The Adventurers' Counterattack

"I can join your party, but you'll have to let me be the leader," Water Falls Without a Trace said bluntly.

"Isn't that a bit much? There are three of us, after all."

"I'm the highest level, and I have the best equipment. If I'm not the leader, who should be?" Water Falls Without a Trace said, raising the staff in her hand. The sapphire at its tip radiated an icy chill. It was unmistakably a Kirin Tor Frost Scepter, the best mage weapon below level 20, and it could easily be used all the way to level 30. One cost 500 yuan at the auction house, and generally only well-off players bought one for leveling.

Apparently this girl was a little rich lady. Hellboy's Dad immediately backed down. "All right, you can be the leader."

"That's more like it." Water Falls Without a Trace took charge of the party, thoroughly pleased with herself. By then, most of the people had gathered, and Professional Expert Gamer 007's raid group was ready too. With that, the massive force of seventy or eighty adventurers set off for Nightwhisper Village.

The battle that followed was completely one-sided. When the two raid groups, a full eighty adventurers, charged the gates of Nightwhisper Village, the human bandits guarding them put up a tenacious resistance. But a single volley of ranged attacks from the adventurers killed every last one of the dozen or so bandits.

From there, they steamrolled everything in their path. The first to suffer were Black?Rod's men. He had actually been quite cautious about tonight's operation, deliberately leaving his main force near the exit of Nightwhisper Village and taking only a small contingent of cannon fodder into the village to loot. He had planned to make himself scarce the moment things went wrong, and had even left himself an escape route.

But plans couldn't keep up with changes. He had never imagined the adventurers would attack from outside the village. Instead, he ended up taking the hit and was caught like a turtle in a jar.

Black?Rod reacted quickly. As soon as he saw things were going badly, he hurried to join Derek. The two combined their forces and rounded up a good number of kobolds as cannon fodder, bringing their numbers to over a hundred before launching a counterattack.

Judging by their momentum alone, they were hardly inferior to the adventurers. Their formation was even far more orderly than that of the adventurers, who were a hodgepodge of different classes. The problem was that this game was about skills and stats, not military bearing.

They were defeated again without a doubt. Even with a two-to-one advantage in numbers, the weakness of the monsters' overly limited fighting methods became plain when they faced the adventurers. The adventurers threw every kind of AOE spell, Multishot, and Explosive Flames at them all at once. A row of melee tanks stood in front, while healers of every kind restored their health from behind. By comparison, the monsters had a very limited makeup, consisting of nothing more than ranged and melee fighters. They couldn't compete at all.

The mobs charged forward, only to be hit by a wave of AOE attacks before they even had time to strike. In an instant, they were either dead or wounded. Then the tanks on the other side charged in, cutting them down like vegetables, and their formation fell apart in an instant.

"Fuck, how the hell are we supposed to fight this? Run, hurry up and run! Fucking hell, that stinking goblin screwed us over today!"

Derek and Black?Rod cursed as they ran. The underlings quick enough to react followed them and escaped with their lives; those who were slow to react were **** and down in an instant.

But escaping wasn't so easy. The moment the two bosses showed their faces, the players locked onto them. How could they pass up such a good opportunity? They chased them relentlessly. Although Black?Rod was a rogue, he hadn't learned the stealth skill. Monsters really had it rough: he was already over level ten and still didn't know stealth.

A Frostbolt slowed him down, and a group of players immediately knocked him to the ground. Big Gold Tooth had it even worse. It looked so ordinary that nobody noticed it among the kobolds, and a random AOE attack took it down. Only when it dropped a huge pile of assorted equipment did someone notice in surprise. "Huh, looks like we killed a boss."

Only Derek the gnoll reacted quickly enough to get away. He had a skill called Wild Body that let him ignore slowing effects for a short time, allowing him to escape disaster. Even so, he was frantic and could only flee farther into the village. Halfway there, he ran into Xiao Yu.

"We're finished. This time we're completely finished! We're dead for sure!" Derek's face was full of despair, and the moment he saw Xiao Yu, he flew into a rage. "Damn it, we attacked the beginner village because we listened to you and your instigation! What possessed us to listen to you? Now we're done for! We're going to get killed by the plot!"

What a hopeless loser, Xiao Yu thought. He's already panicking. When my three-skull flame demon lord got killed, I didn't make such a fool of myself. Aloud, he comforted him. "A setback may turn out to be a blessing. Don't panic, boss Derek. Things might still turn around."

"Turn around my ass! Black and Big Gold Tooth are both dead, and you're still talking about a turnaround?"

Xiao Yu smiled. "Think about it. The four of us normally split Nightwhisper Village between us. None of us can do anything to the others, so we have to coexist peacefully. Now those two are dead, and their troops have suffered near-total casualties too. As long as we can escape, won't we be able to split their territory between us? Once we've set up branch bases and recruited some more underlings, our forces are bound to grow considerably."

Huh, that's right! Derek brightened at once. There were five monster camps in Nightwhisper Village in total, including the murloc camp, and that number was fixed. Now that two had opened up, it was the perfect chance to expand their forces.

"But wait, that only works if we can get out, doesn't it? How are we supposed to fight the adventurers with what few troops we have left? The exit's blocked, so we can't even run."

"Don't worry. I prepared a backup plan long ago, and now's just the time to use it. Hurry and join Deathclaw and the others. That grand druid is about to die. Once we finish him off, we'll leave."

The moment Derek heard there was a kill to snatch, his desire to grab a small advantage resurfaced. "All right, I'll go help."

Xiao Yu watched Derek turn and leave. He's finally gone, he thought. In fact, he had no escape plan at all. He might well have to leave his hundred-plus pounds of flesh here today, but before he died, he had to get the Seed of Elements out somehow.

"You have a backup plan? That's really surprising. Honestly, I'm quite curious. What trick do you have left when things have gotten this bad?" A voice sounded beside him, and Moontrace?Shadowstalker appeared once again. Her daggers were covered in blood, and she had quite a few burn and frost marks on her body. She looked rather worse for wear.

"Oh, you finally came. Where did you go?"

"I went to deal with the adventurers for you, of course. A party of them came through here just now, and I took care of them for you while I was at it. Otherwise, why do you think there wasn't a single adventurer where you were? But honestly, those adventurers really are troublesome. I can just about handle three or five of them, but if there are any more, there's nothing I can do."

There was no helping it. This wasn't a game where a high level let you crush everything. Since there was no such thing as level suppression, crowd-control skills worked just as well on high-level characters. As a result, even high-level players couldn't claim they were guaranteed to win against a well-coordinated party of low-level players.