Chapter 12: The Mob-Snatcher

As the first ray of dawn broke through the night, 【Horizon】 welcomed its second morning.

Because the game had just launched, although 【Horizon】 had a day-night system, it wasn’t currently operating on the same 24-hour cycle as Earth, but rather had the time halved—8 hours of daytime and 4 hours of nighttime, for a total of 12 hours.

The reason for this setting was, firstly, because players had all just entered the game and many features, especially those related to nighttime, were inaccessible, hence the current setup.

Normally, players could still go out and fight monsters at night, as long as they purchased a torch from the general store to solve the visibility problem.
However, there were also some people who were afraid of the dark and unwilling to go out at night, so they could do other things in the city, such as selling unneeded equipment dropped during the day, or training the skill levels of their sub-professions.

Sub-professions like forging, alchemy, tailoring, enchanting, and cooking could all be learned from NPCs by spending a certain amount of in-game currency.
High-level sub-professions could create many useful items, and a suitable one could even improve a player’s combat effectiveness to some extent.

There was no limit to the number of sub-professions one could learn; if you were willing, you could learn them all.
However, leveling up a sub-profession to a high level required a great deal of time and effort, so learning too many was pointless.

But because sub-professions could only be accessed after a player reached level 6 and also required a considerable amount of in-game currency, they were still a bit out of reach for the current players.

After a week, when the second batch of game accounts was released, the game’s day-night cycle would revert to a 24-hour system.
By then, since the channel for exchanging virtual and real currency would be open, obtaining in-game currency would become easier, so new players wouldn’t be as poor as the current ones, who couldn’t even afford a torch.

However, although the game would have a 24-hour day like in reality, it wouldn’t completely follow real-world time—night would fall in the game at 12:00 AM and last until 8:00 AM.
This was mainly to accommodate the schedules of students and office workers, while also not greatly affecting those who played during the day.

Seeing that it was dawn, Mo Ming, who had been out all night, finally put away his Novice Sword and walked back to the novice village.

Although he had been fighting monsters all night, his level hadn’t increased; he was still at level 6 from turning in the quest.

The reason he hadn’t leveled up wasn’t that leveling in this game was that difficult, but because he hadn’t been fighting high-level monsters.
Instead, he had been killing low-level mobs near the novice village all night.
And the reason he had been bullying these low-level mobs was mainly to complete quests.

When he had first entered the game, Mo Ming had made a round of the village and accepted every quest he could find.
As a level 1 player just starting out, all the quests he could accept were novice quests designed to familiarize players with the game, with content like killing certain level 1 mobs near the village and collecting materials dropped by them.

Since he had later accepted Blacksmith Hu’s commission and spent a whole day in the mine, he hadn’t dealt with these quests at all, which was why he was now going back to do them.

Although these were quests that anyone could accept, they were still “promises he had made to people,” so Mo Ming had no intention of just blowing them off.

When he went back to do these quests, Mo Ming was already a level 6 player, so fighting the level 1 mobs next to the village was no trouble at all.
With the level suppression, it was definitely one-shot, one-kill… The very first monster he had encountered in the game had a level suppression on him, which made the fight very difficult.
So, it was only when fighting these level 1 mobs that Mo Ming realized how easy this game could be.

But of course, this ease came at a price.
Just as there were rewards for fighting higher-level monsters, there were naturally penalties for bullying lower-level ones—because Mo Ming had a one-tier level suppression on these monsters, the drop rate would be reduced.

Mo Ming didn’t care much about things like equipment, but the fact that the drop rate for quest materials was also reduced was very frustrating—in a total of four hours, while circling the village, it was only thanks to his extremely high monster-killing efficiency that he was barely able to clear all the quests in his list.

Unlike when Mo Ming had first entered the game, there were now very few people to be seen in the village; everyone had gone outside.

Unlike Mo Ming, who had gone out to fight monsters at night, the other players could only chat in the village or browse the forums.
It was only because the virtual holographic game was so new and the simulation was so realistic that so many people had waited for dawn, still looking like they wanted more.
Now that dawn had finally arrived, the players naturally all rushed out.

After dawn, the NPCs all came out to start their day, which was perfect for Mo Ming to turn in his quests—unlike the special quest from Blacksmith Hu, these normal quests that anyone could accept couldn’t be turned in by disturbing an NPC’s rest.

While turning in the quests, Mo Ming paid special attention to the other 3 NPCs mentioned in the previous quest, but he didn’t find anything unusual about them.
However, perhaps due to the increased favorability, those 3 NPCs would actively nod at him when he approached, and the pharmacy owner, Fengmian, even said a few words to him before he left.

“You’re Born Without a Name, right?
Just as Old Hu said, you really are something special… Keep working hard to improve your strength.”

Although this sentence sounded no different from the polite phrases NPCs in other games would say, this was something Fengmian had only said to Mo Ming… but Mo Ming didn’t pay it too much mind, just giving a few polite replies before leaving, since the sentence itself didn’t contain any real information.

After turning in all the quests he had, new ones naturally appeared—since Mo Ming had already reached level 6, he could now accept all the quests from level 2 to 6.
Since there was no limit to the number of quests he could accept, Mo Ming took them all… Although he took them all, there were only 9 quests in total; not all quests had follow-ups.

And looking at the quests in his list, Mo Ming found that none of the 9 quests required him to fight level 6 mobs… he didn’t know if it was because he hadn’t done the prerequisite quests or what.

But Mo Ming didn’t care much about that.
Although he had unknowingly become the highest-level player in the game, he wasn’t the type to be a power-leveling fanatic, so after accepting the quests, he went straight out to do them.

Because Mo Ming had leveled up to 6, he could now equip all the level 6 gear he had gotten from the mine.
There were 5 pieces in total: 2 green and 3 white.
The two green pieces were a hat and a staff, while the white pieces were boots, leggings, and bracers.
Mo Ming equipped the leggings and boots, but not the bracers, since the quest had given him a green one.

Although most of his gear was white-quality, with 2 pieces of level 6 equipment, Mo Ming was undoubtedly much better off than the other players who had nothing besides the gear from the novice quests.

Originally, because the general player level was still low, the level 2 monster area was very crowded, no different from the level 1 monster area before.
It was basically a situation where a monster would be stabbed to death by a flurry of swords as soon as it appeared.

Under the effect of 【Death’s Pity】, Mo Ming’s current attack power had broken 20, which was actually a bit higher than the average player’s.
Coupled with the 1-tier level suppression, fighting level 2 monsters was a complete one-shot for him.

If it were any other player, even if they could one-shot level 2 monsters, their mob-snatching efficiency wouldn’t be very high.
After all, the problem now was too many people and too few monsters; the monsters were killed as soon as they spawned.
But if the person snatching the mobs was Mo Ming, the situation was different—

A monster spawns, gets discovered, gets killed, and then respawns, in a cycle.

In this process, snatching a mob depended on luck, but mostly on reaction time.
After all, the grinding area was full of people.
To get a hit on a monster, one had to have very fast reactions… but when it came to reaction speed, what human could compare to Mo Ming?

Mo Ming couldn’t do anything about the monsters that spawned far away and were killed before anyone could even run over.
But if a monster spawned next to him, with his unparalleled reaction speed and a precise attack with no wasted motion, Mo Ming would absolutely be the first to hit it.
With the level suppression, he could kill the monster in a single blow, so his efficiency was undoubtedly a cut above the other players.

At first, no one noticed this.
After all, every monster died instantly upon spawning, and the players busy snatching mobs naturally wouldn’t pay much attention.
But as time went on, the people around Mo Ming finally began to notice his extremely high mob-snatching efficiency.

After discovering that it was completely impossible to snatch a mob from this monster of a player, the players around Mo Ming naturally moved to the side to compete with others.
And so, as more and more people realized this, there was simply no one left around Mo Ming—all the players tacitly gave him a wide berth, letting him farm by himself.

Seeing this, Mo Ming naturally wouldn’t be shameless enough to go to other places and snatch mobs from people, but instead peacefully guarded the spawns in his own area.

There were, of course, many newcomers who, seeing that other areas had groups of people fighting over mobs while Mo Ming occupied a large circle by himself, would naturally think of coming to his territory to snatch some.
Mo Ming said nothing to this, continuing to silently kill mobs.
In any case, after a few minutes, the players who came to snatch his spot would find that they couldn’t get a single mob and would obediently go back to competing with others.

Although the drop rate for quest items was reduced due to the level suppression, they would still drop eventually.
After grinding for a while and collecting all the necessary items for the quest, Mo Ming naturally left for the spawn point of the next monster.

And in the spawn area of the second quest monster, the same situation naturally repeated itself—first, Mo Ming would find a spot and compete for mobs, then the people around him would realize they couldn’t get anything and go to compete with others, and later, the players would tacitly clear a space for him.
And after finishing the quest, Mo Ming would naturally leave to find the next quest monster.

And so, after this repeated a few times, there would always be people whose mobs Mo Ming had snatched before who would run into him in other monsters’ territories.
And then, Mo Ming’s “heroic deeds” quickly spread through word of mouth among these players.

Of course, many people would refuse to believe it and want to go over and compete with Mo Ming for mobs, but the result was, naturally, that they couldn’t get a single one.
After that, the story of Mo Ming’s mob-snatching spread even further, attracting many people who wanted to see him with their own eyes.
Some of them really just wanted to see how good this guy was at snatching mobs, while more of them wanted to personally test if Mo Ming was really as good at it as the rumors said.

Among these onlookers, there were naturally some with ideas, who recorded Mo Ming’s feat of snatching mobs left and right in the crowd.

And so, after the whole hidden quest affair from yesterday, Novice Village No. 2 had a new piece of big news today—

[Novice Village No. 2’s Mob-Snatcher Appears, Leaving Numerous Players Fuming but Helpless!]

This was a post with an attached video.
The video was recorded using the game’s built-in recording function, and the protagonist was, of course, Mo Ming, the Mob-Snatcher.
The video first showed a clip of Mo Ming competing with others for mobs, followed by a crowd surrounding him, watching him peacefully farm a circle of monsters by himself.

And the part about Mo Ming snatching mobs from people, with the author’s intentional post-production and commentary, perfectly highlighted just how skilled he was at it.

Since mob-snatching was something every player was currently experiencing, this video was very appealing.
After watching it, due to Mo Ming’s astonishing skills, many people would mention it to their friends, and so the post’s popularity climbed to the third most popular—

The top two were [Continuously Updated, a Beginner’s Guide for Horizon Players] and [Shocking!
The Player Who Got a Hidden Quest!]

And Mo Ming, the person in question, had already finished his quests and slipped away by the time the post went viral.