Chapter 58: Sneak Attack and Counterattack

What do I do, what do I do, what do I do, what do I do!

Hua Yibing tried his best to hide in a clump of seaweed, trying to pretend he didn’t exist.

Riding a snake, what kind of sudden and exciting activity is this!
Couldn’t Old Li have hooked up with a different species back then?
Even a seahorse, a whale, or a turtle would have been fine!!

But why did it have to be a snake!

He slowly peeked through a gap in the seaweed, wanting to see if the snake had ignored him and left directly—yes, he was willing to give up the opportunity to set off with his companions for this.
He was willing!

He was just sorry to the Lord.
He was extremely sorry.
This time, it was his, Hua Yibing’s, heart that was insincere.

QAQ

But before Huahua could see clearly in the distance, he felt his shoulder being poked by someone.
He impatiently pushed the other person aside.
“Don’t bother me, I’m hiding!”

Hua Yibing continued to look towards the place where the snake had been before and was delighted to find that the other party seemed to have already forgotten about him and had long since disappeared.

Great, I hope the 234 team has a smooth journey!
Huahua let out a long sigh of relief and almost laughed out loud.

After his entire nervous system had relaxed, he felt his shoulder being poked by someone again.
He reached out to push that person again, but halfway through, he felt that something was not right—

Given that his companions had already ridden on the snake’s head, and this was the outer lands with no other players, who was poking his shoulder now?

Answer: Mom, save me!!

Hua Yibing turned his head tremblingly.
This simple action seemed to have used up all the courage of his life.
But the brave’s actions did not correspond to the brave’s luck.
He just happened to meet a curious, deep blue vertical pupil.
The other party even happily blinked at him.

Huahua’s eyes rolled back, and he almost died on the spot.

In the end, Hua Yibing still managed to board this snake-shaped express train in a posture that did not touch the snake’s body.

As for what is meant by a posture that does not touch the snake’s body…

He silently glanced at Scott next to him.
The other’s arm was held out straight, extending a bit past the snake’s head, and on that part extending outside, a large Hua-style pendant was hanging.

“Scott, are you tired?” Hua Yibing asked weakly while carefully pulling a little of the clothing around his neck out of Scott’s hand.

There was no expression on Sykes’s face.
Holding his neck was as natural as holding a small goldfish.
“Not tired.”

“Then, I didn’t expect you to be so strong, ahahaha…” Huahua gave a dry laugh, not knowing what he was saying himself.

Although Hua Yibing’s snake-riding journey could be described as a nightmare plus death, it was obviously not the case for the other few.

The speed of this snake was something that a few fledgling little mages like them couldn’t compare to.
If one had to find something to make a comparison to be more vivid, if their own swimming speed could be seen as a bicycle, then the red-topped snake’s swimming speed was probably a high-speed rail.

After Old Li came to this conclusion in his heart, he began to be glad that he hadn’t taken the opportunity to slip away while the other was asleep.
Even if they could have left smoothly at the first moment, they probably wouldn’t have even finished one-tenth of the current distance.

Is this a different kind of good deed being rewarded?

The red-topped snake carried one… four merfolk all the way north and reached the edge of the Sea of Death in just ten minutes.

Living in this water area usually didn’t have any special feeling, but when it was truly compared with the seawater outside, the players discovered that the seawater of the Sea of Death seemed to be more… thick?

This description is a bit strange.
They are both transparent existences, but for some reason, they just felt that the water of the Sea of Death had more texture, so much so that they could distinguish the edge of the domain with their naked eyes.

“What could be the principle behind this?” Yan Shuangwen rubbed his chin, trying to use his knowledge from the real world to explain this phenomenon, but still couldn’t get a convincing answer.

“It’s very simple,” Sykes was the first to cross the boundary and stand in the ocean of the outer lands.
“Come over and feel it, and you’ll understand.”

Yan Shuangwen flicked his tail without hesitation and broke through the invisible boundary.
His breathing couldn’t help but pause, and he felt a sudden sense of weightlessness.

He felt the seawater around him, and as smart as he was, he immediately understood Sykes’s meaning.
“So that’s how it is. Is it the concentration of magic elements?”

Sykes nodded.
“After all, this is a game world. Many times, you can’t speculate with past knowledge. Although that might bring unexpected innovations, sometimes it will also limit your thinking and trap you in the same direction, unable to make progress.”

“Just like… just like the invention I scrapped before?” Yan Shuangwen was thoughtful.
He thought of the thing he had studied before.
The final result was a world apart from the effect he wanted to achieve.
He unwillingly sent it to Scott’s appraisal hut, but Scott just frowned and shook his head, refusing his order.

“What are you guys talking about!”

Suddenly, the two of them were slapped hard on their backs.
There was no need to turn around to know that it was definitely the most boring player in the team.

Based on your intelligence level participating is forbidden,” Yan Shuangwen was interrupted and activated his poisonous tongue skill.

“Hehehe”~ after reaching a safe distance, Hua Yibing returned to his usual energetic self.

Old Li seemed to be gesturing something to the red-topped snake, his whole body’s movements particularly exaggerated.

Then he saw the red-topped snake’s head slowly shake.
It first looked at the players reluctantly, then retreated and disappeared from the spot.

Old Li shrugged regretfully and turned to join his companions.

Under the collective gaze of his companions, he explained, “I just asked the snake if it was willing to go to the territory. It should have understood my meaning, but it clearly expressed that it was unwilling.”

“!!” Hua Yibing’s eyes widened upon hearing this, with a look of “how dare you, Old Li, to backstab me.”

But no one paid attention to him.
Everyone’s focus was on the red-topped snake’s attitude.

Sykes was calm.
“It’s about what I expected.”

Huahua: “Thank heavens it didn’t agree…”

Yan Shuangwen felt it was a great pity.
“I don’t know when I’ll be able to observe it up close again.”

Huahua: “I don’t want to have this experience again, okay?”

Old Li finally sighed.
“If only Sea Realm could have a pet system.”

Hua Yibing: “Hey, is anyone going to pay attention to me! QAQ!”

Old Li lovingly rubbed Huahua’s dog head, messing up his pink short hair and making him dizzy.
“Be good, go be stupid on the side.”

No matter how regretful they were about the NPC’s disappearance, the players still had to complete the main quest.

Their initial plan was to reach the edge of the domain and take a look at the current situation of Mentor Xavier’s former territory, so as to make corresponding preparations for the next step of the strategy and plan.

Originally, the 1234 team had really planned to just take a look and leave, but because they encountered an accident on the way and got the help of the red-topped snake, they had already exceeded their expected goal by a large margin—now they had not only taken one look, but two or three!

Now they could ambitiously propose the next goal—a preliminary exploration of the outer territory!

The four of them formed a one-front, two-middle, one-rear formation and explored forward steadily, ensuring that no matter from which direction they encountered an attack from an unknown creature, they could react at the first moment.

This was also Yan Shuangwen’s suggestion.
His original words were, “When the overlord of a territory disappears, although there will be a short period of calm, a new type of chaos will soon arise from competition for status. So it’s better for us to be careful.”

However, they had been swimming carefully for so long, but they hadn’t seen any large-scale creature, not even the common small fish and shrimps.

“There’s a problem,” Old Li frowned deeply.
“There’s definitely something wrong somewhere.”

Sykes also felt a certain strangeness.
He wasn’t afraid of any ferocious sea beasts or the like, but he smelled a familiar smell—the same extremely disgusting smell as on Xavier before.

The answer was hidden in this quiet domain.

His pair of sharp eyes swept around and fixed on a seemingly unremarkable clump of seaweed.

“Huahua,” Old Li also looked over there following Sykes’s gaze.
He called out in a deep voice.

Hua Yibing instantly understood his companion’s meaning.
He took out two round meat patties from his backpack, weighed them in his hand, and smashed them onto the clump of seaweed.

With a ‘boom’, a huge explosion sounded, and water waves spread out from the center of the explosion.

The creature originally hiding in the seaweed didn’t seem to expect to be discovered.
It was caught off guard and was directly bombed in the face by the meat patty version of a bomb.

“Squeak!” The thing shot out with a ‘swoosh’.
It looked like a dark mass, and it attacked Old Li, who was at the front, with incredible agility.

Old Li’s face was fearless, and he stepped forward to meet the enemy.
Magic power surged in his body, and the magic circle plate engraved in his body suddenly lit up.
His fingers, with defense and strength, waved towards the other in a claw shape.
This attack was actually well-prepared!

The tacit understanding of the team from fighting side by side many times beautifully delivered a preemptive opening against this unknown attacker.

But what they hadn’t expected was that Old Li’s claw, which should have directly and heavily injured the other, was twisted by it into an unbelievable arc at the last moment, reducing the damage to a minimum, only scraping the edge of its body.

“How could this be…” Huahua looked at the illogical dodging action in shock.
The next second, the black shadow, borrowing the force of being knocked away just now, pounced fiercely towards Hua Yibing—

Obviously, it was still holding a grudge against the person who had first bombed it.

Although Hua Yibing usually acted very unreliably, don’t forget, he was a combat-oriented streamer who had played many games.

To be able to crush a crowd of holographic streamers and have such a large number of fans was definitely not an achievement that could be obtained just by acting cute and foolish.

The combat awareness and habits he had cultivated over a long period of time made him not stand foolishly on the spot waiting to be killed.
Instead, while quickly dodging to the side, a blinding spell was thrown out of his hand and slapped onto the monster’s face with a ‘smack’.

“Scott!” Hua Yibing decisively called out to his companion.

This monster indeed had eyes.
The sudden blindness made its movements slow down by a few beats, but it quickly adjusted back to normal.

But this short period of time was already enough for the team to launch a counterattack.
In the spot where Huahua had just moved away, Sykes, who was nocking an arrow and pointing it at the black shadow, was revealed.

“Here I come,” Sykes’s lips curved.

As his voice fell, a slender arrow shot out like a ghost, directly piercing through the black shadow and nailing it firmly to a coral wood not far away.

The thing couldn’t break free from the shackles of this arrow for a while, and its appearance was also presented in front of the four people—the monster, which was miserably nailed to the stone, had a round body and a dark black color.
Two bright black bean eyes were inlaid on its face, looking extremely harmless and soft.

Seeing a cute creature that was completely different from the ferocious and cruel monster they had imagined, the three real players were all stunned on the spot.

Sykes was still frowning, trying to figure out what this creature was, when Old Li and Hua Yibing had already pointed at the thing in surprise and shouted in unison—

“Slime??”

📚 Also on NHV Novels

An Undeniable Pull

ChaebolDominant TopObsessive

Read Now →
Not interested