Seizing Rewards

The instant Wang Zhifan used the Blade of the Wolf Fiend to strike the special monster's arm, he felt a considerable resistance transmit through his hands gripping the hilt. Such a scenario had never occurred when he obliterated those dozens of ordinary monsters earlier. After all, the Blade of the Wolf Fiend was a rare-grade weapon, possessing its own fairly potent armor-piercing effect. This time, however, he had presumably encountered a tough opponent.

Yet, mere unexpected resistance could not make Wang Zhifan retreat in the slightest. He immediately let out a low shout, channeling power from his waist and legs through his shoulders and arms into the long blade in his hands. This caused the striking force of his slash to surge instantly, executing a breakthrough through sheer strength.

Crack!

Following the explosive surge of power, the monster's claw—which had previously resisted the Blade of the Wolf Fiend—snapped directly. Its front section dropped before the Long-Haired Female Ghost, which had emergency-teleported back to protect its master, while its rear section rapidly retracted amid the screeching of the monster outside the window.

Wang Zhifan then glanced at the blade of the long sword in his hand, confirming that his exertion just now had not caused any rolling or bending to this precious weapon. Following that, he rushed toward the middle of the bus and began wielding the Wolf Fiend to deal with the remaining monsters.

By this time, there were hardly any ordinary monsters left outside the bus. Almost all of them had entered the cabin, but mostly in the state of dismembered corpse chunks.

Driven by the short-haired girl's Long-Haired Female Ghost summon and Wang Zhifan's fierce combat, the aisle inside the bus and those wooden-dummy-like passengers were now piled high with sickening monster remains, leaving fewer than twenty ordinary monsters still maintaining activity.

Yet, their days were also numbered because Wang Zhifan had now replaced the Long-Haired Female Ghost to begin a precise slaughter. Meanwhile, the Long-Haired Female Ghost, manipulated by the short-haired girl, teleported outside the vehicle and launched an offensive against the unique entity beyond the window, preventing it from causing any further interference inside the bus.

This round of task allocation once again demonstrated the tacit cooperation between the two. With just a glance of his peripheral vision and the impressive perception brought by his 16-point spirit attribute, Wang Zhifan confirmed that the tall monster outside was completely pinned down by the Long-Haired Female Ghost summon, and that the two sides had already begun a well-matched confrontation. This meant Wang Zhifan did not need to spend too much energy paying attention elsewhere; he only needed to hack and slash the remaining monsters inside the bus to clean up all the small fry first.

After about a minute of this, Wang Zhifan, whose forehead was already beaded with a layer of sweat, finally approached a seat near the front of the bus and closed in on the very last monster.

This monster was somewhat special. Unlike the other monsters that kept attacking the two players inside the vehicle like moths to a flame, it quietly hid here, crouching on a seat and continuously gnawing on the head of a wooden-dummy passenger.

When Wang Zhifan sought it out, the unlucky passenger beneath it was left with only a neck connected to a small fragment of skull, dead as dead could be. Even so, Wang Zhifan had not heard this passenger utter even a single scream during the previous time.

This showed just how miserable non-player humans were within the Ash Domain, completely devoid of any possibility of escaping monster attacks. The parents of the original owner whose body Wang Zhifan transmigrated into had presumably lost their lives under such circumstances.

Without a moment's hesitation, Wang Zhifan beheaded and dispatched this final monster with a single slash. He first narrowed his eyes slightly, using his high perception to judge that there were no remaining fish slipping through the net inside the bus, and then shifted his gaze outside the bus, which now resembled a refrigerated transport truck for corpses.

Through the window at this moment, he could see that in the wasteland about ten or twenty meters away, the massive monster whose claw he had severed not long ago was still battling the short-haired girl's summon.

The Long-Haired Female Ghost, under the girl's precise control, fought quite skillfully. It gave full play to its overwhelming advantage in agility, its figure constantly blinking around the massive monster's body. Whenever it seized an opportunity, it would viciously rake its long, sharp nails across the giant, ugly creature, driving it into a furious rage yet making it difficult to counterattack.

However, this did not mean the girl's side had completely crushed the opponent, for Wang Zhifan discovered that her summon seemed somewhat lacking in offensiveness. This was not very noticeable when it faced those ordinary monsters earlier, but now that she controlled her Long-Haired Female Ghost to attack the large monster for a full minute, it failed to leave any distinctly obvious injuries on the opponent's body. It could be said to be little better than scraping the skin.

Having likely discovered this long ago, the short-haired girl, still standing at the back of the bus, caught sight of Wang Zhifan finishing the task of clearing the mobs and immediately spoke up, "Do you still have stamina? My summon has a hard time breaking the defense of that fellow outside; it can only try its best to tie it down."

"No problem, I'm going out to help right now."

As an entity with a physique attribute as high as 18 points, Wang Zhifan knew very well that he still had considerable leeway and should have enough to slay the big guy outside. Thus, he immediately prepared to jump out of a front window to support the Long-Haired Female Ghost.

Yet just as he stepped on the monster's corpse chunks at his feet and reached the edge of the window to jump out, an unexpected gunshot suddenly rang out.

Bang!!! Accompanied by the gunshot that suddenly erupted outside the car, the body of the bulky monster outside the window—still entangling with the Long-Haired Female Ghost—suddenly shook, and a bowl-sized hole appeared on its torso, beginning to ooze dark, blackish mucus.

Seeing this, Wang Zhifan immediately halted his exit, quickly took a step back, and carefully observed and searched for the source of the gunfire through the window from a distance.

Judging by the power, it should be a sniper rifle... Could it be people from the Administration?

He then turned his head to look at the short-haired girl at the back of the bus and asked, since the other party had been saying from the very beginning that the official Special Administration Bureau would arrive soon.

At this moment, however, the girl furrowed her delicate brows and shook her head.

"Doesn't quite look like it. People from the Administration entering the Ash Domain always rescue civilians first... The people outside are in such a rush to shoot and kill monsters; I feel like they must be other players who probably want to come and snatch the reward."

"Snatch the reward? In this Ash Domain, does the reward go to whoever kills the monster?"

Wang Zhifan expressed immediate confusion upon hearing this. In his understanding, killing monsters in this world had no such thing as snatching rewards, because everyone dropped their own treasure chests in instances, and looting someone else's chest would trigger a penalty mechanism, the outcome of which would definitely make the looter deeply regret it.

"That's not it."

The girl shook her head again immediately after Wang Zhifan finished speaking.

"The rewards for killing Ash Domain monsters are ownerless; whoever grabs them can directly claim them as their own."

She then explained.