For 10 minutes, they repaired equipment, bought potions, reset traps, and filled the trenches.
The players once again stood atop the stone walls they had built themselves!
The battle at Tianhe Village was still ongoing; 20 minutes had passed and they still hadn’t finished clearing the rabbits.
Their numbers were three times fewer than those at Wangxi Village, and their combat strength was far weaker.
Some had even died!
A cornered rabbit will bite, and these were mutated rabbits, and there were many of them.
The mutated rabbits surged toward Tianhe Village wave after wave.
Given the number of players at Tianhe Village,
each person needed to clear over 300 rabbits.
But with five people forming a team, that meant clearing 1,500 rabbits per team.
Their clearing speed wasn’t fast enough. As more rabbits piled up from behind, each team faced an ever-increasing number of enemies.
Moreover, they hadn’t built stone walls; their traps were sparse and scattered, and in the end, they could only rely on barricades to hold back the beast tide.
After 20 minutes, the barricades had been shattered by the rabbits.
Players were being attacked from all sides by the mutants.
With no choice, they retreated one by one into Tianhe Village, using the village buildings for shelter.
Without a solid defensive line, a large number of rabbits flooded into Tianhe Village.
And on top of that, there were the BOSSes.
Four giant mutants charged in, smashing three houses. Inside one house, a family of three NPCs was crushed to death.
But the players didn’t care at all; they hurriedly pulled back.
“Quick, take down the BOSS!”
“Take out the BOSS first, then clean up the rest slowly!”
“Fight around the houses! Deal damage! What are you all doing? Can’t you handle such a small BOSS?”
Everyone scrambled, and they finally took down the BOSS.
But the rabbits had spread throughout the entire village.
It took them a long time just to find all the monsters.
Finally, at 53 minutes, they killed all the Red-Eyed Rabbits.
However, the next wave of monsters would arrive in just 7 minutes.
It was 7 minutes instead of 10 because the beast invasion, a major event in this expansion, refreshed on the hour.
If they couldn’t clear the current monsters within an hour, the next batch would spawn, and the monsters would accumulate more and more.
…
At Wangxi Village.
Within that one hour,
they had fought three entire waves of monsters.
The Chu Fu team managed to snatch three Level 2 BOSSes. But even though they were Level 2 BOSSes, getting the last hit only awarded 1 free attribute point instead of 2.
They secured all the Level 3 BOSSes because those had more HP. Chu Fu and Shen Chi were close to Jiao Jiao and Suture Saint; they flew over and helped snatch the final blows.
Their free attribute points increased by a total of 11.
Chu Fu allocated all the points to Spirit, raising her Spirit stat to 103.
Once her Spirit stat exceeded 100—not counting equipment—Chu Fu felt a cool sensation on her forehead.
A feeling of breakthrough.
Her perception of the outside world sharpened, and the number of plants she could control seemed to increase.
It went from 20 to 40.
Chu Fu immediately fast-germinated 20 dandelions, arranging them in an interwoven pattern to form a plant formation.
She was buzzing around like a little bee.
Mostly because she had to compete with Shen Chi for first place.
“A Mechanic is basically a swarm army! Infinite mechanical units can fight on their own.
But the number of plants I can control is limited, and so is the range!
Still, these machines are low-level. Once the monster levels get higher, my advantage will kick in!”
Chu Fu racked her brains to outdo her teammate.
Shen Chi was also grinding hard, his hands practically smoking from all the work.
In the previous dungeon, with the BOSS’s HP as it was, Chu Fu did the most damage and had the highest contribution, which naturally lowered others’ shares.
But now it was different.
Now it was about monster-killing efficiency.
Shen Chi’s mechanical army, because he spent money (on materials and crafting costs), was far more autonomous than the plants Chu Fu could summon.
They could rush out and fight monsters on their own.
As long as he kept crafting puppet beasts, his contribution would soar.
However, as the monster levels increased, his mechanical puppets started to feel like little toys.
But Chu Fu’s [Plague Spread] skill turned out to be even more absurdly powerful.
In the first hour,
Wangxi Village held off three waves.
In the second hour,
Wangxi Village held off another three waves.
In the third hour,
Wangxi Village held off two more waves!
…
At Tianhe Village.
The fourth hour arrived, and with it came everyone’s despair.
They hadn’t even finished clearing the third wave’s Level 3 monsters—wild boars, wolf cubs, and foxes—
when the fourth wave appeared: gray wolves, giant wild boars, and black chimpanzees.
Along with eight BOSSes.
This time, there was truly no stopping them.
The remaining players at Tianhe Village averaged only Level 5, while the monsters were Level 4. Worse, each player had to face an endless stream of monsters, with each team needing to kill 1,500 just to clear them all.
Their mana was depleted, and during the cooldowns of their skills, the monsters overwhelmed them.
There were simply too few people.
Not only that, but a pack of over ten Black Wolf Elites appeared—fiercer and even craftier than the Silvermoon Wolf King.
They leapt into the crowd, ruthlessly targeting the healers among the players. Their intelligence was terrifyingly high.
They tore the players’ defensive line apart.
More monsters poured into the village. Wild boars rammed into buildings, leveling houses one by one.
The village chief, in despair, was bitten and killed by the black wolves.
Everyone heard the system announcement.
[System Announcement: Remaining buildings in the village at 10%, NPC survival rate at 10%, village chief dead. Village defense failed!]
[System Announcement: All players from Tianhe Village lose 1 point from all attributes and receive the debuff ‘Fugitive’: All attributes reduced by 20% for 2 days.]
[System Announcement: Tianhe Village has been removed from the map, becoming Tianhe Village ruins.]
By now, the players had suffered heavy losses.
But oddly, all the members of the Youlong Studio had survived, as their strength was still considerable.
Those few BOSSes and elites only targeted the independent players, avoiding a direct clash with Youlong Studio’s members.
The leader of Youlong Studio’s server, Youlong Zhuye, shouted, “All players, break through! Head southeast—there are no monsters spawning there!”
Far from grieving the village’s destruction, they actually breathed a sigh of relief.
They no longer had to die alongside these people.
Blame that damn Lin Haowan, and that Thorn Association.
Otherwise, none of them would have perished.
Fortunately, orders had already come down from above.
Currently, three beginner villages—26, 27, and 28—had all been destroyed, but over 5,000 players had escaped.
Merging servers would also meet the condition of having over 10,000 players.
If the 30th server merged with them as well, Rongxun, Huanyu, and Youlong would collectively have 5,000 members.
Thorn Association only had 500 members.
They stood no chance against them.
And they still had a secret weapon.
Youlong Zhuye’s gaze fell on the dozen or so Black Wolf Elites that had spawned. A cold smirk crept across his face.
