Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
—’You have entered Blood Swamp.’
Lin Jie searched for a crack, which was engulfed by thick layers of blood mist. Once he found it, the Blood Token wrapped him up within a bloody cocoon and squeezed through the crack.
The whole area was filled with blood, sludge, and corpses!
One could just imagine how Blood Swamp was like by looking at its name. This was a swamp created by blood. There were once millions of creatures being massacred in this area. After their deaths, their blood had flown towards this area and created such a bloody slosh.
Not far away, tens of Bloody Skeletons were grabbing handfuls of the red earth around them and absorbing the blood from it. This was to enhance and strengthen their bodies.
[Bloody Skeleton] (Enhanced Elite)
Level: 45
Health Points: 55,000
Attack: 755-956
Defense: 310
Additional effect: Blood Toxin.
Note: Every Bloody Skeleton has venomous blood. Be careful of its sharp claws, they can cause ghastly toxic attacks, decreasing your fighting abilities.
‘Wow, Level 45 Enhanced Elites, that’s great!’ Lin Jie’s eyes brightened up. As the game’s developers followed the game’s chronologies and time-line very closely, masses of monsters were refreshed and gathered within a map that had not been explored thoroughly. All the monsters in Blood Swamp were at least Level 45 Enhanced Elites or above, and they had venomous Blood Toxins. Such toxins would not only corrode the players’ health bars’ upper limits but would corrode their armors and other defensive gear too. If one continued fighting for a prolonged time in Blood Swamp, his armor’s attributes might be corroded all away if he did not find a way to get rid of the toxins. It would then be akin to being under the effects of the Armor Removal skill—forever!
Due to the prowess of the Bloody Skeletons, very few players dared to challenge Blood Swamp! Even if players gathered in groups to level up on this map together, most would choose to give up after some time due to the high repair costs needed for maintaining their weapons’ attributes. As such, there were few people to be seen around Blood Swamp.
However, Lin Jie was unafraid of Blood Swamp. The corroding effects of the Blood Toxins might be effective against Gold or Dark Gold equipment, but its power would be greatly reduced when facing Sub-Legendary armors. Moreover, he possessed the Enchanted Scaly Armor and the Bone Membrane Armor, and both were signature for combating all types of attacks by Undead creatures!
“Enchanted Scaly Armor!”
Lin Jie suffused 50% of his available health points into the Enchanted Scaly Armor, and his Defense power rose steadily until it was almost on par with the Bloody Skeletons’ Attack Power. However, the Bloody Skeletons were still higher than Lin Jie by at least 14 levels, and as such, they could ignore about 14% of Lin Jie’s Defense capabilities. This meant their effective Attack Power would still be 14% higher than Lin Jie. As such, they could still bypass Lin Jie’s Defense capabilities easily.
Such were the effects of level suppression! Not only could such effects be exhibited in players’ fights with monsters, but these effects would also be more pronounced when players dueled among themselves.
“Hunter’s Forward Charge!”
After a booming shout, Lin Jie transformed into a black swirl and neared one of the Bloody Skeletons within moments. He attacked the Bloody Skeleton’s heart area with Combo attacks of Shield Cut and Army Obliteration, and forced it tumbling back!
-1,452!
-485! -452! -473! -455!
‘Such a powerful defense!’ Lin Jie frowned. Due to the fact that he was at a lower level than the monster, his attributes were being partially overridden. If not, going by Broken Blade’s Attack Power, he would not have dealt out only such a measly damage. It was fortunate that the Armor Ignore effect of the Shield Cut skill was still effective. As such, after this Combo attack, the Bloody Skeleton’s health bar was decreased by about 1/10!
At this moment, the Bloody Skeleton’s attack arrived! Both of its claws were like bloody shadows, and they slashed down at Lin Jie’s Kiara Beast King Armor. With a loud ‘clang’, the claws hit the Enchanted Scaly Armor, and one piece of scale was being ripped off!
-374!
The Bloody Skeleton cackled and tried to claw at the flesh exposed from the missing scale. Toxins gleamed within its claws—those were the Blood Toxins! If one came in contact with the toxins, the upper limit of his health bar would be decreased with every passing second. Furthermore, the toxins could corrode players’ armors and deepened any other wounds on the players’ bodies. It was a 3-in-1 advanced poisonous-type attack!
Clang-
Yet when the claws touched Lin Jie’s flesh, a clashing sound was heard. The claws knocked against a layer of bones—the Bone Membrane Armor! This armor was like a layer of bony cement, which covered the top layer of Lin Jie’s skin secretly.
After all, the combat tactics being examined by Paladins throughout the years of battling Undead would definitely hold up against their attacks. In fact, they were targeted at combating the weak areas of the Undead! Lin Jie was now fully immune against the Blood Toxins!
If not for the fact that he had gotten hold of the Bone Membrane Armor, even Lin Jie would not dare to challenge Blood Swamp! Once the Blood Toxins took effect on one’s body, there would be no way to remove it unless the player returned to Midolhaar and sought help from the army’s Priest.
This was even more so for the other players. One would have to complete at least one month’s worth or more missions to accumulate enough Merit Points, just to cast the Bone Membrane Armor skill for once! It would be considered suicide if one entered Blood Swamp without the Bone Membrane Armor.
Lin Jie curved up his lips as he stabbed into the Bloody Skeleton’s heart with a sudden attack. After he struck home, he immediately moved to the back of the skeleton. Undead were known for being slow when turning their bodies around, as even though the Bloody Skeleton waved its claws in front ferociously, Lin Jie escaped unscathed!
“Die!”
With a loud roar, blood spurted out as Lin Jie cleaved off the Bloody Skeleton’s skull!
Ding~
—’You have killed the Bloody Skeleton and received 25,000 EXP (Over-level Kill, EXP Gem bonus). You received 1 Guild of Light Reputation point.’
His EXP bar increased by 0.02% inconspicuously. Such was the huge gain for killing a strong Undead! As the common saying went, ‘The greater the risks, the higher the gains!’
The Bloody Skeleton spawned quite a generous amount of items. It spawned a huge amount of Bone Dust, and they were rare Bloody Bone Dust some more. These Bone Dust were great items that were comparable to, or better than the Undead Raid Commander’s Bone Dust. 100 sets of Bloody Bone Dust could be exchanged for 1 gold coin! However, here at Blood Swamp, most players would prefer to use 100 sets of Bloody Bone Dust to exchange for 1 Merit Point instead.
A Seed of Holy Light, the size of a closed fist was spawned with the death of the Bloody Skeleton. It added a blessing upon Lin Jie, and this time round, the blessing was ‘Increase Defense points by 1%’.
Last but not least, the Bloody Skeleton’s corpse was being absorbed by the Bone Membrane Armor. It became more sturdy, and its effective period was extended by 10 minutes.
That’s right—one could increase the attributes of the Bone Membrane Armor by killing Undead creatures and hence achieved the effect of extending its usable time. Or else, how could one simply survive in the Blood Swamp with just 12 hours of effective use?
Every part of the Bloody Skeleton was a great treasure!
Lin Jie glanced at his health bar—he still got 80% of it, meaning that he was still going strong! Even though the Bloody Skeleton had strong Stats, it had a slow turning speed. As such, he was able to dodge about 50% of its attacks just by simply changing positions. Moreover, its signature Blood Toxins had no effects on Lin Jie! This was why Lin Jie could kill it so effortlessly.
If the Druids team leader Orcc saw this performance, he would most probably scream ‘insane’! It was considered difficult even for a 10-person team to take down the Bloody Skeleton—the MT’s shield would be corroded by the Blood Toxins within a single battle. After battling for a few minutes, the upper limit of the MT’s health bar would decrease to an alarming level, and thus MTs must take turns frequently to tank the monsters.
One of such Enhanced Elite monster would require at least three or more MTs to tank! With Bosses of such powerful attributes, it was no wonder few players would choose to challenge Blood Swamp, even though it occupied such a big region and was littered with lots of monsters.
Lin Jie did an estimation of his abilities. If he used the Wind Rider Blade Aura Executioner and Flame Boost skills, there was a possibility that he could clear the monsters in groups. However, the trouble was that Blood Swamp’s terrain was too flat, and there were no suitable box out spots.
‘Hey, that’s the…!”
Lin Jie’s eyes brightened up as he saw a deep shadow appear around 200 meters away from where he was. That was the embryonic form of a Flesh Beast! The Flesh Beast was a living creature made up from the forceful combination of numerous corpses by a Necromancer. A mature Flesh Beast would be bigger than even a giant. It would have massive strength, and players often nicknamed it as the ‘Hercules’ of the game. There were rumors that if a Flesh Beast engaged in battle, the entire earth would be shaken!
And lo and behold, the embryonic forms of a Flesh Beast was just right before Lin Jie’s eyes now! Its body was just around 1/3 the size of a fully-grown Flesh Beast. To be more accurate, its body was not yet fully formed—it only had a right arm, a head, and a rough torso. Burying its head deeply into Blood Swamp, the Flesh Beast was devouring the blood and dead bodies found from the swamp’s earth hungrily.
[Young Flesh Beast] (Gold Boss)
Level: 45
HP: 350,000
Attack: 500-800
Defense: 450
Additional effect: Blood Devour! The Flesh Beast feeds on fresh blood to increase its attacking capabilities.
‘It’s really just a young Flesh Beast!’ A gleam flashed past Lin Jie’s eyes. This was not because he wanted to kill it, but he had a sudden spike of inspiration from seeing it!
In actual fact, a young Flesh Beast was even more dangerous than a mature Flesh Beast. Flesh Beasts at this stage were like hungry babies, and they would gulp down fresh blood continuously until they were full. Only then would they lift their heads out of the mushy Blood Swamp.
However, as long as it felt any signs of danger, it would increase its speed of eating! The more it ate, the stronger its attributes would get. In Lin Jie’s previous life, some players had concluded from experience that if one attacked a Flesh Beast while it was still amateur, its Stats would grow to become as powerful as it would be after one month’s worth of strengthening—and all this would take place in just half an hour!
However, what was interesting about the young Flesh Beast was that it would not attack anyone actively. In other words, unless players initiated attacks, it would completely ignore their presence—even if one chose to pee on it!
Lin Jie would definitely not want to be instakilled by a Dark Gold Boss, but its hill-like body was a superb box out spot on this map!
He crept up silently to the Flesh Beast. It was eating heartily, and was oblivious to the fact that there was a human being nearing it. Before the Flesh Beast, there were at least 400 to 500 Bloody Skeletons roaming Blood Swamp! In fact, the whole area was so cluttered with the monsters that anyone in their right minds would be turned off by this sight.
‘It’s there then!’ Lin Jie made up his mind and cut open his own skin with a quick slit of his sword. He smeared his blood all over the Flesh Beast. Immediately, this rotting, swollen lump of flesh became the most flavorsome food for the Rotting Skeletons, and they were attracted to it like ants to honey. They started tearing apart the Flesh Beast’s body excitedly and gulped down the fresh blood greedily. Soon enough, a hole that could stand one human appeared within the Flesh Beast’s body.
That was the tricky part—should players attack it, the Flesh Beast would be alerted from its feast. However, if Undead attacked it, it wouldn’t start any active attacks! Moreover, the areas being eaten by the Undead were just about one-thousandth of its whole body.
“Forward Charge!”
Lin Jie spared no time. With a gust of blade aura, he parted the crowded Bloody Skeletons and rushed inside the human-sized hole! When he reached the deepest point, he turned back and glanced at the heavily cluttered Bloody Skeletons in front of him. There only one of them could actually cause him any real damage!
“Flame Boost!” yelled Lin Jie. Flames spewed out at the tip of Broken Blade!
Wind Rider Blade Aura Executioner!
-475! -495! -551! -486!
…
A bunch of Damage Dealt sprang out. Although the Bloody Skeletons’ high Defense made Lin Jie’s Damage Dealt seem mediocre, it was still very satisfying to see all the damage figures flying around!
“Army Obliteration!”
“Shield Cut!”
By sustaining himself with health potions, Lin Jie could totally hold off a single Bloody Skeleton’s attacks on him. On the contrary, this batch of Bloody Skeletons’ health bars kept decreasing! To Lin Jie, these monsters were now just walking coins and EXP for him to collect!
Wu—
One Bloody Skeleton fell. Following this, all the Bloody Skeletons broke apart into bones like a domino effect.
Meanwhile, Lin Jie’s EXP bar surged by 10%!
Other than that… There were gains all before his eyes! In fact, some equipment let out shining glimmers within all the stuff before him!
