The aftermath rippled as the dust settled.
Looking at the scattered severed limbs, the belly-up Cave Spiders, and Hu Wan clinging desperately to the Bone Spear, Leon lowered his Magic Wand and nodded approvingly.
"Not bad."
It looked like this Skeleton Soldier would still be useful for quite a while.
Of course.
The main reason was that he had kited them well.
Looking at the mess all around them, Hu Wan, clutching the Bone Spear, felt his butt clench.
Seeing that Lord Demon Lord had finally stopped chanting, he breathed a sigh of relief and slid down from the Bone Spear.
So this was power?
While they had still been calculating the Cave Spiders' attack patterns, Lord Demon Lord had merely waved a hand and crushed all those bugs to death.
Damn...
Had he, an aspiring number one thief in Calamity Online, chosen the wrong class?
He was not the only one having thoughts like that.
Thousand Miles, standing nearby, felt the same way.
Lord Demon Lord's awe-inspiring display of power left an indelible impression on her mind.
Maybe she should try becoming a Magic Swordsman? But before that, she should probably switch out of this skeleton class first.
In another couple of days, she should have enough Contribution Points to raise her Soul Level. She just did not know when the development team planned to unlock new classes.
At this moment, the players had no idea that what they saw as the combat-power ceiling of Calamity Online was merely the ceiling of North Peak Mine.
Leon opened his status panel to check the gains and found that he had received less Experience Points than expected.
"...More than three hundred Cave Spiders only gave me a little over twenty thousand experience. Is it because the level gap is too large?"
As he recalled, One Leaf Knows Autumn and Hu Wan had killed over ninety Cave Spiders and gone from LV0 to LV3.
Three levels in a row should have required more than thirty thousand experience in total.
And that was with two people sharing the experience! Since You You issued the Contribution Points, Leon knew the players' progression like the back of his hand.
"Sure enough, if I want higher experience returns, I still need to challenge stronger monsters."
"Or else—"
"I can only make up for poor quality with quantity."
Leon took a small Blue Potion from his robe, bit out the cork, and poured it into his mouth.
A warm sensation spread from his abdomen throughout his body before finally gathering in the Sea of Consciousness deep between his brows.
His fatigue vanished completely, and his depleted mana bar filled once more.
Once the medicine kicked in, Leon quickly regained his composure and turned toward the players with an unfathomable expression.
"It is time to clear the next area."
As he spoke, he took out four vials of potion and tossed one to each of them.
"Go draw the spiders' attention... You know what to do."
With the example set by the Hu Wan brothers, the remaining four players needed no instruction. The moment they received the potions, they poured them over their own skulls... Clearly, they already knew what they were supposed to do.
Leon was extremely satisfied.
As expected of skilled players. They were just so comfortable to use.
Unlike those dumbasses with bizarre IDs, who either waved their broken swords around in front of the statue or obsessed over the cats they kept.
What was vision?
This was vision!
Save up more Contribution Points and grow stronger alongside his Great Cemetery. Once they made it big, what kind of cat could they not keep?
If they truly could not abduct one... they could just become one themselves!
After all, the players operated Soul Mirror Images. Reincarnating was as easy as changing classes in an MMORPG.
Leon was not the only one satisfied. The players he was ordering around were satisfied too.
They were doing quests, after all. Was being ordered around not perfectly normal? How was that the same as working a job?
An NPC who got straight to the point, did not beat around the bush, and did not make them guess riddles was already incredibly friendly.
This game barely had any beginner guidance to begin with. If they also had to guess what the NPC wanted, that would have been utterly maddening...
Over the next several hours, Leon showed the players what efficiency truly meant.
And the eager players were thoroughly shocked by just how inhuman this Lord Demon Lord was.
Under his command, they split up and ventured deep into the corridors beyond the hall, leaving marks along the way while luring every monster they encountered back to the hall.
The thousands upon thousands of ratmen fed more than just the spiders in a single "maze room." They fed an entire vast maze beneath North Peak Mine! The abundance of food greatly stimulated the spiders' breeding instincts. Whenever skeletons covered in pheromones entered their feeding grounds, those previously lazy insects instantly became as excited as Boar-Headed Knights spotting a Succubus.
They had practically been one scream away from shouting, "Mine! Mine!"
Even if it was only a pile of bones, even if they really caught those guys, aside from ending up covered in bone dust, it seemed like... there was not much they could do?
In any case, the players acting as tools got to experience what it felt like to be Succubi in advance.
They each lured monsters into the hall, and then it was Lord Demon Lord's turn to perform.
If there were only a few spiders, he would wave his Magic Wand and hurl Bone Spears to pick them off one by one.
If a huge swarm of spiders arrived at once, he would first throw out a Bone Spear to mark a Safe Zone in an open area, then directly unleash an AoE skill to blast the Cave Spiders apart in groups.
Besides that, he would occasionally sit down, take some medicine, and meditate.
Whenever that happened, the zombie lackey following behind him would take his place, swinging the greatsword in its hand and cutting down the spiders chasing the players one by one.
This game was way too kind to mage classes! The more One Leaf Knows Autumn watched, the more envious he became. He wished the developers would immediately add a pay-to-win button.
His demands were not high.
As long as he could cast spells, he would accept being either a Skeleton Soldier or even a slime!
Time slowly passed, and the spider corpses piled up into a small mountain in the hall.
Scarlet and pale yellow fluids gathered into streams across the hall, adding a touch of horror to the web-covered chamber.
As more and more Cave Spiders flipped onto their backs, not only did Leon's experience shoot upward, but the players responsible for luring monsters also got a sip of the soup.
Although their damage contribution was low and each monster gave little experience upon death, the numbers made up for it! With over a thousand Cave Spiders combined, even if each spider only contributed a double-digit amount of experience, that was still an increase of over ten thousand! The LV3 experience cap was only thirty thousand in total, and One Leaf Knows Autumn's experience bar filled up without him even noticing.
And at the very instant he broke through the LV3 bottleneck, an unexpected change suddenly occurred to him!
"What... is going on?"
A ghostly green light emerged from the void and wrapped around One Leaf Knows Autumn.
In an instant, he felt stronger than ever before.
If the Skeleton Soldier he had controlled before was merely his real-life body wearing a layer of skin, then he was now terrifyingly powerful—both in reaction speed and strength!
A wad of sticky old phlegm whistled toward him. Previously, he would have needed his full attention to dodge it, but now, he merely dipped down with perfect control and let it land harmlessly in empty space.
The Cave Spider seemed startled by the change in him as well. Its rushing steps slowed, as though it wanted to reassess whether this troublesome skeleton was worth the risk.
Taking advantage of the brief hesitation from those spiders, One Leaf Knows Autumn leaped backward several times to open up distance, then lowered his head to examine himself.
He did not know whether it was an illusion, but he was stunned to discover that his previously frail bones seemed to have become thicker and sturdier! And that was not all—
Those sluggish joints now seemed to have been oiled, no longer making creaking noises whenever he moved.
Suddenly realizing something, he immediately opened his status panel and, sure enough, found something unusual.
ID: One Leaf Knows Autumn Race: Skeleton Soul Level: Black Iron-level (Level Cap LV10) Level: LV.4 Experience Points: (18/40,000) HP: (300/300) MP: (100/100) Constitution: 3 (+1) Strength: 6 (+1) Agility: 3 (+1) Intelligence: 1 (+1) Spirit: 1 (+1)
All attributes had increased by 1!
Especially his mana bar, Intelligence, and Spirit—they were finally no longer at 0!
Looking at his updated status panel, One Leaf Knows Autumn's face broke into an ecstatic grin.
At the same time, a pale green notification window appeared before him.
Server Announcement: Congratulations to player "One Leaf Knows Autumn" for becoming the first player on this server to formally advance to Black Iron-level! We hope all other players will keep up the good work and create a glorious future together with the Great Cemetery!
Looking at the announcement before him, One Leaf Knows Autumn felt both delighted and somewhat embarrassed.
Although he could sense the development team's sincerity from this server-wide announcement, if he had a choice, he would still have preferred to hide his ID.
He was a low-key person and did not want to draw too much attention.
Meanwhile, not far away, Long Xing Wan Li, Thousand Miles, Hundred Miles, and the others had just finished luring another wave of monsters and were resting when they saw the announcement. Envious expressions appeared on their faces.
"We got beaten to it."
"His Contribution Points... already passed one thousand?!"
"Probably."
What a pity.
He had originally wanted to use this chance to make the Long Xing Tian Xia guild known in Calamity Online and unite the Beta Testers.
But now, it seemed they would have to wait for another opportunity.
Wan Li: "There is nothing we can do about it. I remember they started farming Cave Spiders yesterday. Their Contribution Points must have been way ahead of ours, so it is not like we lost unfairly."
They had also tried farming Cave Spiders, but their efficiency had been far too low, and there had even been casualties.
At the end of the day, the physical capabilities of these skeleton frames were just too pathetic. They were not even as good as his real-life body.
And the game's Closed Beta Qualifications were limited. He could not mobilize the strength of his guild, and could only rely on Thousand Miles and Hundred Miles, who had also drawn Closed Beta Qualifications.
After weighing the pros and cons, they had ultimately chosen the easier-to-bully Rat Rat.
Although their money-making and experience-gaining efficiency had improved, now it seemed that they might have lost more than they gained.
Hu Wan, on the other hand, did not feel much about it. He even thought this server-wide announcement should have appeared long ago.
After all, One Leaf had reached Black Iron-level early in the morning. He had merely been a little short on Experience Points.
"...It seems raising Soul Level alone is not enough. The actual level has to go up too."
This was rather fair to ordinary players.
After all, Cave Spider corpses could be traded. Whether it was Hell Money or Contribution Points, there was always a way to buy them with money. The only reason they could not buy them right now was because there were too few people on the server. There would definitely be private trades in the future... It was unavoidable in any game.
Experience Points alone had to be earned personally.
Even if someone paid others to help, they could not leech experience without dealing any damage at all.
Not far away, as he watched Long Xing N-li and the others pull themselves together and charge back into the maze, a certain big boss finally revealed a triumphant smile.
That server-wide announcement just now was less a reward for One Leaf Knows Autumn personally than a spur for all the grind-addicted players on the server.
Take a good look! See how this was what you called an "enterprise-grade" understanding of the current version!
They all started with a skeleton frame, so why did some Skeleton Soldiers reach Black Iron-level in just one day while others remained stuck at LV3 without making progress?
If you did not grind and he did not grind, how was this lord supposed to upgrade the Demon Lord Territory and make it bigger and stronger?
Did this king have to grind personally?
Leon twisted open another small Blue Potion, tipped his head back to drink it, and wiped the corner of his mouth with his arm.
Yet, to his surprise, he caught a glimpse of crimson on his sleeve out of the corner of his eye.
Hm? A nosebleed?
Just as he stood there in a daze, several drops fell with soft plops beside the tips of his shoes.
"Lord Demon Lord, you should pay more attention to your health... This kind of potion has side effects, does it not?"
Floating beside him, You You looked at Your Majesty Demon Lord with concern and spoke softly.
This was already the seventh bottle.
Its instincts told it that constantly taking medicine was not good.
"I am fine. It is probably mental network overload from casting too frequently... It may not necessarily be the medicine."
Maybe his Constitution was too low? He had seen demons drink bottle after bottle, and they were even taking Beast Drug doses, yet they seemed fine...
Looking at the blood dripping onto the ground, Leon felt somewhat uneasy as well and did not dare keep messing around.
"...I should rest for a while before farming again."
Before you continue