One, two, three, four, five...

He had no time to worry about Youyou's safety.

A large rabbit with only one ear on its head gradually approached through the darkness.

Human blood still clung to Red-Eyes' feet.

The dried blood had matted its soft, snow-white fur into little clumps of grime.

"Dear player-did you find twenty-one sheep as I asked? Hehehehe-"

Red-Eyes sneered, seemingly certain that Wang Guangfei could not complete the task. "Looks like I'll have to put in a little effort to send you down to join your girlfriend."

It then looked Wang Guangfei up and down. "Your little girlfriend had her legs broken first, so I'll start with your arms."

As it spoke, Red-Eyes unleashed its oppressive aura without restraint, enveloping Wang Guangfei.

But apart from his face turning ashen at the news of his girlfriend's horrific death, he showed no other signs of discomfort.

"Huh? How is that possible!?"

Red-Eyes froze, then crouched outside the sheep pen in disbelief and began counting. "One, two, three, four, five..."

It stopped counting, because it had already spotted the sheepskin rug on the ground inside the pen.

Finding the rug meant the trap in the task had already been uncovered. There was no need to count any further.

The player's complete lack of reaction to its imposing aura further confirmed that he had completed the task and was still under the game's protection.

"Wonderful... just wonderful."

That meant four of the instance's five players had completed their tasks. This survival rate had already broken Red-Eyes' own record.

It was Red-Eyes, the so-called rookie butcher!

If it let so many players go, its peers would definitely laugh at it when it returned.

And not just its peers-the viewers could hardly believe it either.

[Four people actually survived. I thought only one or two would make it.]

[Same. I even considered a total wipe, but then I remembered this was a level-one instance. Even if it's a Ladder instance, its level is what it is. The game wouldn't let Red-Eyes do whatever it wanted. Still didn't expect so many to survive in the end.]

[Probably too much pressure running two instances at once. The Nowhere to Escape instance next door is great! Hahaha! There's minced flesh even on the cabin ceiling!]

[Game balance is part of it, but this batch of players is also high quality. Those twin sisters are a rare case of players maxing out two attributes before taking the challenge. As long as the tasks don't exceed the intended difficulty, they can handle them.]

[Boring. Other than recording a video of someone being eaten alive, I got nothing out of this. Luckily, Everbright Technology's official website has already posted the countdown to the Great Purge. We'll get our fill then.]

[What!? It's coming that soon!?]

[This is why we call people from lower worlds pigs. They breed faster than pigs, popping out litter after litter. Apparently the player count is about to go through the roof again. Doesn't that call for cutting their numbers right away?]

[I'm back. Tch-the countdown on the official website still has half a month left, doesn't it? The way you were talking, you'd think it was tomorrow.]

The Great Purge?

Zuo Cheng'an only caught a little information about the Great Purge, because his timing was off.

By the time he noticed, those comments had already disappeared from view, replaced by discussions about how players died.

He made a note of the term. He could only wait for more comments or ask someone about it after leaving the instance.

Although he had seen little about the Great Purge, he did see that most players challenged the Ladder Tower after maxing out just one attribute.

Young Yu Le had told him about that.

Players had records of their instance runs. Once they had cleared too many instances of a particular level, their rewards would gradually decrease.

For example, if someone kept running level-one instances, their first run might earn them not only 40 points but also 2 free attribute points.

By their seventh or eighth level-one clear, even if their rating remained unchanged, the rewards might drop to 5 points, with no free attribute points at all.

This effectively forced players to make the most of every instance run and keep challenging higher-level instances.

But for most people, even ten runs only yielded enough free attribute points to max out one attribute. Maxing out two was excellent.

If they could, everyone would want to play it safe,

maxing out all three attributes before challenging the Ladder Tower.

But the game did not allow players to do that.

They only had seven or eight chances. After those seven or eight instances, however many attribute points they had earned was all they got.

If they had not maxed out even one attribute after eight instances...

They either had to pin their hopes on achievements or become players who muddled through one day at a time, hanging on for another week whenever they could.

They stopped caring about rewards and unfailingly waited until the seven-day deadline before entering another instance just to complete the task.

The prevailing approach among many ordinary people in the safe zones was to first reach the First Heavenly Ladder and unlock the stat cap,

then spend the rest of their lives running level-one instances where hostile monsters had attributes ranging from 1 to 15.

Even receiving only the bare minimum of 2 points was fine. Running a jianbing stall as a side job was not bad either.

Then they would marry and have children in the safe zone, living out simple lives like that.

Safe Zone 7 had a population of one hundred thousand, with twenty thousand Not Yet on the Ladder players. The proportions alone showed that players at that level were not the majority.

The real majority was First Heavenly Tier players, numbering as many as fifty thousand.

Their average attributes mostly fell between thirteen and sixteen.

After all, if they kept challenging level-one and level-two instances, they would stop earning any more free attribute points after sixteen runs at most.

After that, they could either join a large group for a level-three instance and take a gamble, or remain mediocre.

That was why every single instance run in a player's early days was so important!

Some players who refused to settle for mediocrity would rather spend hundreds of points to remain in the safe zone and get themselves into shape so they could earn a high rating in an instance.

They would wait until they were at their peak before entering an instance with the utmost caution.

If, for safety's sake, they avoided new instances with high rewards and instead entered ones that had been cleared countless times,

they had to remember that a level-one instance might have only five hundred free attribute points to distribute, or even fewer.

The players who cleared it first had already taken the free attribute points. Naturally, those who arrived late got nothing.

Running old instances with a guide was safe, certainly, but there would be no free attribute points, and their strength naturally would not increase either.

By the time players realized the importance of attribute points, it would be too late to make amends.

On the farm, Red-Eyes imagined all the ridicule it would face after the instance closed.

Suddenly, it regretted letting that female player die so quickly.

But there was no undoing what had been done.

In the end, it could only force a sentence through gritted teeth. "Congratulations to this player on successfully clearing the instance."

At this point, Wang Guangfei should have been able to choose to leave the instance.

Seeing that there was nothing else to do, Zuo Cheng'an also prepared to leave. He had rushed to break through his attribute allocation limit and had not spent even a single day in the house he had just rented.

But Wang Guangfei, who had remained silent all this time, suddenly let out a defiant roar. His eyes looked even more bloodshot than the game boss's.

He pulled a scissors-shaped item from his backpack and charged at Red-Eyes as though staking his life on it.

Red-Eyes' remaining ear twitched. Rather than being startled, it was delighted. "Lost your temper? You've lost your temper!?"

It had been worrying about having no human to vent its anger on.

It was no longer even saying "player," calling him a "human" instead. That showed how excited it was.

"You stupid, lowly pig! Let me show you the gap between us!!"

Wang Guangfei, who had lost his head at the news of his girlfriend's death, was instantly locked onto by a terrifying presence, and his overheated mind cooled.

But it was too late now. A chilling aura enveloped his entire body. For a moment, he felt as though all the blood in his body was about to freeze.

At the same time, a blood-red message box appeared in his vision.

[Warning! You are attempting to attack the instance boss!! Would you like to initiate a boss battle?]

Crack-

It sounded as though some protective barrier had shattered, or perhaps some rule had been broken.