"Agreed!"
Chu Fu placed Bitter Melon King into the team.
She proactively introduced her: "This is Bitter Melon King, a player from Zone 028. She escaped from the gaming addiction reform school with me before. Her talent is an S-rank Agony Prison, and she's incredibly strong."
[S-rank Talent Agony Prison:
Trait 1: Grievous Cage – When cast on herself or an ally, forms a shield that reflects 50% of enemy damage and continuously stacks Pain debuffs. When cast on an enemy, creates an immovable cage that continuously stacks Pain debuffs.
Trait 2: Pain Amplification – Any skill can magnify the suffering of the target, causing convulsions, dizziness, uncontrollable crying, and similar status effects.
Trait 3: Mental-type damage is increased by 100%.]
Bitter Melon King quickly greeted the team as well, her voice sounding soft and gentle over the channel.
"Hello everyone! I'm Bitter Melon King. Thank you, Plant Queen, for bringing me along. I'll definitely work hard!"
Bitter Melon King gripped her staff tightly, feeling nervous. She had only just reached level 10, and her equipment was a complete mess — mostly basic white-quality pieces. Compared to the heavyweights in the team, it looked pathetically shabby.
Fortunately, she had been through embarrassment so many times that while she still couldn't face it with confidence, she had learned to tiptoe around others with careful, cautious politeness.
She was the girl who had returned to Linjiang City with Chu Fu from the gaming addiction reform school: Jiang Yunuo.
Jiang Yunuo had always felt her life was miserable, so when she created her character in the game, she chose this name.
Bitter Melon King.
She had grown up with divorced parents — more accurately, her mother had been beaten away by her father's domestic violence. At the time, she was already five years old and knew that if her mother hadn't run, she would have been killed. So she wanted her mother to run too.
But after her mother ran away, her clothes were never new or clean again, and she was often hungry.
Her grandparents favored sons over daughters and never cared for her as a granddaughter. Less than three months after her mother divorced and fled that burning house, they found her father a new stepmother.
The stepmother gave birth to a younger sister but was beaten away within three years as well.
Her little sister was left behind in her care. The grandparents went all-in again, spending everything they had, and found her father a third wife.
This wife brought along a son from her previous marriage.
Jiang Yunuo could never understand why her own father treated his biological daughter so terribly, yet spoiled his stepmother's son like a treasure.
Just because he was a boy?
She had no choice. She had to fawn over the stepmother, please the little brother, do housework at a young age, wash clothes, survive under the stepmother's thumb, and even start elementary school two years later than kids her age.
With no lunch money, she collected bottles to sell for change, or squatted by fast food restaurants to eat the leftover scraps people had thrown away.
When her father found out, he didn't blame the stepmother for refusing to give her money. Instead, he beat her himself.
Said she was a disgrace.
After that, she did get food to eat, but she got beaten for eating, beaten for making noise while chewing, and even beaten just for walking.
The stepmother would hold her little brother and watch coldly from the side. If her little sister cried or fussed, the sister got beaten too.
When she was young, there wasn't a single spot on her body that wasn't bruised.
Luckily, a kind neighbor noticed and called the police. Her father was convicted of abuse and locked away for two years.
She was sent to live with her grandparents, who didn't abuse her but did hold a grudge for her putting their son behind bars.
So she stopped getting beaten, only to be starved all over again.
Two more years passed, and when her father got out, her grandparents kicked her right back to his house like a soccer ball.
By then, she had grown a little older and learned to run, but most of the time, she still had to fawn over the stepmother just to get a meal.
At 17, she finally graduated from middle school three years late, with terrible grades — because she was too hungry to think properly.
She couldn't attend high school, and her piece-of-trash father and stepmother certainly wouldn't pay her tuition. So she went out and got a job, shaking milk tea at a bubble tea shop.
The sweetness of the tea seemed to make up for her bitter life.
That was around the time when [Primordial Gate] exploded in popularity. From her monthly salary of three thousand, she scraped together a third to buy a gaming helmet.
Because her talent and class were formidable, she secured the first kill on the Wild Boar King the very first time she fought it.
The guys from Dragon Roam Studio tried to kill her for it, but they were utterly tormented by her pain reflection shield. On top of that, her first skill as a Pain Warlock was a lifesteal ability that made her stronger with every clash, turning her into Dragon Roam Studio's number-one nemesis.
But her streak of freedom lasted barely two days. Her stepmother confiscated her gaming helmet, claiming she was "wasting money instead of handing it over to the family," and goaded her trash father into beating her black and blue before stuffing her into a gaming addiction reform center.
What she didn't know was that Jiang Yunuo had fallen victim to a scheme by Dragon Roam Studio. They had tracked down her real-life identity, used a few tricks to get her declared illegally detained, and prevented her from stealing another world boss.
Jiang Yunuo simply assumed her stepmother couldn't bear the thought of her having one nice thing.
But at least all that suffering was behind her now.
When she returned to Zone 028, in order to be merged into the same server as Chu Fu, she skipped the village defense battle. After it ended, there was a mirror map in Fengdu Town, and she just waited for the server merge so she could follow Chu Fu into the Thorn Guild.
It really was true that all the hardship she endured only made her stronger.
Now, she was the very first person to catch a ride on the Thorn Queen's wagon.
She was so incredibly lucky.
She was going to perform well, no matter what.
As she was thinking this, Bitter Melon King raised her staff to put a shield on everyone — but everyone was flying in the sky, quite far from her.
Shen Chi came over to pick her up and gave her a pair of flight wings.
"How much for these? I'll trade you!" Bitter Melon King hastily said, not wanting to accept gifts she hadn't earned. She'd recently made a bit of money too.
"Standard guild equipment — everyone who joins the guild gets a set!"
Chu Fu casually added Bitter Melon King to the guild.
Scrolling through the long list of guild benefits, Bitter Melon King nearly cried tears of joy.
This guild was way too generous!
She maneuvered the flight wings into the air, then cast shields on everyone on the team.
By now, the boss had been spawned for about ten seconds.
The unorganized players could no longer hold back and began attacking in droves.
But the Goblin Tribe Chieftain was a terrifying boss in its own right, and its most dangerous skill was the Leap Slash.
It would leap into the air and smash its massive spiked club into the ground, cracking the earth open. Players would be launched five or ten meters into the air, and the fall would deal additional impact damage.
Between the launch and the chaotic aggro, players were dying left and right in droves.
Just as Chu Fu was about to make her move, a player suddenly threw up a server-wide broadcast.
[Server 0308888 - Fengdu Town] [Rongxun Qizhao]: "To the big shots of the Thorn Guild — I heard you folks have a code of honor in the newbie village, where you don't kill other players out of spite during boss fights. Whoever lands the killing blow on the boss keeps the drops, and nobody retaliates privately. I think that's an excellent set of rules. Why don't we all keep following it and build a harmonious server environment together?"
Chu Fu frowned when she heard this.
She hadn't expected the head of the Rongxun studio to be slick enough to use such a public, hard-to-refuse gambit.
They tried to morally blackmail Chu Fu and the others, making it so they couldn't openly move against Rongxun Studio during the world boss event.
Chu Fu thought for a moment, and then her brow relaxed.
She, too, pulled out a megaphone!
