Chapter 1629: Players Trust Their Own Strength More
Of course, that strike didn’t harm Xu Huo. Even though the player was fast and used props to compensate for his broken leg disadvantage, the person sitting in front of him wasn’t Xu Huo at all. No matter how well-prepared he was, it couldn’t work.
Seeing the person in front of him suddenly disappear, the player realized he had been tricked. Before he could turn around, a black blade pierced through his chest.
Kicking the corpse away, Xu Huo looked at the remaining two. “The contact method stays the same.”
The two had no choice but to keep taking antidotes to slow the poison’s onset, but their physical condition was clearly deteriorating. Since the medicine didn’t match the toxin, it couldn’t eliminate it.
Xu Huo ignored them and instead planned to search the two corpses for props.
“Let me, let me!” Tong Qi ran out of the mall, beaming. “You keep an eye on those two so they don’t slip away. Leave the small task of collecting props to me!”
These two players weren’t particularly wealthy. Each carried over a dozen props, more than half of which were D-rank.
Tong Qi gathered the props and handed them to Xu Huo. “Killing and looting really pays off. This is way faster than clearing an instance.”
Xu Huo let him pick one and stored the rest. Glancing at the time, it was already 5:30 AM—the sixth day since entering the instance.
Not long after, Scarface Glasses finally returned, struggling to bring Young Master Mo with him.
They weren’t surprised by the scene outside the mall and simply explained to Xu Huo why they had left.
Young Master Mo’s location prop was good, but unexpectedly, some player had obtained a transport prop and moved the entire location prop away. Young Master Mo had already fallen asleep, and Scarface Glasses couldn’t let him fall into other players’ hands, so he had to chase after them.
“Their original intention was to lure me away,” Scarface Glasses said apologetically. They had agreed to stay at the mall, and his unauthorized departure was a breach of promise.
“You can’t blame him entirely,” Young Master Mo said. “Those people probably planned to send some to the mall, but in the end, they were all held up…”
He didn’t finish, noticing the corpses and the two slumped figures on the ground, so he swallowed the rest.
Xu Huo gave them an out. “To injure a B-rank player like this, the opposing side must have been numerous. If you hadn’t held them off, not many in the mall would have survived.”
If not for Xu Huo single-handedly killing two B-rank players earlier, Young Master Mo and Scarface Glasses might have believed his praise.
As for the other six, one had disappeared on the spot, two were killed, and the remaining three likely slipped away when they saw the situation turn bad. As for the surveillance devices in the mall, some were taken by the ambushed players, and the rest were probably stolen by those who fled.
“Taking one wasn’t enough; they had to take everything. These people are so greedy!” Tong Qi fumed.
“Actually, those surveillance devices aren’t very useful,” Scarface Glasses remarked.
Just like now—they roughly knew how to clear the instance but couldn’t find the door. This instance had strong randomness; everyone’s experience was different.
He and Young Master Mo tacitly avoided asking Xu Huo why he had woken up so quickly.
But soon, they had another discovery. After the two players struggled for an hour, one of them actually disappeared, while the other met the same fate as the first.
“They’re gambling with their lives,” Young Master Mo frowned. “Can they really clear it in the end?”
“Instead of worrying about whether others can clear it, shouldn’t you think about yourselves?” Tong Qi said. “You don’t have tickets. Who knows how things will turn out for you?”
This comment chilled the atmosphere.
“Are you always this stubborn?” Scarface Glasses looked at him. Being this stubborn and still surviving wasn’t easy.
Tong Qi laughed. “I’ve got a bit of luck on my side. Besides, who would bother messing with a poor guy like me? Look at those 013 district people—if Yi Jun hadn’t been so inhumane, no one would have paid them any attention.”
“And,” he added with a suggestive glance at Young Master Mo, “someone like you is still alive and well.”
This guy radiated contempt for others from head to toe, practically having “You plebeians” written on his face.
“But it’s not surprising. Having some family background in the game is indeed something to be proud of.”
Young Master Mo was exasperated but couldn’t really turn around and leave. After a moment, he said, “You can’t expect high moral standards from someone who’s barely clothed and starving. I’ve seen plenty of that kind.”
“That’s an exaggeration. Even at my poorest, I wasn’t that bad,” Tong Qi protested on behalf of himself and other players.
“He means that compared to players with family backgrounds, wild players like us are the ones barely clothed and starving,” Xu Huo added.
Tong Qi snorted. “Just because your family is rich doesn’t mean you can see everyone as thieves.”
Young Master Mo didn’t get angry at this. “More or less. The more destitute someone is, the more they want to grab everything. My family has been around for a hundred years, and I’ve seen too many of this kind. Especially those who rely on themselves in the game—they often adhere to the law of the jungle, completely abandoning humanity, acting like beasts driven by their own desires.”
“If they can’t even control their own behavior, aren’t they the result of inferior genes?”
The air fell silent for a moment. Xu Huo said nothing, and Tong Qi scratched his head. “I feel like I’ve been subtly insulted.”
“I’m not targeting you two,” Young Master Mo added. “You’re not people without principles.”
Xu Huo didn’t dwell on the issue. Instead, he asked, “If you don’t take in outsiders, how does your family ensure continued prosperity?”
The death rate in the game was very high. Even those who did instances with guides and bodyguards couldn’t guarantee absolute safety. And as he said, players who couldn’t be restrained by law or morality trusted their own strength more. They would rob even the Game Government Base, let alone player families. If a family couldn’t continuously produce talented players, it would inevitably decline. And even if they maintained some strength, they couldn’t completely reject outsiders for the sake of growth.
Alliances like Scarface Glasses’ marriage-based assistance were only a small part.
Young Master Mo smiled slightly. “If a family doesn’t produce powerful players, no matter how many strong outsiders they absorb, they’ll eventually be replaced or carved up. Unless, like those families at higher-level wormhole points, they have special methods to cultivate genius players.”
“What special methods?” Tong Qi asked eagerly.
“Do you think I know?” Young Master Mo turned to him. “There are plenty of player families that have been wiped out because some passing player took a whim.”
Xu Huo rubbed his chin:
Special cultivation methods—for physical evolution, it was probably similar to the instrument-assisted activation method used by Platinum Eye. As for intelligence, there were likely related potions or instrument achievements.
(Chapter End)