Chapter 571 - Fallback
Albeit having died countless of times, players in the Ten Barren Sea had obtained a luxurious amount of experience points and a number of Insect Shells. Some of them who were luckier had managed to haul in a good number of Yellow-Gold Insect Shells. As a result, they had only died and lost 10% of their equipment durability.
It was a worthwhile trade. Hence, everyone was prepared to face the monsters. They had set camp outside the portal and were attacking all the monsters that came out of the portal.
Just when the atmosphere was reaching its boiling point, dark rays blasted out of the portal. Players who were camping all around the portal were startled and attacked the spot without giving any second thoughts.
There were more than 100,000 players camped outside the portal. Behind the front lines were more than a million of them. Since the monster’s pathway was only limited to the portal, they were bottlenecked into it. When a monster pops its head out, it would be killed, instantly. Even though it would still be dangerous to loot the item drops, players were still getting experience points. The loots were on a first come first serve basis. Hence, when anyone attempts to loot, they would be struck by players as well.
"D*mn! Which stupid idiot is attacking me!"
"F*ck me. I was killed by players instead of monsters. Sigh. Luckily, I had just leveled up. I only lost 4% of my experience points!"
"Bastard"
Humans were amazing sheep. When they see the front liners attacking, the players behind them would jump on the bandwagon and attack the black light coming out of the portal. Even though a majority of players were still under Level 100, anyone without strong equipment would surely be killed by several hundred simultaneous attacks.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
More than ten dark lights that had managed to escape to the sky were shot down. Just when the players had come closer to loot the items, they were surprised to see that the dark lights were none other than players themselves! In a fit of haste, they had turned around to pretend they had seen nothing. If the dead player was someone prominent in the game, they might have incurred their wrath and would be a whole lot of trouble. However, even if the player would want to have his revenge, how could he search for the one guy who killed him? It was a sea of players, there was close to a million of them!
Once the news spread out that the dark lights were players, players from outside the portal stopped attacking blindly. In truth, Lone Desert Smoke, Crimson Rage, Imperial Sky, and other guilds who were still in the portal had spread the news of the oncoming third wave of monsters. However, since the start of the game, there were a total of 2,000,000,000 players worldwide. China alone had taken up to 200,000,000 players!
Even though half of that of that colossal number were players lower than Level 50 and were ineligible to participate in the Legendary Quest, there were still close to 80,000,000 players in Ten Barren Sea. With such a large number of players, it would take a super-charged megaphone to deliver a single message. While many pairs of eyes were locked onto the portal, the public channel was filled with constant scolding and chitter-chatters. It was as noisy as a night market.
As a result, the first batch of players who had tried to escape was unfortunately killed.
When Zhang Yang’s crew had arrived at the portal door, the sea of mega monsters was only less than 1 kilometer away from them. Zhang Yang tried his luck. He jumped onto the Thunderhawk, turned on his name tag and all the titles and switched to the public channel and shouted. "Brothers and sisters of China! The monsters are coming now! This wave of monsters is extremely strong! Please work together! We must stop the monsters here and now! We will take the Level +4 reward as well as be the greatest nation amongst all others! Let the bastards of Europes, North America, and India eat our dust!"
In the beginning, his voice was completed overwhelmed by the noisy environment. However, when players had spotted Zhang Yang’s name was coming up in the public channel, they kept quiet, stopped their argument, and listened. Within half a minute, the entire area around the portal, as well as the islands around fell silent. It was so quiet that you could hear the sound of everyone’s beating pulse, not to mention their ragged breathing!
Zhang Yang repeated his words over and over until all players were responding with a burning vigor.
One Sword Stroke, Greensleeve Prince, Snow Seeker, and the rest of the guildmasters nodded their heads as they acknowledged Zhang Yang’s position. If someone else were to speak, people would not even care about you. Zhang Yang was someone. He was the idol of everyone in China and the level of admiration towards him was unrivaled.
RAAWWWR!
1 kilometer might seem far for a normal person. However, for mountain-sized monsters that could cover 100 meters with each step, it was merely a few strides away. A gigantic head emerged out of the portal. The portal adjusted its size to match the entity that was moving through it. Judging from the size to which the portal had enlarged, the monster that was passing through it was frightening.
"My lord…just how big is this monster! The portal just keeps on growing!"
"F*ck! It’s a Violet-Platinum boss!"
"Crap! What level is it? I can’t see it!"
When the creature appeared in Ten Barren Sea, everyone started throwing their opinions into the public channel. There was even someone who was standing on the other half of the island could spot the monsters.
"Arghh!" The Zergert Mammoth growled deafeningly and stomped its gigantic furry legs to the ground.
WHAM!
A massive quake struck the land and a sea of players was dealt with 30,000 damage. The ground cracked and many players fell to the ground. After only 1 second, there were countless of white lights floated away. Those were players that had been instantly killed by the boss’ stomp attack.
30,000 damage was nothing but a scratch for Zhang Yang. However, Level 70, 80 players that had equipped themselves with top-tiered Violet-Platinum or Yellow-Gold equipment had trouble pushing their maximum HP to 30,000.
"KILL!" Still, death was nothing to them. All they had to do was to revive, repair their broken equipment and, come back to the spot again and again.
After the first attack from the Ancient Creature had ended, countless of wooden arrows, Frost Arrow, Fire Missiles burst into the air and shot down towards the boss. Berserkers and Theif class players had no choice but to charge into the wave of monsters bravely. As long as they land a single hit, they were eligible to claim the loot. If they were lucky enough to land the killing blow, it would be 50% experience points for them alone.
It was, after all, a Violet-Platinum boss.
For players under Level 100 who had not even managed to enter the Dragon Throat Fortress, fighting a Violet-Platinum boss was a rare attempt. Hence, when a sea of Violet-Platinum boss appeared to them, everyone got hyped up and fight on like a mad dog.
There was a saying, an elephant can squash an ant effortlessly, but falls to a sea of ants. Even though the mammoth boss was as large as a mountain, the number of players that could attack it in close range was close to a thousand. In the same time, the players that could attack it afar could reach 100,000 and more.
Even if 99% of all the players there could only deal 1 damage, one wave of attack would be close to 100,000 damage! The amount of accumulated damage was not to be looked down upon.
Sadly, even though there were many players around, as many as a thousand players had perished with one boss attack.
Zhang Yang locked its gaze to the mammoth and commanded Endless Starlight. "Go and kite that boss. Do not let it roam around freely! Fantasy, take care of Endless."
Endless Starlight had a flying mount. Kiting the boss from the sky could help reduce the death rate by a large number if he could control its aggro properly.
"Boss, that’s just one boss. There’re still hundreds of them still inside the portal!" cried Endless Starlight as he rode his giant hornet towards the boss.
"It won’t matter. If it’s too much for you to handle, run. You’ll be fine even if you’re killed. As long as the killing blow is not from a player. Come on, the repairing fee is nothing but a few gold coins!" Zhang Yang laughed.
"Dummy, could our people hold the line?" asked Han Ying Xue after Endless Starlight has left with Fantasy Sweetheart.
"Obvious not." Zhang Yang said with a straight face. "800 Platinum-Gold boss and 80 Mythical boss is something that we are not capable of stopping."
"Then, why did you ask Endless Starlight to go on like that! I thought we actually have a shot at winning!"
"Hahaha. It’s called strategy and morale. If the lord of a city professes his weakness at the beginning of the siege, how would his army fight with their lives on the line? Right now, we should try to reduce the enemies’ number as much as we could. After the front line is breached, we can still rely on defensive strategies to wipe them all!"
"As I recall, isn’t there a celestial boss in the main city? Let them reach there, and the boss will kill them all with a swift ulti attack!"
Zhang Yang shook his head. "In this kind of story-based quest, NPCs will provide help but we cannot rely on them as the main force. Back then, when Princess Serena dominated all seven kingdoms, why didn’t the so-called celestial bosses come out to defend their cities? I strongly feel that the battle has been left to the players. Only when victory is at hand, the NPC will come out to clear the dust for us."
"…That…doesn’t make any sense," said Daffodil Daydream.
"Sigh…If you want a more logical explanation…gimme a sec. If there are too many monsters, the strong would not want to waste their soldiers. They would try to do something sneaky like assassination or poison-work to reduce the enemy forces. All in all, this is just a game. Let’s just strap in and survive this." Zhang Yang shrugged and everyone else had no choice but to accept his reasoning.
Undoubtedly, there were many players attacking the boss. Even though the boss had a staggering HP of 50,000,000, players were still able to inflict a significant amount of damage even if they only dealt 1 damage each.
Just when players had hopes of killing the first boss, echoes of "arugh" were heard from the portal. Seven mammoths had just made their way through the portal, followed by the battalion of creatures behind.
Just when they thought the seven was more than enough, the same growl was heard again and more than 10 mammoths had emerged out of the portal, followed by the Zergert Cthulhu behind.
"It’s a hit! A hit each, I’m telling you! No need to fight for the boss. There’s one for everyone!"
"Hit? There's so many bosses, one of them is enough to knock your head off your neck. How do we fight?!"
"I think I need to wear glasses in the game, for I am seeing several hundreds of Violet-Platinum boss!"
"Relax, you’re vision is fine. I’m seeing a few Mythical bosses here!"
Right then, players finally understood why Zhang Yang had warned them earlier. This wave of monsters is indeed strong. In fact, they were strong as f*ck!