Chapter 3057: Bloody Melee
The two of them entered the swamp zone.
For Xu Huo as he was now, searching for a single person was far too simple, but they still spent a bit of time before finding the female player Ding Xiang had mentioned.
After hearing their intentions, the other party said she would think it over, then quietly slipped away when they encountered other players later, seemingly unwilling to cooperate with them.
She hadn't outright refused, probably afraid they might make a move on her.
Since the other party had no intention, Xu Huo and the others naturally wouldn't force it, instead moving as close to Little Bear City as possible while searching for companions.
After a day passed, three more people had joined their group.
Among the three, only the older Duan was a Super Evolver, and his evolution direction was olfactory, giving him some advantage in distinguishing objects and identifying people.
The other two were a couple, Zhang Mi and Mag, who had become partners only after arriving on the island. One excelled in close combat, the other in long-range support. They had been in Bear Hug Zone for six days and had entered Little Bear City once before.
Thus, Xu Huo and the others learned about Little Bear City in advance.
Little Bear City was one of the routes from Bear Hug Zone into the Wasteland Zone. It was said there were other cities like Little Bear City, but they were too far away, so nearby players could only go to Little Bear City.
Little Bear City's rules were simple: free entry and exit, but each entry cost one hundred points, and once inside, players were not allowed to privately kill each other.
"Not allowed to privately kill each other?" Ding Xiang raised an eyebrow. "So that means..."
"How else would this place be called Challenge Island?" Zhang Mi said. "After entering the city, players can initiate challenge matches. These challenge matches don't have any 'touch-and-stop' rules. Once they start, only one person can survive. Even if both sides hold back, the losing side will be killed by Challenge Island in the end."
"Not many people should be willing to actively challenge, right?" Old Duan said. "After all, the risk is too great. It's simply not worth it."
"Players who enter definitely aren't as aggressive as those outside, but for the sake of others' instruments, some do initiate challenges." Zhang Mi swept his gaze over the group and emphasized, "Some players, after confirming their strength level in Little Bear City, will repeatedly challenge opponents who seem weaker."
"Can players stay in Little Bear City for a long time?" Xu Huo asked.
"That's unclear, but I haven't seen anyone with over a thousand points in Little Bear City," Zhang Mi said. "I guess once you exceed a thousand, you have to break through the zone or leave."
"Also, challenge matches aren't something you can just opt out of. If no one initiates a challenge, Challenge Island will randomly match opponents, and the frequency is quite high."
"Players who can enter the city with high points aren't weak, so we only rested a bit in Little Bear City before coming back out." Zhang Mi glanced at Mag beside him.
Everyone present had around four hundred points. Entering the city could provide temporary rest, but it would deduct a hundred points and might lead to challenges, making the risk not low either.
"No matter how high the random matching frequency is, it probably can't compare to being challenged. If your points are too low, you might become a target as soon as you enter," Old Duan said. "If you run into consecutive challenges, that's really bad luck."
"It seems we need to get our points above five hundred to be safer," Ding Xiang said.
At least they shouldn't become targets immediately upon entry. Although there were five of them and they could interrupt challenges, there were many players in Little Bear City. As Old Duan said, actually running into that would be unfortunate.
For now, they couldn't enter Little Bear City yet, so the group had to focus on raising their scores. After a day and night of killing, the five of them barely managed to reach five hundred points each.
By this point, everyone in the team was extremely exhausted. High-intensity combat and high-intensity vigilance meant not a single second of real rest. If this continued, problems would definitely arise.
So after replenishing their stamina, the five headed toward Little Bear City.
Naturally, the area outside Little Bear City was also a hunting ground. When Xu Huo and the others arrived nearby, they happened upon a melee of over a dozen people. High-speed flying instruments, like meat grinders, shuttled back and forth through the crowd, reaping several lives in the blink of an eye. Among them, one player had bloodshot eyes, his skin abnormally bulging, with abnormal bones even piercing through his flesh in some places. His state was abnormal, but his combat power suddenly skyrocketed. Moving with incredible speed, he bit through the throats of two opponents in succession!
As blood sprayed, the remaining players calmed down and widened the distance. The barrier formed by the sealing instruments crisscrossed to restrain that player, then a palm-sized short blade shot up from underground. In the next moment, that small sealed area was shrouded in a mist of blood. The player inside swayed a few times before collapsing, turning into a bloody gourd.
The sealing barrier immediately disappeared. The high-speed spinning short blade, once freed, flew toward the place where Xu Huo and the others were hiding!
Zhang Mi and Mag were in front. One activated a defensive instrument, while the other released instruments in three directions, circling around the barrier to collide with the flying blade from behind. The metal chains sprayed from the instruments entangled the flying blade. With a faint clashing sound, several instruments were destroyed together.
At the same time, the several players who had been fighting also moved toward them, pulling the battlefield numbers back!
The melee continued. A player who had just killed an opponent the second before could be killed by someone else the next. This was a hand-to-hand battle among A-level players. Unlike previous fights that relied more on props, the current scene was very bloody. In just a few minutes, even Xu Huo was splattered with blood.
"Chi!" A player who had just approached him was pierced through the throat by a hidden weapon flying from an oblique angle. Xu Huo dodged the hidden weapon and stepped aside, and the blood from the dead man's throat sprayed right into his face.
Kicking away the person closing in from his side, he retreated to widen the distance from other players and casually tore off the mask that was covered in blood.
The mask only protected his head and face. The front of his clothes and chest were already soaked with blood, and the hem of his clothes kept dripping—who knew how many people's blood was on it. But this battle clearly delighted the spectators outside. Every player still alive was seeing their scores rise.
Tossing aside the mask, Xu Huo picked up a long blade dropped by another player on the ground, flicked the blood off it, and re-entered the melee.
The blade was a good one. It easily tore through defensive barriers. Reaping three players along the way, he stabbed through the heart of that ambusher, slowly pulling the blade out under the other's incredulous gaze, then turned to face another person behind him.
From the moment Xu Huo's group of five joined, the melee lasted another ten minutes. At least thirty players had come and gone. In the end, some died, some fled. The five of them survived, but Mag had an arm cut off, while Zhang Mi and Ding Xiang were also severely injured.
Old Duan knew quite a few medicinal plants and gathered some nearby to stop their bleeding and treat their wounds.
"I think I really can't make it," Ding Xiang said, leaning against a tree, her face pale and her voice weak.