Qi Xu directly unleashed his skill, opening all the compound eyes on his body and shooting out a scorching gaze!
Countless small holes instantly appeared on the bodies of the three sea monsters, and thick, foul-smelling blood spewed out in various jets...
Dongfang Yuan followed closely behind. Scuttling sideways, he snapped his massive pincers a few times, completely connecting the bleeding wounds and drastically increasing the area of the blood spatter.
Zhanlang 004, having too many tentacles and needing to carefully protect everyone's loot from falling, was a step late in attacking. Looking back, he gasped. These ruthless guys were still ruthless even after turning into monsters!
He immediately decided not to push forward and instead focused on playing support for his two fierce teammates. When your teammates are this strong, sometimes you just have to let them carry you. A wise man knows his place.
Using his tentacles to hold the three sea monsters in place, or at least restrict their movements, Qi Xu and Dongfang Yuan seized the opportunity to launch a fierce forward assault. Even though they were all monsters now, their combat prowess was not weak in the slightest.
However, the HP of these three sea monsters was incredibly high. It took half an hour of back-and-forth fighting to finally take them down, and Zhanlang 004 had several of his tentacles broken in the process...
Zhanlang 004 was speechless. Nowadays, even monsters knew how to pick on the weak. The other two were clearly beating them up the hardest, but since they couldn't defeat them, they came over and beat him up instead...
Qi Xu didn't know if it was just an illusion. Although visibility outside was extremely limited, he felt that their team's iron cage was rising noticeably faster.
Was it because the other three groups hadn't finished fighting yet? No. Qi Xu suddenly shifted his gaze to the corpses of the three sea monsters, whose blood had almost been completely drained...
"@&%#×!"
After speaking, Qi Xu was the first to take action, doing his best to dismember the sea monsters into smaller pieces and throwing them out of the iron cage.
But as a fat maggot-like sea monster of an unknown species, his methods were truly limited. Fortunately, Dongfang Yuan and Zhanlang 004 quickly reacted and joined him in dismembering the corpses.
As all three sea monsters were thrown down, Qi Xu's theory was finally confirmed. The rising speed of the iron cage increased.
He immediately guessed that there must be other conditions for this stage, and the secret realm's announcement verified his thoughts.
[As expected of the current number one on the national server, you discovered the little secret of the rising iron cage so quickly. As a passing reminder to the other groups of players, you need to make the iron cage rise quickly.
Players who fail to reach the surface within twenty-four hours will be sealed at the bottom of the sea. Whether you can successfully escape then will depend entirely on the players who reach the finish line, and whether they are willing to trade the reward of becoming the top player on the server for your lives.
In addition, the group with the slowest rising speed will not receive any points for the third stage. Please be careful not to lose the watermelon while picking up sesame seeds. These are all the rules for the third stage. I wish everyone... good luck, and a successful escape.]
The other three groups had yet to kill their monsters. Hearing these supplementary rules, a sense of urgency instantly washed over them.
No one wanted to entrust their lives to the kindness of others, especially in this deep-sea iron cage where every inch of air was soaked in a despairing, salty stench. They couldn't imagine what it would be like to be trapped here.
They all erupted with life-or-death potential, fighting desperately to quickly kill the monsters in their cages and throw them out.
They only breathed a slight sigh of relief when they noticed the rising speed had increased a bit. But upon observing the situation of the other groups, they couldn't help but grow tense again.
One group was far in the lead, their iron cage clearly about ten meters higher than the other three, which were all at roughly the same height.
This meant that their own group could very well end up in last place, unable to obtain any points...
There were still twenty-four hours of escape time left...
While it didn't seem too short, this was the deep sea. No one knew exactly how far they were from the surface, leaving them feeling extremely uncertain.
To make matters worse, everyone was a monster right now. They couldn't communicate or comfort each other with words.
They even couldn't help but overthink things. The lighter the weight inside the iron cage, the faster it rose. Then... would someone, in order to increase their chances of survival, choose to...
After all, everyone had obtained a lot of treasures from the glowing cruise ship earlier. As long as they could successfully leave with these treasures, this trip to the secret realm could be considered absolutely perfect.
There was no need to even look at what the points at the finish line could be exchanged for, as long as they could take away everything they currently had...
Suddenly, the atmosphere between everyone became delicate.
Looking at the pile of weapon enhancement stones and ability awakening stones in the middle of the cage, Qi Xu seemed to suddenly understand. After a brief struggle for two or three minutes, he made a direct decision.
However, these things were not all his; he needed to consult his teammates.
Stretching out his chubby little claws, he pointed at the treasures, and then pointed down at the abyssal depths below the cage.
Every group had smart people. Rather than throwing these things away in a panic at the end, it was better to throw them away right from the start, widening their advantage early on to avoid the disgusting scenario of having to sacrifice a teammate later.
Dongfang Yuan and Zhanlang 004 understood instantly. They directly indicated that they didn't mind and let him make the call.
Qi Xu's heart ached too, but there was no helping it. He had felt something was off when they first obtained these treasures. If they had truly fought a life-and-death battle with sea monsters, suffering heavy injuries and nearly losing their lives to get them, he might have felt more at ease.
But the problem was that they had only lifted a wooden board to obtain several weapon enhancement stones. It was too easy! And the ability awakening stone that Zhanlang 004 obtained, which could allow ten people to become ability users, was completely unheard of and exaggerated to the extreme.
Now that he completely understood the rules of the third stage, Qi Xu realized that the treasures given to them were never meant to be taken away.
This made perfect sense. How could there be a free lunch?
Unless you were willing to hold onto these treasures and push your teammates out of the iron cage...
Having figured it out, Qi Xu calmly and composedly threw all the treasures they had obtained down into the abyss, leaving none behind. This was the third stage; it was a trial, not a real treasure hunt. It was all just a test.
He still felt the sting of loss. Watching the treasures fall away, Qi Xu felt a chilling ache in his heart.
But soon, the iron cage's rising speed suddenly increased, emitting a loud rumbling sound... and it was more than five times faster than before.
The weight of those items wasn't actually that exaggerated; they were even lighter than a single severed limb of the sea monsters they had just thrown down.
Qi Xu and the other two were a bit surprised, but thinking about it, it made sense. The value of these items was far beyond that of the sea monsters.
In the depths of the sea, although visibility was extremely limited, such a loud rumbling sound and the shadow-like rapid movement of Qi Xu's cage still drew the attention of the other three groups.
The smart ones quickly figured it out: either the people had been dropped, or the treasures had.
Invincible Black Whirlwind was definitely not the type to abandon her teammates, which perfectly explained why the iron cage on her side was rising so quickly.
Cheese Foam tapped Xie Shaoning's turtle shell with her shrimp claws and pointed at the treasures on everyone's backs. Even though Xie Shaoning couldn't bear to part with them, he chose to listen.
It was just that he was very reluctant to throw them away, tossing them out one by one...
Cheese Foam Eighty-Percent Sugar really couldn't stand watching it anymore. Using both her claws and tail, she swiftly swept all the treasures inside the iron cage out in just a few moves.
Xie Shaoning howled in heartache, rolling around frantically on his back inside his shell. Cheese Foam Eighty-Percent Sugar felt bad for him but also found it hilarious.
The two of them were completely distracted by each other. As the iron cage's ascent sped up, they completely failed to notice the bighead carp that the burly man had transformed into, whose cheeks were bulging and who adamantly refused to open his mouth...
On Jinwen Xingmangyue's side, they kept one treasure and threw the rest away. Upon noticing that their rising speed was exactly the same as Xie Shaoning's group next to them, they breathed a slight sigh of relief.
As for Threeking's side, a fight had already broken out.
After the second level ended, both of Threeking's original teammates had been left behind.
In order to set off again, they had no choice but to pick two new teammates. One was Taro Grape, Xie Shaoning's original teammate, and the other was Hand Covering the Sky, Cheese Foam's original teammate.
..........
