"Holy shit! We're rich! We're rich!"
Watching the reward notifications dance across his screen, [Passing Pure-Love Warrior]'s eyes went bloodshot.
He slapped his thigh in excitement. "This is a hundred times more efficient than running all over the map looking for mobs yesterday!"
"Don't just stand there! Jiahao, dig through the corpses for materials! Warrior, you and Bossy Guy clean the blood out of the trap and lay down fresh grass! Ma Lou, keep bringing in customers!"
[Ji Luo] had fully embraced his role as a ruthless foreman, shouting orders to keep the assembly line running. "We're not just filling the progress bar today. We're getting everyone to level 3!"
"Get grinding!"
"You got it! Come on, you little shits! Grandpa Ma is back!"
Without a single complaint, Ma Lou plunged into the outskirts of the Black Forest again, as though pumped full of adrenaline.
For the entire morning that followed, the outskirts of this Wasteland underwent an unprecedented ecological cleanup.
If any adventurer from elsewhere had passed by, the sight would have made their jaw drop.
Those grotesque monsters, which represented despair and terror in the natives' eyes...
Were now like pigs awaiting slaughter on an assembly line, lured wave after wave into a crude pit by a scrawny monkey of a man with a shifty face.
Then four burly men, grinning more maniacally than villains, subjected them to a collective execution in all manner of inhumane ways.
The scene had none of the oppressive dread of Cthulhu. Instead, it was filled with a bizarre contrast between utter idiocy and industrialized slaughter!
But to Sister Sivir, who had been secretly watching from inside the Church, the scene took on an entirely different meaning.
The young nun knelt before the statue, both hands clutching the cross at her chest.
She stared at the mountain of monster remains at the bottom of the pit outside, and at the five blood-soaked players who showed no fear whatsoever, instead bursting into excited, wild laughter with every monster they killed.
Her body shook violently with overwhelming awe.
How terrifying... Is this the power the Deity commands?
Sivir swallowed, the little theater of overblown speculation in her mind spiraling completely out of control.
They must be the most bloodthirsty demons in the Abyss! No, they're even crueler than demons!
Against monsters even the Church's knights would give a wide berth, they toy with them and kill them in pits as though slaughtering livestock!
And every time they kill one of those foul creatures, their auras seem to grow a little stronger!
Praise my lord! What tremendous power did you wield to tame these terrifying calamities?
Sivir bowed her head all the way to the floor, her devotion reaching its peak.
[Ding! Extreme shock and awe from a native. Faith Points +20.]
Up on the altar, Lin En sat within the statue, watching one batch of Faith Points after another roll in. His spreading grin was already harder to control than an AK's recoil.
"This feels good! So fucking good!"
Lin En opened the system's backend and watched his balance skyrocket.
Last night, he had possessed a pitiful 791 Faith Points.
Yet after just one morning of these five "assembly-line butchers" frantically luring monsters into their killing pit...
His balance had shot up like a rocket, breaking straight through the 2,000-point mark!
And that wasn't all. As the progress bar for the server-wide event [Reforge the Ashen Portal] crept forward on the official website...
The backseat gamers on Blue Star had completely lost their minds.
Countless people camped on the official website, hammering F5 until the key practically smoked. Every time the progress bar ticked up by 0.1%, the forums erupted in celebration. Some had even begun writing little essays cheering on Lu Ziye and the others.
Spurred on by the triple carrot-and-stick combination of "exclusive titles," "bragging rights over the next wave of players," and "the entire internet supervising their work"...
The productivity these five members of the Fourth Calamity unleashed would have moved even the harshest capitalist to tears.
"At this rate, I'll have the 5,000 Faith Points needed for new player slots by tomorrow noon at the latest!"
Lin En stretched contentedly, though only in spirit.
With his employees working so hard, their boss naturally had to show some appreciation.
Lin En willed it into being.
In the clearing directly in front of the abandoned Church, the outline of an ancient stone gateway slowly began to emerge, formed from dark ash and rubble.
The center of the gateway remained empty for now, but every time the players killed a monster, a faint glimmer gathered on it, making its outline a little clearer.
This was a "visual spectacle" Lin En had spent fifteen Faith Points creating.
It was like dangling a premium carrot right in front of a donkey-one it could actually see and touch!
Sure enough.
[Passing Pure-Love Warrior], who was hauling monster corpses outside, turned his head and spotted the magnificent portal gradually taking shape at the Church entrance. His eyes went wide.
"Holy shit! Guys, look! The portal spawned!"
[Passing Pure-Love Warrior]'s voice cracked with excitement as he planted his Wooden Spear in the ground.
"See that? All our grinding wasn't for nothing! The devs weren't lying, and they've even added real-time visual updates to the map's structures!"
"Then what are we waiting for? Keep pulling mobs!"
As though pumped full of adrenaline, Ma Lou charged toward the Black Forest again with bloodshot eyes, without even stopping for a drink of water. "I don't care who shows up today! Every mob on the outskirts of the Black Forest is dying, and that's final!"
The sun set and the moon rose, and the mist on the outskirts of the Black Forest grew thicker, colder, and more sinister.
Yet beside the enormous dirt pit outside the Church, work continued at a feverish pace.
"Number fifty-six! Here we go!"
With a roar from Lu Ziye, an [Ashen Missile] detonated precisely at the bottom of the pit. Dazzling sparks blasted the flesh off two Corrupted Villagers scrambling around below.
Immediately afterward, Bossy Guy's bricks and Ji Luo's spear rained down, smoothly finishing them off.
"I can't... Guys, I seriously can't pull any more..."
Ma Lou slumped beside the pit like a half-dead dog, without even the strength to lift a finger.
He had worked nonstop since six thirty that morning, making at least seventy or eighty round trips between the outskirts of the Black Forest and the trap.
Though he hadn't expended any physical stamina in real life, the prolonged strain of intense concentration had left his head buzzing.
"No need to pull any more. We've damn near farmed everything around here to extinction."
[Passing Pure-Love Warrior] plopped down on the ground covered in black mud, panting heavily.
"I just walked almost five hundred meters farther out and didn't see so much as a monster's hair! We've straight-up cleared the outskirts of the Black Forest!"
The five of them lay sprawled every which way beside the trap, looking at the pit full of black water and ash. Each wore the blissful smile of someone who had been wrung dry by a capitalist and still wanted to say thank you.
Because the returns from today's assembly-line, industrialized mob farming had been downright terrifying!
"Old Ji, tally it up."
[I'm Not Jiahao] pushed up the shabby glasses he had fashioned out of ash, trying to preserve a shred of his polished professional image.
[Ji Luo] forced himself to sit up and opened the system's team statistics panel, his voice trembling:
"Today, we killed a total of 214 [Zero Tier Corrupted Villagers] and 12 [First Tier Mutant Hounds]."
"The experience each of us received was just enough to get all of us to level 3!"
"As for Ash Coins, every single one of our account balances has broken the hundred mark!"
Before you continue