"Holy shit, Brother Bang, aren't your men elite? How'd they get wiped out in one go?!"
While Murphy was talking with Lord Payn, the little players who'd just suffered a party wipe in Xike City began discussing the disaster. Little Rich Guy's startled exclamation came through the private channel, prompting Happy Bang, who was far away in Xike Territory and heading toward the Blood Eagle Clan's southern armory, to reply with a pained expression:
"Ah, we got caught off guard. It happens. The good news is that the intel and map we bought from the young count for 150,000 gold coins were real. There really is a huge treasure beneath Xike City. The bad news is that it's a high-level map.
"I think you'd need at least a Silver-ranked player leading the way for a small-team treasure hunt. If we moved in on a large scale, we might even trigger a hidden raid dungeon.
"You didn't see what it was like when the whole dead city came to life.
"All I can say is, compared to Xike City, the ghoul horde we ran into in Scarlet Castle's sewers was just an 'appetizer.'"
"Holy shit, it's that intense?"
Touch-Me-I'm-Poor's first reaction was shock. He asked:
"But isn't Transia a 'newbie zone'? How can they put a high-level dungeon in a newbie zone? What's the development team thinking?"
"It might not actually be a raid dungeon."
Meow Brother, who was sitting on a gargoyle and had just finished bandaging himself, joined the "group chat." Still relieved to have survived, he said to Little Rich Guy:
"When we asked Knight Varland for permission to leave just now, we saw the Griffin Knight discussing something with the young count. We only caught a few words, but it was definitely about the old Count of