The players who entered the "Nowhere to Escape" instance originally only needed to enjoy good food and drink while vacationing aboard the ship, letting the fifteen-day survival period pass.
At most, they would have to fight a few passengers who turned into zombies along the way. The hidden quest was to find the source of the zombie virus.
Completing the latter was optional. As long as they were not aiming for a high-rated clear, there was no difficulty at all.
But not long after the game began, the ladder boss "Red-Eyes" appeared in the instance.
As everyone knew, the moment a ladder boss appeared, the instance's difficulty rose by at least one level.
Red-Eyes's appearance raised the instance's level, and the zombies received a massive boost.
Many players still on the second ladder immediately found themselves overwhelmed, and casualties mounted.
Gan Ran, the leader of Dawn Moon's team, could only abandon a full clear and search for an opportunity to clear a side route.
In instances of level three and above, not only was there a chance of triggering a ladder boss's arrival, there was also more than one way to clear them.
Presumably, the game did not want large numbers of high-level players dying while exploring instances either, so it left some "escape routes."
After all, only if information made it out of the instance would their deaths have value, allowing the next batch of players a better chance of clearing it.
And the purpose of providing more than one instance exit was to give players a way out when they realized they could not hold on.
These were the so-called "perfect clears" and "side-route clears."
Level-one instances had no such distinction at all, and only a very small portion of level-two instances did.
All instances of level three and above distinguished between "perfect clears" and "side-route clears."
A perfect clear meant completing the initial quest given on the opening panel, clearing the instance through the normal procedure, and receiving the normal clear rewards.
Side-route clears came in all shapes and sizes.
They might be triggered by completing a request from a particular NPC in the instance, entering a particular passage, or defeating a certain minor boss.
At the end, there would only be the routine question of whether players wanted to spend points to heal their injuries, with no rewards given.
Presumably, letting the players leave the instance alive was the greatest reward of all.
After several batches of players had explored the "Nowhere to Escape" instance,
although no team had yet achieved a perfect-clear ending, they had worked out the timing of several early "side-route clears."
The first opportunity came on the evening of the first day after the instance began, when a private helicopter would land on the cruise ship.
As long as players boarded that helicopter and successfully flew it away, an option to "leave the instance" would pop up in their minds.
But a small private helicopter could carry four people at most.
In a large, hundred-player instance, this was clearly the worst option.
The second opportunity had no limit on numbers, nor did its timing need to be accurate down to the second.
And according to the information available, players could leave through this second route at any time before ten days had passed in the instance.
What happened after ten days was unclear, because no player had yet lasted that long and successfully made it out.
In the normal course of the game, a small zombie outbreak would occur on the third day after the cruise ship set sail. It was not very difficult.
But with the ladder boss Red-Eyes joining in,
what had originally been only a dozen or so zombies became several hundred!
The zombified NPCs included all the important crew members as well as the technicians responsible for the ship's repairs and maintenance, bringing the entire ship to a standstill almost instantly.
And the upgraded zombie virus had a longer incubation period and was more infectious! Infected hosts were stronger!
Even plants and fish in the surrounding waters became infected, turning into zombie-like monsters!
By this point, the instance's difficulty had completely exceeded level three, approaching level four or even level five!
Thus, Gan Ran, the Dawn Moon Guild's team leader, decisively abandoned the original plan to continue tackling the instance and chose to lead the players out through the second "side-route clear" that had always existed in the game.
That meant taking the escape pods carried aboard the cruise ship.
But even a "side-route clear" was not something the instance would let players achieve easily.
Otherwise, would the instance not become a resort where they could come and go as they pleased?
To leave aboard the escape pods, players had to complete:
"Find out where the escape pods are."
"Find the key to the room storing the escape pods."
"Fight through obstacle after obstacle to reach the room containing the escape pods."
"Successfully break through the zombie blockade, inflate the escape pods, and launch them onto the sea."
"Row the escape pods more than a thousand meters away from the cruise ship while surrounded by layers of mutated fish monsters."
And a whole series of other complicated steps.
As for the first two tasks, finding the escape pods' location and the location of the key,
the previous groups of players who entered the instance had already figured out where they were.
Those who came later only needed to follow the information straight to them, without wasting time asking around.
Thus, the players Gan Ran led only needed to handle the remaining steps.
Barring any surprises, this was surely the moment when a villain would jump out.
At the critical moment, that obnoxious rabbit Red-Eyes jumped out to cause trouble.
He brought a large mob of zombie underlings and personally guarded the only route to the escape pod storage area.
He looked ready to stand guard until the end of time.
Meanwhile, large numbers of players in the team were already infected with the new zombie virus. The items they carried could not cure the boss-enhanced virus, so they had to return to the safe zone for treatment as soon as possible.
The players could not afford even a second's delay!
For that reason, the players could only choose to attack Red-Eyes themselves and begin the boss battle!
The final outcome was what everyone had seen.
Although the boss escaped, the players also suffered devastating losses.
Of the hundred-person team, only twenty-odd survived, and several were lying on the ground barely conscious. There was no telling whether they would pull through.
Still, this outcome was much better than a total party wipe.
Especially in an instance where a ladder boss had appeared!
Achieving a survival rate like this meant Gan Ran, the instance's team leader, had already done very well.
As the Dawn Moon Guild player responsible for keeping order recounted the story, every word brimmed with pride.
It was as though he felt proud to have joined such a guild.
It really was worth being proud of. Even Red-Eyes had been beaten into a desperate retreat, left with no choice but to vent his anger on low-level players.
If the players had not been rushing to leave the instance to treat their wounded, with no time to pursue the boss, Red-Eyes might never have had the chance to escape at half health.
Zuo Cheng'an had seen for himself how bedraggled Red-Eyes looked when he first escaped from the "Nowhere to Escape" instance.
He had clearly taken things too far and nearly gotten himself killed in there.
After mingling with the crowd for a long time without learning anything new, Zuo Cheng'an finally headed to the market as originally planned.
From far away, he could already see the bustling scene at the market entrance, where guides were pitching their services to new players.
People who had just finished receiving their beginner quest rewards were still bewildered when, the very next second, beautiful women or handsome men enthusiastically surrounded them, asking whether they needed any special services.
When they asked what those special services were,
Tch.
They were just guides.
Zuo Cheng'an scanned the market entrance and spotted Yu Le standing among a group of children.
Yu Le also spotted Zuo Cheng'an and waved a greeting from far away. As his first customer since he had begun living independently, Zuo Cheng'an was someone Yu Le remembered very clearly.
Zuo Cheng'an waved back too.
Before you continue