【Xu Youyou: Brother An, I'm so miserable!】
【Xu Youyou: At first, I had my living body disguise as an NPC to contact them and sniff out information on the players.】
【Xu Youyou: Did you know? Out of the twenty players on my end, fifteen of them are newbies with novice benefits, and only the remaining five are veteran players.】
【Xu Youyou: At first, I thought this was in the bag! So I was plotting how to farm more unsolvable specters, but guess what?】
Reading up to this point, Zuo Lin'an had already more or less guessed it.
Since there were so many newbie players, they definitely wouldn't have many specter items. This meant that the biggest issue lay in their talents.
Could Xu Youyou have encountered the same dilemma as him?
Something similar to 【Heavenly Punishment Divine Fire】?
【Zuo Lin'an: Is it their talents?】
Xu Youyou replied instantly.
【Xu Youyou: Exactly! And that's not all!】
Judging by his message, his emotions were likely running extremely high. He had probably been triggered to the extreme.
【Xu Youyou: The five veteran players all have common talents! But every single one of them has a specter item that can repel specters!】
【Xu Youyou: I can accept that, since they're veteran players and it's only normal for them to have specter items. The real problem lies with those fifteen newbies.】
【Xu Youyou: My dear Brother An! Did you know? Five of those players actually possess the special talent, Heavenly Thunder Talisman!】
Zuo Lin'an frowned.
The special talent 【Heavenly Thunder Talisman】 could summon a bolt of lightning to directly repel a specter, with a cooldown of two days.
Although 【Heavenly Thunder Talisman】 wasn't a unique special talent born from a player's own life experiences, it was still classified as a type of special talent.
But how could there be so many of them?
【Zuo Lin'an: That shouldn't be possible.】
【Zuo Lin'an: The Heavenly Thunder Talisman is a special talent after all. Given the massive population of a country, the total number of players with this talent might not be small, but to have five of them sorted into your dungeon at once...】
【Xu Youyou: Exactly! That's why I'm so miserable!】
【Xu Youyou: And the remaining ten newbies are giving me a headache too! Three of them have Lie Detection, which adds up to nine uses of Lie Detection a day!】
【Xu Youyou: On top of that, three of them have the Concealment talent!】
He continued to pour out his grievances.
【Xu Youyou: As soon as I attack them, they'll use their talents, forcing me to turn around and target other players instead. I'd have to actually kill another player before I could circle back to target the original one.】
【Xu Youyou: If those three players use their talents consecutively, how am I even supposed to play?】
After reading all this, Zuo Lin'an suddenly felt that his situation wasn't quite as bad in comparison.
【Zuo Lin'an: What about the other four?】
【Xu Youyou: The other four are pretty useless. They just have Colossal Strength, Rapid Speed, and things like that.】
Zuo Lin'an muttered to himself.
“That's not too bad. At least those four can be killed at will.”
But right after he spoke, he saw the message sent by Xu Youyou.
【Xu Youyou: But they're all loaded!】
【Xu Youyou: Every single one of them has a Death Doll—at least one, and up to three for the wealthiest! They can redirect my Death Lock whenever I attack them!】
Zuo Lin'an didn't find this particularly troublesome, though.
【Zuo Lin'an: Isn't your Death Rule very easy to trigger? When you're disguised as an NPC, can't you just take the initiative to speak to them? You'll always get a response.】
【Xu Youyou: That's true, but I've already been repelled now, so I have to wait over three days...】
Seeing this, Zuo Lin'an felt a bit helpless as well.
【Zuo Lin'an: Just wait the three days, then. In the meantime, chat with those players properly and see if you can squeeze any more useful information out of them.】
【Xu Youyou: I know. If all else fails, I'll just ignore them and stall for time to starve them out.】
【Zuo Lin'an: You won't even need to starve them. In a couple of days, they will definitely start fighting each other over food and water. You might be able to harvest a bunch of unsolvable specters without doing a single thing.】
【Xu Youyou: Well, that sounds great!】
【Xu Youyou: Come to think of it, you really are the reliable one. If you hadn't warned me beforehand not to prepare too much food, I'd probably be worrying about them having too much food right now.】
【Xu Youyou: Actually, they're already fighting over it. But just like on your end, I only placed ten rabbits and ten chickens in total. It's nowhere near enough to feed them all.】
【Zuo Lin'an: What are the strength levels of the players on your side?】
【Xu Youyou: Out of the twenty players, there are two in the Houtian Rank, five in the First-Rate Rank, ten in the Second-Rate Rank, and the rest are all in the Third-Rate Rank. There isn't a single ordinary person.】
【Xu Youyou: Excluding the ones I've already killed, they've split into two factions. There are already some undercurrents brewing, but they haven't reached their breaking point yet, so they haven't started fighting.】
【Zuo Lin'an: Don't do anything for these three days.】
【Zuo Lin'an: If they ask you questions, answer in a way that prevents the players with the Lie Detection talent from determining that you're lying, but it's also best not to tell the absolute truth.】
【Zuo Lin'an: I expect that by the time your specter body recovers, it will be the perfect time to harvest.】
The situation with the players on Xu Youyou's end was much better than on his own.
There was no Xiantian Rank expert looming over them, and there happened to be exactly two in the Houtian Rank, allowing them to form opposing factions and stand against each other.
Initially, they could unite to search for food and occupy water sources.
But there wasn't much food, and it was far from enough to feed so many people.
Since they couldn't directly kill other players, they only had two options: either cripple them and throw them out to fend for themselves, or drive them away.
If they drove them away, the players expelled from the group would naturally band together into a new team for survival.
Zuo Lin'an stroked his chin.
It was indeed highly complex.
He hoped nothing would go wrong on Xu Youyou's end.
“I'm a joke too, worrying about others when my own problems aren't even solved yet.”
Zuo Lin'an chatted with Xu Youyou for a bit longer about future countermeasures before finally putting down his phone.
“I wonder how many unsolvable specters the two of us will get this time. As for wiping out all the players...”
To be honest, with 【Heavenly Punishment Divine Fire】 in play, Zuo Lin'an no longer held much hope for that.
Unless they truly managed to wear them down and starve them to death in the dungeon.
For the rest of the time, Zuo Lin'an remained in place.
In any case, the dead grass here was very thick and comfortable to lie on. Moreover, although the sky in the dungeon was gloomy, it wouldn't rain, and there were no insects or other small pests.
Resting here was quite pleasant for him.
Even the players wouldn't come here.
Whenever Zuo Lin'an felt bored, he would play on his phone, occasionally taking a peek at the players' status.
But a few hours later...
Zuo Lin'an suddenly noticed that the Martial Alliance player, who had previously run up the mountain to catch a wild pheasant, was now standing at the summit. In his hand, he was holding the wild pheasant, its neck already snapped.
“Huh?”
“Where is everyone?”
He looked around, feeling somewhat bewildered.
“They're really all gone? Even the natives aren't here!”
Rate on N.U.
