Chapter 512: War of Attrition
Bai Kou was right. When Xu Huo took out this instance, he had no intention of leaving empty-handed. With high-level players present, if they didn't want to clear it, he couldn't force them to, and those people most likely wouldn't go through normal channels anyway. The instance would probably end up destroyed in the end.
Since it was a single-use item, he might as well make the most of it.
He glanced at Bai Kou. "A horse needs to eat grass if it's going to run. That person you mentioned is a B-rank player, right? I saw his prop earlier, but I don't know his traits yet. I can't go kill him empty-handed. If I fail, it'll be trouble for you too."
Bai Kou didn't say much. "This is your territory. Do as you see fit. If you can't even kill a B-rank player, how can you inherit Uncle Fan Xiao's castle?"
"Right, I also think Zone 011 is too dangerous. Better give the castle to you. I'm out." Xu Huo looked at her sincerely.
Bai Kou rolled her eyes. "Yu Guo's profession is black market doctor. He has two notable traits. One allows him to transform objects into scalpels at any time, limited to small items, living things excluded. The second is that his hands carry infectious diseases. Touching a human body or object can spread the disease. Direct contact or touching contaminated objects will quickly cause illness that turns severe."
"Can protective suits prevent it?" Xu Huo asked.
"Only B-rank protective suits can block it. But if you're in close combat, can you guarantee you won't get hurt?" Bai Kou asked.
Xu Huo did have protective suits—many of the top-tier equipment he got from Jiang Feng were top-notch—but as Bai Kou said, he didn't have the strength to fight a B-rank player up close without injury.
Relying solely on ranged attacks, he might not even be able to hold Yu Guo back.
"You're not without advantages," Bai Kou said. "This is your instance, and it happens to be a mental-type instance. As long as he can't break the instance, he'll be affected by it."
"Isn't this your instance?" Xu Huo raised an eyebrow. The stairs that automatically generated beneath him brought him back downstairs, while the floors that opened like automatic doors quickly closed again after he disappeared.
"You're pretty slick at this." Bai Kou smiled, cleaned the blood off herself, and tapped on the sphere. The small black dots moving on the sphere were isolated by rising black particles. At the same time, the Seventeenth Hospital also changed.
The original instance venue was just a large hospital, six floors including the rooftop. Although it could make some changes according to Xu Huo's commands, its main effect was mental influence on players entering it. In other words, the building was real. If someone unknowingly punched through the hospital walls, there was nothing to be done.
But Bai Kou, using some unknown method, had installed a metal shell on the hospital walls, complete with her signature metal chain doors. She also modified the hospital layout with her spiritual realm, keeping her word to isolate Yu Guo separately.
Xu Huo briefly suspected she was hiding her strength, but the next second he had no energy for that, because Bai Kou directly sent Yu Guo to him.
Earlier, Bai Kou killing Jiang Feng had made Yu Guo pay some attention to Xu Huo. He had just been with the whale, and now he was suddenly in a different place, running right into him. The anger from failing to kill Bai Kou and complete the transaction was all directed at the person before him.
He casually stomped on the ground, raised his hand, and the scattered debris turned into sharp projectiles shooting at Xu Huo.
Xu Huo naturally wouldn't just sit there. And it wasn't time for a real fight yet. He turned and ran toward a newly appeared corridor on the left. As he entered, countless monsters imagined by people surged out of the corridor, crowding around Yu Guo.
The projectile attack was useless against these monsters. Yu Guo picked up a very small scalpel and swept it through the air, cutting the grotesque monsters in half.
Naturally, the monsters' vitality couldn't be judged by normal standards. Especially a few that looked very human—after being cut, they flew up trailing their organs, using them as ropes to repeatedly entangle Yu Guo.
The man in the floral shirt and beach shorts was extremely annoyed. He slapped the objects attached to him, and a black-gray substance like mold rapidly spread, like tiny flies quickly multiplying, soon corroding all the monsters away.
Xu Huo had now seen both traits. But he didn't go back. Instead, he changed the hospital layout, sending more imagined creations to Yu Guo, and according to his own design, fabricated a Blood Aberration.
Earlier, Yu Guo hadn't taken the monsters seriously—it was just a matter of time. Mental creations couldn't truly harm him. But when the Blood Aberration appeared, his expression changed. Some high-level players kept alien species as their fighters, which was why Platinum Eye was popular.
But he wasn't sure if this Blood Aberration was real. So the first thing he did after getting rid of the surrounding monsters was to test it—using his trait to transform scattered objects and pin it to the wall!
"Roar!" The injured Blood Aberration howled, completely ignoring the "scalpels" in its body, forcibly breaking free and charging at Yu Guo without a second's pause.
From a distance, Yu Guo swung his scalpel, but unexpectedly, the Blood Aberration was very keen, dodging his attack and bouncing off the ceiling, lunging straight for his face!
Yu Guo used the "scalpel" attack again, but with little effect. Affected by the instance, he didn't have a clear understanding of the actual situation inside the hospital building. The walls that could have been crushed before were now hard to break, and there weren't many usable objects around. This attack only scratched the Blood Aberration's surface.
But that wasn't a problem. He used a prop to teleport, appearing in the corridor Xu Huo had left through. But here too, Xu Huo had prepared a "Blood Aberration" for him.
Two Blood Aberrations, plus the wall growths, completely surrounded Yu Guo. But he didn't use the "infectious disease" trick again. Instead, he took out a tuning fork and flicked it. Everything around him—monsters and Blood Aberrations alike—instantly turned to ash. The hospital revealed its true form: walls wrapped in metal and unprotected floors.
Not far away, Xu Huo hid downstairs through the portal Bai Kou had left. Yu Guo's tuning fork wasn't a lethal prop but a waking prop. The Eerie Sound Knights had a member, Dou Shengnan, who specialized in mental attacks. It wasn't surprising that the group had countermeasures for this. Relying solely on mental creations to drain Yu Guo's traits wasn't very effective.
(Chapter End)