Chapter 19: The Charming Moment of the Fourth Calamity
The so-called strongest Beginner’s Village, Village 66, is in this dismal state, and the other villages are even worse!
Before the boss battle, all the players are all talk and bravado; when the boss appears, they go silent. After getting wrecked by the boss? It’s a torrent of swearing!
They rush in with excitement, get one-shotted, and then what? What else can they do?
Downgraded? Check. Gear drop? You bet! Screams of agony? Absolutely! Smoke a cigarette to console their losses.
A thought bubbles up in every player’s mind: “The officials are at it again, aren’t they?”
Wait a minute… why say “again”?
In short, if things go south, just blame the officials. Bad mood? Blame ‘em. Lucky streak? Blame ‘em too!
They curse in-game, rant on forums, and let loose in video comments.
Generally speaking, in all the game servers, 99% of players end up whining about the same issue—if they do, the game’s officials usually make a change.
However, this time, the players hit a brick wall.
The officials swiftly posted the same announcement across all the server forums:
“After our research and investigation, all data regarding the World Boss is normal and meets expectations. We encourage players to actively engage in combat.”
“If you find it difficult, you may choose to give up, but the consequences of leaving the boss unchecked are yours to bear.”
Although the tone of the announcement seems sincere… isn’t that just a clear threat?
It’s a mess of a game! “If I quit, what else do I have… uh, apparently nothing else.”
Don’t play? Then keep watching cardboard cutouts!
The official stance took the players by surprise. After some time to cool off, they started re-emerging from the respawn points, continuing their march towards the city outskirts.
What else could they do? s*ck it up! After all, it’s a World Boss—the high difficulty is to be expected.
They’ve already taken a hit; if the boss doesn’t drop next, they’ll really be leaving their dignity at grandma’s house!
And to be honest, even if they only whittle the boss down with a single drop of health, with this many players, it’s practically impossible not to take it down.
Furthermore, the players’ ultimate cheat is d*ath and resurrection. Even if this boss unleashes a massive area-of-effect attack that wipes everyone out, they can still continue their grinding.
“It’s so brutal…” Xu Xiaofeng scrolled through the forums while watching the swarm of players on the plains resembling a horde of ants, shaking her head in disbelief.
“I thought we could take down the boss in half an hour, but at this rate, two hours might not even cut it.”
After about ten minutes of battling the boss, they hadn’t even clipped a thousand health off it.
And after observing for a while, she noticed that the boss had a self-heal mechanism; it regained one percent every three minutes.
Moreover, this whole boss-fighting scene is incredibly dull.
No tactics, no strategies, not even classes to speak of. All you gotta do is nudge up and hit it.
Warriors and assassins drop after just one hit; a hit gets a drop of health.
Priests? You’d be better off taking a swing at the boss than just standing there looking dumb.
Mages? After charging up a fireball for ages only to deal minor damage to the enemy while hitting their own team? You might as well line up for a stick fight alongside the priests.
Rangers? Don’t just stand there and miss a shot after aiming for half an eternity. Just stab its eyes with arrows, for crying out loud!
What’s that? You’re agile and can kite? Look at this crowd; if you move two steps, you’re amazing.
Bored out of their minds, many players turned on livestreams to broadcast their progress.
You could say everyone’s progress was pretty much the same, and the scene was no different.
Even the highly-anticipated Village 66 was in the same boat.
Because high-level players were too skittish to throw themselves into the fray; if they got taken out, the loss would be massive. And even if they did take a swing, the damage difference was negligible—one drop of health per hit just wasn’t going to cut it!
So, they opted to throw money at the problem. d*e? Refund! Drop a level? Five gold coins back! Gear loss? Screenshot compensation!
Today was shaping up to be another day of spending cash, but the big spenders didn’t really care. What they cared about was the first k*ll.
The boss had to go down, and it had to be by their village’s hands!
Some newbie villages had already given up before the boss even appeared, thinking they had no chance. But now that the officials had pulled this move, all villages were back in the race.
Even Village 66 had to scratch and claw! In the end, who could out-grind whom was anyone’s guess.
“Hey, bro, if this keeps up, things aren’t looking good. Isn’t this just turning into a game of luck?”
The top players of Village 66—no, wait, the village heads—were huddled together, brainstorming.
Everyone’s grinding; if any village gets lucky and takes minimal damage, they could snatch the k*ll.
At this point, who gets the first k*ll isn’t what matters, but which faction or village claims it is critical.
It’s all about reputation and clout.
“Don’t worry, let’s keep grinding.”
“What about that deal you made with us earlier…”
“Relax, I, Liu Haotian, am a man of my word. What I promised will be delivered, even in the face of unexpected happenings.”
“Awesome! I admire your character! Once we pull this off, let’s collaborate more!”
“Absolutely.”
Fiery Conflict Across the Sky smirked knowingly.
Little did the others know, he had a big move up his sleeve.
While they were busy pecking away at the boss, he could deal a straight-up seven thousand damage in one shot! With the boss at five percent health, what did they think they could do to compete?
Luck? Please! Real skill doesn’t need to pray for some ghostly luck!
Before the boss appeared, he had been a bit worried. If the boss dropped too quickly, some other village might sneak in and steal the first k*ll.
But now, with such a twisted difficulty level of a boss, even if others had a backup plan, they wouldn’t stand a chance!
He had to admit, he truly was the chosen one; even fate was on his side.
“Brothers, give it your all! Once we take down the World Boss first k*ll, there will be rich rewards!”
Meanwhile, Edward perched atop a tree, watching the distant figure of the Wolf God surrounded by a mob.
After careful confirmation, he was sure this was a mid-tier calamity beast.
At this level, even a calamity beast wouldn’t be any trouble for him.
But this raised some serious questions. Why, when heaven and earth exhibited such terrifying phenomena, was the actual calamity so mild?
What Edward didn’t know was that there wasn’t just one calamity beast this time, but thousands!
If this many calamity beasts gathered in one place, that would be true horror.
Edward took another glance at the calamity beast, estimated the strength and number of adventurers, and figured that they could handle it just with them—so he decided to leave it be.
It was best not to mobilize a single soldier from the city. As for these pesky outsider adventurers? It’s on them if they choose to meet their end.
However, looking at the massive influx of players, he couldn’t help but sigh heavily.
Where on earth am I supposed to find that troublesome girl…
