Chapter 026: Picking Up What One Has Blown Up Oneself

Horned flies themselves possess no offensive capabilities; instead, they seem to rely on spawning swarms of bats to attack their enemies. Moreover, these creatures remain stationary. As long as one can evade the onslaught of bats, killing a horned fly is a simple matter.

But in the cramped confines of these corridors, is it truly so easy to slay a horned fly spewing bats in a frenzy? Clearly not! Horned flies typically spawn amidst hordes of monsters, and with countless bats obstructing the way, players fall easily—let alone Lin Jia, the young mage.

Bats have very little health; even someone like Lin Jia, whose attack power is nearly zero, can dispatch them instantly with physical attacks. Yet the bats' own attacks are quite formidable: the kind of monster that inflicts a painful bite with each strike. If more than four bats swarm a player, even a tough warrior like Windless, the fourth brother, can’t withstand the assault.

At the moment, however, Lin Jia need not worry about bat attacks. As the last one to enter, his character is stacked atop those of the eldest and the fourth brother, with two tanks shielding him from harm. The potions strewn across the ground and the fourth brother’s horse-slaying saber have yet to disappear. In this game, if items dropped on the ground are not picked up after some time, the system refreshes them to maintain cleanliness and order in the environment. While this interval is generally long, no one has ever tracked exactly how long it lasts.

More than four minutes have passed since the fourth brother died. Lin Jia’s finger has been pressed firmly on F1, never letting go, his mouse darting swiftly to follow the monsters’ movements. The monsters here offer generous experience points, and since the eldest and the fourth brother fell earlier and hadn’t managed to regroup after reviving, Lin Jia now claims all experience for himself.

Zombies grant Lin Jia 160 experience points; horned flies, red wild boars, black wild boars, scorpion snakes, black maggots, and wedge moths grant 300, 320, 380, 360, 180, and 350 respectively. These monsters give more than double the experience of zombies—if not for the danger, farming them would be far more rewarding.

As the final red wild boar collapsed under the barrage of Lin Jia’s lightning, the thinning crowd of monsters prompted the fourth brother to roar, unable to hold back any longer: “Charge!” Swinging his slender, wind-blessed saber, he cut down the bat that had been gnawing at him and rushed forward.

Roused by the shout, the eldest brother hurriedly charged toward the spot where he had fallen, making straight for the cluster of sparkling loot on the ground. Lin Jia suddenly found himself without protection and quickly darted into a corner behind the eldest brother, terrified. Had not two zombies followed the fourth brother away, Lin Jia’s little mage might have been in grave danger.

Dodging and weaving, Lin Jia picked off the swarming bats with fireballs. Meanwhile, the fourth brother was besieged by bats, frantically guzzling healing potions and shouting, “Heal me!” in his desperation. Who knew when the saber on the ground would disappear—after all that effort, if it vanished just as he reached for it, it would be enough to make one spit blood in frustration.

Though there were dozens of bats, they were soon cleared. The fourth brother strode over to his saber, lying on the ground for ages, and retrieved it. Seeing him reclaim the saber, Lin Jia breathed a sigh of relief; letting his guard down, his mage was immediately bitten by two nearby bats. If not for the eldest brother’s timely healing spell, he might not have survived. Swallowing a medium healing potion, Lin Jia finished the bats off with a lavish lightning spell. The eldest brother let out a relieved sigh: “That was close! Almost lost you there!”

All the other potions on the ground vanished within seconds of the saber being picked up, but the three brothers, reunited with the saber, felt no regret. The joy of recovering a lost treasure was even greater than when they had first acquired it.

With the bats all slain, the three brothers began to sift cautiously through the monster corpses for spoils, taking care not to lure any more monsters. Grinning, the fourth brother swapped his saber back in, wiping sweat from his brow. “That was nerve-wracking! If I’d lost it, I’d have wept dry!” Indeed, there were hardly any warriors on the server who could wield a horse-slaying saber at level 20—especially not a top-tier one like his. Most were still stuck with bronze axes or similar weapons.

Laughing as he gathered potions from the ground to replenish his supplies, Lin Jia said, “When you ran off just now, you almost got me killed! But the monsters here give amazing experience—some are worth over 300, nearly 400 points each. Why don’t we keep training here?”

Before the fourth brother could reply, the eldest brother exclaimed, “Wow! I finally got a ‘Soul Fire Talisman’!” He eagerly opened his inventory to show them the skill book he had just picked up—a level 18 skill book, *Soul Fire Talisman*, the very spell he needed. It had dropped from the electric zombie Lin Jia killed first. Who would have thought that zombie would come through in a pinch? With this crucial skill, the eldest brother’s female priestess, Misty Grace, at last had access to the only practical ranged attack for priests at present.

Without delay, the eldest brother double-clicked the book and set the talisman to F1, moving his usual healing spell to F2. However, pressing F1 a few times produced no effect, leaving the three of them puzzled. Was the skill only triggered when attacking monsters?

The eldest brother lured a zombie from a distance and tried attacking again with F1, but still nothing happened. Frustrated, he turned to the fourth brother. “Is it a passive skill? I heard it’s supposed to be a ranged attack!”

The fourth brother shook his head. “Let’s check the official site!” He switched windows to look it up. The game’s site offered scant information, perhaps because the beta had only just begun and much data remained unposted, though basic skill info was available.

After a while, the fourth brother pointed at his screen. “It says here ‘A ranged spell similar to Fireball, using talismans to attack enemies.’ Maybe, like your Poison Spell, it needs a supporting item to activate? There’s a vendor in Stone City that sells talismans—maybe it’s that.”

To get to the bottom of it, and with their potions nearly depleted, the three brothers decided to return to town to restock and try buying a talisman. As Lin Jia was about to teleport, the eldest brother ran over and initiated a trade, handing him a green scroll: a Town Portal. Like the Random Teleport and Dungeon Escape scrolls, it was an escape item; the Random Teleport warped you somewhere random on the current map, Dungeon Escape sent you to a random spot on the main map, but the Town Portal took you straight to the safe zone in Stone City.

However, this item wasn’t sold by any NPC vendors; it only dropped from certain monsters—bats here, or cave bats in the Skeleton Cave near Bicheng, for example. The eldest and fourth brothers, who had spent ages farming the Skeleton Cave, had amassed quite a stockpile. Sold to other players, they could fetch thousands of gold coins a bundle.

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(Trouble: A chapter late at night! I have to return to Wuhan today, so updates may come in the evening these next few days. Please keep voting for me!)

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