The Silencer was a bane to a bandit leader. With a single cast of [Silence], the strongest skill of the bandit leader, [Powerful Sweep], would be disabled.
That was, of course, if the bandit leader could not or did not know how to dodge the skill.
While they had a Silencer in his party, the players wanted to take Mohai down, but they soon realized that it was wishful thinking.
When they finally got to the group of bandits, they were confident that they could take Mohai down, but they soon realized that everything they did was useless.
The Silencer was the first to die despite being fully prepared and the monsters' teamwork was better than they expected.
The players had already leveled up and changed their occupations. They even upgraded their gears and had all kinds of tactics planned out meticulously, yet they welcomed a harsher death than they did the day before.
"That bandit leader is surely a variant monster!"
"I know, right? He's a lot stronger than a normal bandit leader! They are like two different monsters!"
"Hehe, you guys might not know this, but LostDream, the b*stard who mocked us in the forum and claimed that he could take the bandit leader on in a one-on-one, just died. He really tried to confront the bandit leader but could not even take three hits."
The thread in the forum rose in popularity again. The players, who dreamt of killing Mohai but were killed in return and lost XP in the process, got together and licked their wounds.
"Haha, in his face! Arrogant much? Does he really think he is invincible because he is better at PK?"
"Yeah, he just got a big slap to his face."
Yesterday, a group of players was insulted by LostDream. He called them rubbish for not being able to take down a bandit leader and even boasted that he could take the bandit leader down on his own after he changed his occupation.
Therefore, right after LostDream was destroyed by the bandit leader, the players that he insulted felt a lot better.
"Damn it! What is wrong with that bandit leader? What a bummer!"
Back in the Guggenheim revival point, a common-looking Assassin player got revived and he looked as confused as he could be. He was LostDream.
He had actually fought a bandit leader before, thus he bragged about his achievements in the forum.
He actually ran countless simulations in his mind about the battle. If he had the time, he was certain he could kill a bandit leader by using the terrain to his advantage.
However, the bandit leader he fought just now was entirely out of his expectations.
He usually felt great when fighting monsters as if he had the freedom to do anything, but the battle with the bandit leader was depressing.
The bandit leader's normal attack effectively locked his movements and LostDream could not find an entry point to launch his attack as if he was a noob who had just started the game.
'I must be having a bad day!'
After some consideration, that was the only reason LostDream could come up with.
'I must level up first before I take my revenge!
It was the first time LostDream felt so depressed in the game. He decided to level up first before confronting that bandit leader again for revenge. He ought to destroy the bandit leader the next time to vent his grievance.
…
Mohai and his 15 bandit goons were on a rampage around the Monolith Stronghold. He would avoid the big guilds with a lot of players, and when he ran into smaller parties, he would bully the players.
After all 15 of the bandit goons gained Loyalty, they were able to follow Mohai's command effectively and could work together tacitly.
Even though the players were getting stronger, the difficulty of killing them did not skyrocket.
However, compared to yesterday, Mohai had to fight a lot more and he was the one who killed all the core members of the parties.
Players might be powerful if they worked together, but if the core member or someone who gave the commands was killed, they would break down like crumbling sand. The difficulty of killing scattered players was a lot lower.
Whenever Mohai killed the core player, he tried to hide his true strength and tried his best to not draw too much attention.
Similar to the battle with LostDream, he attacked with only his normal attacks but did not follow the usual patterns.
That was the reason why LostDream felt dismal and failed to notice what went wrong when Mohai locked his movements effectively and eventually destroyed him.
If Mohai had been a player, from the attacking patterns, LostDream would have realized that this player was ridiculously overpowered.
Monsters had a hard time leveling up. Although Mohai and his bandit goons had been fighting players continuously for 4 hours, they were still some distance away from Level 13.
However, since monsters would not lose XP upon death and those variant monsters had to accumulate XP over a long period of time to reach where they were, Mohai felt slightly better.
Mohai estimated that he and his goons would have to hunt players down for a few more hours, or more precisely till midnight, to reach Level 13. Then, he habitually skimmed over his activity log and something caught his eye. Someone was invading his Reincarnation Pool!
"Huh?"
This 'someone' was not from the player's side but was a monster!
'Did someone come for the little fox?"
The other monsters around the Monolith Stronghold would not even try to invade his Reincarnation Pool, it must be a foreign monster.
Mohai's interest in the little fox had diminished. If the little fox really has some reliable helper, he would be more than happy to throw the feisty problem away.
However, he wanted to know what kind of monster would come for the little fox and if the monster would hunt him down for kidnapping the little fox. He had to be prepared in advance.
Mohai stopped his goons from killing the players and led them back to the den. He had not strayed too far from his den either, so they returned in a little over 10 minutes.
He told his goons to standby in front of the den while he climbed up to a big rock at the side to secure a vantage point since he had a better view of his den from high above.
"Is that…a Treasure Bird?" Mohai peered at his den from above the rock.
He saw a familiar giant in front of his den. It was a big yellow bird that was 2 meters tall and at least 6 to 7 meters long.
Not even Mohai knew the real name of this big yellow bird, or more precisely, no one in the game knew the name of the bird. They simply called it the Treasure Bird.
The most pronounced characteristic of the Treasure Bird was the two big brown rattan baskets on both sides. It was called the Treasure Bird because killing it could reward a player with more spoils than killing a Boss if the player was not ridiculously plagued by bad luck.
However, the Treasure Bird did not have a fixed respawn point. Players could only encounter the Treasure Bird in the wild and it had a ridiculously large HP and a high Defense. It had the fastest flying speed in the game and had a passive skill that allowed it to be immune to all kinds of negative debuffs. Therefore, killing a Treasure Bird was actually very difficult and the players had only killed a handful of Treasure Birds throughout the game.
'Why is the Treasure Bird in my den?'
The bird was looking around as if it was waiting for him to come back.
Although it was weak in combat, it was more than enough to deal with Mohai, a low-level bandit leader.
Some thoughts later, Mohai told No. 13 to approach the Treasure Bird.
Bandit goon No. 13 had been enhanced using Template Enhancement and was the strongest and the most loyal among the goons. He might even give his life to Mohai's cause without a second thought, and more importantly, it was able to communicate.
"Leader, that big bird says that Distant Sea Birds don't participate in battles and it asked you to go back. It is here on someone's request for a deal, and it promised not to attack you," No. 13 reported after returning.
The actual name for the Treasure Bird was actually the Distant Sea Bird, but it was actually Mohai's first time hearing the name.
He pondered about the Distant Sea Bird's words for a while and believed that the bird should be telling the truth.
In the past, there were many speculations about the Treasure Bird and Mohai found one particular theory rather plausible: the Treasure Bird was a delivery tool on the monster's side, hence the huge amount of spoils upon killing it.
Of course, Mohai did not believe it 100% either. No one had actually seen Distant Sea Birds in a lot of monsters' lairs and if it really was a delivery tool, it would have appeared close to some powerful Bosses.
Distant Sea Birds never participated in battles and that was actually true.
In the past five years, other than fighting the players who tried to hunt it down, no one had ever seen the Treasure Birds in conflict with other monsters.
After some thought, Mohai told his 15 goons to be prepared as they walked towards the Distant Sea Bird.