Chapter 8: Defiled Spirit

In the vast majority of MMORPGs, so-called “quests” have always been one of the most important components, and the game 【Horizon】 takes this point to the extreme—

In the official promotions, 【Horizon】’s quest system is also overseen by the world’s number one optical computer, “Pangu.”
Aside from the normal quests that everyone can accept, 【Horizon】 features countless different types of quests; things like quest chains, hidden quests, or unique quests are naturally abundant.

Some quests will even have different progressions and content based on the player’s experiences, ultimately leading to different outcomes… just like the branching paths and different endings in a text-based game, a player’s experience is determined by their own choices, not by following a completely fixed script.

And those unique quests tend to have some degree of difficulty, which gradually increases as the quest progresses.
The 【Find the Ring】 quest that Mo Ming had received from the blacksmith uncle undoubtedly belonged to this unique category.

But during the quest’s progression, Mo Ming hadn’t felt any increase in difficulty—

The beginning, on the first floor of the mine, was clearly the most difficult part, the first challenge of the quest.
Even if one were to level up to 5 before attempting this quest, they would still have to face the level 6 Mine Rats under level suppression.

If one could get through the first floor and reach the second, the quest’s difficulty would immediately drop by several notches.
Skeleton-type monsters, which rely on numbers to win, have stats that are quite a bit lower than other monsters of the same level.
With the Essence of Holy Light in hand and no level suppression, the monsters on the second floor would surely be unable to stop the players who successfully passed through the first.

According to general quest design philosophy, this was clearly very wrong.
If there wasn’t a problem with this quest’s design, then there was only one other possibility—Mo Ming had not yet encountered the quest’s second challenge.

‘If this path isn’t the challenge, then the challenge must be at the Boss.’ Mo Ming analyzed.

After finishing his analysis, Mo Ming immediately quickened his pace—although it wasn’t too dark and he wasn’t afraid of the atmosphere, Mo Ming still didn’t particularly want to stay in this kind of cave.

It had been a while since Mo Ming had encountered a monster.
The chilling winds that blew from time to time had also quietly disappeared, and a faint sense of oppression filled the air, as if a great battle was imminent.

“…” Just as Mo Ming was wondering where the Boss would jump out from, he stopped in his tracks.

But what blocked Mo Ming’s path was not a monster, but… a wall.

“A dead end?” Mo Ming walked up to the wall and reached out to touch it… but the wall was just a wall, not an illusion or anything of the sort.

However, the moment Mo Ming pulled his hand back, something abnormal occurred—the Essence of Holy Light in his left hand suddenly emitted an intense light that was impossible to ignore.

After being illuminated by the light, a strange magic circle outlined in black lines appeared on the wall.

Perhaps because he was used to walking around boldly since there was usually nothing that could harm him, or perhaps because he had little experience with games, when he saw this strange magic circle, Mo Ming’s first reaction was to reach his hand towards it, not to retreat.

Just as Mo Ming’s hand was about to touch the magic circle, a claw suddenly shot out from the circle, clawing at his outstretched hand.

Mo Ming, whose attention was focused on the magic circle, was naturally not going to be caught by such a sneak attack.

Mo Ming immediately withdrew his hand, lightly scraping the claw with the Novice Sword in his hand as he did so, while his entire body retreated.

After playing for so long, Mo Ming had figured out a little bit about the game’s mechanics, for example, regarding parrying—when he had encountered that low-health elite earlier, he had swung his sword and sent it flying on its first pounce, with both of them taking damage.

According to Mo Ming’s later tests, whether one takes damage in this situation seems to depend on how much impact is taken.
Because Mo Ming was used to meeting force with force in his real life, without the technique of dissipating the impact, he had taken such high damage.

Of course, it might also be related to attributes like Constitution, but Mo Ming had no way to test that for the time being.

After all, as a game that had always boasted its 【Realism】, 【Horizon】 had done an excellent job in this aspect.
Of course, excellence aside, as a game, it still had to rely on data… which was why that elite rat had only taken one point of damage.

And this time, when Mo Ming’s Novice Sword made contact with the claw, because his sword had only lightly scraped it, he didn’t take any impact force, and naturally, no damage.

As for why Mo Ming had deliberately scraped the claw with his sword, there was, of course, a purpose—

【Defiled Spirit (Head) Level: 12

????】

Mo Ming wanted to see if the owner of this claw was a monster, so he had deliberately “attacked” it.
Although he didn’t deal any damage, his objective was achieved… it was just that the result was somewhat beyond his expectations.

According to the information revealed by the officials, the monsters in 【Horizon】 also had a grading system: Common, Elite, Head, Chief, Lord.

A total of 5 tiers, and with each tier increase, the monster’s strength and drops would improve significantly.
And starting from the 【Head】 tier, monsters already entered the category of what players would normally call a “Boss,” generally requiring a team to defeat.

From the abnormal reaction of the Essence of Holy Light in Mo Ming’s hand, this Head-tier Defiled Spirit was clearly related to his quest.
For a level 12 Head to appear in a quest with a level limit of 5… Mo Ming had originally thought this quest was a bit too simple, but now it seemed he had been too naive.

‘If this monster is in a sealed state, or if it’s just this claw, then a normal player should have a chance of completing the quest…’ Mo Ming thought to himself.

But the moment this thought appeared in his mind, the magic circle on the wall flashed, and the owner of the claw emerged from it.

Although he had been calling it a claw, this “claw” was not the talon of a beast, but a “human” hand.
It’s just that this hand was less of a hand and more of a bony claw covered in skin, with fingernails several centimeters long.

Just as its name suggested, the Defiled Spirit was a ghost-type creature.
Its entire body was translucent, and it wore a tattered nun’s habit, its exposed skin deathly pale.

‘A nun’s habit… defiled… has it fallen?’ Mo Ming thought to himself as he sized up the Defiled Spirit before him, his mind still on other things.

It wasn’t that Mo Ming’s focus was strange, or that he wasn’t in the right mindset—Mo Ming simply wasn’t taking this Defiled Spirit seriously.

As a Transcendent Being, even without his powerful physical body, Mo Ming still had absolute confidence in himself.

Although he was facing a level 12 Head, as long as the Defiled Spirit’s speed did not exceed the limit of what his current body could handle, Mo Ming was not afraid of a one-on-one fight in the slightest.
Victory, for him, was merely a matter of time.

After emerging from the magic circle, the Defiled Spirit fixed its “gaze” on Mo Ming.
After pausing for a moment, the Defiled Spirit immediately attacked.

Lightly dodging the Defiled Spirit’s attack, Mo Ming swung his sword at its outstretched arm.
Perhaps because the Defiled Spirit was a ghost and had no physical form, Mo Ming’s sword passed straight through its arm, only displacing a wisp of something that looked like mist.

【-1】

Although Mo Ming’s sword passed straight through the Defiled Spirit’s arm, it still dealt damage.
However, there was an 8-level gap and a 1-tier level suppression between Mo Ming and the Defiled Spirit, and as a Head, the Defiled Spirit’s attributes were too high, so this strike failed to break its defense.

After successfully dealing damage, the Defiled Spirit’s health bar appeared above its head… but because it had so much health, this single point of damage was as good as nothing; the health bar didn’t even budge.

Taking advantage of the moment the Defiled Spirit was retracting its hand, Mo Ming scraped it twice more with his sword, taking away 2 more health points.

To miss an attack and get hit three times in return was clearly unacceptable for the Defiled Spirit—so it immediately raised its other hand and clawed at Mo Ming.
The pale claws, trailing a black light effect, left five claw marks in the air, as if to tell Mo Ming: ‘If I touch you, you’re dead.’

Although the Defiled Spirit, as a level 12 Head, had stats that Mo Ming could not compare to, as a low-level monster, its combat AI was not very high.
Its seemingly ferocious attack was, in Mo Ming’s eyes, nothing more than a flashy move full of openings.

Dodging the Defiled Spirit’s attack once again, Mo Ming took another 2 health points from it.

Because the Defiled Spirit was an incorporeal ghost, every one of Mo Ming’s sword strikes passed directly through its hand.
Compared to attacking a solid target, swinging a sword through the air was undoubtedly easier and more efficient.
Therefore, in terms of swing efficiency alone, Mo Ming was now much more efficient than when he was fighting monsters before.

The Defiled Spirit used every trick it had, attacking Mo Ming crazily as if it had gone mad, but it couldn’t even touch the corner of his clothes.
Mo Ming was like a single falling leaf, swaying amidst the Defiled Spirit’s gale-like attacks.

It was as if the two were performing a choreographed fight scene.
Every attack from the Defiled Spirit that looked like it was about to hit would be dodged by Mo Ming at just the right moment; every time Mo Ming looked like he had nowhere left to run, he would miraculously slip past the Defiled Spirit’s claws from an unbelievable angle.

At first glance, the battle seemed to be in the Defiled Spirit’s favor—whether it was its ferocious attacks or its relentless offensive, it looked far stronger than the seemingly precarious Mo Ming.

But upon closer observation, it would seem that the situation was under Mo Ming’s control—although under the Defiled Spirit’s assault, Mo Ming constantly looked like he was on his last legs, in reality, the Defiled Spirit had never hit him even once, while it, on the other hand, had already been struck by Mo Ming’s sword over a hundred times.

But on careful thought, Mo Ming’s advantage seemed like a joke—although it looked like he was constantly counter-attacking, the hundred-plus points of damage were pale and powerless in the face of the Defiled Spirit’s thousands of health points.
On the other hand, although the Defiled Spirit hadn’t hit Mo Ming, if any of its attacks landed, Mo Ming would be instantly killed.

The actual gap between the two was simply too obvious.

But Mo Ming, the one in the middle of it all, showed no sign of anxiety and was still actively looking for opportunities to attack.

It was as if victory, for Mo Ming, was something he could obtain with a simple stretch of his hand.