Chapter 61:
It takes about a day’s slow walk from Morland Village to Kadman City, so Khaki Tony Tai went offline shortly after setting off, leaving the driving work to three unlucky laborers.
The latter, remembering the kindness of Khaki “rescuing” them, naturally worked diligently and did not dare to slack off. However, even so, when these ordinary people returned to the camp at the risk of being snatched by wolves on the night road, it was already late morning the next day.
After returning to the camp, these three bruised and battered fellows were immediately brought before Miss Miriam by the guards, and they described everything that had happened in a muddled way.
They also tried their best to praise the “warriors of Lord Murphy” with clumsy but sincere language.
However, since the little players were in a state of deep sleep that could not be woken up no matter what when they were offline, Miriam could only send the soundly sleeping Khaki Tony Tai to the city wall defense line, waiting for him to “awake” and report to Murphy in person.
At the same time, the Leading Pigeon was leading the dormitory brothers to grind the second Blood Vulture Vault, a “test instance dungeon.”
In addition to the six brothers, there was also the Precipitation Niuniu carrying a shield in front as a shield tank, blocking the attacks of the increasingly ferocious spawns of despair that kept rushing in from all directions under the cover of black snow.
However, after two days of clearing, the astral shadows in this area had already thinned out a lot, so the combined danger was not as great as when they were “pioneering.”
In the center of the student party’s team, the beautiful and tall Sister Pomegranate was strolling leisurely like an idle person on this crisis-ridden battlefield.
Just like a typical “carried for achievements” boss.She herself had no awareness of being on the battlefield, after all, she had paid “money” for it.
The sword manual she got from Maxim had been given to Ah Yuen of the student party to read, and since it was won as a spoil of war, Maxim did not restrict the circulation of this manual within a certain team. So after Ah Yuen read it, he could also share it with the other brothers.
From this point of view, the student party had also made a good profit.
Although this thing required that it could not be given to more than 10 people, and their computation beads would record the number of times it was passed on, so it was difficult to cheat in the game, the student party had already come up with a countermeasure and was planning to find an opportunity to implement it.
If you don’t let everyone see it in the game, then we’ll translate it and post it on the forum, and no one can stop us, right?
“Niuniu, you’re really bad.”
The slender and long-legged big sister taunted her little brother as she enjoyed the pleasure of “auto-grinding”:
“I gave you the correct answer, but you couldn’t even copy it correctly. I was just wondering, we practiced the same fist, why can’t you beat Maxim?
Did you slack off after going to college because no one was supervising you?”
“Hey, don’t mention it, sister. That BUG of yours has been fixed.”
Niuniu rolled his eyes and complained:
“I went to challenge Maxim eagerly, but he just swung his sword at me without any intention of comparing fists and feet, and even mocked me for being sly.
You just took advantage of the early challenge time slot.
Ow, shit!
There’s an astral wolf over there! I saw its tail!
Quick!
Gather up, brothers, it’s a rare dungeon monster!”
“The spawn rate of these rare monsters today is really damn high! The dog planner must have secretly changed the spawn rate after seeing our feedback post! This is what it should be.
Listen to advice to be civilized!”
The Kono Maomao Shark carrying a hunting rifle immediately aimed and fired, forcing the astral wolf hiding in the shadows of a short wall to come out, and then the dormitory brothers surrounded it skillfully.
They had already learned that in the third vault instances, these “rares” would occasionally spawn. They had encountered them while grinding the instances yesterday and today.
Although killing them often did not drop anything, Brother Stick’s squad squad killed an astral wolf yesterday afternoon and picked up some rare alchemy materials, which they exchanged for a《Spirit Perception》skill book from Lady Tris.
Astral beasts were certainly much more dangerous than spawns of fear, but facing this group of “high-level players” whose levels were mostly above 5, it couldn’t do much either.
Soon it was beaten until its scales were severely wounded, and then the Invincible Tyrannosaurus Cheche landed a well-angled spirit burst that took it down directly.
“Loot dropped!”
The Spicy Gugu Chicken let out a shrill cry, then got up holding a dull, star-speckled wolf bone, and the whole student party immediately beamed with joy.
But before they could fully enjoy it, Sister Pomegranate reached out and took the drop that Gugu Chicken was about to hand to the Leading Pigeon.
She played with the item and said to the student party:
“Did you little brothers forget that this instance was booked by your sister? I get to pick the loot first.”
“Sister! You can’t do this!”
Niuniu shouted angrily. He had always felt that his elder sister was unfairly exploiting his companions, but Sister Pomegranate then waved her hand and said lightly:
“I’ll pay you later, and you can take them out for a lavish meal today, eat as much as you want, sister will treat you. Isn’t that enough?”
“Hey, that’s more than enough, sister.”
The easily satisfied student party was immediately bought off.
They were just playing around on this instance trip anyway, while also bringing along Sister Pomegranate, this “super newbie” who was not only Niuniu’s cousin, but also their alumna.
Her graduation photo is still hanging in the school’s outstanding alumni section.
This face had to be given.
A few minutes later, the Leading Pigeon, as the team leader, took out a blood vial containing Murphy’s blood and opened the door to the second vault. After scavenging inside, they successfully obtained two veteran weapons and a few components of a veteran armor set. Sister Pomegranate even lucked out and found a《Spirit Blast: Bind》technique manual in a corner of the wall.
It could be considered a super jackpot, a very fruitful trip.
But on the other side, the situation in the first vault was gloomy.
The Meow King leading the team was squatting in a farmer’s squat pose at the vault entrance, looking at the three recruit staves and two blood-veined spears laid out in front of him, and then at the composition of his own team.
He himself was a spirit apprentice, Dump Truck Iaido was a shieldhand, Black Stockings Under the Keyboard was a two-handed swordsman, Day One No Fap was a dual-wielding swordsman, and the last, Electronic Succubus Old Tune, was a damn gunslinger.
After working so hard on the instance, not only did they not see the astral beasts which were instance rares, but the rewards they got in the end were not a single usable item, which was outrageous.
This was just too dark!
It was almost as if they were being targeted intentionally by the development team.
As these five were feeling resentful, they saw the Leading Pigeon’s team boasting about Sister Pomegranate’s jackpot on the “world channel” in their computation beads, causing the self-proclaimed professional player Meow King’s face to darken further.
Damn!
We were definitely targeted!
“Take these junk back and hand them over to Maxim to grind some favor, let’s come back and grind again tomorrow!”
The Meow King stood up and kicked the now closed vault door fiercely, saying ferociously:
“There are still two days left until the event ends, I don’t believe I can’t get lucky just once!”
They left cursing and grumbling, but failed to notice Murphy quietly slipping out from the shadows around the first vault, carrying a spirit bag.
He glanced at the departing backs of the Meow King and his group, a hint of relief showing on his lips.
Heh, you think you can get lucky?
As long as those vulgar stories you made up about me and Tris, me and Lady Adele, me and the Young Lady, and even me and Maxim don’t disappear from the forums for a day, you few culprits won’t see any luck for a single day!
I told you, Mr. Murphy holds quite a grudge!
“Let me see, who’s the next team coming?”
Murphy checked the screen in his core bead.
After confirming that the next team coming to the first vault should be the Dump Truck Trio and the new little brother Heaven’s Chosen Grayman, he carefully took out weapons, armor, and a basic spirit manual written by Tris that matched their job requirements from his spirit bag and placed them in the vault, while looking at the jobs of the Dump Truck group.
Considering that these four little fellows who had started the “administrative gameplay” had performed quite well in the Survivor Camp, he would reward them today.
With Murphy’s current dexterity, it wouldn’t even take five minutes to finish this and slip away, while the “loot” in the other two vaults was handled by Lady Adele.
The latter could fly, so her speed would be even faster.
Murphy hummed a tune as he returned to the area below the city wall defense line. At that moment, Khaki Tony Tai, who had just gone through a “representative negotiation,” also came online. He stretched lazily as he got up, looked around and saw that he was back in the safe area, so he let down his guard. But when he looked up, he saw Murphy walking towards him with his hands behind his back.
Khaki immediately felt a pang of anxiety.
The stuff he blurted out last night in front of the Witch Hunters, his own NPC didn’t hear that, did he?
And he was charmed by the insidious and cunning Witch Hunters at the time, so those comments didn’t represent his true thoughts!
He was absolutely loyal to Mr. Murphy!
After psyching himself up, Khaki Tony Tai went up to Murphy and recounted the events of last night.
He added a billion little artistic embellishments.
Including but not limited to him debating the group of scholars, him remaining dauntless in the face of threats, him berating the Witch Hunters for lacking martial ethics, and so on. Something that could be said in one minute was dragged out by him to five minutes.
Listening to this, Murphy was quite puzzled.
That’s not right, lad. What I heard when I took over the computation bead to eavesdrop last night wasn’t like this at all!
Are you trying to deceive me like this to get on the “blacklist” as well?
But as a noble NPC, Murphy did not expose Khaki’s boasting. Since there wasn’t much entertainment in these ruins anyway, listening to his solo stand-up comedy was quite interesting.
Especially Khaki’s northeastern accent, which was quite nostalgic, Murphy vaguely remembered having a northeastern girlfriend he spent half a month with a few years ago.
After Khaki finished, Murphy stroked his chin in a pensive manner, then patted the little player’s shoulder and said:
“You’ve done well, warrior!
Perhaps I should consider appointing you as a dedicated ‘negotiator’, but regrettably, we are not yet extravagant enough to have such a position set up specifically.
So, go to Maxim and claim your well-deserved reward.
I will remember your outstanding contribution to the greater plan!”
Leveled up!
Definitely leveled up!
Favor must have increased!
The little player was overjoyed, but did not forget to profess his loyalty:
“Thank you, Lord Murphy. It is my honor to serve your great cause.”
He politely bowed in salute, then bounced away as if the floor was burning hot to claim his generous reward.
Murphy shook his head watching his back, this guy ran off at the mouth a bit too much to be fully reliable. But his luck was indeed not bad, and he did bring back the information Murphy needed.
Though Murphy had known all this last night already and discussed it with Tris and the Young Lady.
The unanimous conclusion they reached was:
Can’t beat them, can’t escape them, so let them do as they please.
The golden old knight said their goal was to confirm Salrokdar’s life or death and the final fate of the Blood Vulture clan, how coincidental?
This happened to also be one of Murphy’s gang’s goals.
Of course, the Young Lady had a different opinion on this, but in the current situation, she couldn’t come up with a better response either, so she could only adopt the traditional ostrich tactic of pretending not to see that pack of Witch Hunters eyeing them ravenously.
Tris had said before that Salrokdar might not be dead, and no one knew the current situation in the inner city. The elite Witch Hunters attacking was actually a good thing for Murphy and Tris.
It meant that in an extreme scenario, they wouldn’t even need to scheme in secret, those Witch Hunters would actively help them eliminate a major nuisance in all sorts of ways.
On Khaki Tony Tai’s side, when he came to Maxim for the reward, the loyal servant prompted by Murphy had already prepared it for him.
A rough wooden box contained a full set of standard masterwork veteran armor, next to a twin-handed night bat battleaxe glowing greenish and a uniquely shaped stone gargoyle crimson wing blade, all spirit weapons left behind by Vault Guard Mick.
This scene happened to be witnessed by the Meow King’s group who came to grind favor. Seeing the newbie who had just entered the game three days ago obtaining such a high-level set of equipment from the NPC, these veteran players’ eyes nearly popped out.
“Damn! Did you sell your ass?”
The Meow King went up to Khaki Tony Tai and said:
“How did you get this? Got any insider tricks? Share with your brother, will ya?”
“Oh well, just good luck. I took a random event that triggered a hidden follow-up.”
Khaki waved dismissively as if it was no big deal, but his face beamed with pride, exuding a Versailles air. Upon hearing the words “good luck”, not just the Meow King, but the faces of his four heavenly kings also darkened.
Hey brother, don’t hit the sore spot so precisely!
“Oh right, Meow King, I got some information for you.”
While donning the veteran armor, Khaki did not forget the main point either. He turned to the Meow King and said:
“A very powerful Witch Hunter group spawned at Morland Village. That’s where I did my hidden quest. I asked the neutral NPCs there before leaving.
They said you can ask them about that sword in your hand. You posted your hidden quest on the forum before, didn’t you?
I just casually helped you out a bit.
They said they welcome you anytime, but that bunch of bastards have no martial ethics anymore, so this is definitely dangerous.”
“Ding”
After Khaki Tony Tai finished relaying this information, the Meow King’s computation bead sounded a quest update notification. He looked down and saw that the hidden quest he took from Murphy had updated to the next step:
【Hidden Quest ‘Shadow of the Old Faith’ Step Two Updated:
Quest Name: Lone Sword to the Meeting
Quest Description: You, entrusted with a mission by Lord Murphy, have once again heard information related to the Witch Hunters from your companion. This may be a good opportunity for you to unravel the history of the Old Faith and the secrets of Avalon. However, from your companion’s description alone, you know this will absolutely be a dangerous undertaking.
You may even have to pay with your life, or worse.
Quest Objective: Go to the Witch Hunter base in Morland Village, find the replica of the Sacred Blade of Avalon and the secrets of the Avalon Church.
Quest Reward: Unknown.
Note: This is an optional quest, choosing to reject it will be considered giving up the entire hidden quest chain.】
“Damn, does the dev team have some problem understanding the word ‘optional’? Did the PE teacher who taught you language skills used to sell spicy hot pot on the street corner as his previous job?
In this situation, I basically have no choice, right?”
The Meow King rolled his eyes while cursing out the dev team’s whole family.
But he was also a bit curious and eager, hidden quests had proven to give very generous rewards, and the equipment obtained from quests couldn’t have any luck factor involved, right?
“I’ll have to hire some people to take me over there before I log off.”
The Meow King tapped his cheek, quickly forming a plan. He glanced at the newly equipped Khaki Tony Tai and snorted inwardly.
He was a noble veteran player!
It was time to show these newbies who only knew how to rely on luck what real skills looked like. He had to put up a brilliant fight to turn the situation around, otherwise where could a veteran player like him put his face?