PDLP Chapter 108 [White Flame Appears, Hope Emerges]
Chapter 108 [White Flame Appears, Hope Emerges]
The anger on Lightning Blade's face froze, turning into ecstatic joy.
"A world-class event!" he shouted, raising his arms. "It's finally here! I told you this game couldn't just be about farming forever!"
"A major global event, a disaster-themed one at that." Zhang Wei adjusted his glasses. "First kill, first clear achievement, and legendary gear! We can't miss this one!"
All the players, no matter how tense they had been just moments before, erupted in similar cheers.
They saw this as a long-awaited celebration, a ladder to the top of the version.
Chieftain Terra and war leader Kahn wore solemn expressions.
Waaah—!
Waaah—!
Waaah—!
The horn signaling the highest level of enemy attack sounded from the defensive arrow towers on the east side of the tribe, its sound sharp and urgent.
A tribal hunter on guard duty scrambled into the hall.
He was speaking incoherently, pointing eastward.
"Monster...monster...the forest to the east is alive..." Before the words were finished, Kahn and Terra had already rushed towards the eastern defensive line.
"The world boss has spawned! Brothers, let's get the first kill!" Lightning Blade shouted excitedly, grabbing a simple stone axe. "Charge!"
Ignoring the NPCs' warnings, the combat-oriented players grabbed their various weapons and charged forward with boundless energy.
Eastern defense line.
Constructed from large logs and stones, this place served as the tribe's first line of defense against wild animals.
Everyone witnessed a horrific scene they would never forget.
The edge of the forest was covered by a blood-red carpet, which was still writhing and expanding.
Countless stitched monsters poured out of the crimson fungal carpet.
A wolf with spider legs, a giant bear with arms replaced by scythes, and a flesh-and-blood aggregate pieced together from the remains of three or four different creatures.
They let out meaningless roars and charged toward the defensive line.
"Loose the arrows!" The tribe's warriors unleashed the first volley of arrows.
The players of the "Fighting Faction" also roared and launched their first charge.
However, the arrows struck the monster but did not cause any effective damage.
When players hit monsters with their stone axes and wooden clubs, they can only leave shallow scratches that heal in the blink of an eye.
The defensive line was breached in the very first encounter.
A combat-oriented player was pounced on by a monster, its sharp claws tearing open his chest.
A flash of white light, and he respawned at the village's respawn point.
The next second, his terrified scream rang out in the guild channel.
"This debuff...this debuff can't be removed upon resurrection! My hands...my hands are being corrupted!"
He shared his perspective in the guild channel.
On my arm, red streaks of blood appeared, slowly wriggling under the skin.
【Crimson Erosion (Level 1): Your body is being corrupted by a twisted force. This condition cannot be cleared by resurrection.】
The entire guild channel went silent for a second.
Then came even greater panic.
"Damn! This isn't a debuff! It's permanent contamination!"
"What do you mean? Will we turn into monsters?"
"This game...can you die?"
This news spread among all players.
The most fundamental logic of the game world—"death without consequences"—has been broken.
The revelry in the council chamber ended, and extreme panic began to spread.
On the front lines of the battlefield, on the verge of collapse, blood and flesh flew everywhere.
The tribe's warriors suffered heavy casualties in a single encounter.
Their death is permanent.
Even though those players were terrified and screamed wildly in the chat, their bodies instinctively kept running back to the battlefield from the respawn point.
A sudden realization flashed in the single eye of the war leader, Kahn.
Watching a player who had just been shouting that he was going to give up, but after being torn apart by the monster, return a few minutes later cursing and swearing, carrying a stone axe.
He understood the true nature of these strangers and issued a ruthless order.
"All tribal warriors, retreat! Archers, fire freely, provide cover!"
Then, he yelled at them, "You indestructible lunatics!"
"Use your bodies to plug the gap! Use your lives to hold them back!"
Lightning Blade had just run back from the respawn point when he heard Cain's command.
He paused for a brief second, then burst into morbid laughter.
"Holy crap! An officially certified main tank (MT) quest!" he yelled. "Brothers! Old man Kahn has spoken! We're to be tanks! This is the faction's main quest! If we push this quest, our contribution points will skyrocket!"
The players of the "Combat Faction" were ignited by a mixture of fear and excitement.
They formed a fragile yet resilient wall of flesh and blood, and with wave after wave of suicidal charges, they managed to slow down the monster's advance.
Behind them, in a relatively safe village.
Zhang Wei, the leader of the farming faction, forced himself to calm down.
He wasn't foolish enough to charge into battle and die; instead, he organized professional players in the rear to systematically gather battlefield intelligence.
"The monsters in Area A seem to be more afraid of the campfire we lit."
"The monsters coming from the mine are moving slower than those in the forest!"
"I saw a monster engulfed in flames, and its wounds are healing more slowly!"
All the information obtained at the cost of lives was compiled and sent to Zhang Wei.
A flash of lightning struck Zhang Wei's mind: mines, slowness, fear of flames...
He recalled the notes he had taken on that batch of new ore when he was researching how to increase the furnace temperature.
Iron ore is rich in an unknown, reactive component that produces a violent energy reaction at high temperatures.
Iron ore + charcoal = special flame!
"Quickly! Send men to the mine and steal a few pieces of the black iron ore we dug out yesterday!" Zhang Wei ordered his men.
"Everyone, gather all the charcoal you can find at the tribe's blast furnace!"
A few minutes later, a player risked his life to retrieve several pieces of dark ore from the perimeter of the affected mine.
The flames of the forging furnace were burning fiercely, fueled by charcoal.
Zhang Wei grabbed the first piece of black iron ore, mixed it with a few pieces of charcoal, and personally threw it into the blast furnace.
The fire in the stove changed from orange-red to a dazzling bright white!
"It's done!"
They used tongs to pick out a piece of slag that was burning red-hot and still radiating white flames, and threw it at a monster trapped in a trap.
The monster let out a miserable howl as the flesh and blood that came into contact with the white fire slag melted and vaporized.
Most importantly, the edges of the burned wounds were charred black and completely unable to regenerate!
The weakness has been found!
The frontline command post amidst the chaos of war.
Ignoring the danger, Zhang Wei wrapped his hands in two thick pieces of animal hide, held a piece of "white fire" slag that was still radiating high temperatures, and rushed like a madman to Kahn and Terra, who were directing the battle.
"look!"
In front of the two tribal leaders, he forcefully threw the piece of ore at a monster that was about to pounce on Kahn.
After the monster came into contact with the slag, half of its body hissed and fell down while emitting white smoke.
"We've found the weapon of victory!" Zhang Wei roared.
Seeing this decisive moment, a glimmer of hope shone in Chief Terra's eyes.
He immediately summoned Kahn, Zhang Wei, and Lightning Blade, who had just run back from the respawn point and was still panting heavily.
Amidst the monster's roars and towering white flames, Terra's words were clear and powerful.
"I propose the formation of the 'Valley Survival Alliance'! Let's unite the tribes, the combat factions, and the farming factions!"
Kahn was appointed as the Alliance's Supreme Military Commander. He looked at the players who were still risking their lives to fill the defensive line and issued the first unified order.
"The [Fighting Faction] continues to serve as the first line of defense, risking their lives to buy time!"
"【Farming Faction】, ramp up production of 'White Fire'! I need more White Fire!"
Zhang Wei organized logistics, his mind racing as he planned the production line.
In his eyes, this disaster has become an excellent opportunity to advance in the field of technology.
The scales of victory tipped in favor of this human tribe that was struggling to survive in the cracks.
Farming-oriented players were busy producing in the rear, pushing wheelbarrows to transport baskets of burning white slag to the front lines.
Combat-oriented players let loose, using the slag as projectiles and firing volleys of arrows soaked in slag powder.
War leader Karn mixed the tribe's most elite warriors with this group of fearless "outsiders," and he discovered that the players didn't care about formations or casualties.
Their sole objective was to rush toward the monster as quickly as possible and then use their weapons, or their own bodies, to deliver deadly white fire to the enemy.
Purifying fire spread across the crimson carpet, the monsters' roars turned into screams, the battle lines were stabilized, and they even began to slowly push back outwards.
Morale is at an all-time high.
Players are celebrating, believing they have once again found the answer to the current version;
The tribe's inhabitants cheered; they saw a glimmer of hope in the darkness of despair.
……
In the study, Xu leaned back in his chair and yawned, looking somewhat bored.
In the sand table, the data on the evolution of the battle situation was fed back to his retina. The progress bar representing the nutrient supply showed a significant slowdown in growth, and tended to stabilize.
"Too easy," he commented. "Once you find a way to break the deadlock, it becomes a boring 'monster-grinding' game."
"Brushing" is the least efficient way to produce nutrients.
"It's time to give this world a small update."
Xu Ye's consciousness sank into the bottom layer of the Ashem continent through the [Heavenly Dao] system.
They found the "Seed of Calamity," which he had planted deep within the Wild Boar Forest as the source of all disasters.
That seed has grown into a huge, ever-beating heart of flesh and blood.
Xu also mobilized a pure stream of [Primordial Spore] energy and directly injected it into that heart.
"Let me see where your limits are."
boom!
Immediately, crimson energy, a hundred times more concentrated than before, poured into the entire battlefield.
On the front lines, a combat-oriented player had just pierced the chest of a Stitched Monster with a stick tied with white fire slag.
Before they could even cheer, the monster, which should have been purified and dissolved, secreted a layer of oily mucus from its body surface.
The white flames sizzled on the slime, producing a "sizzling" sound, but could no longer damage its core.
The monster was covered in a bony carapace that could easily insulate it from high temperatures.
The effectiveness of the regular "white fire" attack has been greatly reduced.
The fatal changes don't stop there.
A sweet-smelling, grayish-white mist rose from the depths of the forest, and the tribal archer, drawing his bow, inhaled the first breath of the mist.
In a flash, he saw his dead wife waving to him.
He dropped his bow and arrows, grinned foolishly, and walked towards the monster horde, only to be instantly overwhelmed.
The UI of a combat-oriented player flickers, displaying countless garbled characters. The world in his eyes is distorted and spinning, and his teammates have turned into the most terrifying monsters. He roars and swings his axe at the people around him.
Panic, hallucinations, chaos.
This fog directly attacks the spirit and erodes the mind, causing the newly established "Valley Survival Alliance" to begin collapsing from within.
The newly ignited hope was replaced by a new despair.
"Hold on! Hold the line!" Kahn roared, pinning a mutated monster that lunged at him to the ground with a spear, but the monster only twitched a few times before standing up again.
"No! The White Flame is ineffective!" Zhang Wei stared at the data in his hand, his face deathly pale. "These new monsters have protective shells! Our weapons can't penetrate them!"
"That fog is poisonous!" Lightning Blade had just run back from the respawn point when he saw one of his raid members rolling on the ground, clutching his head, acting like a madman. "That's a mental attack! Damn it, does this game even have a SAN (Sanity) detection system?"
Faced with overwhelming odds, the four temporary alliance leaders realized a harsh truth.
Passive defense is tantamount to waiting to die.
The only way out is to break into the heart of the polluted forest, find and destroy the source of the plague.
"I need a squad, a suicide squad." Terra's gaze swept over Kahn, Zhang Wei, and Lightning Blade. "We have no way out."
"Among my hunters, there are still ten of the strongest." A rare hint of heartache appeared in Kahn's one eye.
That was his most prized guard, each one a warrior forged in the wilds against the most ferocious beasts, brothers he had raised himself. Faced with the survival of the tribe, they had no choice but to...
Lightning Blade spoke in the guild channel with an unprecedentedly serious tone.
"All core members of 'Peak', listen to my command."
"This is not a mission, this is an order."
"The highest-ranking, best-equipped, and top-20 contributors, gather here."
"Let's blow up the core of this world's servers."
Although it was a joke, every player who heard the command understood the significance of the line from the resolute expression that almost overflowed the screen.
Moments later, the two teams regrouped in the chaos at the rear.
On one side stood ten silent, iron-blooded tribal hunters, wielding bone spears and stone axes, ready to die.
On the other side were twenty players with the highest levels and the most deaths, and their equipment was the best.
This was the most elite force that the tribe and Wang Jia could muster.
Terra looked at the hastily assembled team, took off a charm made of animal teeth from her neck, and handed it to Kahn.
"Come back alive." He walked up to Zhang Wei. "Protect the home."
Zhang Wei nodded emphatically: "We will do our best."
Terra's gaze fell on Lightning Blade, this stranger whom he could never fully understand.
"Strangers, create miracles in your own way."
The Torch Expedition Team was officially established.
Kahn stood at the very front, with the tribe's warriors and otherworldly visitors behind him, all gazing at the forest shrouded in a grayish-white psionic mist.
"Set off."