Realizing that they could no longer treat their lives as a joke, this group of “Fourth Calamity” players finally put away their cheeky, trolling expressions and revealed their most terrifying side.
Extreme involution, all for the sake of avoiding a ban.
The Aberrant Corrupted Corpse had originally been enjoying itself.
Its poorly functioning brain couldn’t understand why these five prey were like unkillable cockroaches, completely fearless in the face of death.
But now, the tables had completely turned.
The five bald guys no longer charged forward recklessly.
Instead, they became slipperier than loaches.
“Roar!”
The monster lunged fiercely at [Ji Li], but she didn’t try to take the attack head-on.
Instead, she performed a textbook tactical roll and dodged behind a load-bearing pillar.
The monster slammed headfirst into the stone pillar and staggered back, completely dazed.
“Now!
Pull the rope!”
[Passing Pure Love God of War] and [Malou Also Has Dignity] had somehow dug a thick, dust-covered hemp rope out from somewhere.
The two of them pulled it hard from opposite sides.
The rope caught around the monster’s thick ankles.
The three-meter-tall behemoth lost its balance and crashed heavily to the ground with a deafening “boom,” shattering the church floor tiles beneath it.
“Output!
Output!
Hit its weak point!”
[Ji Li] grabbed a broken door panel covered in jagged spikes and stabbed it repeatedly into the back of the monster’s head, as if planting rice seedlings.
Five meters away, [I Am Not Jiahao] dug a fist-sized brick out of the ground and hurled it at the monster.
In an instant, the situation was completely reversed.
No matter how powerful this Tier 1 Aberrant Corrupted Corpse was, once it had fallen to the ground, there was nothing it could do against five players who refused to play by the rules.
Flesh flew everywhere, while black pus spread across the floor.
The monster let out a shrill scream, and for some reason, there was even a trace of unmistakable fear in its voice.
It wanted to run.
It wanted to crawl out of this terrifying church.
Were these really frail humans?
They were clearly five psychopaths wearing human skin!
But the players weren’t about to give it that chance.
If they let it escape, wouldn’t they lose their server-wide first kill?!
[Ji Li] jumped directly onto the monster’s back and began frantically attacking the back of its head with the sharp wooden spike in her hand.
[Kindergarten Boss] and [Malou Also Has Dignity] grabbed one of its legs each, wrapping their arms tightly around them and disrupting its movements.
Meanwhile, [Passing Pure Love God of War] continued swinging the wooden board, repeatedly smashing it into the Aberrant Corrupted Corpse’s head.
“Bang!
Bang!
Bang!”
“You bastard!
You knocked me away just now!”
“Eighty!
Eighty!
Eighty!”
The pitiful Tier 1 anomaly—a monster that looked like a natural disaster to the local residents—was actually beaten to the point of exhaustion by five bald men wearing nothing but oversized boxer shorts.
“Roar…”
With one final unwilling howl, the monster finally lost the strength to resist and collapsed onto its knees with another heavy “boom.”
“It’s done!
Give it the finishing blow!” [Ji Li] shouted.
“Here comes the big fortune!”
[Passing Pure Love God of War] leaped down from the dilapidated second-floor staircase.
The sharp, broken edge of the half-door panel in his hands pierced viciously into the back of the Aberrant Corrupted Corpse’s neck, aided by the force of gravity.
“Pfft!”
Black, foul-smelling blood sprayed out.
The monster twitched twice before its enormous body collapsed with a crash, transforming into a puddle of foul-smelling rotten flesh.
[System Prompt: Congratulations to the player team for defeating the Aberrant Corrupted Corpse (Tier 1 Hazard Level).
Main Quest completed!]
[Participating Players: Passing Pure Love God of War, Ji Li, Malou Also Has Dignity, Kindergarten Boss, I Am Not Jiahao.]
“We won!!
Holy shit!
We killed the BOSS!
We got the first kill!”
The five players excitedly hugged each other and jumped up and down.
Even Jiahao, who had spent most of the battle hiding in the back and shouting “666,” became so excited that he completely forgot to maintain his usual character persona.
On the altar, Lynn’s system panel instantly refreshed, displaying a long string of densely packed data.
[Settlement completed.]
[Killed a Tier 1 Aberrant Corrupted Corpse.
A total of 100 Faith Points have been extracted.]
[The system has automatically deducted 90 Faith Points as server maintenance fees and personal profit.]
[The remaining 10 Faith Points have been converted into Experience Points according to contribution and distributed to the participating players’ accounts.]
Ding!
At that moment, all five players standing below received the same notification.
[Quest Reward Distributed: You have obtained 20 Experience Points!]
[Current Level: Lv.1 (20/100)]
Looking at the distribution of Faith Points in the system backend, Lynn couldn’t help marveling inwardly.
Dark!
Too fucking dark!
He had hidden behind the scenes without lifting a finger, yet had shamelessly pocketed 90 Faith Points.
And the five players who had fought for their lives had received only a tiny amount of experience converted from their individual 2 Faith Points.
This was the classic principle of “the wool comes from the sheep”!
Even capitalists would have to stand up and salute if they saw this commission rate.
But Lynn’s conscience didn’t hurt in the slightest.
He even wanted to laugh.
After all, this was an online game.
As long as the players could see their progress bars rising, they could happily move bricks all day, even if it was nothing more than glorified manual labor.
Sure enough, the five bald guys below were already ecstatic after seeing their experience rewards.
They hugged each other and howled like a pack of ghosts.
“Holy shit!
Twenty experience points!
The progress bar went up by one-fifth!”
“First kill!
This is the server-wide first kill!”
“Even the experience notification sound in this game is so satisfying!
All that frustration from nearly getting banned just now is completely gone.
Awesome!”
The five bald men jumped up and down in the middle of the church, looking like they were participating in some bizarre large-scale evolutionary regression experiment.
After celebrating, the five players immediately threw themselves at the puddle of rotten flesh on the ground like starving ghosts reincarnated.
For the Fourth Calamity, failing to loot a monster’s corpse after killing it was simply more painful than killing the monster itself.
“Did it drop equipment?
Any gold coins?
Doesn’t this lousy game even have a loot beam?”
[Passing Pure Love God of War] didn’t care about the disgusting stench covering the floor.
He frantically rummaged through the black flesh and blood with both hands, even pulling out the monster’s intestines and shaking them twice.
“Not a single thing!
Not even one copper coin!
This game is way too stingy!”
[Kindergarten Boss] angrily kicked the monster’s severed arm.
However, the wild imagination of these players was something conventional logic could never hope to measure.
No equipment?
It didn’t matter.
Wasn’t the monster itself a material?
“Brothers, don’t rush to curse the game yet.”
[Malou Also Has Dignity] squatted beside the monster’s smashed head, his eyes shining brightly as though he were staring at a three-star Michelin feast.
He extended a finger, dipped it into the viscous yellowish pus inside the monster’s skull, and brought it close to his eyes for a careful examination.
“According to my years of experience playing open-world survival games, eating the corpses of poisonous monsters like this usually grants some kind of hidden buff, such as [Poison Resistance +1].”
The other four players immediately stopped what they were doing and stared at him in disbelief.
Even [I Am Not Jiahao], who always considered himself a high-end player, instinctively leaned backward.
“Holy shit.
Are you serious?”
“That thing smells like a dry latrine that’s been fermenting for ten years, and you’re actually going to put it in your mouth?”
“While people your age are still thinking about killing monsters and looting equipment, I’ve already begun exploring the fundamental logic of the game’s food chain.”
Malou looked immensely proud.
“This is called the exploratory spirit of a hardcore, high-end player!
You guys understand, right?”
Unbeknownst to him, Malou had actually grasped the very essence of Jiahao’s literary style.
After finishing his speech, and under the admiring yet disgusted gazes of the other four, [Malou Also Has Dignity] shoved the finger covered in yellow-green pus directly into his mouth without hesitation.
He smacked his lips.
The entire scene fell silent.
“Ugh—!”
“Holy shit!
The aftertaste is worse than surströmming!
Blech—”
Malou’s face instantly turned green.
A bright red [-5] suddenly floated above his head.
He began foaming at the mouth and twitching violently on the ground as his health bar rapidly plummeted.
[System Prompt: Player [Malou Also Has Dignity] has consumed a lethal hallucinogenic toxin and entered a poisoned, near-death state.]