The packs of wolves and crows that had already arrived at the spiked barricades and wooden fence were attacking continuously, generating various noisy sounds that masked other movements.
The dark night not far off acted as an accomplice, providing cover for the monsters that had vanished from view to conceal their bodies.
At any rate, they couldn’t breach her defense, so He Miaomiao simply ignored them, walking toward the other three sides of the house to search carefully.
Circle after circle. Finally, as she carried a stone lantern for illumination and reached the back of the house, she felt a distinct vibration underground.
He Miaomiao thrust her blade downward without the slightest hesitation.
[Corrupted Wolf HP -81!]
He Miaomiao twisted her sore arm, eliciting a popping noise.
Found you guys.
Setting down the stone lantern, she held her weapon in both hands and stabbed repeatedly into the ground.
Continuous prompts of Corrupted Wolf “HP -81” popped up, accompanied by the sound of exploding grey mist.
“How clever.”
The rats actually didn’t just dig holes themselves, but could lead other monsters to burrow underground alongside them—using this method to trick her eyes while avoiding both the spiked barricades and the explosively damaging Sparks Slash, which required landing hits on monsters to take effect.
With soil separating them underground, casting no matter how many Sparks Slashes wouldn’t shave off a single drop of their health.
Rats truly proved to be her lifelong nemesis—so full of scheming tricks in both the real world and this realm.
Prior to this, every wave of rats would surface in order to attack the house. This time, however, they had learned to be sneaky, gnawing right from underground.
Watching the durability drop 5 points by 5 points, He Miaomiao knew exactly where the rats were located, yet had no way to kill them—they were using the accompanying Corrupted Wolves as meat shields!
“Did you really think I had no way to deal with you just because you hid away?”
He Miaomiao was angered into a laugh by the rats’ maneuver.
Stabbing directly into the ground was like opening blind boxes—she might predict correctly, or her strikes might miss, wasting time.
8 rats attacking once could only consume 40 durability from her home—not much, zero threat, yet it made her utterly displeased.
Therefore, He Miaomiao wielded her Dual Blades and initiated full-on digging mode.
Before long, she scraped her way to an underground tunnel.
It could actually accommodate an adult human walking upright.
However, the Corrupted Wolves possessed large bodies and huge numbers, packing themselves tightly inside. He Miaomiao gave them a swift end, peeling away the underground wolf pack layer by layer like an onion.
Inside the enclosed tunnel, the grey mist was even less able to disperse, clinging almost entirely to her body.
If possible, He Miaomiao truly would have chosen to stop breathing—it stank far too much!
It was the kind of stink from accidentally diving headfirst into a trash pit in mid-summer, full of countless left-over instant noodle soups, spoiled food, and rotting meat!
Gag—
It was simply impossible not to vomit.
The blades in He Miaomiao’s hands moved even faster.
Slay earlier, leave earlier.
Slaying her way straight through to the wooden fence side, she finally caught the chief culprits—4 large rats.
Previously, they had always separated 1 by 1. This time, it was likely to dig a tunnel wide enough for the Corrupted Wolves to pass through that they huddled together.
“Just as well—saves me the trouble of hunting them down one by one.”
Raising her blades to cut down, followed by Sparks Slash.
Thud, thud, thud.
An even denser black mist exploded.
“Cough, cough, cough… cough, cough…“
He Miaomiao departed the tunnel at top speed, gulping down an entire bottle of water on her way to hunt other rats before feeling slightly better.
Digging tunnels was a unique skill of the Corrupted Giant Rats. They dug tunnels quickly and well, making almost zero noise when moving underground—making them hard to detect unless they actively surfaced.
This time, however, they brought the Corrupted Wolves along. Those blunt-headed beasts knew nothing about stealth, not only making thudding noises as they ran, but also howling from time to time, actively exposing their positions.
Relying on them, He Miaomiao scraped out 4 more large rats in the right diagonal direction of her house and killed them.
After wiping out this nest, the monsters that originally obeyed commands reverted to brainless creatures that only knew how to grab and attack humans. It appeared this wave held 8 giant rats in total.
The fourth, fifth, and sixth waves arrived together.
A grand total of 450 Level 2 Corrupted Wolves, 600 Level 3 Corrupted Crows, and 48 Level 4 Corrupted Giant Rats.
A massive horde of monsters was responsible for blocking her movements on the ground. The wolves—capable of dealing a slight bit of damage—relied on numbers to forcefully block her path, while crows flew wildly before her to obstruct her vision.
They also generated all sorts of chaotic noises on the ground to create offensive conditions for the creatures underground.
The burrowing rats combined forces, digging more and larger tunnels, pulling in more wolves as meat shields to buy more time for gnawing on the house.
They even connected the tunnels together, playing hide-and-seek with He Miaomiao underground.
He Miaomiao scraped and searched all the way. Before she could finish killing all the rats, she was forced to chew rabbit meat to recover Energy Points, followed by taking Detoxification Pills to clear the toxins that had accumulated inside her body to nearly life-threatening levels.
“Cough… cough, cough… Can normal players truly clear Extreme mode?”
Without a safehouse possessing high Defense to immunize against the vast majority of monster damage, or without Detoxification Pills to clear toxins, this round meant absolute death.
A normal Level 1 Safehouse had only 5 Defense, and Level 2 had only 15—incapable of fully immunizing even against the attacks of the first wave’s Level 0 Corrupted Rabbits.
Upgrading to Level 3 granted 30 Defense, yet right now, the only players who had upgraded to Level 1 were seemingly her and Xia Ning. Even if others earned enough money during combat to upgrade a wave, they were still far, far off from Level 3.
Perhaps Extreme mode—or even Hard mode—was a trial designed for players with high safehouse levels.
He Miaomiao pulled out a bottle of Pure Water, pouring it out extravagantly to wash her hands and face.
There was no choice: her bathroom at home contained water, but she had no time to return and fetch it, while the massive volume of grey mist had already left her face covered in dirt—not to mention stinky, it obstructed her sight.
The blood stains on her hands left her unable to hold her blades steadily, far too slick, requiring a wash.
Next was the monster torrent formed by the merger of the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth waves.
Rumbling echoed underground, and rumbling echoed on the ground. Standing outside the wooden fence, He Miaomiao actually couldn’t see the end of the monster wave at a single glance.
Countless monsters squeezed in from all directions; she had to retreat all the way behind the spiked barricades to avoid being attacked from both front and back and immobilized.
Even so, monsters packed tightly in front, to the left, and to the right of He Miaomiao, leaving every step arduous.
[Safehouse Durability -750!]
“There are actually 150 large rats.”
She had to kill them as quickly as possible, or even with around 5,000 remaining health left on her safehouse, it wouldn’t hold out for long.
Rabbits, dogs, wolves, and crows posed zero threat before the current He Miaomiao, yet they created real, physical obstacles.
They didn’t attack the house, responsible only for blocking her—forcing her to spend time carving out a path, while simultaneously searching for where the rat holes were located while slaying monsters.
Yet this was exceedingly difficult.
This time, there were no wolf howls underground, nor any sounds from other monsters, and the rats didn’t surface to gnaw on the wooden fence either.
He Miaomiao could only widen her eyes, searching in the dark for red prompts indicating durability loss to judge the rats’ general positions, then slaying her way over.
Slaying her way over took time. Several times when she arrived, the rats had already shifted locations, and other monsters swarmed over again, forcing her to keep slaying, slaying, and slaying.
With great difficulty, she dragged out over 50 rats and eliminated them. He Miaomiao’s arms had grown numb with soreness, every attack hurting terribly, failing multiple times to complete even the simple action of raising her arms.
The edges of her newly equipped blue-tier Dual Blades developed a series of notches and rolled edges due to continuous high-intensity monster slaying.
Dragging out another 30 rats—thud, thud!
As the grey mist exploded, He Miaomiao’s Dual Blades shattered into powder, dissipating along with the grey mist.
She noticed the color of the powder was muddier and greyer than the grey mist, appearing as though excessive poison corrosion had penetrated deep into the marrow, pollution spreading across every inch of the blade body.
He Miaomiao had no time to feel sorrow over the breaking of such a good pair of blades, biting down on a Detoxification Pill and pulling out a new pair of Dual Blades to continue fighting.
1, 2, 5, 10…
Toward the end, she became completely incapable of calculating, knowing only to mechanically raise her blades, thrust, lift her hands, and blast Sparks Slashes.
Sharp pain issued from every corner of her body, her temples throbbing uncontrollably, her heart feeling as stifled as working overtime for 3 days and nights straight. Every breath brought unbearable burning in her chest, while her hands holding the blades and her legs while running trembled violently, cramping multiple times—all desperately reminding her that she had to stop immediately and return to her room to rest.
He Miaomiao was no sadomasochist, yet the giant rats’ area attacks earlier had consumed far too much of her home’s durability. Without clearing every last one of them out, she couldn’t feel at ease.
“Nobody touches my house!”
Gritting her teeth, gritting her teeth, and gritting her teeth again. Relying on instincts honed through continuous combat, He Miaomiao continued digging for rats around the safehouse while the scene before her eyes grew increasingly blurred and indistinct, and her head grew heavier while her feet felt lighter.
As her entire body lost strength, the attacks delivered by her Dual Blades became soft and limp. He Miaomiao didn’t waste time, chewing rabbit meat while frantically blasting Sparks Slashes.
Without knowing how much time had passed, finally, no red light indicating durability loss echoed from the dark any longer.
This time, He Miaomiao failed to make it back behind the wooden fence, collapsing with a loud thud right on the spot—collapsing wrapped within the endless darkness.
She had long lost even the strength to carry the stone lantern capable of small-area illumination, having fought in the dark all along.
Monsters that had not yet been slain surrounded He Miaomiao’s side, attempting to devour this unconscious prey. Yet no matter how they attacked, they couldn’t touch the hem of her clothes.
Bloodthirsty instincts left them lingering around the prey for a long time without dispersing. Even if in vain, they continuously attacked, attacked, and attacked again, attempting to tear everything to shreds.
Opening her eyes once more, what met He Miaomiao’s sight was not the pitch-black sky, but monsters with red eyes, rotting flesh, bone-white skeletons, and bloody maws opened wide attempting to devour her.
Startled, she wanted to scramble up, but couldn’t move at all. Lying for a short while, she remembered that before passing out, she had cleared every monster capable of breaching her defense.
What she had thought at the time was: her home definitely could not fall.
Only now did she realize after the fact that her Defense and HP were far inferior to her home’s. If she hadn’t managed to hold out and forcibly kill the final rat back then, she would have been chewed into a pile of bone splinters by monsters far earlier than her house.
It was also fortunate that the only creatures capable of breaching her defense were wolves and rats. The rats in command—clever as they were—remained monsters after all, prioritizing bringing over the wolves that could deal damage to hunt her down, causing her to passively clear out the wolf pack first.
Otherwise, even if the wolves didn’t trigger attack boosts and possessed only 28 base attack—dealing a mere 3 effective damage when hitting her—an army of ants could still bite an elephant to death, taking her down relying on numbers and time.
He Miaomiao swallowed a Detoxification Pill, cast a Sparks Slash off to the side, and sighed faintly.
In the future, she still had to pay far more attention: in that state, her mind was far too unclear, far too easy to lose her life.
Having finally regained consciousness, He Miaomiao was tired, tired, and deeply exhausted, lacking the strength to move—lying in the pile of monsters just like that, casually casting her sole skill every now and then.
In the pitch-black wilderness, the light of Sparks Slash flashed and vanished, vanished and flashed, bringing forth trails of grey mist.