Chapter 12: Snatched from the Official Website

One hour later.

The Kindergarten Guild players finished their resurrection cooldown, and the fiercely debating chat group finally quieted down.

Amidst the guild leader's desperate roars of "You all really deserve to die," thirty players logged back into the game, resurrecting in the central square of Emperor Tomb Village.

This time, they still chose to head to the Dim Cave for exploration.

According to the Guide's explanation, the method to occupy a domain node was very simple.

One only needed to shatter the node crystal corroded by Black Black Tide energy; Di Zhao's power would then re-cover the domain node, incorporating it into Emperor Tomb Village, at which point new functions would appear in the village.

After an hour's journey, just as the Kindergarten Guild arrived before the crystal wall of the Dim Cave again.

They unexpectedly discovered players engaged in fierce combat with Iron Shell Worms.

Two of those players had chosen a Bone Fire form they had never seen before; ink-black flames burned around their bodies, and with a raise of their hands, they could condense a fireball and hurl it at the Iron Shell Worms.

Black Sphere: "This Bone Fire form is so cool! I love controlling flames; I'll pick it for my next Star Vein."

Drunk Milk: "Brothers, they seem unable to hold on. Should we help?"

Iron Hammer: "Nonsense, we're here for revenge; of course we help!"

After a brief exchange, the thirty players of the Kindergarten Guild switched into their monster forms and joined the battle.

The scene instantly became incredibly chaotic; in the cramped space, collisions were inevitable, resulting in many comical scenes.

"Dude, where are you biting? That's me! I'm a player!"

"Brother Gargoyle next door, why are you smashing my head? Can't you identify your target clearly!"

"Who's throwing fireballs randomly? One hit me! Put it out quickly, I'm taking continuous damage!"

"Sorry, brother, I only know how to start fires, not extinguish them. Let me just say sorry in advance; rest in peace."

In the chaos, many players were struck hard by their own teammates.

Several players immediately turned into black mist and entered death cooldown.

The game's realism made the fighting players unable to help but complain again.

Most other games generally have faction settings or safe PK modes, allowing one to choose whether to inflict damage on other players.

But this game lacked such settings; even teammates could inflict damage on each other.

Especially the ink-flame attacks of the Bone Fire; once they hit a target, they were difficult to extinguish, continuously burning until the target died.

This led to several unlucky players who weren't killed by the Iron Shell Worms instead dying at the hands of their own teammates.

During this period, several Iron Shell Worms were also killed; their life energy transformed into Evolution Points and surged into the players who delivered the finishing blows, raising their levels and strengthening their physical attributes.

In Qi Sheng's design, whenever players killed a monster.

The Challenger System would extract 30% of the dissipated life energy from the monster, converting it into Sacrificial Power to enter the Sacrificial Power Pool, while the remaining 70% would transform into life energy suitable for the player, used to enhance their physical attributes—what the players understood as experience points.

Qi Sheng, who was observing the battle, naturally noticed the friendly fire issue the players mentioned.

But at the current stage, there was no way to solve this problem.

After all, the Monster World was merely a real world disguised as a game; there were no same-faction alliances or damage immunity between players.

The players, however, fabricated their own reasons, believing this was a setting designed to make the game more realistic, and while complaining, they couldn't help but praise the development team's capabilities.

The fierce battle in the cave lasted over ten minutes, ultimately ending with the players being wiped out.

Although he greatly desired this domain node, Qi Sheng also knew that relying on the players' current strength to capture this place was unrealistic.

After the Guide detected and perceived the area, it found there were five layers of space beneath the cave floor.

The players' current location was the first layer of the cave; the further down one went, the more Iron Shell Worms there were, while the domain node crystal lay in the fifth layer of the cave.

To clear this dungeon, the players' strength still needed to grow.

This also gave him the idea to recruit players again.

After recruiting the second batch of players, he still had 100, 00 points of Sacrificial Power in hand.

The four Primordial Monsters contained could produce 960 points of Sacrificial Power revenue for him daily; added to the Sacrificial Power generated by players hunting in the Monster World and collecting resources to sacrifice, the income and expenditure of Emperor Tomb Village before expansion had reached equilibrium.

He planned to recruit another 50 players, keeping the remaining 50, 00 Sacrificial Power for emergencies.

The one-hour resurrection cooldown ended.

After both waves of players logged into the game, they resurrected at the spawn point in the center of Emperor Tomb Village and stared at each other in bewilderment.

Through communication, the Kindergarten Guild players learned that map exploration progress was shared among all players.

After they had explored to the Bloodstained Plains, this group of players on the opposite side also saw the new markers on their maps, subsequently entering the Dim Cave according to the map coordinates.

Their situation inside the cave was very similar; upon seeing spiritual ores, they were also extremely excited and immediately chose to purchase pickaxes to mine.

But soon, a large number of Iron Shell Worms were alarmed by the sound of pickaxes striking the rock walls, erupting into battle with them.

Then came their arrival, followed by joining the melee, and together they were wiped out.

At this moment, Iron Hammer from the Kindergarten Guild couldn't help but look at Li Zheng and ask curiously:

"Brother, how do we obtain the Bone Fire form your team is using?"

Facing the question, Li Zheng immediately explained the permission to freely unlock the second Star Vein slot obtained after killing the Bone Fire, as well as the process where two members of his team spent 1, 00 points of Sacrificial Power to purchase the Bone Fire Soul and embed it.

Hearing his account, the players in the Kindergarten Guild who had chosen the Eagle-Head Demon form raised their hands and cheered:

"Hahaha, I knew I didn't choose wrong! The Eagle-Head Demon's perception combined with the Bone Fire's ranged elemental damage makes this combination invincible for early-game exploration."

"Good heavens, I was forced to choose the Eagle-Head Demon for team composition, and now you tell me it's the meta answer; happiness comes so suddenly."

Listening to the discussions of the opposing team's players, Li Zheng smiled and shook his head:

"This game has extremely high freedom; in the future, there will be a vast number of new Primordial Monster Souls for us to choose from. The appearance of Bone Fire is just the beginning; every monster form has immense development potential. There is absolutely no need to worry about one's initial form being weak; moreover, the initial form can be changed for a cost of 1, 00 points of Sacrificial Power."

Drunk Milk: "By the way, do you know why there are so few players in the novice village? It feels very deserted."

Black Sphere: "Yeah, I'm also puzzled by this issue. Playing until now, we've only encountered you guys; we haven't met any other players."

Cute Baby: "If we say other players have already left the novice village, that doesn't make sense either. After all, at the current stage, there are only four selectable Primordial Monster forms; three are initial options, and the other is the Bone Fire you killed. Could it be that no other players have killed a Primordial Monster?"

Facing the question, Li Zheng was also stunned; after a brief silence, he fabricated a reasonable explanation:

"Perhaps to solve the server congestion problem, the Dark Lands have opened multiple sub-servers. We entered a newly opened server region where not many players have been distributed yet, so the number of players in the novice village isn't large."

"That makes sense." Iron Hammer immediately nodded in agreement.

"By the way, on which platform did you purchase your game qualifications?"

Li Zheng's sudden question instantly left the members of the Kindergarten Guild stunned.

This was a question they dared not answer truthfully, because their response could likely affect the safety of the "Welfare Officer."

If they answered poorly, the Welfare Officer would most likely end up behind bars with food and lodging provided.

"Haha, we were very lucky; we grabbed 30 game qualifications on the official website of the Dark Lands... What about you? Where did you purchase yours?"

Iron Hammer's counter-question made the ten players of the Liver Emperor Group feel awkward internally; Li Zheng, their leader, also hadn't expected the question to be thrown back at him.

The reason he asked the other party was to find out if they had the strength to establish a guild, allowing their group of brick-moving players to join them.

Facing the question, while feeling awkward internally, Li Zheng smiled and said:

"What a coincidence; we didn't use other channels either. We all rushed to purchase our game qualifications on the official website for 128, 88."

Amidst the laughter and conversation, both sides provided a reasonable explanation.

And without continuing this topic further, they very tacitly shifted the chat content to the Dim Cave, deciding to form a group and head there for exploration.

(End of Chapter)