An hour later.
The Kindergarten Squad players' respawn cooldown ended, and the heated discussion in the chat group died down with it.
Amid the group owner's various anguished roars of "You all deserve to die," the thirty players logged back into the game and respawned in Emperor Tomb Village's central square.
This time, they still chose to explore the Dark Cavern.
According to Guide's explanation, claiming a domain node was simple.
They only needed to shatter the Node Crystal corrupted by Dark Tide energy, and Emperor Zhao's power would cover the domain node once more, incorporating it into Emperor Tomb Village. New features would then appear in Emperor Tomb Village as well.
After an hour's journey, the Kindergarten Squad arrived before the Crystal Wall in the Dark Cavern again.
To their surprise, they discovered players locked in fierce combat with Iron-Shelled Insects.
Two of those players had chosen a bonefire form they had never seen before. Ink-colored flames burned around them, and with a lift of their hands, they could condense a fireball and hurl it at an Iron-Shelled Insect.
Black Ball: That bonefire form looks so cool. I absolutely love controlling flames. I'm picking it for my next star meridian.
Drunken Milk: Guys, they look like they're losing. Should we help?
Iron Hammer: Obviously. We're here for revenge. Of course we're helping!
After that brief exchange, the thirty Kindergarten Squad players switched to monster form and joined the battle.
The scene instantly descended into chaos. Collisions were inevitable in the cramped space, leading to plenty of hilarious moments.
"Dude, where are you biting? That's me! I'm a player!"
"Gargoyle buddy next to me, why are you smashing my head? Can you look at what you're hitting?"
"Who's throwing fireballs everywhere? You hit me! Hurry up and put it out. I'm taking damage over time!"
"Sorry, bro. I can only start fires, not put them out. Let me apologize in advance. Go in peace."
Amid the chaos, quite a few players took heavy blows from their own side.
Several players turned into black mist on the spot and entered death cooldown.
The game's realism made the players complain again as they fought.
Other games generally had faction systems or safe PvP settings that allowed players to choose whether to deal damage to other players.
But this game had no such settings. Even teammates could deal damage to one another.
Bonefire's Inkflame attacks were particularly difficult to extinguish after hitting a target, burning continuously until the target died.
As a result, several unlucky players died at their own teammates' hands rather than being killed by the Iron-Shelled Insects.
Several Iron-Shelled Insects were also killed during the battle. Their life energy turned into evolution points and flowed into the players who landed the finishing blows, raising their levels and strengthening their bodies.
Under Qi Sheng's settings, every time a player killed a monster,
the Challenger System would extract thirty percent of the monster's dispersing life energy, convert it into sacrificial power, and deposit it into the sacrificial power pool. The remaining seventy percent would be converted into life energy suited to the player to improve their physical attributes-what the players understood as experience points.
Qi Sheng, who was watching the battle, naturally noticed the friendly fire issue the players mentioned.
But there was no way to solve this problem at the current stage.
After all, Monster World was a real world wearing the skin of a game. There was no immunity to damage between members of the same faction or between players.
The players, however, came up with their own explanation, believing it was a setting designed to make the game more realistic. Even as they complained, they could not help praising the development team's capabilities.
The fierce battle in the cavern lasted over ten minutes and ultimately ended in a party wipe.
Although Qi Sheng badly wanted this domain node, he also knew that taking it with the players' current strength was unrealistic.
After scanning the area, Guide discovered that the cavern had five underground levels.
The players were on the cavern's first level. The farther down they went, the more Iron-Shelled Insects there were, and the domain node crystal was on the fifth level.
The players still needed to grow stronger to clear this dungeon.
This also gave him the idea of recruiting more players.
After recruiting the second batch of players, he still had one hundred thousand points of sacrificial power left.
The four contained Primordial Monsters could produce 960 points of sacrificial power for him each day. Together with the sacrificial power produced by players hunting in Monster World and gathering resources for sacrifice, income and expenses before Emperor Tomb Village's expansion had already reached a balance.
He planned to recruit another fifty players and keep the remaining fifty thousand points of sacrificial power for emergencies.
The one-hour respawn cooldown ended.
After logging in, the two groups of players stood at the respawn point in central Emperor Tomb Village, staring at each other.
Through their conversation, the Kindergarten Squad players learned that map exploration progress was shared among all players.
After they explored as far as the Blood Plains, the other group had also seen the new markers on the map, then followed the map coordinates into the Dark Cavern.
Their experience in the cavern had been very similar. They were thrilled when they saw the spirit ore and immediately chose to buy Mining Pickaxes to mine it.
But before long, the sound of pickaxes striking the rock walls alerted large numbers of Iron-Shelled Insects, and a battle broke out.
Then the Kindergarten Squad arrived, joined the melee, and got wiped out along with them.
At this point, the Kindergarten Squad's Iron Hammer could not help looking at Li Zheng and asking curiously,
"Dude, how do we get the bonefire form your team is using?"
In response, Li Zheng immediately explained how killing Bonefire had granted them permission to unlock their second star meridian slot for free, and how two members of the team had spent one thousand points of sacrificial power to purchase and slot in Bonefire Life Souls.
After hearing his account, the Kindergarten Squad players who had chosen Eagle-Headed Demons raised their hands and cheered.
"Hahaha! I knew I made the right choice. An Eagle-Headed Demon's perception combined with Bonefire's ranged elemental damage? That combination is unbeatable for early-game progression."
"Well, damn. I only picked Eagle-Headed Demon because our team composition forced me to, and now you're telling me it's the meta build? This happiness came out of nowhere."
Listening to the other team's discussion, Li Zheng smiled and shook his head.
"This game offers a tremendous amount of freedom. There'll be plenty of new Primordial Monster life souls for us to choose from in the future. Bonefire's appearance is only the beginning. Every monster form has enormous potential to develop, so there's absolutely no need to worry that the starting form you chose is too weak. Besides, you can change your starting form for one thousand points of sacrificial power."
Drunken Milk: By the way, do you know why there are so few players in Novice Village? It feels really deserted.
Black Ball: Yeah, I've been wondering about that too. We've only met you guys so far, no other players.
Cute Kid: It wouldn't make sense to say all the other players have already left Novice Village, either. After all, there are only four Primordial Monster forms available right now. Three are starting options, and the other is the Bonefire you killed. Has no other player killed a Primordial Monster?
Li Zheng was also taken aback by the question. After a brief silence, he came up with what he thought was a reasonable explanation.
"Maybe Darklands set up multiple servers to solve overcrowding. We entered a newly opened server, and not many players have been routed here yet, so there aren't many players in Novice Village."
"That makes sense." Iron Hammer immediately nodded in agreement.
"By the way, which platform did you buy your game access on?"
Li Zheng's sudden question left everyone in the Kindergarten Squad stunned.
They did not dare tell the truth about this, because their answer could very well affect the Perks Officer's safety.
If they answered poorly, the Perks Officer would most likely end up getting free room and board behind bars.
"Haha, we got really lucky and snagged thirty game access slots on the Darklands official website... What about you? Where did you buy yours?"
Iron Hammer's question made the ten Hardcore Grinder Group players inwardly uncomfortable. Their leader, Li Zheng, had not expected the question to be turned back on him either.
He had asked because he wanted to know whether the other group had the resources to establish a guild that his group of gold farmers could join.
Faced with the question, Li Zheng smiled despite his inward discomfort.
"What a coincidence. We didn't use any other channels either. We all snagged our game access on the official website for 128,888."
As they chatted and laughed, both sides offered a reasonable explanation.
Neither continued the topic. With an unspoken understanding, they shifted the conversation to the Dark Cavern and decided to form a group to explore it.
Before you continue