Free Web NovelWithin the constantly writhing rose bushes that crept ever closer, swaying refugees began emerging one after another from the ominous shadows. Their bones protruded through rotten flesh, their eye sockets were hollow, and flesh-colored tentacles writhed from their decayed lips like tangled vines and roots. The tentacles dragged through the muddy ground, connected to the roots of the swaying roses. The refugees resembled a swarm of grotesque swamp squids, pulling their tentacles through the mud as they crawled toward Bai Liu and Liu Jiayi on the riverbank.
The dense mass of tentacles spilled over the ridge like earthworms overflowing from a bait bucket. Suddenly, a tentacle as thick as a ponytail burst from the soil, coiling around Bai Liu’s ankle in an attempt to drag him into the mud.
Bai Liu reacted instantly. With a sharp crack of the Siren’s Bone, he lashed the twisting tentacle away.
At the same time, Liu Jiayi released a cloud of poisonous mist, corroding the tentacle that tried to wrap around her waist. freewebnσvel.cѳm
The moment the monsters attacked, both Bai Liu and Liu Jiayi activated the Monster Book.
Bai Liu scanned through the refugees’ information at a glance, ten lines at a time, then calmly issued orders.
“Liu Jiayi, use your poison mist for wide-range attacks. Cover as much area as possible. I’ll clean up anything that slips through.”
“These monsters are A+.” Liu Jiayi’s expression darkened as she surveyed the surroundings warily. The poisonous mist formed a protective circle around her and Bai Liu, preventing the tentacles from approaching. “And they don’t appear alone. They move and fight together. They look like separate entities, but underground they’re all connected through the tentacles. They’re a communal organism formed by the roses.”
In a situation where there was no way to restore mental value, fighting monsters that could not be completely killed became a pure war of attrition. There was no way they could outlast a colony-type monster like this. Defeat was only a matter of time.
Still, Liu Jiayi did not question Bai Liu’s decision. She carried it out without hesitation.
Taking a deep breath, she asked, “Okay. I’m the main attacker. What should I pay attention to?” fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com
Bai Liu whipped another refugee that had crawled onto the ridge back into the flower field before turning to look at her.
“Buy time. Your skill cooldown is one hour. If we can hold out for an hour, we win. During that time, control the amount of poison you use.”
“To what extent?” Liu Jiayi asked.
Bai Liu lifted his eyes toward the countless rose refugees blotting out the sky, his tone calm and steady.
“Use only enough poison to hold back all the refugees drawn here by the scent for over an hour. Once your skill cooldown ends, I’ll confine them in a small area. Then we enter the burst phase and let your poison achieve maximum lethality.”
Liu Jiayi froze briefly before immediately understanding his plan. Her expression shifted several times before finally settling into restrained confidence.
“That won’t be a problem.”
“Against A+ monsters, my poison has no antidote.”
The tentacles continued churning violently within the rose fields.
Bai Liu stood at the edge of the ridge, using it as the final defensive line. Keeping the sack of roses at his waist as bait, he continuously lashed at any refugee or tentacle that climbed upward, driving them back into the flower fields. While attracting them with the scent of roses, he herded them toward a fixed area as efficiently as possible.
Liu Jiayi’s protection around Bai Liu was nearly airtight.
Aside from the severe physical exhaustion caused by continuously wielding the whip—cold sweat soaked Bai Liu’s face as he repeatedly drank stamina recovery agents—he was barely touched by the refugees afterward. However, that first moment of contact had already drained part of his mental value and HP.
As a result, the roses reflected in Bai Liu’s eyes appeared increasingly seductive and beautiful, while the black cracks spreading across his face deepened noticeably.
For only two people to hold back an overwhelming horde of A+ monsters for an entire hour should have been impossible by any conventional standard.
Skills had cooldowns. Neither Liu Jiayi nor Bai Liu possessed the kind of offensive power capable of annihilating an endless swarm like this. Bai Liu in particular could only force the monsters back with his whip; he could not inflict any real damage on them.
But Bai Liu’s objective had never been to defeat the monsters.
He only needed to keep them from climbing up.
In this deceptively simple “herding ducks” strategy, as long as Bai Liu and Liu Jiayi pushed their abilities to the limit—and as long as Bai Liu maintained flawless cleanup without a single mistake—they could endure for an hour.
But below the ridge, the refugees had already gathered into a horrifying black mass.
Not only the ones Bai Liu had driven back down, but also countless others surging in from behind.
The densely packed tentacles writhed through the velvet-red mud like boiling water or intestinal villi digesting flesh. Human faces, broken bones, and rotting limbs churned within the crimson mire, screaming and twisting endlessly.
Yet amid all of it, the roses continued swaying peacefully, untouched in the slightest.
It was as though the refugees were instinctively protecting the unpicked flowers.
Now that they had moved farther away from the dense fragrance of the rose fields, the overwhelming stench of the accumulated refugees and their tentacles became impossible to ignore.
Countless tentacles clawed at the ridge, desperately trying to climb upward.
Faced with such terrifying density, Bai Liu swung his whip so fast it left pale afterimages in the air.
A bottle of high-grade stamina recovery agent—extorted earlier from Mu Shicheng’s panel—was clenched between his teeth. He swallowed from it while continuously swinging the whip, burning through staggering amounts of stamina.
Bai Liu had maintained this level of high-precision mechanical movement for nearly forty minutes.
Sweat ran down his hair and dripped from his soaked work jacket. He looked as though he had just been dragged out of the water.
Liu Jiayi’s poison reserves were nearly depleted as well.
Although her panel stats surpassed Bai Liu’s, maintaining such high-intensity, high-precision skill control for almost an hour while protecting both herself and Bai Liu had pushed her to the limit.
However, despite how desperately the two of them were fighting, the Audience watching from outside the screens—or more specifically, the members of the Kings’ Guild gathered around Bai Liu’s small TV—were far from impressed.
Most of the players Queen of Hearts had brought to surround Bai Liu’s screen were low- and mid-level guild members. These people had clawed their way upward through ruthless competition, and what they despised most were talented rookies like Bai Liu—players who ignored convention yet looked destined to rise rapidly.
Combined with Queen of Hearts’ openly hostile attitude, and the fact that nearly everyone present belonged to the Kings’ Guild, the comments and ridicule directed at Bai Liu naturally became increasingly unpleasant.
Several guild players standing behind the screen sneered as they watched Bai Liu lead Liu Jiayi through what they considered “pointless resistance.”
“Trying to stall for time in a Level 3 game? Are they scared they’ll reincarnate too late? The only reason this guy even got onto the King’s Leaderboard last time was because the Little Witch carried him.”
“Based on the monster settings, this game should require killing monsters to obtain roses. The other four players already started hunting, but Bai Liu’s group still has zero progress.” Another viewer pointed toward the neighboring screen. “That TV belongs to some Hunter. Never seen him before, but apparently Queen personally brought him in as reinforcement. He’s ridiculously strong—he’s already wiping out monsters on a large scale.”
The small TV beside Bai Liu’s belonged to Tang Erda.
On the screen, the right side of Tang Erda’s face was drenched in blood. His deep blue eyes glowed eerily within the crimson sea of flowers and mud like ghostly flames blooming inside roses.
A silver revolver rested in his right hand. The rose engraved into the grip had long since absorbed so much blood that it resembled a dark crimson “Withered Rose.”
Around Tang Erda lay piles of twitching tentacles and butchered refugee corpses. Silver bullet casings littered the ground at his feet.
Under the luminous full moon, the hunter with deep blue eyes circled the flower fields with his revolver raised, firing without pause. Every monster that approached—or attempted to steal the roses under his protection—was executed with terrifying precision and brutality.
Covered in blood and consumed by the violent impulses threatening to overwhelm him, Tang Erda radiated the madness of a beast on the verge of transforming into a werewolf.
After another round of gunfire, Tang Erda lowered his head slightly and exhaled heavily.
Blood dripped from his arms and clothes. Without expression, he kicked away the tentacle wrapped around his foot before quickly biting open a bandage to treat the wound between his thumb and index finger.
He ignored his other injuries completely.
Only this wound mattered—if blood made his palm slippery, it would interfere with his grip while shooting.
Once he finished wrapping the wound, Tang Erda coldly resumed loading bullets into the revolver one by one.
The corpses piled around him had already formed a mound large enough to nearly bury him entirely.
The roses stolen by the refugees scattered from the bodies upon death, drifting from the corpse mountain like pale willow catkins.
Tang Erda slowly raised his bloodstained eyes.
Those eyes were empty—drained of all emotion by relentless killing.
As he lifted his revolver and aimed forward before pulling the trigger, even though everyone knew he was only firing at monsters inside the game, the audience standing before the screen instinctively stepped backward.
The overwhelming pressure radiating from Tang Erda’s combat ability—and the chilling aggression that accompanied it—made the viewers in the front row unconsciously swallow nervously.
No one dared speak loudly anymore.
“...Who the hell is this guy?”
“From the first shot to the last, almost every bullet triggered a reward notification. Every shot kills an A+ monster. A normal attack value exceeding 6000, and there’s barely any visible cooldown... How have I never heard of a player like this? That’s impossible.”
“One person suppressing an entire clustered attack lane in a Level 3 game through sheer firepower alone...” Someone inhaled sharply. “This is the strength of a top-tier league player. Absolutely monstrous.”
“Has the Kings’ Guild really been hiding someone like this all along?”
