Chapter 0065—A Battle of Luck
At the other demon city of Evergrand, players were cheering like a parade.
With Night’s Venator hung on his waist, Zephyrwolf was walking with relish while waving at players from Yoda. Of course, there were also those who shot him cold gazes, most of which were from either Terrafirm or Empyreon. They were originally from Yoda too, but they had switched cities right before the event started thinking that the other two cities had a higher chance of victory. Even so, they felt curious about the four.
Next to him was Hades who was surrounded by a thin layer of dark mist. The pair of small, sharp horns on his head fitted his style perfectly. This guy just keeps making a fool of himself! He thought as he scorned Zephyrwolf.
Soulsmith followed behind Hades with a bland look on his face, a longbow hung on his back. That was his weapon, and he himself shall serve as Hades’ bow and arrow. Drako Yau, on the other hand, had nothing but his mask on as he trod behind the three.
The four of them had created a private chat among themselves beforehand. “Let’s start with Easy to test the waters,” said Hades. Seeing Drako Yau who wore no equipment at all and had a look that suggested that he really was just going to do nothing and leech experience the entire time, Hades sighed and felt like he didn’t have much of a choice.
While their squad only had four members, they were by no means weak.
Dragonspear, Level 14 warrior… Let’s not count him in for now.
Hades, Level 18 hunter (assassin build).
Soulsmith, Level 18 hunter (ranged build).
Zephyrwolf, Level 16 warrior. While his level was on the lower end, his demon wolf king made up for the difference in level. It was almost like they had an additional member in the squad also.
The four of them also entered the dungeon’s teleportation array under countless gazes.
As for the challenge targeted at them? Zephyrwolf was too nitwitted to care about it, while Hades and Soulsmith had been used to such things and simply couldn’t be bothered with such a petty challenge. Drako Yau didn’t give it much thought either, completely ignoring the position Age of Scholars was in. If those from Age of Scholars knew no one actually paid any heed to their challenge, they would probably fly off the handle.
Once they entered the demon city, a plain and open sight greeted them. It was a familiar one as well.
Intrigued, Drako Yau observed his surroundings. Apart from the demonic aura everywhere and the structures turning black, the demon city’s layout was identical to that of Evergrand.
The dungeon, Demon City, did not exist in Drako Yau’s version of Real World, which meant it was something the developers had added in. After experiencing so much, he had gotten over it already. Trying to spot differences between the current version and his own version of the game all the time was unnecessary at this point. His objective was simple—survive until he could find a way to leave the game. That said, he still subconsciously observed the changes in the game. It was his instinct as a game developer.
While he was casually looking around, the other three were already engaged in combat up ahead. They were simply walking down a straight, long road in the demon city, but countless monsters swarmed them from both sides and blocked their path. Most of them were skeletons; skeleton warriors who knew not what death was kept charging at the invaders, and skeleton archers fired arrows from behind.
Hades furrowed his brows and said, “Soulsmith, target those archers.”
Soulsmith nodded and started firing away. His accuracy took Drako Yau’s breath away; it was hard to believe that someone could be so accurate.
From his conjecture, ranged hunter was one of the most difficult classes to play. If your arrows couldn’t hit the target, it didn’t matter how high your damage was. The class tested one’s accuracy with the bow, and life was even harder for archers when aim assist didn’t exist in the game, nor did they have many targeted skills at their disposal.
However, Soulsmith barely missed the target whenever he fired a shot. Noticing Drako Yau’s admiration, Hades said proudly, “Soulsmith was CA’s world champion.”
Drako Yau quickly understood what he was saying. While War of the Daemons had been the most popular MMORPG, CA had been the most popular first-person shooter with millions of players. The skill and dedication required to become a world champion… his current strength was only to be expected.
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It was the Easy difficulty after all, so the monsters weren’t much of a threat and were swept aside as they continued on their journey through the city.
They soon arrived at what used to be the resurrection altar of Evergrand. It had now become an evil altar where a seat made of bones stood in the centre, and a gigantic skeleton donned in black armour was sitting on it.
“Grrr… Humans…” The skeleton king lifted its claymore and stood up. “Pay the price for invading my demon city!”
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“Successfully cleared Demon City (Easy)!”
“New team record for clearing Demon City (Easy). Do you wish to make your name public?”
Hades glanced at Drako Yau, who nodded to indicate that he didn’t mind. He was wearing the mask anyways, and their player information wouldn’t be available even if they made their squad name public.
At almost the same time, another announcement popped up on the global channel.
“Team ‘Age of Scholars’ has set a new team record for clearing Demon City (Normal). The new record is 20 minutes, 42 seconds.”
Zephyrwolf got impatient upon seeing the announcement and said, “They’ve cleared Normal already? It’ll be Hard next!”
When new dungeons were first launched, only Easy and Normal were available. Players had to clear Normal to unlock Hard and clear Hard to unlock Hell. This was to ensure that players wouldn’t overestimate themselves and dive straight into Hard to their deaths. As such, Easy and Normal weren’t that difficult as they were meant to let players learn more about the dungeon.
Hades shot another look at Drako Yau. After noticing that he wasn’t going to say anything, Hades said, “What’s the rush? If it’s so easy to liberate the city, the announcement wouldn’t have said ‘there is a certain chance to encounter the Demon Castellan’. It means it’s up to luck and chance. If you’re lucky, you might encounter it on your first run, or you could clear the dungeon over and over again for a month without encountering it if you’re not.
“There’s just the four of us, and that guy isn’t even equipped with any items. We’ll lose in terms of speed, so it’s just a battle of luck now.”
Zephyrwolf was visibly confused even after hearing the explanation. Hades shook his head and sighed while thinking, Why is someone like this Yoda’s hero? That crazy masked guy… how did he even manage to make this idiot so popular?
This time, Drako Yau couldn’t just stay silent anymore. “Hades’ right. We don’t have to be impatient like they are. If they’re so lucky that they can encounter the Demon Castellan on their first run, we can only admit defeat. The most important thing now is… to get me to Level 15 so I can equip Moon Gazer and get some good equipment. Then we can get to business.”
Seeing how Drako Yau was telling them to level him up with a straight face, Hades rolled his eyes and put a stop to the conversation by saying, “Let’s go, we can talk after we reach the daily limit for clearing Easy.”
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“Team ‘Dual Coalition’ has set a new team record for clearing Demon City (Easy). The new record is 15 minutes, 58 seconds.”
Booksy Swordsman let out a sigh of relief after seeing the announcement. So they’re only farming Easy… But he wasn’t going to slack off just because of that. If Drako Yau’s team could come up with such a strategy, so could he.
However, he also had a similar idea in mind. Today will be my lucky day, please let us encounter the Demon Castellan on our first run!
“Off we go! To clear Hard!”
In less than half an hour, another announcement that stated that Age of Scholars had cleared the dungeon in Hard popped up on the global channel. Drako Yau and the other squad members simply ignored it and continued to farm Easy. By the time they reached the daily limit for Easy, Age of Scholars had already cleared Hell.
“Team ‘Age of Scholars’ has set a new team record for clearing Demon City (Hell). The new record is 45 minutes, 13 seconds.”
Hades cheered in his head and said, “Looks like they’re out of luck this time.”
Drako Yau replied, “That’s just how it works. Well, let’s not care about them for now and start clearing Normal. I should be Level 15 after we use up all our daily runs for Normal.”
Normal wasn’t too much different from Easy, just that there were more monsters and they were a bit stronger. Coincidentally, Drako Yau and Zephyrwolf were having the same thought: I miss the giant wolves in the Demon Wolf Cave so much!
Compared to the skeletons in Demon City, those giant wolves were literally vials of living experience. The experience gained for killing a giant wolf was almost ten times that of skeletons! Levelling up was a breeze back then… which was only natural because it was an encounter quest.
Encounter quests only took place by chance, not by choice. Even Drako Yau who thought he knew most of the conditions to trigger various encounter quests couldn’t trigger every quest because it was up to luck. Even when all conditions were met, the quest wouldn’t be available if luck wasn’t on your side.
Of course, he was just rambling in his head to kill time. He felt like he was on a leisure tour through the demon city of Evergrand as he followed Soulsmith, Hades, and Zephyrwolf who did all the fighting. He was just leeching experience like a toddler who couldn’t do anything, so he really had no right to complain.
As expected, Drako Yau finally levelled up after reaching the daily limit for clearing Normal while the levels of the other three members remained the same. It took so long for Drako Yau who was only Level 14 with half his experience bar filled to level up. In that case, it wasn’t much of a surprise that the others who had much higher levels didn’t level up.
“Great, I’ll get some equipment from the city. We should give Hell a go afterwards.” Instead of using speech bubbles, he actually said those words this time because everyone there knew who he was anyways.
“Okay, we’ll wait for you here.”
Drako Yau nodded and took out a scroll from his item bag. It was the Return-to-City Scroll, which wasn’t anything new, but it was costly and average players simply couldn’t afford to use it casually. Hades gave him a dozen or so of such scrolls after hearing that he wanted to run all the way back to the city on foot.
He tore the scroll apart. A bright orb of light swallowed him, and he was gone the next moment.
After teleporting back to the resurrection altar in Yoda, Drako Yau wasted no time and dashed straight to the trade centre. Plenty of players sent him looks of admiration and respect on the way. The mysterious masked guardian—everyone in Yoda knew of his existence.
He started looking for items he needed upon arriving at the trade centre. As Soulsmith had mentioned, there was a considerable gap in stats between Level 15 and Level 10 items.
Currently, the most expensive type of equipment on the market were Level 15 epic items. But who was he? A game designer. He knew the price of such items would plummet when more players started clearing Demon City because the dungeon’s Hard and Hell difficulty could potentially Level 20 epic items. Obviously, they were bound to be expensive when they first entered the market, and it would be pretty luxurious for average players to have a single piece of such an item. Most would probably sell the epic item for funds to buy a full set of rare items, which would improve their overall stats.
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