Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Inside the S-53 military base…
“20… 19…”
The cold, electronic synthesized voice of the robot squid echoed through the hall. The group of players in the hall below looked at each other for a moment upon hearing the voice.
“Attack!” The Red Queen said decisively in the team chat.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Without any hesitation, the NPC crewmen followed the order from Red Queen, raising their assault rifles and firing at the robot squid. However, the results were poor. The bullets of the assault rifles merely yielded sparkles against the squid. The damage dealt was insignificant. There were only a few dents on Octopus’s metallic sheen mechanical body.
The main reason was because the SMGs and assault rifles had comparatively low attack coefficients compared to sniper rifles and machine guns in War. This caused such weapons to be less effective when used against robotic monsters with immensely high physical defense stats. When coupled with the fact that these NPCs had only ordinary equipment and low damage output in spite of being over Level 40, only insignificant damage was dealt to the robotic squid.
Bang!
By comparison, Black Panther’s damage was higher. A single shot successfully blasted away a huge part of the robotic squid’s metal alloy body. Moreover, as they were in a party, all of them could acquire partial information from the enemy if one of the party members managed to deal damage to it.
ZY-55 Mecha Octopus Guard: Level 55 (Elite)
A Level-55 Elite monster. High ranking and difficult to be destroyed at the same time. It would not be easy to deal with it.
The Mecha Octopus stopped its counting abruptly after the attack. A layer of electromagnetic energy flashed across its body. The tips of the eight mechanical tentacles were undergoing contraction and deformation. Eventually, they morphed into multiple drills spinning at high velocity.
“The intruder has attacked the guard. According to the 25th security code, execute order ‘Exterminate’!”
As the word “Exterminate” was produced by the cold, electronic synthesized voice, the Mecha Octopus’s eyes instantly changed color. Two white laser beams burst out at the crowd.
−500
−500
−380
−380
Black Panther and the NPC who had attacked first were swept by the beams. Hundreds of damage values appeared over their heads once every half second.
Laser beams dealt continuous damage. Black Panther and the NPC immediately moved around while attacking constantly in order to escape from the attack. They used pillars as cover to block the attacks.
Robotic monsters did not feel any pain. Therefore, they would not be taunted by Shield Bash. They required a different method of attack than normal monsters. Most robot monsters would primarily target players who inflicted the highest damage because their programming would treat them as the highest threat. Therefore, when a player dealt high damage to the Mecha Octopus, he could run around in front of it to trigger its “aggro.”
However, it only worked for normal robotic monsters. In fact, many of them above the Elite rank had various standards of judgment. The tactics needed to fight against them were mainly dependent on the specific situation. Of course, the key strategy was to destroy the power core and the computer chip. This was the specific way to “kill” a mechanical monster.
Pow!
Red Queen’s magic staff started to glow. After channeling for five seconds, a giant fireball smashed onto the Mecha Octopus and exploded against its head. However, due to the fact that mecha monsters did not have HP bars and did not take burning damage, the high damage dealt by Red Queen was ineffective in these circumstances.
Boom!
The Mecha Octopus jumped off the wall. Four of its eight tentacles supported its body to move at high speed while the laser beams emitted from its eyes were still sweeping after Black Panther and the NPC crewman. The Mecha Octopus threw its four other tentacles, spinning like drills, at four targets: the three NPC crewmen who were shooting at it and Neutron Star, who was charging toward it. Evidently, its logical judgment was to use its ranged attack to take out the most dangerous enemies while using melee attacks to get rid of the closest ones.
Bang!
Feng Luo fired a shot. A double armor-piercing bullet struck the tentacle that was attacking Neutron Star. The bullet took off a layer of its alloy plating, revealing intertwining circuits underneath.
Neutron Star was agile with his movements. He managed to dodge the tentacle drill and unleashed a strong destructive skill—the Level-35 Warrior’s move “Devastating Slash”—against the part of the tentacle where Feng Luo had landed his shot.
Clack!
A little less than half of the tentacle was chopped off by Neutron Star, twitching on the ground for a few moments before it stopped.
The Mecha Octopus’s red electronic eyes gleamed, and it turned its head around unexpectedly, causing the laser beams previously targeting Black Panther and the NPC to turn in the direction of Feng Luo and Neutron Star.
“Evaluating threat…” it said. “Increase threat level… Exterminate!”
“Damn!” shouted Neutron Star.
He quickly retreated and moved away to dodge the beam. Even with more than 6,000 HP, there was no way for him to stand against a laser beam head-on, especially when the beam was able to deal over 100 points of damage every half a second. The only one who would dare to take such an attack head-on would be Big Pineapple. However, he needed to protect the two NPCs for the sake of the mission. Therefore, he could not afford to participate in this fight.
Bang!
After Feng Luo fired another shot, he immediately threw himself behind a pillar he had seen earlier.
Zing!
The laser beam brushed past him, leaving a charred black streak on the silver floor.
“Ah!” an NPC crewman suddenly screamed in agony.
He stumbled while running and was pierced through the back by the high-speed spinning drill. It penetrated through his chest, and the blood and flesh spilled all over the floor, leaving red stains everywhere. In addition to his blood and flesh, his horrible cry before death caused both White Crescent and Glazed Ice to turn pale. Even though they had turned off the bloody visual mode, they could still visualize the disgusting scene.
“Help me!” another NPC crewman shouted as he ran. The Mecha Octopus was attacking his back after killing another crewman.
Bang!
Out of nowhere, a bullet blasted through the Mecha Octopus’s chest, taking off one small piece of the alloy carapace. At the same time, the bullet flashed with an electromagnetic blue light. The Mecha Octopus was reaching out its tentacle to a distance less than 10 centimeters away from the back of the NPC. However, it suddenly stopped in mid-motion!
Electromagnetic armor-piercing bullets. The one who fired the bullet was Black Panther, who had just finished reloading behind a pillar. The shot had hit the outside of the core chip, which greatly disrupted its system’s computation.
“The interruption will only last for five seconds!” Black Panther yelled in the team chat. “Focus fire on its head!”
Upon activating Rapid Shooting, Black Panther started continuously firing a series of electromagnetic armor-piercing bullets with his sniper rifle one after another.
“Hit it!”
Feng Luo, Neutron Star, Glazed Ice, and Red Queen, along with the three NPC crewmen left, unleashed all their skills and bullets onto the lower head of the Mecha Octopus!
Even though the metallic body of a robotic monster was rigid, but with such a tremendous intensity of attacks, it would be impossible for it to handle the damage dealt.
Successfully defeated the ZY-55 Mecha Octopus Guard (Level 55 Elite). Contribution: 4.5%. Experience gained: 225!
******
By the time the team had eliminated the Elite Mecha Octopus, the other group was at the same site as their ship on Silvermoon Island. Therefore, they were unable to see each other because the terrain had obstructed their view. After braving the angry sea, six players, which consisted of five males and a female, rushed to the beach in a large assault boat.
“Wait, don’t go first!” a guy yelled while looking on his recon meter when they were about to reach the beach. There was a silver Death Messenger assault rifle hanging on his chest, and inside his high boots was a military stiletto: the “Bloodtooth Knife.” He was Dan Hen.
“There are monsters underneath the beach!”
“Grassy!”
“Okay!”
Grassy, who was wearing a white Doctor’s suit, took out an ejector from her medical kit. She sprayed the solution all over the beach, producing a large amount of green mist. In a blink of an eye, a few scorpions the size of a man’s palm crawled out of the pits on the beach. They were twisting when they revealed themselves, with −200 poison damage values continuously popping up over their heads.
Within 10 seconds, the entire beach was filled with the scorpions’ corpses.
If Feng Luo had witnessed this situation, he would have understood the reason Grassy had been in the Town of Exiles because of a red name. It was unbelievable that such a powerful poison skill had been cast by a weak little girl with a shy smile.
“All right! Let’s get on to the beach!” Dan Hen said after making sure that the scorpions on the beach were dead. “According to the insider’s information, the Roaring Dragon Mercenary Group has been preparing for almost a month for this mission. If they were to complete it before us, it would put us on the defensive in the Silvermoon City.”
Dan Hen told his team about the situation they were facing with a dignified expression after all six of them had hit the beach with their equipment at the ready.
“On the contrary,” he continued, “if we manage to sabotage their mission, all their work will be wasted, which will be enough to relieve the pressure facing our guild. They did a good job at keeping the mission a secret, but our insider was unable to extract the information regarding the exact mission location. Our guild ordered us to delay the plan because the ambush area we arranged was closer. If anything happened, our reinforcements would be here in less than two hours. Therefore, we have to work harder!”
“Okay!” said the five team members. They were Ultimate Heavy Armor, who was over 1.9 meters tall, Frozen Red Giant, wielding a white longsword, Ion Flame, who wore a fire element robe, Skynet the careless sniper, and Grassy, who was carrying medical kits on her back. All five of them nodded as they acknowledged Dan Hen’s words.