Chapter 12: Bought from the Official Website | Monsters Are Coming
One hour later.
The Kindergarten Little Class players finished their respawn cooldown, and the heated discussions in the chat group also died down.
Amidst the group owner's furious roars of "You guys are really hopeless!", thirty players logged back into the game and respawned at the central plaza of Emperor's Mound.
This time, they still chose to explore the Shadowed Cavern.
According to the Guide's explanation, capturing a territory node was quite simple.
They just needed to shatter the node crystal corrupted by Black Tide energy, and the power of the Emperor's Sign would once again cover the territory node, merging it into Emperor's Mound. At that point, new functions would become available in Emperor's Mound.
After an hour's journey, the Kindergarten Little Class arrived once again at the crystal wall of the Shadowed Cavern.
Unexpectedly, they discovered that other players were engaged in fierce combat with Iron Shell Bugs.
Among them, two players had chosen a monster form they had never seen before: Bonefire. Black flames burned all around them, and with a mere gesture, they could condense fireballs to hurl at the Iron Shell Bugs.
Black Ball: "This Bonefire form looks so cool! I love manipulating fire. I'm definitely choosing it for my next star vein."
Drunken Milk: "Guys, it looks like they're having trouble holding on. Should we help?"
Iron Hammer: "Of course we help! We're here for revenge, after all!"
—
After a brief exchange, the thirty players of Kindergarten Little Class switched to their monster forms and joined the battle.
The scene immediately descended into chaos. In the cramped space, collisions were unavoidable, leading to many hilarious moments.
"Bro, where are you biting? You're biting me! I'm a player, damn it!"
"Hey, Gargoyle brother next door, why are you smashing my head? Look at your target carefully, will you?!"
"Who threw that fireball? You hit me! Put me out quickly, I'm losing HP constantly!"
"Sorry, bro, I can start fires but can't put them out. My bad. Rest in peace."
—
In the chaos, many players were accidentally struck by their own teammates.
Several players immediately turned into black mist and entered the death cooldown.
The game's high level of realism made the battling players complain again.
Other games usually have faction systems or safe PK modes, allowing players to choose whether they can harm teammates.
[T/N: PK means player killer.]
But this game had no such settings. Even teammates could inflict damage.
Especially with Bonefire's black flame attacks, once they hit a target, they were hard to extinguish and continued burning until death.
As a result, some unlucky players weren't killed by Iron Shell Bugs but instead died at the hands of their own team.
During this time, several Iron Shell Bugs were slain, and their life energy was absorbed into the victorious players, granting them evolution points that increased their level and strengthened their physical aptitude.
In Qi Sheng's system design, each time a player killed a monster, the Challenger System would extract 30% of the monster's dissipating life energy and convert it into sacrificial power for the sacrificial power pool. The remaining 70% would be converted into life energy suitable for the player, enhancing their physical aptitude, which players understood as experience points.
Watching from the sidelines, Qi Sheng naturally noticed the players' complaints about friendly fire.
But there was no solution to this issue at the current stage.
After all, Monster World was a real world disguised as a game. There was no concept of factions or friendly fire immunity between players.
Instead, the players themselves came up with a reasonable explanation, assuming this was a deliberate design to make the game more realistic. While complaining, they also couldn't help but praise the development team's skill.
The cave battle lasted for over ten minutes before ending in a complete party wipe.
Though Qi Sheng very much wanted to capture this territory node, he knew that with the players' current strength, taking it down was unrealistic.
After Guide's perception scan, it was revealed that the cave had five subterranean levels.
The players were on the first level, and the deeper they went, the more Iron Shell Bugs they would encounter. The territory node crystal was located on the fifth level.
To clear this dungeon, the players still needed to grow stronger.
This prompted him to consider recruiting more players.
After recruiting a second batch of players, Qi Sheng still had 100,000 sacrificial power points.
The four contained Primordial Monsters generated 960 sacrificial power points daily, and with players hunting in Monster World and sacrificing collected resources, the income and expenses before the expansion of Emperor's Mound had reached a balance.
He planned to recruit 50 more players and keep the remaining 50,000 sacrificial power points as a reserve.
One hour later, their respawn cooldowns ended.
When the two groups of players logged back into the game, they stared at each other in surprise at the central respawn point of Emperor's Mound.
Through discussion, the Kindergarten Little Class learned that the map's exploration progress was shared by all players.
When they reached the Blood-Soaked Plains, the other group also saw the new marker on the map and entered the Shadowed Cavern according to the coordinates.
Their experience inside was very similar. When they saw the spiritual ore, they got excited and immediately purchased pickaxes to mine it.
But soon, the noise of pickaxes striking rock walls attracted large numbers of Iron Shell Bugs, leading to a battle.
Then the Kindergarten Little Class arrived, joined the chaotic fight, and they all got wiped together.
At this point, Iron Hammer from the Kindergarten Little Class couldn't help but curiously ask Li Zheng.
"Bro, how do you acquire the Bonefire form your team is using?"
In response, Li Zheng immediately explained how they had obtained the right to unlock a second star vein slot after killing Bonefire, and how two of their members spent 1000 sacrificial power to purchase and embed the Bonefire monster soul.
After hearing his explanation, the Kindergarten Little Class players who had chosen the Owl-Headed Fiend form all raised their hands and cheered.
"Hahaha, I knew I made the right choice! Owl-Headed Fiend's perception combined with Bonefire's long-range elemental attacks make an unbeatable combo for early-game clearing."
"Damn, I only picked Owl-Headed Fiend for team composition, but now you're telling me it's the meta build. What a pleasant surprise!"
Listening to their excitement, Li Zheng shook his head with a smile.
"This game has a very high degree of freedom. In the future, there will be plenty of new Primordial Monster Souls to choose from. Bonefire is just the beginning. Every monster form has huge development potential, so there's no need to worry about your initial form being weak. Besides, you can change your initial form later for just 1000 sacrificial power."
Drunken Milk: "By the way, do you guys know why the starter village feels so empty? It's kind of deserted."
Black Ball: "Yeah, I've been wondering about that too. So far, we've only run into you guys and haven't seen any other players."
Cute Baby: "It wouldn't make sense if everyone had already left the starter village either. Right now, there are only four Primordial Monster Forms to choose from, three starter options and Bonefire, which you unlocked. Could it be that no one else has killed any Primordial Monsters?"
Hearing this, Li Zheng was briefly stunned. After a moment of silence, he came up with a reasonable explanation.
"Maybe it's to resolve server congestion. The Dark Land might have opened multiple sub-servers. We entered a newly launched server with fewer players, so there aren't many people in the starter village."
"Sounds reasonable." Iron Hammer nodded in agreement.
"By the way, which platform did you guys buy your game access from?"
Li Zheng's sudden question caught the Kindergarten Little Class members off guard.
They didn't dare tell the truth, since their answer could affect the Welfare Officer's safety.
If they weren't careful, the Welfare Officer might end up enjoying an all-inclusive stay behind bars.
"Haha, we were lucky. We managed to snatch 30 access slots from Dark Land's official website… What about you guys? Where did you buy yours?"
Iron Hammer's counter-question made the ten players from the Grind Kings group feel a bit awkward. Li Zheng hadn't expected the question to be thrown back at him.
He had asked to gauge whether the other party had the strength to form a guild that his gold-farming group could join.
Feeling slightly embarrassed, Li Zheng still smiled and replied.
"What a coincidence. We also didn't go through any other channels. We snatched our access slots from the official website for 128,888."
While chatting, both sides offered reasonable answers.
They tacitly chose not to pursue the topic further and smoothly shifted the conversation back to exploring the Shadowed Cavern, deciding to team up and explore together.