Chapter Ninety-Six: A Great Upheaval! The Pack of Demon Wolves

The chronicle of magic on the net, no pop-up interruptions.

Eight o’clock...

Diligent Little Black jumped up to roar: let the flames begin, turn in your tickets and report!

—

Until Little Love’s friends arrived, she was still brooding over falling six levels behind me, wrinkling her nose and insisting that she would catch up in no time.

I could only wipe the sweat from my brow in speechless resignation. Girls these days... why was every one of them so fiercely competitive?

Still... it was not impossible for her to catch up.

There were still two days before the magic kodo beasts respawned. I could not gain levels in that time, but if she had someone to carry her, moving from level thirteen to nineteen would not be difficult.

However...

Frostfall City would likely know no peace these next few days.

As long as the black wolf packs and the Windshadow Wolf King in Blackwind Forest remained alive, no one would dare approach that large mid- to low-level training ground. With masses of first- and second-tier players flooding into other hunting grounds, the pressure of competition would multiply many times over.

Moreover, under the Dragon Wolf Knights’ revenge plan, the Supreme Mercenary Corps had already suffered a crushing loss. In the short term, they would be unable to make any further move against the wolves in Blackwind Forest.

In that case, for first- and second-tier players to level normally... would be difficult.

More than that, I only hoped those damned Dragon Wolf Knights would not, on a whim, suddenly visit Kodo Beast Valley by night. If they drew out a horde of magical beasts as they had by day, the people outside the valley would likely be wiped out to a man!

But then I thought again:

The Dragon Wolf Knights surely would not be foolish enough to make enemies of every newcomer in Frostfall City, would they?

With that thought, the heaviness in my heart eased somewhat. If they truly did such a thing, then the Dragon Wolf Knights’ leader would not be nearly as frightening as I had first imagined.

...

After Love and her teammates entered Kodo Beast Valley, I went alone to a corner on one side of the valley. Ignoring the strange looks cast my way by several nearby newbie parties, I nocked an arrow in the glow of a magical torch.

Long shot!

Swoosh!!

The arrow struck the little kodo beast squarely in the head... The tiny fellow let out a howl and toppled over at once, while the kodo beast beside it showed no reaction at all.

“Target hit, twenty points of damage dealt to the little kodo beast!” The little kodo beast had only twenty hit points.

“The little kodo beast has died; no experience gained!”

I did not stop. I kept using Long shot on the little ones, again and again.

As one little kodo beast after another fell, the skill Long shot, already raised to intermediate level, began to climb its proficiency again, bit by bit...

When my mana dropped to the last point, I sat down on the spot. Standing would restore mana at one point every fifteen seconds.

Even sitting to recover was painfully slow; it took nearly five minutes to climb back to twenty-eight mana. I stood up, and in less than half a minute released fourteen Long shot attacks!

Then I sat down again...

After several such rounds, I could faintly hear hushed conversation from a few newcomers not far away:

“Is that kid sick?”

“Yeah, I’d say his brain’s been burned out. Forget leveling up or not—he’s come to a place like this just to train a skill. Does he think training a skill is that easy?”

“Exactly!”

Hearing this, I could only smile bitterly to myself.

Do you think I enjoyed tormenting myself like this?

Wasn’t it all just to push Long shot to advanced level within these two days? That way, when the magic kodo beasts respawned, I would at least have one advantage against them.

If I could find someone to help clear the retreat behind me, then using the attribute advantage of advanced Long shot—striking first—I might be able to deal very easily with the magic kodo beast, whose physical defense was not particularly high.

After all, the kodo beasts in Kodo Beast Valley were a major obstacle for me; for the magic kodo beast, they would be an equally serious nuisance.

And besides, the person helping me handle the kodo beasts behind me would not be directly confronting the magic kodo beast, so it would not count as interference...

Thinking of this, a plan targeting the magic kodo beast gradually took shape in my mind.

As for the person who could help me, I would look for Falcon. Anyway, he usually had nothing to do at night. A little side activity might be... an excellent diversion.

...

Time passed second by second, and more and more first-tier newcomers and ordinary players squeezed into Kodo Beast Valley.

At first I did not pay it much mind, but later, the valley was almost completely covered by magical torches. The whole place, inside and out, was lit as bright as day...

Player parties clustered like ants. Usually, within the range of one magical torch, several parties would gather around a single respawn point, and any beasts that appeared would be swiftly encircled and annihilated.

Then came the stealing and clashes between parties. The previously harmonious atmosphere of leveling vanished in an instant.

That was not all. At every moment, new groups were still arriving from Frostfall City, making the already player-saturated Kodo Beast Valley seem like daytime all over again... Lone wanderers out hunting for levels also began to appear.

In such an environment, even I was affected. With every respawn point being camped, there were almost no kodo beasts left outside the valley.

As for the newcomers rushing in after hearing the news from Frostfall City, each of them was bold enough to be reckless. With such dense traffic, if they ran into a high-level magical beast on the road, they would not even know how they died—and they might even drag the entire valley full of newcomers down with them.

With a sigh, I still could not bear to leave just like that. In the end, I rose and departed from the ground I had occupied for more than an hour, beginning to move deeper into the valley.

By then, the situation inside the valley was no better.

Looking at the thick mass of player parties, I felt my scalp go numb. I did not dare draw my bow at all, terrified that the moment I attacked, someone would block the shot with their body. Offending people was one thing... what I feared most was accidentally one-shotting someone. That would be a massive loss!

I kept pressing inward. Only after reaching the deepest part of the valley did things improve slightly.

The competition for silver kodo beasts was still extremely fierce, but at this spawn rate, almost no party dared stand directly in the center of the silver kodo beast spawn point. Even Love’s team was like that: five warriors ringed the spawn point from outside, while two female mages stood behind them casting spells...

Since it was one of my own people’s parties, I naturally would not interfere. I would go for the team next to them instead.

However, just as I turned my gaze toward the spawn point of the four silver kodo beasts beside them and prepared to draw my bow...

A tremendous uproar and screams of terror suddenly erupted from outside the valley!

“Wolves! Who dragged the wolf pack here? Damn it!!!”

Almost at the same time, even more horrified screams rang out not far inside the valley.

“The magic kodo beast!”

In that instant, almost all the players present, myself included, went deathly pale.