Chapter 2864: Little Dog's Bell
The moment the bell rang, the silver-armored woman and the other players in that layer of space changed color, and in the next instant, they sought out nearby cubicles to hide in.
Almost as they dodged into the cubicles, the space rippled, and a faint, dusty shadow suddenly materialized in the corridor, charging straight for the silver-armored woman closest to the incident!
The silver-armored woman had her back to the dust, and she was touched just as she was about to step through the door, but the silver armor on her body suddenly scattered and expanded, forming a circular protective barrier.
The barrier successfully bought time before being dissolved by the spatial force, but it was enough for the silver-armored woman to escape—the cubicle door closed again.
Xu Huo held his breath and focused. He had taken the bell, which should be an important item in the instance, capable of affecting the boss's actions. It wasn't surprising that the boss would break the rules for this, but just as he was ready to bolt out the door, a poor unfortunate appeared.
Probably wanting to observe the instance boss's situation, this person hadn't fully closed the cubicle door after entering, leaving a crack...
This person didn't have the life-saving item the silver-armored woman had, and in an instant, they turned into a small pile of dust.
The instance boss began to wander through the building. Sometimes it appeared on the top floor, sometimes in the atrium, and finally returned to the basement. It seemed to be searching for something, but in the end, it only drifted over the white bones for a while before disappearing.
Xu Huo wasn't sure if this seemingly intangible spatial force had consciousness, but from its behavior, it seemed very attached to those bones.
Strictly speaking, a naturally born instance boss is a concentration of power. Its body might contain environmental factors, but its final form relies on the instance, and its actions follow the instance's operational rules. It should have no emotions.
This is different from the Painting Woman, who already possesses thinking ability.
The instance boss was gone, but no one dared to break down the doors. So the silver-armored woman guarded the area outside Xu Huo's cubicle, letting her other companions search the building.
Xu Huo didn't rush out. Instead, he examined the bell he had just obtained.
[Congratulations to player Passerby A for finding an A-grade item.]
[Little Dog's Bell: A pet bell purchased maliciously by a medical staff member. However, it was not a tool for training pets, but a cage bell that looked down on life from a position of superiority.]
[After a long time, it became an item. Simply ring it, and the bell will mark out an area as a trapped beast's domain. It will only be lifted when the item fails, the holder dies, or everyone trapped inside except the holder dies.]
[After the bell is activated, it will ring on its own every fifteen minutes. If no one trapped has died before the next ring, it will randomly kill a certain number of people until the trapped begin to kill each other or everyone dies.]
A location-sealing item.
Xu Huo had seen such items a few times before. The one that left the deepest impression was the black-and-white roulette wheel belonging to a member of the Eerie Sound Knights. That was an item with binding power far exceeding the average A-grade. Unless you used a ticket, it was hard for ordinary people to escape from it.
There were quite a few items born in this instance, but most were related to the blood and tears covered up by the Hexin Research Institute, making them unpleasant.
Putting the bell into his item slot, Xu Huo finally opened the cubicle door and walked out.
The silver-armored woman, who had just lost a life-saving item because of him, saw him still acting as if nothing had happened, and her anger and killing intent surged.
However, Xu Huo only glanced at her before walking straight toward the room ahead.
And the silver-armored woman, the moment he stepped forward, was frozen in place. As he passed by her, she rapidly aged and then died.
Ignoring the shattered corpse, Xu Huo took out the box containing the white bones he had obtained earlier, opened it, and placed it in the room filled with many human bones. After a few seconds of silence, he left the basement.
He didn't spare any of the Hundred Forest Society members who had followed the silver-armored woman in. He killed them all on sight.
The five people from another player organization who had entered were eager to intervene when he first made his move, but after he killed two in a single breath, they silently suppressed that impulse. Seeing that he didn't intend to let the remaining two go, they didn't say a word, found a spatial portal, and fled.
Xu Huo didn't care about exposing his "skill with time items." After killing these people, he continued what he hadn't finished before.
Unfortunately, even after searching every possible place, he found no clues about the Perfect Potion.
Could the Perfect Potion also be moving through different spaces like that box?
Or was this simply false information, a trap set to toy with him?
Unable to find it in one space, Xu Huo decided to search the other spaces as well, since he had plenty of time.
But by four in the morning, when the cubicles were about to close, he still had nothing.
By the next morning, when the cubicle doors reopened, he had made a decision: search for two more days. If he still couldn't find it, he would have to find a way to clear the instance.
Sensing his bad mood, the sparrow who had walked out of a first-floor room stayed silent by his side.
Xu Huo ignored her and instead watched the commotion among the Hundred Forest Society.
The person from the Hundred Forest Society who had died the previous night had suddenly started screaming in his cubicle for no apparent reason. Although the recorder hadn't captured the moment the instance boss killed him, it had caught his madness from the previous second. There was no doubt that he had been psychologically hinted at some point. In this place, only the short old man had been exposed by the sparrow, so the Hundred Forest Society naturally suspected him first.
Thus, the bearded man led a group to surround and kill the short old man as soon as the doors opened.
The short old man remained composed, dodging while explaining, "I'm not the only Mental Evolver here. Besides, some items have the same effect. How can you arbitrarily judge it's me?"
"A-grade players aren't so easily influenced by items, especially since the incident happened long after the doors closed. Ordinary items don't have such a long delay effect." The bearded man had ample reasoning. "Even if there are other Mental Evolvers here, killing you first and then finding them is the same!"
"It seems you're determined to kill me?" The short old man sighed. Facing another Hundred Forest Society player who had chased him close, he gently flicked the person's forehead. The man's body froze, and the next second, his throat was slit.
The short old man stood still again, turning to face the bearded man and the others. His hand, however, caressed a thin blade formed from mental power, a blade attached to his little finger. Under his control, the blade lengthened and shortened at will.
"In a life-and-death struggle, there's no room for flashy tricks." His gaze swept over the bearded man and the others, then he tapped his own head with a finger. "When you rely too much on items, the moment your thinking stagnates, your life stops."