Humans and Monsters Walk Different Paths

Eric (Goblin Pyromancer): "Fire elemental, burn him to death!" As he ordered the fire elemental, Xiao Yu raised his staff and continued casting Flame Missiles.

Halfway through the cast bar, Supreme Greatsword punched him in the face. A red -5 appeared above Xiao Yu's head, and the spell was interrupted.

Pummel: Punch the target hard in the face, dealing unarmed attack damage and interrupting their current spellcasting. Cooldown: 5 seconds.

The damage wasn't very high, but the spell interruption was a real nuisance. Fortunately, Xiao Yu still had an instant-cast spell.

Lesser Fireball! With a smack, a fireball instantly blasted Supreme Greatsword. There was no stopping this one, and he lost 19 health at once.

"Heal me, quick!" Supreme Greatsword cried as he desperately swung his weapon at the goblin boss in front of him. But his damage was clearly too low, each hit taking only a few points of health off his opponent. Meanwhile, the fire elemental and the boss were attacking him together, and his health was plummeting. In the blink of an eye, half of it was gone.

Someone behind him should have started healing him long ago, but now he realized that no one was healing him at all.

"Oh no, I'm under attack! Help me!" Vivi Soy Milk suddenly cried from behind him.

Supreme Greatsword turned around and was startled. At some point, the three black-skinned orcs had circled around to the priest and were ganging up on her. The shield around her was on the verge of breaking, and even though she kept healing and shielding herself, she couldn't withstand the three orcs' combined assault. It looked like she wouldn't last much longer.

The mage stood between the warrior and the priest, at a loss. What the hell is going on? Was the boss arranging tactics when he spoke to those three orcs just now? This game's bosses are pretty smart. For a moment, she didn't know which one to help.

The warrior gritted his teeth. "Go help the priest. I'll hold the boss off." As he spoke, he pulled out a healing potion and downed it in one gulp, instantly restoring nearly half his health.

Shameless! Xiao Yu immediately wanted to curse when he saw it. Drinking potions in a fight? Fine, I forgot he's an adventurer. Could he even call himself an adventurer if he weren't shameless?

But you want to take me on one-on-one? You're dreaming. He raised a hand and cast Lesser Heal on himself. You think you're the only one who can heal?

"Damn it, this boss can heal too?" Now it was Supreme Greatsword's turn to cough up blood. Although Lesser Heal didn't restore much, only a dozen or so health points per cast, he wasn't doing much damage himself. And the skill didn't seem to have a cooldown. His healing potions, on the other hand, caused Drug Resistance.

In Sky World, players could drink as many potions as they wanted, but after drinking one, they would receive a debuff called 'Drug Resistance' that lasted two minutes. During that time, the effect of potions of the same type was halved, and the debuff could stack. That meant that if the first healing potion restored 100 health, the second would restore only 50, and the third 25. The more they drank, the less health they restored.

But for the sake of victory, Supreme Greatsword couldn't worry about all that.

On the other side, the mage had already rushed to the priest's side and frozen all three orcs in place with a Frost Nova.

"Run!" she cried, firing Frostbolts at the three orcs alongside the water elemental beside her. The priest couldn't spare the time to heal herself and started helping with Holy Light Projectiles. Holy Light Projectile wasn't weak either, dealing double damage to undead creatures and half damage to living units, though it was better than nothing. The two of them had a hard time finishing off one orc, and by then Frost Nova's freezing effect had already ended.

Frost Nova! With a flash, the water elemental cast a ring of ice this time, freezing the two orcs again. The three unfortunate orcs couldn't even move and could only watch as they were shot dead.

But at the same time, the adventurer warrior couldn't hold out any longer either.

His health kept dropping until he had just over twenty points left, and Drug Resistance had stacked three or four times. Supreme Greatsword looked back and saw that the mage and priest had finished off the three orcs. Delighted, he turned and ran in the direction he had come from, hoping to get the priest to heal him quickly.

You think you can run?

Xiao Yu raised his staff. Flame Missiles!

A string of fireballs blasted toward Supreme Greatsword's back. Supreme Greatsword was quick-witted, rolling across the ground to dodge two missiles, but the next three Flame Missiles struck him in the back one after another.

Bang! Bang! Bang! A string of fireballs slammed into Supreme Greatsword's back. This time there was no blocking them, and he was blasted dead on the spot. He let out a scream, dropped a few pieces of junk equipment, and died.

Although the Blackrock Orc over there had been killed, he had also managed to deplete the priest's health, leaving only the priest and mage, both out of mana.

"Haha, let's see how you survive this!" Xiao Yu laughed triumphantly, raising his staff.

System notification: Insufficient mana. Unable to cast spell.

Damn it. Xiao Yu was speechless. This goblin's intelligence is way too low. I'm out of mana already? Never mind. I'm a boss. I can beat you to death with basic attacks.

"Fire elemental, go deal with that water elemental!" Xiao Yu ordered the fire elemental, then charged at the mage himself.

Water elementals and fire elementals were arch-enemies, and each received a damage bonus when attacking the other. But Xiao Yu's fire elemental was level 10, two levels higher than the opposing water elemental, so it was sure to win.

As for the two adventurers, Xiao Yu would naturally deal with them himself.

The mage had only managed to cast two Frostbolts, taking just over 20 health from Xiao Yu, when he reached her.

The mage panicked and turned to run in fright. But Xiao Yu had an elite template and ran much faster than players. How could she get away? Xiao Yu caught up behind the female mage and brought his staff down on her head. He felt no pity for her now. A -47 appeared, and the blow took a third of her health. Her health was too low and her defense too weak; the basic attack had actually hit harder than Fireball. The mage shrieked in fright.

Xiao Yu paid that no mind. He chased her down and struck her twice more with his staff. Purple Toffee finally let out a scream and fell, unwilling to accept it.

"Toffee!" the priest cried out. She turned to see the goblin boss charging up to her with a big stick in hand. Terrified, she burst into tears.

Xiao Yu felt a little embarrassed at the sight. It was as though he were bullying a young girl. But humans and monsters walk different paths. Who told you to go out with the others and fight a boss instead of finding something better to do? Just accept your fate. He raised his staff and brought it down on her head.

A few seconds later, the female priest named Vivi Soy Milk went down too.

A golden light flashed around Xiao Yu, and he leveled up once again.

Haha, sure enough, killing adventurers is the fastest way to level up. Each one gives over 300 experience, twice as much again as an ordinary monster. That's almost as good as fighting a boss.

The three of them had also dropped a few pieces of equipment. Xiao Yu couldn't equip them, but that didn't mean they were useless.

Players with monster templates generally had three choices after obtaining adventurer equipment.

The first was to use the system to dismantle the equipment into materials.

The materials could be used to craft exclusive equipment for monsters. Each type of monster had a fixed selection of equipment that could be crafted. Of course, adventurer players could also get this equipment as drops, though theirs would naturally be knockoff versions.

The second was to put the equipment in the drop pool as ballast. When a monster was killed, the system would randomly generate a few pieces of equipment for players to pick up. If the monster had no ballast, it would have to pay to revive after dying, and the number of coupons spent was basically proportional to the price of the equipment dropped.

But if there was ballast in the drop pool, the system would prioritize dropping it for players to pick up, saving the monster-template player the cost of revival.

The last choice was to have the system reclaim it and exchange it directly for in-game currency, which could then be sold in the game store for RMB. Of course, this was actually a terrible deal, because the system's buyback price was generally only 30%-50% of the equipment's actual value. So unless he waited until dungeons opened and killed players a raid group at a time, reclaiming equipment in bulk, there wasn't much point. Besides, the three of them had dropped low-level equipment that wasn't worth much at all.

He used the system's reclaim function to clear away all the equipment on the ground.

System notification: Equipment reclaimed. Please select a processing method.

1. Dismantle.

2. Add to drop pool.

3. System buyback.

Xiao Yu chose to dismantle the equipment.

System notification: Dismantled three pieces of adventurer equipment. Obtained Adventurer's Remains Fragments ×9.

Adventurer's Remains Fragments: When the wondrous creatures known as adventurers die in battle, they leave no corpses, only strange fragments. These fragments can be used to craft equipment.