Chapter 660 - Be Wary of Leaving Combat
By the time Steamed Bun finally figured out what was happening and rushed to the entrance of the Darkness Palace, Tang Rou was already there. Ye Xiu’s Lord Grim followed Soft Mist to figure out the situation.
The cleric present revived Loulan Slash right away, so he was present as well. Right now, he was ordering everyone to start the manhunt for Deception, “That guy is pretty strong. Make sure you stick with your party. Don’t confront him alone.”
When Ye Xiu heard his command, he hastily spoke up to stop Loulan Slash, “Scatter! Scatter around!”
“But that guy is pretty strong!” Loulan Slash stated his point again.
“Being alone will drag him out, so it’s a good thing. If this drags on for too long, then he’ll lose his combat state and will log out. It’ll be too late then.” Ye Xiu explained.
Upon hearing this, Loulan Slash changed his orders immediately as he lamented over the shrewdness of the experienced experts.
“Isn’t he your friend? What’s going on?” Loulan Slash was nowhere near as composed as he appeared to be. He rushed forward to pick up the loot the moment the boss had died. While he was still counting the rewards excitedly, someone else suddenly labeled him as a boss and killed him when he had least expected it. When one got killed in the game, a few items from the inventory would also drop. Therefore, most players wouldn’t carry anything too important on themselves. Just now, when he picked up the loot, Loulan Slash had turned himself into a mobile treasure vault. When he died, he lost more items from his inventory than equipment from his body. Three items from his inventory dropped, while only one equipment on his body had dropped.
While his equipment was flashy, the items in his inventory were much more rare. After all, they had dropped from a level 70 wild boss, which was usually hoarded by big guilds. The items he lost, especially the materials, couldn’t even be bought with money. Their value far surpassed the equipment that he was wearing. Right now, he lost all of it to a scrap picker. There were no words to describe the bitterness that he felt.
“We just know each other. Don’t worry. He hasn't run too far yet. I’ll take full responsibility if I can’t get the stuff back.” Ye Xiu replied.
Loulan Slash had some doubts. Apart from Deception’s reputation, Loulan Slash had seen Lord Grim work with him in the past. The thought “did he act on Lord Grim’s orders?” surfaced the moment he got killed. Still, he quickly realized that this kind of betrayal was meaningless. They had originally agreed to split the loot fifty-fifty. This assassination would earn him less than half, so what would be the point?
Loulan Slash didn't think too much about it, but the thought still lingered. He simply pushed it to the back of his mind. Ye Xiu’s words not only crushed his doubts, but it also embraced him a little, “No, I didn’t mean it in that way. I was just wondering. Aren't the two of you friends? Is there some sort of misunderstanding?”
“No. That is just what he does.” Ye Xiu answered.
“Oh, he…” Loulan Slash was going to follow up with an explanation of how Deception had killed him, but Ye Xiu interrupted, “Just tell me which direction he ran off to. That’s much more important than how you died. Did he go this way?”
Lord Grim indicated with the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella in the direction where players were gathering.
“Yeah…” Loulan Slash agreed.
“Start attacking with AoE attacks!!!” Ye Xiu called out, while going over, “Attack with your group! Those who aren’t in the same group, don’t crowd together!”
“Don’t stand around too loosely! Try to cover more area with your attacks! Start attacking!” Ye Xiu was too busy giving out commands to continue chatting with Loulan Slash.
Loulan Slash thought about it. There really was no time to chat. Once Deception left the combat state and logged off, he couldn’t have everyone wait until he came back. It didn’t take long to leave combat, only 3 minutes. This was determined by the system. If no skill hit Deception within 3 minutes, he would no longer be considered in a state of combat. Then, he could simply log out and escape this hunt with ease.
Ye Xiu’s plan right now wasn’t focused on killing or even finding the opponent. All he wanted to do was ensure that Deception couldn’t log out.
“Open your eyes! That guy’s class is ninja. The ID is Deception! He’s a professional scrap picker! His greatest strength is being shameless! Very shameless!” When Ye Xiu’s voice echoed across the hall, Loulan Slash, as the guild leader, decided to stay silent and let Ye Xiu take full control.
The players from Heavenly Justice responded in kind. They were quite enraged by the fact that their guild leader was killed out of the blue. They simply wouldn’t allow the fruits of their labor to be stolen so easily. They couldn't accept that they had beaten two large guilds with Clubs behind them, but lost to a lowly scrap picker.
The peace and quiet that had settled down in the Darkness Palace with the conclusion of the boss fight was quickly shattered. Players of all classes threw out their AoE skill. No one knew if the skills hit Deception, but they had aggroed quite a large number of monsters.
Darkness Palance was nonetheless still a leveling area and all leveling areas had monsters. It was just that those regular monsters posed no real threat to elite teams, so no one really cared much about them. While dealing with the monsters casually, everyone was still scanning the area, hoping to find Deception.
“There!”
A cry rang from somewhere. When most were still looking around to locate the source of it, Lord Grim had already run off.
“Is he there?” Loulan Slash hastily followed, but he wasn’t sure at all. This only made it more apparent how large the gap in skill there was between a pro and himself.
Ye Xiu had Lord Grim charge straight over. Purple smoke exploded, engulfing a number of people in a flash.
Ninjutsu - Smoke Bomb.
Spitfires had a similar skill called Smoke Bullet.
Smoke bombs activated a lot faster than smoke bullets did. They filled the entire area in a split second. Using this type of skill in this situation was obviously for escaping. Ye Xiu immediately gave up on trying to find Deception in the smoke cloud. Instead, he started predicting where he would exit the smoke.
As expected. Deception's figure quickly shot out of the smoke cloud. Surely, there were people other than Ye Xiu who noticed this and gave chase right away. Ye Xiu, on the other hand, noticed that Deception's hand had moved back as he was escaping and shouted out a quick warning, “Beware of the spikes!”
“Spikes” was the name given to the skill by players. The actual skill name was Caltrops. These tiny spikes were thrown onto the ground. Any person who stepped on them wouldn’t take a large amount of damage, but their mobility would be severely decreased.
Deception had hid his actions well, so most people wouldn’t have noticed that he threw out spikes. Unsurprisingly, among the many that gave chase, quite a few were suddenly debilitated. Clearly, they had stepped on the spikes accidentally. With another handful of caltrops, he successfully delayed his pursuers to buy himself sometime to jump onto a nearby stone pillar and started climbing upward.
The guns roared away.
Just because the melee players were slowed down didn’t mean that the long-range players had to take the back seat. The gunner classes focused their gunfire on him right away. However, Deception performed superbly. He was clearly well-practiced with the climbing skill belonging to ninjas. In that moment, there was no one who could stop him. Ye Xiu knew from his agile movements that he probably hadn’t brought out his trash equipment for this attack. This kind of speed could only be achieved with movement speed buffs from relatively good equipment.
In a few breath, Deception was pretty high up. With a backward jump, he stepped onto a beam and started sprinting straight ahead.
The beam was rather narrow, so it had no space for horizontal movement. Running up there spared him from dealing with the troubles from melee classes, but it made him the perfect target for long-range class players.
Amidst the gunfire, Deception ran straight ahead, swaying left and right to dodge the attacks. These actions demonstrated his incredible mastery over his character’s movements.
“Not bad!” Ye Xiu praised. At the same time , Deception had finally entered Lord Grim’s effective attacking range. The Myriad Manifestations Umbrella shook and Anti-Tank Missile shot straight at Deception.
Boom!
The missile landed on the bean squarely and the shock wave spread out. Deception dodged both with an agile leap, successfully avoiding this calculated move of Ye Xiu’s.
Amidst the regretful sighs of the players around, Deception could feel cold sweat dripping down his back. If he had reacted half a second later, the missile would have hit him.
Deception had been ignoring his attackers up until now. That well-planned attack finally tempted him a glance at the crowd. Immediately, a familiar name stood out painfully to him.
Why is he here?!
Deception buried his surprise in his heart and noticed the guild ID attached to Lord Grim’s name. It was same as all the other players: Heavenly Justice.
Had he been recruited?
While Deception was still contemplating this, Lord Grim fired again.
Deception started to worry. If it were a one on one, he was confident that he could dodge the attacks pretty easily. The problem at hand right now was that he was running around in a hail of bullets. If an expert at such a high skill level joined the fray, there was no way his escape would be easy. That jump had indeed been splendid, but that was because he had made a mistake previously and moved one step too slow. How many players could make that sort of prediction?
I can’t drag this on any longer!
Deception made up his mind. Eyeing the stone pillar nearby, he suddenly jumped over.
Just when he seemed to have missed it, he threw out a ninjato, which buried itself into the pillar. Then he swung his character over using the fabric attached to the small knife. After some swinging in midair, he successfully hid himself behind the pillar.
“Surround him!!” Loulan Slash ordered loudly, and the players of Heavenly Justice rushed from every direction.
Behind the pillar, Deception used a Ninjutsu · Disappearing Body Technique right away and was planning on taking his time to assess the situation when a roll of racing bullets nicked him
Among the flying debris, Lord Grim’s gun pointed straight at him from below the pillar, “Still hiding?”
Deception was gloomy. Wasn’t that a bit too quick?