The Official Website Grab

One hour later.

The players from the "Toddler Troupe" finished their resurrection cooldown, and the heated discussion in their chat group also died down.

Amidst the group owner's frantic shouts of "You all deserve to die!", 30 players logged back into the game and respawned in the central plaza of Emperor's Tomb Village.

This time, they still chose to explore the Gloomy Cave.

According to the Guider's explanation, occupying a Domain Node was simple.

They only needed to shatter the node crystal corrupted by Black Tide energy. Then, Di Zhao's power would re-cover the Domain Node, integrating it into Emperor's Tomb Village. At that point, new functions would appear in Emperor's Tomb Village.

An hour's journey later, the Toddler Troupe arrived before the Crystal Wall of the Gloomy Cave again.

They were surprised to find players already engaged in fierce combat with Iron Shell Beetles.

Two of the players had adopted a form they had never seen before: Bone Fire. They were engulfed in dark flames, and with a raise of their hands, they could conjure fireballs to hurl at the Iron Shell Beetles.

Black Ball: "This Bone Fire form is so cool. I love controlling flames, I'll definitely choose it for my next Star Vein."

Drunk Milk: "Brothers, they look like they're about to lose. Should we help?"

Iron Hammer: "Of course, we're here for revenge! We have to help!"

After a brief exchange, the 30 players of the Toddler Troupe switched to their monster forms and joined the battle.

The scene immediately became chaotic. The confined space inevitably led to collisions, resulting in many comical situations.

"Dude, where are you biting? You're biting me, I'm a player!"

"Neighboring Stone Gargoyle brother, why are you smashing my head? Look at your target!"

"Who threw a fireball at me? Help me put out the fire, I'm still taking damage!"

"Sorry, brother. I only know how to start fires, not put them out. I apologize in advance, may you rest in peace."

Amidst the chaos, many players were heavily attacked by their own teammates.

Several players instantly dissolved into black mist, entering their death cooldown.

The realism of the game made the players in combat unable to help but complain again.

Most games had faction settings or safe PK modes, allowing players to choose whether or not to damage other players.

However, this game had no such settings. Even teammates could inflict damage.

Especially the Ink Flame attack of the Bone Fire form, which was difficult to extinguish after hitting a target, continuing to burn until the target died.

This resulted in several unlucky players being killed not by the Iron Shell Beetles, but by their own teammates.

During this time, several Iron Shell Beetles were also killed. Their life energy flowed into the players who delivered the finishing blows as evolution points, increasing their levels and strengthening their physical attributes.

In Qi Sheng's design, every time a player killed a monster, the Challenger System would extract 30% of the monster's dissipating life energy and convert it into Sacrificial Power for the Sacrificial Power pool. The remaining 70% would be converted into life energy suitable for the player, used to enhance their physical attributes, which was what players understood as experience points.

Qi Sheng, who was observing, naturally noticed the friendly fire issue mentioned by the players.

However, there was no solution to this problem at the current stage.

After all, the monster world was a real world disguised as a game. There were no such things as allied factions or damage exemptions between players.

Instead, the players themselves came up with reasons, believing it was designed to make the game more realistic. While complaining, they couldn't help but praise the game development team's skill.

The fierce battle in the cave lasted for over ten minutes, ultimately ending with the players being wiped out.

Although he was very eager for this Domain Node, Qi Sheng knew that it was unrealistic for players to capture it with their current strength.

After detection and sensing, the Guider found that there were 5 levels of space underground in the cave.

The players were currently on the first level. The deeper they went, the more Iron Shell Beetles there were, and the Domain Node crystal was on the fifth level.

To clear this dungeon, the players' strength still needed to grow.

This gave him the idea to recruit more players.

After recruiting the second batch of players, he still had 100,000 points of Sacrificial Power.

The four Primal Monsters he had contained could generate 960 points of Sacrificial Power revenue for him daily. Coupled with the Sacrificial Power generated by players hunting in the monster world and sacrificing gathered resources, the income and expenditure before the expansion of Emperor's Tomb Village had reached a balance.

He planned to recruit another 50 players, keeping the remaining 50,000 Sacrificial Power as a contingency.

The one-hour resurrection cooldown ended.

After logging into the game, the two waves of players found themselves facing each other at the respawn point in the center of Emperor's Tomb Village.

Through communication, the Toddler Troupe players learned that the map exploration progress was shared among all players.

After they explored up to Crimson Plains, the players on the other side also saw the new markers on the map and followed the coordinates into the Gloomy Cave.

It was very similar to their situation in the cave. They were also very excited when they saw the spirit ore and immediately chose to buy pickaxes to mine it.

Soon, a large number of Iron Shell Bugs were alerted by the sound of the mining pick striking the rock wall and engaged them in battle.

Then, they arrived and joined the melee, only to be wiped out together.

At this point, Iron Hammer of the Toddler Squad couldn't help but look at Li Zheng and ask curiously:

"Bro, how do you get the Bone Fire form your team is using?"

Facing the inquiry, Li Zheng immediately explained that after defeating Bone Fire, they gained the right to unlock a second Star Vein slot for free. He also detailed how two members of his team spent 1000 Sacrificial Power to purchase and equip the Bone Fire soul.

After hearing his account, the players in the Toddler Squad who had chosen Eagle Head Demon raised their hands and cheered:

"Hahaha, I knew I made the right choice! The perception of Eagle Head Demon combined with the ranged elemental damage of Bone Fire, this combination is invincible for early game clearing."

"Good heavens, I was forced to pick Eagle Head Demon for the team composition, and now you're telling me it's the meta? Happiness comes too suddenly."

Listening to the discussions of the opposing team's players, Li Zheng smiled and shook his head:

"This game has a very high degree of freedom. In the future, there will be a large number of new Primal Monster souls for us to choose from. The appearance of Bone Fire is just the beginning. Every monster form has extremely high development potential, so there's no need to worry about your initial choice being weak. Besides, you can change your initial form for 1000 Sacrificial Power."

Drunk Milk: "By the way, do you guys know why there aren't many players in the newbie village? It feels really deserted."

Black Ball: "Yeah, I'm also very confused about this. We've only encountered you guys so far, no other players."

Cute Kid: "It's unreasonable to say that other players have already left the newbie village, as there are only four selectable Primal Monster forms at this stage. Three are initial options, and the other is the Bone Fire you defeated. Have no other players defeated a Primal Monster?"

Facing the question, Li Zheng was also taken aback. After a brief silence, he came up with a plausible explanation:

"Perhaps to solve server congestion issues, Dark Land has opened multiple sub-servers. We entered a newly opened server with not many players distributed, which is why the number of players in the newbie village is small."

"That makes sense." Iron Hammer immediately nodded in agreement.

"By the way, on which platform did you purchase your game access?"

Li Zheng's sudden question stunned the Toddler Squad.

They didn't dare to tell the truth about this question, as their answer could potentially endanger the "Welfare Officer".

If they answered poorly, the Welfare Officer would likely end up in jail.

"Haha, we were very lucky. We managed to grab 30 game access slots from the official Dark Land website... How about you, where did you guys buy yours?"

Iron Hammer's counter-question made the ten players in the Grinding Player group feel awkward. Li Zheng, their leader, hadn't expected to be asked this question in return.

His reason for asking was to gauge their strength and see if they had the capacity to form a guild, to which his group of grinding players could pledge allegiance.

Facing the question, Li Zheng, while feeling awkward, smiled and said:

"What a coincidence, we also didn't go through any other channels. We all purchased our game access from the official website for 128,888."

In their conversation, both sides provided a reasonable explanation.

Neither side pushed the topic further, and they tacitly shifted the conversation to the Gloomy Cave and decided to team up to explore it.

(End of this chapter)