Chapter 9: The Wrong Way to Complete a Quest?

More than half an hour had passed since the Defiled Spirit first appeared.
In that time, Mo Ming had been locked in a… one-sided back-and-forth battle with it.
Although the Defiled Spirit’s attacks looked incredibly ferocious, Mo Ming had managed to evade every single one, not getting hit even once.

Although Mo Ming had been trying his best to deal damage, finding opportunities to attack while simultaneously having to “dodge all of the Defiled Spirit’s attacks” was an extremely difficult task.
As a result, he had only managed to chip away a meager 400-plus health points, not even ten percent of the Defiled Spirit’s total health.

If Mo Ming continued to make no mistakes and avoid being hit by the Defiled Spirit, at its current rate of health loss, he could kill this Boss single-handedly in just over 4 more hours.

Killing the Boss in just 4 hours sounded easy… yeah, right!

As a level 12 Head, the Defiled Spirit was by no means a monster to be trifled with.
Under normal circumstances, to defeat it, one would need at least a ten-person party composed entirely of level 10 players, and they would have to be well-coordinated, well-equipped, and highly skilled.

With 【Horizon】 having just launched, players were still in the exploratory phase.
The vast majority of players had no experience fighting with weapons themselves, so their combat style was still stuck in the simplest, most brutish stage of trading blows.

In previous virtual holographic fighting games, the controls were all based on the system automatically executing moves, with the player mostly just acting as a director.
【Horizon】 was different.
In 【Horizon】, all actions had to be performed by the player themselves; the system, at most, served an auxiliary role to prevent players from being completely unable to fight.

Those players who had previously worked in special professions and had a little combat experience were only a step ahead of the general public.
As for those special individuals who were battle-hardened in real life, the vast majority of them did not enter the game at launch.
And the small portion who did were only at the level of “experts.”

Everything that was happening in the mine—a level 4 player with handicapped stats soloing a level 12 Head-tier monster—this completely monstrous feat could only be accomplished by a Transcendent Being like Mo Ming, who surpassed all theory.

It was also fortunate that the Agility attribute primarily affected stats like movement speed and attack speed, having a much smaller impact on the fine movements of the body; otherwise, Mo Ming would have been helpless as well.

While continuing the somewhat mechanical process of dodging and counter-attacking, Mo Ming began to ponder something—this quest shouldn’t be this difficult.

The quest didn’t specify that it was a team quest.
Even for a level 5 player in full green gear with a maxed-out initial attribute value of 125, it would clearly be impossible to solo a level 12 Head.

If the quest’s difficulty was designed with “Mo Ming can pass” as the standard… then the person who designed the quest had a problem with their brain.
As a Transcendent Being, Mo Ming’s reaction speed and combat intuition were unparalleled by any other creature.
If there existed a quest that even Mo Ming couldn’t complete, then no one in the world could.

Since it was impossible for a normal person to kill this Defiled Spirit while meeting the quest’s conditions, it could only mean one thing—killing the Defiled Spirit was not the objective of the quest at all.

Generally, in this type of “find an item in a monster-infested area” quest given by an NPC, the required quest item almost always drops from a monster.
Depending on the quest’s difficulty, some require the player to kill normal monsters, while others require fighting a Boss, but they all “drop from a monster.”

This was the subtext of quests in most games, and players with even a little gaming experience would understand these hidden implications.

Although he wasn’t a dedicated gamer, Mo Ming had dabbled in games when he was bored, so he had some of this “player experience.”

Therefore, after accepting the quest, especially after the Defiled Spirit appeared, Mo Ming had subconsciously treated defeating this level 12 Head-tier monster as his objective… After all, for this Transcendent Being, any problem that could be solved with force was not a problem.

Thinking back now, asking the quest-taker to defeat a Head-tier monster 8 levels higher, with a 2-tier… or 1-tier, with the bonus from the Essence of Holy Light, level suppression, was clearly illogical.

But this monster was obviously related to the quest… In that case, this monster was most likely there to scare people, or perhaps it was just an obstacle.
There must have been something else that Mo Ming hadn’t noticed, and that point he had missed should be the orthodox way to complete the quest.

A method like directly taking down this level 12 Boss was clearly an unorthodox completion method that the quest designer had never considered.

‘So… what did I overlook?’ Thinking of this question, Mo Ming’s gaze immediately fell upon the magic circle on the wall.

If there was anything Mo Ming had overlooked, then this magic circle was clearly the most obvious one.

However, the terrain here was not very open, and the magic circle was blocked by the Defiled Spirit, so it was impossible to get close.

Thinking of this, Mo Ming immediately retreated in the direction he had come from—according to his memory, there was a more open area a little further back.

If he wanted to see if there was anything special about the magic circle, he would have to get past the Defiled Spirit blocking the way.
And since the terrain here was too narrow, running to that open area would solve the problem.

Seeing Mo Ming retreat, the Defiled Spirit naturally followed close behind.

But just then, something unexpected happened again—

During their half-hour-long close-quarters combat, Mo Ming had formed a rather deep impression of the Defiled Spirit’s sharp and swift attacks.
Normally, a monster of this type should be a glass cannon with high attack and speed, but relatively low health.
But the moment it started moving, Mo Ming realized something was wrong: the Defiled Spirit’s speed was far, far slower than he had imagined.

The Defiled Spirit’s speed was only a little faster than a Mine Rat’s, and even slower than a Mine Skelebat’s.
Although it wasn’t slow, and it was quite a bit faster than Mo Ming’s own movement speed, it clearly didn’t match the Defiled Spirit’s attack speed.

There were three reasons why Mo Ming hadn’t chosen to flee before.
First, he wanted to see if he could kill the Defiled Spirit directly.
Second, he assumed the Defiled Spirit’s movement speed would be very fast, and that abandoning the current stalemate to flee would put him at a disadvantage.
Third, the Defiled Spirit was clearly related to the quest; if he just ran away, he wouldn’t be able to complete it.

But now, with the Defiled Spirit’s movement speed not having an absolute, crushing advantage over his own, if Mo Ming wanted to run, there really wasn’t much the Defiled Spirit could do.

Although the Defiled Spirit’s attacks were ferocious and its wide, sweeping strikes looked very intimidating, this aggressive posture was clearly a disadvantage in a chase—after its attack was dodged, Mo Ming immediately ran out of its attack range, forcing the Defiled Spirit to spend more time adjusting its position to attack him again.

Seeing this scene, Mo Ming immediately understood the correct way to complete this quest—clearly, this long stretch of road with no monster spawns was designed for players to kite the Defiled Spirit.

And the Defiled Spirit’s (relatively) abnormally slow movement speed, the recovery time after its attacks, and that strangely open area up ahead were obviously designed specifically for this situation.

After seeing through the true intent of this quest, its difficulty immediately dropped from inhuman to human level.

Of course, although the Defiled Spirit’s speed was slower than Mo Ming had imagined, it was by no means slow in reality.
Plus, as a level 12 Head that could kill a person in one hit, this quest was actually still quite difficult.

What was 【quite difficult】 for an ordinary person was nothing to Mo Ming.
Even standing still and facing the Defiled Spirit’s full-power output head-on, Mo Ming could guarantee he wouldn’t be hit.
Occasionally dodging an attack during a chase was simply too easy for him.

In no time, Mo Ming had led the Defiled Spirit to that particularly open area.

As long as he ran a full circle along the edge of this area, he could get the Defiled Spirit behind him and then run to the magic circle—in fact, that’s exactly what Mo Ming did, but he also did something else.

For the sake of convenience before, all of Mo Ming’s attacks had landed on the Defiled Spirit’s outstretched hands… To commemorate his wasted time, Mo Ming decided to take a few slashes at the Defiled Spirit (to vent his frustration).

And so, while running, Mo Ming took advantage of a gap in the Defiled Spirit’s attacks, suddenly turned around, and swung his sword at its face.
Since the Defiled Spirit was incorporeal, the Novice Sword sliced straight down, from its right eye all the way to its left leg.

【-1】

【-40】

But this time was a bit different from before.
In addition to the symbolic 1 point of guaranteed damage, a black “【-40】” also floated out below it.

After being hit by this strike, the Defiled Spirit suddenly began to tremble, one claw covering its head and the other clutching its chest, looking as if it were in great pain.
From its expression, it seemed to be wailing, but it was only opening its mouth as if it were shouting, without making a sound.

Seeing the Defiled Spirit like this, Mo Ming paused for a moment, then immediately swung his sword at it again.

【-1】

【-40】 This strike once again took away 41 of the Defiled Spirit’s health.

Before Mo Ming could figure out how this damage was being dealt, the Defiled Spirit, as if enraged, suddenly raised its head.
Its once pitch-black eyes were now glowing with a crimson light.
The Defiled Spirit brandished its claws and attacked Mo Ming again, its demeanor even more ferocious than before.

Unfortunately, getting angry was useless—even if the Defiled Spirit was angry, it still couldn’t hit Mo Ming.

On the contrary, Mo Ming, after discovering that attacking the Defiled Spirit’s body could deal huge damage, immediately abandoned his original plan and decided to kill it.
With his damage multiplied by more than 40, it wouldn’t be a difficult matter for Mo Ming to kill the Defiled Spirit.

But before Mo Ming could land more than a few strikes, the unexpected happened again—

“Ahhhhh—!” The Defiled Spirit suddenly threw its head back and let out an extremely sharp shriek.

The moment he heard the Defiled Spirit’s soprano voice, Mo Ming suddenly found himself unable to move.

【Affected by the skill “Spirit Shriek,” you have lost the ability to move for 10 seconds.】

Hearing this system notification, Mo Ming felt that he was done for.