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Dragon Tooth, Double Stab, Sword Draw!

Ye Xiu chose to continue use what had worked before, except that after three skills, the cluster of seaweed was still good and well. The durability of the main body was, as expected, slightly better. However, it was only slightly. Ye Xiu quickly followed up with a fourth skill and, at last, the seaweed he had gathered with Shadow Cloak dispersed into nothingness. Ye Xiu gave a long sigh of relief. In that moment, he had been rather nervous, because the effects of Stun Bullet had a limit to its duration. When he had delivered the first strike, he knew that the problem wouldn’t lie in if he could deal enough damage to destroy the main body or not, but time. Could he deal enough damage in the time given by the Stun Bullet?

In the end, he succeeded. This made Ye Xiu feel much more secure. Lord Grim jumped out of the water, right through the destroyed cluster of seaweed. The Myriad Manifestations Umbrella opened into a Rotor Wings and he immediately left the water behind him.

The seaweed monster wasn’t willing to let go of its target so easily, hurriedly sending out a tentacle to catch him. Ye Xiu had been expecting that and had Lord Grim rise up at full speed. The seaweed wasn’t slow either, but characters could move around in the air with Rotor Wings, so Ye Xiu would naturally use this to dodge. Ye Xiu wasn’t planning to leave. Leaving the lake surface was just to wait for his skill cooldown. Low levelled skills always had short cooldowns, but those that had a bonus effect like Stun Bullet would have a longer cooldown, otherwise, if someone could endlessly keep their opponents CCed - and one like stun, too - there’d be no need to fight.

Stun Bullet’s cooldown was a full ten seconds and Ye Xiu was currently trying to last through these ten seconds. However, he wouldn’t just keep dodging. As he dodged, Lord Grim threw a Grenade down. The surface of the lake exploded. Though this didn’t really do any damage to the seaweed, since it had come out of the water, the seaweed had all been squeezed into a cluster.

It worked!

Ye Xiu was relieved. If he could gather the seaweed like this, then killing the seaweed monster would become much faster.

Soon enough, the cooldown for Stun Bullet was over and Lord Grim landed as Rotor Wings ended, striking his sword at the water’s surface and sending out an Earthquake Sword to sweep the seaweed together. Then, he added a Shadow Cloak. This time, he had gathered even more seaweed, but when Lord Grim began to attack, Ye Xiu knew that this wasn’t good.

The more he gathered, the more health the seaweed had. This was a very logical design. Ye Xiu hadn’t neglected that, of course. He had gathered the seaweed this time with the intention of trying things out. After making so many attempts, he was now certain he’d be unable to destroy the seaweed in the time the Stun Bullet gave him.

Stun Bullet’s stun effect lasted for two seconds and this duration wouldn’t see much increase as the skill’s rank was raised. After all, the control effect of a stun was very powerful. An eight or ten second stun would be beyond broken. When Stun Bullet was maxed out, the stun effect would only be increased to 3.5 seconds, so it was up to the player to decide how many ranks to raise it in accordance to their reliance and usage of Stun Bullet. Lord Grim’s Stun Bullet was only rank one with the basic two second stun. Using four skills in two seconds was already his limit and Ye Xiu had to make sure he didn’t slip up at all. Now, the seaweed had even more health, so Lord Grim, with his abysmal damage output, wouldn’t be able to destroy such a large cluster no matter what.

This result was greatly disappointing for Ye Xiu. However, with two rounds of gathering to go on, he now knew very clearly on how much to gather at one time. Then, all he had to do was repeat.

The seaweed was cleared up bit by bit by Ye Xiu and the lake soon returned to its original clean state.

He was nearly done.

Seeing the two clusters of seaweed over there, Lord Grim swam over and then Ye Xiu heard voices coming from the bank.

”It’s right over here!”

”We don’t know how many players it’s killed already. This seaweed monster is extremely powerful, so keep your guards up.”

”However, we’ve already found a way to defeat it. Witches and Spitfires, make sure to cooperate. You’re the key.”

A large group of people had gathered at the lakeside. Normal players weren’t idiots either, having also found a way to deal with the seaweed monster. It was just that they had no way of completing all the steps on their own, so they could only get helpers to cooperate with them. The group of people had excitedly rushed over to kill this massive monster, but what they were met with was a clear lake. Where did the seaweed that was said to be taking over the lake?

”Shit! No way!”

Some observant players quickly noticed Lord Grim’s existence, swimming to a cluster of seaweed, Shadow Cloak, Stun Bullet, then a rapid stream of combos… Wasn’t this the strategy their team leader had been emphasising the whole way here?

”Are you goddamn kidding me?!”

The one who had gathered all these people here was a Spitfire player. The first time he had came, he had been ambushed by the seaweed monster and killed. Then, running over to get his revenge, he had been killed again. He couldn’t accept it and came again. By then, the seaweed monster had grown quite a bit and he was even less of a match, but this time he had discovered a way to kill the seaweed monster. The fourth time, he had charged over, thinking that knowing the method to killing the monster would assure his victory, but he had underestimated the strength of the seaweed monster. After dying four times in a row, he finally relented and went and gathered a team, also figuring out a good way to gather the monster. However, by the time he returned, he found most of the seaweed gone and the one who did it had done so with the method he had gained through four sacrifices.

”Who dares!” The leader was enraged. He thought that this person had been watching him and stole his method. He was a dirty thief.

Chasing after the figure along the bank, the team leader held up his gun to shoot, but was suddenly knocked into by one of his companions. With a stumble, his shot missed.

”What?” The team leader was furious.

”Are you stupid? Shadow Cloak, then Stun Bullet afterwards, then followed up with a combo including Sword Draw. Can’t you tell who this is through those variety of skills?” The one who had knocked into the team leader said.

The team leader paused. In the past, if anyone saw a character using skills across different class types, they’d think it was an NPC, but now, all the players knew that there was such an existence: God Ye Xiu and his unspecialized, Lord Grim.

The team leader trembled as he walked along the bank a little further, and by then, Lord Grim was also swimming towards the last cluster of seaweed. The name above his head was finally visible to the team leader.

Lord Grim. Sure enough, it was Lord Grim.

Immediately, the misunderstanding of stealing his method was dismissed. If he couldn’t even figure out this method on his own, then would he still be God Ye Xiu? It was just that the team leader had been bustling around, sacrificing himself and gathering helpers, confidently returning to reap his profits, but in the end he didn’t even manage to get the scraps. That was too depressing...

”There’s another cluster!” The team leader couldn’t accept this. ”Witches, go, Shadow Cloak!”

The Witch didn’t move.

”Why aren’t you guys doing anything? Did you disconnect? You there?” The leader yelled.

”And try to steal God Ye Xiu’s kill? Are you crazy?” The Witch asked in shock.

”But I found it first!” The team leader wailed.

”Found it first…” The entire team was speechless. Though they understood this guy’s feelings, you might have ”found it first”, but if you ”found it first” yet didn’t kill it first, then it wasn’t yours. This was common sense.

”Go on, hurry up and go!” The team leader went to yell at another Witch, seeing that the first one refused to move.

This one seemed to be close with the team leader and didn’t have the heart to reject the other. However, he went up slowly, raising his broom into the air for several seconds without doing anything. By the time he was done posing, Lord Grim had ended the battle. The one who had been about to attack turned back around in relief. ”Oops, it’s too late now…”

The team leader cried. However, he neither had the skill or a good reason to bother Ye Xiu about this. What made him even more jealous was that after the seaweed monster was killed, Lord Grim’s position on the rankings had managed to instantly jump to first.

The team leader hadn’t noticed at first. What brought it to their attention was someone suddenly yelling about it in the global chat.

”Fuck fuck fuck!! What cheat did you use, Ye Xiu!? How did you suddenly get to first, did you kill the GM?! You cheat, I’m reporting you, isn’t there a GM here to make sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen?!”

The cathartic speech came from Huang Shaotian’s Troubling Rain. The entirety of Glory was silent. No one had thought they would get the chance to admire Huang Shaotian’s trash talk in the game’s global chat.

Huang Shaotian had been overtaken by Zhou Zekai, but then his luck had been pretty good and rapidly took his place back. As for Ye Xiu’s Lord Grim, he was thirty something already, so Huang Shaotian had disregarded him as a competitor. But that was when he killed a monster and wanted to check his score, only to be met with Lord Grim’s name above his Troubling Rain’s.

Am I seeing this correctly?

Huang Shaotian rubbed his eyes and after confirming what he had seen, immediately exploded in rage in the global chat.

Ye Xiu himself had noticed before him. This seaweed monster had managed to raise his points all the way to first place. He was also very surprised at that. Immediately, he thought of an idea of getting a bunch of smurfs to feed up a monster and then killing it with his main account, then noticed Huang Shaotian’s yelling in the global chat.

”Ha.” Ye Xiu replied.

None of the the players found anything out of the ordinary about this, but the pro players were all laughing their heads off by then.

Just now, in the pro player chat, didn’t Zhou Zekai give the same response when Huang Shaotian had been trash talking after being overtaken by Zhou Zekai? Now Ye Xiu was copying Zhou Zekai. Huang Shaotian was probably choking on his anger by now. The global chat in the game had a message cooldown, so he couldn’t spam. Instead, the pro player chat was flooded by him.

Seeing the number of new messages jumping rapidly, Ye Xiu knew that it had to be Huang Shaotian erupting again, as well as those who were greeting him despite knowing that he was just trash talking. Ye Xiu was thinking about the possibility of raising a monster. The only thing he wasn’t sure about was how many characters he’d have to feed to a monster to get it to grow to this level. Was an experiment necessary?

Ye Xiu thought about this as he had Lord Grim climb back onto the bank. On the bank, the team of players stood there, stunned. After the trash talk in the global chat, they also realized that Lord Grim had managed to jump to first place. The sheer number of points the seaweed monster was worth was clear for all to see. Even though they wouldn’t have as many gains after the points were distributed amongst them, it would still be quite heft. But now, it was all for nothing. Everyone was disappointed, but what could they say when faced with God Ye Xiu?

”So amazing, God!”

”God, are you leaving?”

”Don’t rush off, God…”

The players fawned over Lord Grim like a paparazzi.