Practical Combat Lesson?

Just as it bared its fangs and claws and prepared to leap at him, several faintly glowing threads flashed through the air.

The spider's body paused in midair before being sliced into eight pieces out of nowhere, thick dark-green fluid splattering across the ground.

Smiley looked down disdainfully at the spider's corpse.

A third-tier monster.

And it thought it could ambush him? It was asking to die!

Then Smiley noticed something. He crouched down and picked up a transparent stone beside the chunks of flesh.

The stone resembled a frozen dewdrop, with a threadlike white pattern slowly drifting inside.

So this was a soul stone...

Smiley pocketed the soul stone and was about to stand when a rustling sound suddenly came from the grass behind him, as if something were being dragged through it.

He immediately turned around. A huge purple-scaled python, five or six meters long and thicker than an adult's waist, slowly poked its head out of the grass. Its vertical pupils gleamed coldly in the dim light.

At the sight of the python, Smiley relaxed instead. "Juliet."

Juliet emerged from the bushes behind the python, patting the leaves and dirt from her clothes.

"Captain, I knew Chocolate's nose wouldn't be wrong."

Chocolate was the purple-scaled python's name. It was Juliet's beast pet, extremely obedient and blessed with a keen sense of smell.

The first thing Juliet had done after entering the challenge was summon Chocolate and have it search for Smiley, Chen Piaopiao, and Plucking Flowers and Seeking Willows.

"Chocolate says Chen Piaopiao and Plucking Flowers are farther away, but if we spend half a day, we'll definitely be able to meet up with them."

Smiley nodded, and much of the gloom in his eyes dispersed.

In this two-hundred-person free-for-all, most players had entered alone. Even those