"Swoosh!!"
"Swoosh!!"
"Swoosh!!"
At Huoyan Yan's command, more than thirty archer-players unleashed a rain of arrows.
Their first focus target: a Greatshield Hilichurl Berserker standing at the outer edge of the camp.
With no armor to speak of, the giant Hilichurl was instantly turned into a porcupine. It let out a miserable roar and collapsed on the spot.
"Ya!!"
"Ya ya—ika—kundala!!!"
"Mi—muhe—ye!!"
The entire Hilichurl camp stirred in agitation, roaring back as one after another surged out from the wooden huts.
A dense tidal wave of Hilichurls rushed out—easily as many as the hundred-man raid group.
Players froze for half a second.
They expected a lot of mobs…
Just not this many.
Fortunately, they had prepared.
Before pulling aggro, frontline players dug pits, set up trip ropes, and littered the approach with spike traps.
So when the Hilichurls charged—
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Shunk—shunk—shunk!
Bodies fell. Hilichurls toppled into traps and were skewered before even reaching the frontline.
But the ones behind simply stepped on the corpses and continued forward.
The first real clash came fast.
Front-row tanks braced behind their Wooden Armor, Wooden Helmets, and Wooden Shields.
Warriors wielding Silver Swords, Mercenary Greatswords, and Iron-tipped Spears cut down smaller Hilichurls almost instantly.
The opening trades were good—
Until the Hilichurl Archers and the Shamans got involved.
Arrows rained from the camp. Several players were hit, blood splashing across the battlefield.
If not for the earlier shopping spree at the Shop, those players would've died right then and there.
They yanked the arrows out, used Bandages, then chugged Small Healing Potions and Energy Drinks—patching themselves up enough to continue fighting.
But the worst wasn't the archers.
It was the three Hilichurl Shamans.
One Water.
One Anemo.
One Dendro.
The Anemo Shaman thrust its staff into the sky, summoning a swirling wind vortex that sucked nearby players inside.
At the same time, the Dendro Shaman created thorned vines inside the vortex—turning the whirlwind into a shredding machine.
And then—
The Hydro Shaman's water pillars slammed into the trapped players, battering them repeatedly.
A perfectly chained three-element combo.
"T-This combo is stupidly strong!"
Players screamed in agony as the vortex shredded their HP bars.
From the rear, Huoyan Yan nearly burst a vein.
"Assassins! Where are the assassins?! Get in there and delete their mages!!"
If those three were allowed to free-cast, the frontline would collapse within minutes.
And once front row fell?
The backline would be butchered.
"Wind Step only lasts long enough for me to sneak to the edge of the camp!"
The player [First Assassin of Fandou Garden] shouted in team voice.
"The Shamans are in the center! And they're protected by Greatshield Hilichurls! I can't reach them!"
"Then what about the other assassins? We have fifteen!"
"There are other assassins—
but I'm the only Rogue class with invis burst.
The others? We've got Jesters who can only throw jump-scare boxes…
And Widows, who can only charm targets.
How do you expect those to cut a Shaman?!"
Huoyan Yan rubbed his face violently.
"Right! We have a Stealth Archer! Can't he sneak in and one-shot a Shaman?!"
The stealth archer—[Hi, Hello]—responded calmly:
"I can.
But if I take just one, the other two will alert immediately.
We need to drop all three in one go."
"Then what do we do now?! We can't keep letting them blast us!"
Huoyan Yan was practically yelling.
Just then—
"Wait!"
[Hi, Hello] suddenly shouted in voice chat.
"There's a new icon on the map! Moving toward my position!"
"Reinforcements?"
"Another assassin? A high-level one?!"
"No…"
The First Assassin gasped.
"That's not a player icon…
It's an NPC icon!"
A beat of silence.
Then—
"ID—Liang Chuan?!
What the—
Why is Chuan-ge here?!"
"WE'RE SCREWED!!
If he dies, the whole game fails!!
If the test server shuts down, we won't even know if we'll get our accounts back!!!"
Players collectively panicked.
The main NPC—
The core of the entire "Fourth Calamity" system—
The literal main crystal of their world—
was walking straight into a Shaman-infested war zone.
◇ I'll be dropping one bonus chapters for every 10 reviews. comment
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