The King's Avatar

While the various guilds pondered how to steal the monsters raised by other guilds, they certainly wouldn’t forget to protect their own. Each of them sent extra players to stand guard over their own monsters.

After receiving news from guild leader Changing Spring, Blue River sighed. Another round of deception and scheming was beginning again… how tiring! Nowadays, Blue River no longer led teams. He preferred to serve as an ordinary guild player, just fighting wherever he was told. But there was an overabundance of players willing to do such work in the game; Blue River was more valued for his ability to lead and manage teams. Changing Spring understood and respected Blue River’s state of mind, but faced with the current situation, he still highly valued Blue River’s ability, and ultimately sent Blue River to organize patrols at the revival points of each city.

Revival points!

These were unavoidable for the guilds raising monsters. Even if they brought Clerics with the Revive skill, Revive’s cooldown was thirty minutes, not to mention that there was a limit on how many times in a row a player could be revived. It would be impossible to rely on Revive to seamlessly continue the process of raising a monster. Because of this, during this process, there would inevitably be players travelling from the revival point to feed themselves to a monster. And these players had a distinguishing characteristic: in order to quicken the process, they often wouldn’t wear any equipment.

Blue River quickly understood this point and began to direct his subordinates.

Changing Spring gave him three five-man teams. Including Blue River himself, that made 16 people in total. There was a reason for this number - there were 32 cities in the Heavenly Domain, and therefore 32 revival points. 16 people meant that each person was responsible for two cities. After Changing Spring finished distributing the troops, he began to take action.

Kansas City was one of the two cities for which Blue River was responsible. By the time he arrived at the city, Blue River had already switched to another account. His main account Blue Bridge Spring Snow was a well-known figure in-game and attracted much attention, so he couldn’t use it for covert operations like this. Now that he switched to an alt, Blue River tried to lie low, picking roads that weren’t frequented by many people as he quickly made his way to the revival point.

Once he was close, Blue River stopped.

A good deal of time had passed since the start of the event, and the guilds must have reached a steady rhythm in raising the monsters. If Blue River stayed here for a while, he was sure that he would make some discovery. The guilds had to be efficient, so they wouldn’t be raising the monsters somewhere in the deep mountains and forests - too much time would be wasted travelling.

Blue River hid his character behind a corner of a wall. Because there was an event going on, there were more players online than usual. In addition, the inherent difficulty of Ghost Parade made the death count high. There was a constant stream of players emerging from the revival point. Every time the white light flashed at the revival point, Blue River tensed. At the same time, he closely observed the players and his surroundings, and he discovered that there were several other players nearby doing the same thing that he was! Some were ducking this way and that as they furtively looked around, while others merely waited casually by the revival point as if they were meeting up with someone. Blue River turned his camera, studying his surroundings, and sent a message to Changing Spring, advising him to conceal their tracks carefully. Blue Brook Guild definitely wasn’t the only guild that had sent players to watch the revival points.

”How many did you find?”

Just when Blue River sent the message, he suddenly heard a voice from right beside him, startling him so badly that he burst into a cold sweat and instinctively directed his character to roll to the side and unsheathe his sword. But once he finished the roll and saw the other player’s name, he faltered.

Lord Grim!

What kind of luck was this?

Blue River felt like he was going crazy.

32 cities. 1 in 32 chance. Yet despite the odds, he still ran into this difficult guy. And this guy had just directly approached him! Was Blue River exposed?

No… no, he shouldn’t have, this must be a coincidence because Blue River had been very careful, choosing the most cautious and secure route here. And this guy wasn’t even using an alt, he was directly using Lord Grim, so of course he would be taking the quieter roads as well. So for the two characters to meet here like this, it could be considered an inevitable coincidence.

Blue River steadied himself. And then… and then without waiting for him to say anything, the other side had already asked, ”Which guild are you?”

I’ve been seen through...

Blue River felt regret. Even though he wasn’t using an account with the guild tag, in this current situation, who could fool anyone? Hadn’t Blue River just sent a message to Changing Spring to warn Blue Brook Guild to be more careful?

”I’m in… Herb Garden.” Even though Blue River was sick of this sort of deception, with things as they were now, he still had to play this game. He didn’t have a plan in mind, but concealing his identity was a basic first step. With this easy lie, Blue River allied himself with Blue Brook Guild’s death rivals, Herb Garden.

”Oh, how despicable, you’re trying to steal the monsters that other people raised?” Ye Xiu said.

”Aren’t you doing the exact same thing?” Blue River felt like coughing blood as he replied. It’d been a while since he’d seen him, and the great God was still as shameless as ever!

”Haha, I’ve actually already stolen one, you want to guess how I did it?” Ye Xiu said.

”How did you do it?” That caught Blue River’s attention. Was the God about to reveal some sort of ultimate technique?

”I was just passing by and picked it up. How lucky!” As Ye Xiu spoke, he sent a thumbs up emoji to float above Lord Grim’s head.

Blue River resisted the urge to stab him, and laughed dryly. ”Lucky indeed.”

”Did you discover anything here?” Ye Xiu then asked.

”Not yet.” Blue River’s reply was automatic, but once the words left his mouth, he regretted it. Why was he telling him anything?

”There, there, and there, there, those are all guild alts, right?” Lord Grim lifted his Myriad Manifestation Umbrella, pointing in several directions as he spoke.

”Should be,” Blue River said.

”If all the guilds continue like this, what do you think will happen in the end?” Ye Xiu said.

Blue River stared blankly...

The actions of the various guilds were too predictable. If it were really just one or two or three guilds sending people to monitor the revival points, they probably wouldn’t be exposed. But now, however many guilds there were, that was how many people there were. With that many people loitering about the revival point, it’d be very difficult for them all to conceal themselves. If they discovered each other like this, they’d send news to their own guilds, and then… and then of course the players who were sent to be food for the monsters would disguise their identities by putting on equipment and what not so that they would be harder to recognize.

At that point, in order to tell if a player was food, then you’d have to check their stats. Repeatedly dying in-game would cause their stats to drop drastically. But checking another player’s stats was much more of a hassle. Blue River’s current hiding place was far enough away from the revival point that he couldn’t see the stats of the players appearing there, so if he wanted to check, he’d have to go closer. But if he did that, then it’d be obvious that he was monitoring the revival point. If the opponents were really in this city, and they discovered him doing this, then what would they do?

Blue River was still thinking when he saw a person’s shadow pass by him. He glanced and saw that Ye Xiu’s Lord Grim had actually just walked right out there. He boldly stood at the exact center of the revival point, turning this way and that, surveying all of the revived players.

This guy, he’s already just doing that!

Blue River was dumbfounded, and his mind rapidly ran through calculations. If he were in charge of raising a boss, and suddenly received news that Lord Grim was sitting at the city’s revival point, what would he do?

He would certainly pause the feeding process.

And then… and then things would be difficult! Taking direct action against Lord Grim would be akin to admitting that yes, our guild’s boss is right near here. Even if they were able to kill Lord Grim, he would certainly come back. The revival point was unavoidable, and moving the monster elsewhere was even more unrealistic. Would they have to send a special team to protect the players who were being fed to the monster? Then that would just attract all of the other guilds to attack them! And considering that the monsters were ultimately being raised to be fed to professional characters, it was very likely that the attackers would be the gods of the various teams! That was a terrifying thought! No, it couldn’t be allowed to come to that.

Just thinking about this all was enough to get Blue River sweating. And so he decided, if he were trapped here by Lord Grim waiting at the revival point, the safest plan would be to just sacrifice a little time. Lord Grim had no reason to wait at this revival point forever if nothing happened, and the feeding could resume once he left.

As Blue River thought this, another character appeared at the revival point, and this time, Lord Grim fixed his sight on this one character.

Was that...

Blue River jolted. He was too far away, but he saw that once this character noticed Lord Grim, he also immediately stopped moving. Blue River had a feeling that this was the person they were hoping to find.

Which guild was still bold enough to continue sending players?

Blue River wondered. He didn’t consider himself especially smart, so he figured that any issue that he could think of, the other guilds absolutely would have realized as well. When there was someone so domineering monitoring the revival point, there really shouldn’t be any reason for someone to expose themselves like this! But as soon as he thought that, Blue River suddenly realized, there was one situation where that could happen, which was… the guild didn’t know that there was someone so bold at this revival point.

The guilds had only just started to mobilize, and then monitored and investigated each other. When the plans couldn’t keep up with changes, there would inevitably be mistakes. This guild member was wearing equipment, which showed that their guild had realized that everyone was spying on each other. But they hadn’t yet sent their own people to monitor all of the revival points, so there was a hole in the reports they received. They just inferred the condition of this revival point from what they knew about the other revival points. And so, they put on equipment and boldly continued, only to find that there was an anomaly at this revival point.

Were they overconfident?

Of course they were. But then again, aside from Ye Xiu, who else could be this domineering?

Blue River ultimately felt that this guild was just unlucky, very unlucky that Ye Xiu came to their city and dragged the fox by the tail out of its den.

”Kansas City, a guild is raising a monster, the situation right now is unclear.” Blue River immediately sent a report to his guild.

As for the player at the revival point, once discovered by Ye Xiu, he obviously wouldn’t lead him to where the monster was being raised. This alt just directly logged off.

”Looks like we’ll have a lot to do here.” Lord Grim walked over and spoke to Blue River.

We? Blue River wondered. Since when was there a ”we” in this?