"Lord Qin! Emergency report: player casualties are rising rapidly! According to the messages they've shared in the world channel, they've encountered some very dangerous deep-sea monsters on the seafloor."
Aboard the Ironheart Annihilator, the airship serving as the second command post, Old Qin sat by the window with a pipe between his lips. He seemed a little subdued after saying goodbye to several people in the real world. He had just logged in and was about to light his tobacco when Domestic 003 hurried through the door with a grim report.
Qin raised an eyebrow, put his regrets aside, and switched into work mode in an instant. His tone turned serious as he asked:
"Were they attacked by the same kind of monster, or were the attacks at different locations? Apart from the squad that got wiped out, do we have any other information?"
"It started when Old Master Niu's guild was searching for fleeing murlocs in the territory of the second murloc clan we'd just routed. They were suddenly attacked. At almost the same time, the newbies we'd sent out in other directions ran into similar trouble. I gathered the reports sent back by the various combat groups' staff officers and found that, over the past four hours, the number of elite monsters and BOSSes in this abyssal battlefield has been rising at an abnormal rate!
"The squads that were wiped out were all made up of newbies with poor combat ability. But some veteran players have managed to fight back and kill their attackers.
"In the posts left by the teams that killed the monsters, I found that they'd all obtained a special item from the creatures called 'Tainted Symbiote Crystals.' More than seven players were contaminated after touching those corrupted objects carelessly and had to log off.