Chapter 30: Chapter 30

Marni’s death was not actually too serious, but did alert the other players who were intending to enter the Valley of the Tragic Dead that even with the Miasma-Clearing Torch, the thick purple fog was not as harmless as it looks.

Even at the edge, there were monsters that could kill Players like them in seconds.

In fact, it was not just the Players who were taken surprise—Xi Wei, watching the show live from his Divine Kingdom was taken aback as well.

He immediately spent some divine energy to activate his Divine Eye to see where Marni had just died.

As a former battlefield of the gods, the Valley of the Tragic Dead was full of barriers or wild streams of divine power that even abilities like Divine Eye could not see through.

That was also the main reason why Xi Wei would send the Players to explore it instead of having himself descend.

Luckily, the edge where the Players were now at did not have those things, allowing Xi Wei’s Divine Eye to easily see through the fog and observe the monster hidden in the deadly miasma.

It was a magical beast known as the Skull King Spider. It resembled a massive spider made out of bones, but was actually not too different from another magical beast, the Jungle Spider. However, the Skull King Spider would always look for the bones of other creatures and stick them on itself with its webs, eventually sticking the skulls of giants or other massive magical beasts to protect its abdomen, which was its weakest point.

They also had surprisingly immense strength, and could move very rapidly although they were carrying bones several times above their own weight. In comparison, they were also heavy feeders that devoured two-thirds their own mass each day, not to mention that they were highly territorial and ferocious, often attacking invaders larger than themselves. Apart from their sharp claws, even the stingers on their mandibles contained powerful venom.

Marni had previously been caught defenseless and pierced by its mandibles, reduced to a blob right after he died!

In fact, the field guide that the Continental Adventurers Association published classified the beast as Highly Dangerous, recommending that only veteran adventurers tried to fight them, and in groups of thirty people or above.

“So, it’s not just revenants inside the Valley of the Tragic Dead…” Xi Wei touched his chin with his tentacle, realizing that he had made a mistake in terms of experience.

Still, it was not too major a mistake for Xi Wei—aside from Marni being killed, his body irrecoverable and dropping in level again.

Under such circumstances, if the players would want to continue their initial plan of taking turns in entering the fog, their split strength meant that they would only be killed one by one.

It would be an easy task to help them, however, and Xi Wei did not actually need to make a move at all: he just had to add information about the Skull King Spider as reference and send it to the Players. He was confident that they could come up with a strategy.

But he had no intention of helping.

In the end, it was the Players’ first mission into a new frontier. On many occasions, experiencing things for the first time was the most important start in developing certain instincts.

It was true that Xi Wei could help them once or twice, but there are many things in the mortal realm that even could not interfere with. Furthermore, if the Players became used to his help and turned reliant, they would definitely become helpless if they could not gain information from their god every single time, and might even lose faith in him.

Either way, since Players would never really die, it was acceptable to let them train for a bit.

“Do your best, don’t let me down…” Having decided to not help, Xi Wei continued watching the livestream from his Divine Kingdom.

***

Fortunately, Edward and the others were no fools. They realized immediately that there must be a monster hidden inside the miasma.

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In response, they simply stayed outside the part of the miasma where Marni was insta-killed, calling out to the other Players for a simultaneous barrage of long-range skills.

To ordinary magical beasts, the damage that normal Players who reached level seven or eight could deal against them was already impressive.

The Skull King Spider, struck by a downpour of sword qi, arrows, and other random skills had its outer shell knocked off, and retreated deeper into the miasma of the Valley of the Tragic Dead.

Meanwhile, the remaining four frontline Players entered the miasma, finding the blob which was once Marni.

After seconds of silence mourning for their companion, they continued forward.

Interestingly, while the deadly miasma appeared to be a purple wall of mist from the outside with nothing inside visible, the miasma thinned considerably after Eleena’s group entered with the torches. It was as if they had violet filter lenses that allowed them to see a dozen meters around them.

Hence, tracking the signs the Skull King Spider left behind, the party of four gave chase and found it nearby, trying to dig a hole into the ground!

In the instant the Players saw the HP bar above it, they moved without hesitation and the battle started.

Ever the warrior, Joe rushed ahead without even drawing his sword, grabbing the creature by its legs and throwing it in a suplex.

Anyone from a different church would have been laughing and thinking that Joe was an idiot who did not know his limits.

Rationally speaking, Joe’s strength would not have been enough to throw the Skull King Spider—the creature itself and its bone armor were more than five tons! Not to mention that Joe was not even as tall as any single one of its joints!

And yet reality would have left anyone from other churches gaping, because Joe did manage his suplex move on the Skull King Spider!

That was where the Players differ from normal humans in terms of combat.

Though this fantasy realm came with supernatural powers, divine arts and magic, there was no unified system for those abilities.

In other words, the world itself did not have the thing called ‘skill’.

That was a loophole Xi Wei could use.

Using his all-encompassing Divine Order as the God of Games, he directly wrote up a new law: The Rule of Skill.

Although the programming of the Rule was not significant and has no effect against gods, Legendary champions or Epic creatures, it would remain as rule no matter how low-tier it could be!

In accordance with the Rule of Skill, anyone would be knocked into the air with Sword Skill: Air Launch or burnt by Hellfire. In short, even Godzilla would get hit with one almighty german suplex with the Suplex skill…

Naturally, that rule still remained in the bounds of other rules such as skill damage and immunity. For example, if it had been a huge muscular man who launched a german suplex on the Skull King Spider, it would probably leave the arachnid in ragged pieces and bent legs.

On the other hand, this Skull King Spider was only left confused for a moment after Joe threw it and not really hurt. That was because the skill damage that the suplex caused on its HP was not critical.

Furthermore, after getting to its feet after Joe’s throw, the Skull King Spider was briefly Immune—preventing players from chaining their control moves such as unlimited suplexes, cutting down the enemy’s HP when facing someone they could not defeat.

In reality, Xi Wei did not actually establish the Immunity setting when he created the new rules. It was the world that partially adjusted it when the rules took root, cutting off an assured backdoor to victory for the Players and leaving our protagonist very regretful…