a good judge of character. I believe you're not the type to covet petty gains... Besides, there isn't that much to gain from this anyway."

Upon hearing that, One Leaf Knows Autumn could almost certainly conclude that this guy belonged to some gaming guild.

"...Then I won't stand on ceremony."

He owed this man a favor!

Switching his dagger to his left hand, Hu Wan smiled and extended his skeletal right hand, shaking his hand.

"Pleasure doing business with you... Oh, right. I think I leveled up just now."

"I think I did too."

"Hiss... That's strange."

"What is?"

"My attribute point was automatically assigned to Agility." Hu Wan stared at his attribute panel in thought. "It's exactly what I wanted... but doesn't this game have freely assignable attribute points?"

"Mine seems to have gone into Strength." One Leaf Knows Autumn opened his attribute panel to check.

text
ID: One Leaf Knows Autumn

Race: Undead (Skeleton)

Soul Level: Ordinary (Level Cap LV3)

Level: LV.1 (+1)

Experience Points: (33/1W)

HP: (200/200)

MP: (0/0)

Constitution: 2 Strength: 4 (+1)

Agility: 1 Intelligence: 0 Spirit: 0

He had actually wanted to become a mage, but it seemed even the most basic Skeleton Soldier couldn't become one.

"If I'm not mistaken, this should be a hidden mechanic in Calamity Online."

Hu Wan looked over at him.

"A hidden mechanic?"

"That's right." One Leaf Knows Autumn nodded and shared his thoughts. "Most games work on the logic of assigning points after leveling up, but this game should operate on the logic of 'leveling up after your attributes grow.'"

"I don't know why the development team designed it this way—maybe for realism? But the term 'experience bar' is indeed somewhat misleading. It would actually be more appropriate to call it a proficiency bar. In other words, whatever attributes your actions in the game train are the attributes that will ultimately grow."

"I see..." Hu Wan's eyes lit up as he looked One Leaf Knows Autumn over with interest. "Seriously, bro, are you sure you're not an insider at the game company?"

"How could that be? Do I really look like one...?"

One Leaf Knows Autumn looked at Hu Wan with a mixture of laughter and exasperation. After pausing for a moment, he shifted his gaze to the side.

"Still... I used to want to develop a game like this."

"So we happened to think alike, huh?"

Hu Wan grinned, about to say something else when a notification suddenly flashed before his eyes.

Alert: Monster Siege!

Description: A massive wave of ratmen is approaching the Demon Lord Territory! All nearby players, immediately take up your weapons and gather at the core area of the Demon Lord Territory! Successfully repelling the attack will earn huge rewards in Hell Money and Contribution Points. Failure will result in the forced closure of this closed beta event!

Seeing the part about forced closure, Hu Wan felt his heart leap into his throat... though his in-game self had no heart.

"A monster siege?!"

"I logged off earlier to check the forums. I was going to write down some notes, but then I found a player reporting that thousands upon thousands of rats were moving toward Demon Lord Territory." Seeing that serious skull face, One Leaf Knows Autumn cut himself off. "Looks like the notification popped up in-game too."

Hu Wan hurriedly asked.

"Who was that player?"

"I think his name was Minotaur Warrior."

"...What kind of shitty name is that?" Hu Wan muttered, staring at One Leaf Knows Autumn. "Where is he now? Can we determine the direction?"

One Leaf Knows Autumn shook his head.

"I doubt it. That mine is all twisted and winding, with no markers anywhere. Judging by his confused description, I even doubt he can find his way back..."

Hu Wan pondered for a long while.

"So, what do you say? Go back and help?"

"We definitely have to go back and help."

One Leaf Knows Autumn looked back at the cobweb-covered hall. It was the battlefield where he and a newly made friend had spent an entire afternoon grinding.

"If our home is gone, nothing else matters."

Rumble—

The earth trembled! The ratmen roared! Devour everything, eat everything—

The helpless human things fled!

It was one of the Four Scenes of Doomsday hanging in the confessional of Holy City Cathedral.

Thousands upon thousands of ratman soldiers from the depths of hell flooded over the walls of Doomsday Fortress!

Faced with the ratmen gathering together and launching a suicidal charge, the followers of Saint Siss called it a "Rat Tide"! It was madness that transcended the survival instincts of living things. The swarming rats trampled those ahead of them, destroying themselves even as they destroyed their enemies!

Bathed in the corrupting light bestowed by the Three Rat Gods, these creatures—who normally scattered at the first sign of defeat—would never flee this time! Nor was there the slightest possibility of retreat! The moment they slowed even a little—

They would be trampled into meat paste by their own comrades surging from behind!

"Charge!"

"Smash those skeletons!"

"Bite through those human things' necks!"

"For Gerlo!!!"

The red-eyed ratmen had gone mad, filling the entire mine tunnel like a rolling torrent.

Hearing those shrill cries, Leon's expression changed slightly.

Gerlo! The Gluttonous Rat!

The moment he heard that name, he, who had come from the deepest depths of hell, understood everything.

Deep within this mine, a group of Slave Rats driven out of the labyrinth had completed a ritual to please Gerlo under the most extreme conditions, nurturing an incomparably obese "Chosen Rat"! Leon remembered learning in class at Demon Lord Academy that the ritual required extreme hunger and an extreme abundance of food, as well as a Slave Rat whose soul and personality were twisted to the utmost extreme!

The chances of the ritual succeeding were incredibly small. After all, Gerlo's temperament was just as temperamental as his children's.

Normally, such twisted monsters were created by Demon Lords to cause trouble for adventurers venturing deep into labyrinths! But because the ritual's success rate was so low, few Demon Lords ever used it.

As for a Demon Lord personally subjugating an out-of-control Chosen Rat...

He had never even heard of it! "Why does this kind of fucked-up shit always happen to me..." Leon cursed, raising his Magic Wand as he began preparing a spell. The energy of the dead and the energy of earth elements gathered beneath his feet at the same time.

Facing the surging Rat Tide, Knowledge Explosion, standing on the very front line, widened his eyes in shock. Unfortunately, there was not much expression a skeleton face could show; otherwise, he would have looked like he had seen a ghost.

"Holy shit! So much EXP—"

Before he could finish, the flood of flesh and blood swallowed him whole.

That pale skeleton was smashed to pieces, and Calamity Online finally saw its first player death in battle! With Knowledge Explosion sacrificed, the players behind him immediately realized these ratmen were anything but ordinary and became alert.

"Don't be scared, Brothers! They're just a bunch of EXP packs! Close ranks! Brace the spears!"

Someone shouted from within the sea of skeletons. Several skeletons moved first, followed by the rest of the players, squeezing together in the not-so-spacious mine tunnel to form a spiked wall of bone.

There were no flashy tactics.

Only the clash of blood and bones!

The skeletons in the front row were crushed to pieces, but the skeletons behind them held the line, forcibly halting the Rat Tide's unstoppable momentum.

"Eek—!"

The ratmen at the front were skewered into strings of gourds by the spears, dark blood spraying from the broken spearheads.

And that was not all—

Bone spikes and stone pillars erupted from the ground!

Just as they seemed about to stop the ratmen's charge, the latter smashed them apart with pickaxes and blunt weapons! Leon gripped his Magic Wand, carefully weighing the spells available to him, killing as many rats as possible while avoiding burying himself and the players alive in the mine tunnel.

The constantly piling corpses formed a slope. The bloodthirsty rats surged forward one after another, stepping on the bodies of their own kind as they climbed upward, trying to scale the towering wall of bones!

Yet the moment their claws reached the top, a greatsword trailing a fierce gust swept toward them, cleaving the foremost ratmen in two at the waist and scattering blood and gore behind them.

That "man" was Bond.

Awakened by Necromantic Magic, he had come back to life as a zombie—and possessed strength far beyond what he had in life!

"Damn! Where did this NPC come from?!" Gou Shi stared with his nonexistent eyes wide open at the zombie standing overhead.

This guy was kind of cool! He had stolen all the spotlight! "I think it's that pile of meat paste from before."

"Holy shit?!"

"Aaahhh!!!"

Xiao Wan Can't Get Enough, squeezed in nearby, hugged her pickaxe with both hands, lowered her skull, and let out strange cries as she shoved forward with all her might.

It was obvious she was terrified.

But she had heard that losing would shut down the server, and all the coal she had mined for the entire day would have been for nothing, so she still put every ounce of strength she had into it.

Just as the skeleton wall was about to fail, a player named One Gulp of Septic Tank suddenly stood out.

More than a dozen sticks of what looked like mining explosives were tied to his body. He lit the fuse with a torch, screamed, and climbed atop the sea of skeletons.

"Brothers! I'm going on ahead! See you on the forums!"

Seeing the firecracker-like bundle spitting sparks, the players pinned beneath him were so frightened they nearly turned and ran. Fortunately, they remembered this was a game and managed to hold their ground.

There was no dramatic running start.

The NPC named Bond suddenly sprang into action, grabbed his arm, and hurled him out.

One Gulp of Septic Tank drew an arc through the air and slammed hard into the rat swarm, but after waiting for quite a while, there was still no sound.

"What a rip-off, holy shit!" Gou Shi could not help cursing.

It was a dud! What a waste of that heroic atmosphere! He had actually been moved for two whole seconds!

The battle fell into a stalemate once more.

The ratmen could not advance even half a step, but the sea of skeletons formed by the players could not do much to the former either.

Standing atop the sea of skeletons, Bond swung his greatsword and slew every ratman that charged up. Yet against the unceasing attacks, even the tireless zombie began to show signs of fatigue.

The reason was simple: there were simply too many monsters, and there was no sign of them stopping!

On the players' side, although slain skeletons could quickly come back to life, they were at a disadvantage in numbers after all.

Especially since summoning skeletons did not come without a cost.

Temporary summons created by spending mana could not serve as vessels for souls, while monsters summoned by the Demon Lord Territory's core consumed Faith Points.

Watching his Faith Points plummet with a bang, bang, bang, Leon's heart ached.

Just then, a Skeleton Soldier suddenly ran to his side and dropped to one knee.

"Lord Demon Lord! The mine tunnel a hundred meters ahead of you is directly above the lower-level labyrinth!"

The one speaking was One Leaf Knows Autumn.

Hearing his report, Leon immediately snapped back to his senses and understood what he meant.

As long as they found a way to collapse the mine tunnel and connect it directly to the first floor of the underground labyrinth, they could use the ratmen's natural enemies against them! This was indeed not difficult for a Steel-level mage, especially since the mine tunnel was already right beside the labyrinth!

The only problem was that connecting to the labyrinth might bring new trouble...

Looking at the defensive line that was about to collapse, Leon knew he had no time to hesitate.

He could only gamble that those Cave Spiders would take these ratmen down with them! Leon swung his Magic Wand, chanted an incantation, and used his remaining mana to cast one final Steel-level spell.

Earth Collapse!

The ground began to tremble the moment his words fell, like an earthquake.

Before anyone could react, the already cramped mine tunnel suddenly caved in!

"Screech—!"

The Rat Tide, constantly compressed, finally found an outlet and poured into the grand hall on the maze's first floor alongside the tumbling rubble.

The surging scene was like floodwaters being released from a dam! Falling from a height of over ten meters, the first ratmen to hit the ground vomited blood from the impact, while those following behind were jolted dizzy and disoriented.

And when they finally snapped out of their daze, they found themselves facing pairs of scarlet eyes.

Bone-chilling fear crawled over the ratmen's bodies. They knew all too well what those creatures were—and what those looks meant—

Watching the little rats that had fallen into the spider's web, the starving Cave Spiders rubbed their claws together in the darkness.

It was time to eat!