Chapter 199: Fence Sitters

Being warned by iLittle Arrow, Slayer’s Heart pretended to talk Qin Ruo while quietly scanning the direction she pointed out. He soon realized that iLittle Arrow was right, whereby a few suspicious individuals were following them.

At first, Qin Ruo thought that they might be from Pharaoh Clan which he had just offended. However, he quickly dismissed the possibility. This was because it was impossible for Pharaoh Clan to guess that he had teleported to Moonrise City in such short notice, regardless of how powerful the Clan was…

‘But aside from Pharaoh Clan, who else would want to track our ten-man party?’Qin Ruo wondered doubtfully.

Unlike Qin Ruo, Slayer’s Heart and Violet Orchid had at the same time already guessed the identities of their stalkers. They looked at each other warily and the former said in the party channel, “Ignore them. Let’s get out of the city first.”

The ten of them remained silent and pretended that they were unaware of the stalkers. They proceeded to exit Moonrise City without showing signs of worry…

Along the way, everyone else learned from Violet Orchid that there was a very special player organization near the border of the Mythical Battlefield!

These players were mostly ordinary from decent clans. However, they took advantage of the

rivalry between the Angel and Demon Factions to create the “Fence Sitters Organization”, which targeted both factions’ hunger for Honor Points.

These players detached themselves from their own factions and only made contact or business with the high rank personnels from the powerful clans in Demon Faction…

A capital-less business!

They leaked information regarding teams or parties from their own faction to the opponents in exchange of money. This allowed the Demon Faction clans to gain Honor Points rapidly and easily from the Angel Faction.

A long time ago, this business was well-received by many powerful clans. Many of them exploited this channel to accumulate Honor Points secretly…

However as more and more of such organizations were exposed, these Fence Sitters soon became the enemy of the public and were openly accused or executed. Numerous small clans and teams that suffered losses on the Mythical Battlefield because to them even joined forces at one time to suppress and wipe out some established Fence Sitter organizations.

Despite that, some organizations survived the culling and exist until this day. They only served a minor number of powerful customers from the rival faction now through a more covert approach.

With the sharp decrease in demand, their business was naturally obstructed. Thus, these organizations expanded their service from solely gathering information to tracing and stalking certain players or troops…

According to Violet Orchid, those that they just encountered were most probably these Fence Sitters as only such organizations would place a group of people to guard Moonrise City’s teleportation portal and the city gates all day. They patrolled and checked every passerby to quickly lock on their intended targets from the mass crowd.

“Twelve Zodiacs” was considered as one of the renowned clans in the Demon Faction, so it was highly possible that they had immediately made contact with the Fence Sitters over Moonrise City to take note of Slayer’s Heart party after being heavily defeated the day before…

“So… what should we do now? Sooner or later we would be exposed with them stalking us.” Brother Da asked.

“Just kill them all, there aren’t many of them.”

The one who spoke was Qin Ruo. His tone was calm and relaxed—since finished off so many people from Twelve Zodiacs Clan yesterday, his Honor Points had skyrocketed to 43. He would be fine as long as the number of malicious kills did not exceed this number.

Slayer’s Heart and several others also shared the same thought. Only Brother Da and Dinosaurcerer were slightly unnerved.

It is worth it, wasting valuable Honor Points on killing players from the same faction?

The two of them felt their mouth dry up a little. After all, they had planned to develop the party into a clan in the future, so they were naturally unwilling to offend any organization… Especially those organizations hidden behind the veil who were professionals in selling information from this side of the faction for a living. They afraid that it might be tougher for them to thrive on the Mythical Battlefield in the future once they offended these scary people.

While having mixed thoughts, the group purposely picked a route less traveled by other player parties and advanced toward Silentdeath Jungle…

The route chosen was a remote one, thus the pursuers did not dare to go closer. They just trailed from afar while being extremely vigilant.

Only now was Qin Ruo able to determine that there were a total of four pursuers that followed them—a Bowmaster, a Bandit, a Elementalist, and a Berserker.

The combination was reasonable, which encompassed all basics like melee attacks, ranged attacks, stalking, and identification. Unfortunately, such party formation alone was definitely inadequate to survive on the Mythical Battlefield. Even Qin Ruo, who had entered the Mythical Battlefield only the second time, clearly understood such an obvious fact!

***

“Fourth Brother, something is wrong.”

The Berserker in the group that was following Qin Ruo and company suddenly blurted out. The uneasiness in his tone immediately drew the attention of the other three companions.

“Why?”

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Three of them turned around and looked at him.

“This route… Don’t you guys think it is too remote?”

“Bullshit! This leads to Silentdeath Jungle. How many players do you think are actually willing to enter that damned place?”

“Exactly! Since it’s such a dangerous place, it’s very strange why none of them turned back and looked at us after being trailed for so long. Not even once…” It seems that the Berserker was not a dimwit after all, at least his observation was rather sharp.

“Eh? Wait a minute, now that you mentioned it… Still, though it might be true that they did not turn around and see us, why does it matter? We are so way behind,, so it’s normal that they did not realize our presence.”

As one of them finished the sentence, the Bowmaster suddenly frowned and gazed over their targets more closely. He interrupted them with a grim tone, “Third Brother was probably right, something’s off. Slayer’s Heart and Orchid Violet are two high ranked members of Bauhinia Clan as well as veterans that have long meddled in the Mythical Battlefield. So they should be very vigilant and not be this careless.”

As he said thus, he suddenly paused and scanned the party for another time and to his surprise…

“Eh?!”

“Why does it seem like one person has disappeared?”

Under close examination, the Bowmaster just noticed that the ten-man team in front of them was down to nine-men without their realization…

“Is the Bandit gone?”

The other three people were not too worried at first. In this Mythical Battlefield, many preferred to utilize Bandits as scouts to check on the route ahead. Although it was pretty useless to apply it now, that was not something to be startled about.

“No!”

The Bowmaster took in the cold air. He quickly said, “The Bandit is still in the party. The one who disappeared is… the… Aquamancer… the Level 40 Aquamancer… Qin…”

Before he could utter the two words “Qin Ruo”, an abnormal chilly aura was abruptly felt coming from the top of his head. The four of them trembled and quickly looked up, but a phantom-like voice was raised behind them instead.

“Explode!”

Several Frostramparts that appeared abruptly above their heads suddenly exploded with a loud bang! A sky-full of frost and snow engulfed the four pursuers…

Bowmaster, Bandit, and Elementalist were classes with low HP. The Elementalist, despite having a decent amount of Magic Defense, also failed to withstand the layered Frostburst attack without defensive magic activated. The three of them were instant-killed simultaneously.

The only one escaped from this assault was the Beastblood Berserker. He directly activated Berserk at the dire moment and which instantly boosted his Magic Defense to above 70 points, and thus managed to avoid being killed by that fatal explosion.

Hostile attack by player Qin Ruo, Counterstance activated!

The moment the system notification appeared, the traumatized Beastblood Berserker with body surrounded by red radiance clumsily dashed out from the ice-snow range! He fled while gulping down potion by potion with no intention to turn around and retaliate. Qin Ruo’s level was exactly 40, which was not considered very high. However, it was creepy how his voice could mysteriously “appear” behind them while he was supposed to be in front. Besides that, the opponent ability to instant-kill three of his teammates entirely obliterated his will to fight back. After all, the enemy still had Slayer’s Heart and Violet Orchid from Bauhinia League by their side!

The opponent’s impulsive attack proved that their cover was exposed. The Berserker did not dare to confront Qin Ruo even if he had a hundred guts. He also did not think he could take on the enemy all by himself.

Sadly…

Although he managed to briefly escape, he did not foresee that Qin Ruo was actually standing behind him from the very beginning. At the moment the Berserker dashed out from the snow range, he immediately saw an unexpected figure. He could not quite understand why a person who was supposed to be a hundred meters away suddenly appeared right next to him.

Shaking in terror, he was soon greeted with an Aquarampart formed right before his eyes!

The Berserker was unable to brake at will and collided into the wall due to inertia…

“Freeze!”

The moment he crashed into the soft Aquarampart, the Berserker was lucky enough to “enjoy” the entire process where the liquid was being frozen into solid ice. The sudden freeze immediately trapped the Berserker within the Frostrampart.

***

In the distance, his nine teammates had turned around earlier when the fight broke out. They silently witnessed the snow eagle dive from the sky to land the finishing blow and ended the fight on a high note.

“…he’s getting faster, again.”

Burning Rose murmured, while the members stood near her all nodded in agreement.