With his area-of-effect poison smoke, Ke Meng's leveling became smoother than ever.
His progress was falling a little behind schedule. There was still a long way to go before he reached the level-five-hundred region.
Ke Meng could only run toward his chosen destination, occasionally releasing a cloud of poison smoke to poison a pack of beasts.
Black smoke drifted down from the sky, withering any grass it touched and dissolving everything else.
After some time, the yellowed grass would grow back. That was the Game World's respawn mechanic.
A party of players passed through the Wilderness, trekking over the rolling hills.
Suddenly, the sky went dark.
"That's strange. Why did it get dark?"
"Something's wrong. The sky in the distance hasn't gone dark."
They looked up and saw black mist sweeping down across the sky like a clawing monster.
Giant trees several meters tall sizzled as the black smoke touched them.
Insects hiding among the trees let out agonized death cries. Damage numbers in the tens of thousands appeared above them, ticking continuously as their health plummeted.
"Damn it, it's poison mist!" Someone sharp-eyed had already figured it out. This was no random weather event, but a poison attack!
The party immediately switched to poison-protection equipment and took out more than a dozen kinds of antidotes, taking each in turn.
More than a dozen temporary poison resistance buffs immediately appeared in the players' status bars.
Their poison resistance shot up by seven or eight thousand. Seeing this, everyone breathed a quiet sigh of relief. They should be fine now.
The poison mist slowly descended like an enormous palm blotting out the sky. Everything it touched dissolved into black liquid.
Some minor bosses survived the poison mist, but strange fleshy tendrils sprouted from their bodies. Then those tendrils began to