Volume 1, Chapter 50: Old Goblin's Defensive Barrier

The sole remaining plague matriarch instantly saw its health points drop to zero, gradually dissolving into specks of light that vanished into the air.

Seven or eight gold coins dropped onto the ground, yet strangely, no one went to pick them up.

Around Li Chuan, all the players collapsed onto the ground as if by prior agreement. There were no voices, only the sound of heavy panting.

They were too exhausted, beyond any more exhaustion! Their adrenaline was completely depleted, leaving everyone without even the strength to speak.

Gritting his teeth, Li Chuan refused to fall. Instead, he walked around the battlefield to collect the spoils that had dropped on the ground.

Gao Han was doing the same thing.

As for Donghe Liushui, he felt too ashamed to pick anything up, because he had already finished gathering the dropped items from the specific rift he was responsible for. As for the rest... as a sinner who had almost gotten everyone killed, he simply lacked the face to scavenge further.

There were over two thousand four hundred gold coins, two blue-tier pieces of equipment, seven cyan-tier pieces, and twelve green-tier pieces, all of which Li Chuan listed on the auction house.

There were now at least several hundred pieces of equipment on the auction house, mostly green-tier. Judging by trading volume, players with purchasing power were becoming fewer and fewer.

"It seems players in other arenas aren't having an easy time either."

Having tallied up their gains, Li Chuan silently counted the remaining players in his team.

Originally an eighteen-player squad, five more had joined later, making it twenty-three. After he had killed two of them, there should have been twenty-one left, but counting now, there were only sixteen remaining.

All seven players with blue shields were still alive, and all the archers survived as well; the casualties were entirely high-attack, high-agility assassin players.

There was simply no helping that. Under the circumstances at the time, it had reached a point where everyone had to fight for their lives. Otherwise, whether all the players here could have wiped out this group of monsters was anyone's guess.

Li Chuan silently purchased nine blue-tier weapons and distributed them as promised to all the surviving players.

Some expressed their thanks.
Some wanted to thank him but lacked the strength to do so.

*Sigh*, even greed should have its limits.

Li Chuan briefly and mildly condemned himself in his mind, then proceeded to distribute fifty gold coins to each player one by one.

No matter what, they had to be left with enough money to buy potions and arrows.

With all this done, Li Chuan paced over to the Illuminati faction's camp.

"There are still twelve arenas remaining on the task panel. This hunting party wiped out six arenas. If we can't come up with a better combat plan, then during the next wave of hunting, we will be the ones who get wiped out."

Cutting straight to the point, Li Chuan directly brought up the most severe problem at hand.

Liu Haizhu glared angrily at Li Chuan.

"Being wiped out is your fault anyway. Wasn't it you who had that little vixen lure the monsters over to our side?"

The freckled girl was equally filled with indignation.

"You are far too vicious and selfish!"

"Bastard! A thorough, absolute bastard!..."

Clearly, Lin Yaoyao's actions just now had thoroughly angered the players of the Illuminati.

Li Chuan offered no explanation for this; selfishness was hardly a shortcoming in a place like this.

He had come to negotiate a strategy capable of withstanding the next wave of hunting.

Gao Han raised a hand to stop her subordinates' denunciations. She herself seemed to harbor no resentment toward Lin Yaoyao for shifting the disaster onto them.

"I can't think of a better way."

"If we extrapolate based on the escalation rate of the first three waves of monsters, the next hunters will likely be level twenty boss-grade monsters, and the hunting portals might increase from three to four. The gap in strength is simply too immense."

The freckled girl's expression shifted from anger to anxiety.

"Sister Han, is that really possible? Does that mean we have no chance left at all?"

Gao Han did not speak; she only slowly shook her head.

The atmosphere here was gradually enveloped by despair and fear.

Li Chuan waited for a moment, and seeing that everyone remained silent, he suddenly spoke up.

"I actually feel that if we hold on, there is still a sliver of a chance left."

Everyone raised their heads, focusing their gazes on Li Chuan's face.

Gao Han did the same.

"Go on."

Choosing his words carefully, Li Chuan expressed his thoughts.

"If we set the clearance condition as completing the task once ten arenas remain, we don't necessarily need to completely annihilate the next wave of hunters. We only need to hold out until the number of remaining arenas drops to ten."

"Although the combat will still be unimaginably difficult and brutal, for now, I believe this is our only chance."

Everyone instantly fell into deep contemplation.

After a long while, someone spoke slowly.

"It feels... like there really might be a possibility here."

"Yeah, looking at it from the perspective of the quest designer, it's impossible that they would design a quest that is fundamentally impossible to complete."

Gao Han knitted her fair brows in thought for a moment.

"Even so, what method should we use to stall for time against the other arenas? If we split into four teams like before, we'll undoubtedly be overrun and crushed by the monsters immediately."

Donghe Liushui, who had been hiding behind the players, stood up.

"If it's just about holding out for a period of time, I actually have a relatively reliable method."

[...]

[Old Goblin Defensive Barrier: Blue (Damaged)]
[A defensive weapon developed by a renowned Goblin scholar, composed of two curved magic-rock barriers, each possessing ultra-high armor, adjustable in size, hailed as the hardest small combat fortress to crack on the battlefield. (The maximum protective area of this item is 50 square meters)]
[Left Barrier Shield: 10452/50000]
[Right Barrier Shield: 12308/50000]
[Evaluation: The difficulty of this project lies in how to incorporate spatial technology into hard magic-rock.]

The item produced by Donghe Liushui was genuinely astonishing—so astonishing that Li Chuan felt as though he had caught a glimpse of hope for survival.

"So, the two of you survived the monsters' encirclement relying on this item?"

Donghe Liushui nodded.

"That's right, but the durability of this item is now down to only a fifth. I don't know how much longer it can hold out."

A look of joy appeared on Gao Han's face.

"That's not a problem. The consumable section of the system store sells 'Durability Stones'. Each 'Durability Stone' can restore one thousand armor points to a piece of equipment, and they cost ten gold coins each."

An item like that existed?

Li Chuan hurriedly searched through the game store.

It really was there!

Was there anything this saintly woman didn't know about? Out of the several thousand items sold in this game store, she probably hadn't studied every single one of them in detail, had she?

Donghe Liushui was clearly also unaware of these Durability Stones.

Overjoyed, he exclaimed,

"In that case, doesn't that mean we can keep holding out indefinitely?"

Keep holding out indefinitely?

Li Chuan made a quick mental calculation.

One thousand armor points equated to ten gold coins, so eighty thousand armor points would equate to eight hundred gold coins! How exorbitant!

Even though he had embezzled quite a hefty sum from the previous battles, he only had a little over seventeen hundred gold coins in his backpack, barely enough to fully restore that item's armor value twice.

"Our gold coins aren't enough to sustain this indefinitely, but for now, this is our only option."

After the three of them formulated a brief combat plan, Li Chuan dragged his exhausted body back to Lin Yaoyao's side, lay down on the ground, and fell asleep within a few breaths.

The intensity of the recent battle had long since pushed Li Chuan to his physiological limit; the only thing keeping him awake until now was his sheer will to survive.

Li Chuan wasn't worried about being ambushed while asleep—not because he trusted these players, but because what gave him peace of mind was the second set attribute of his advanced combat armor set: the passively triggered 'Emergency Shield'.

As for the young girl Lin Yaoyao, she had already curled up against the wall and fallen fast asleep.

...

*Screech—*

No sooner did Li Chuan feel as though he had just fallen asleep than the door-opening sound, resembling a demon's whisper, rang in his ears once more.

That impeccably smooth metal wall split open once again!