"Floralteapot?"
Ye Kong did a double-take, not expecting to bump into the three of them again in the Dark Mist Forest. Right after that, he noticed the player that floralteapot's party had surrounded, seemingly with hostile intent.
The player was wearing a full set of armor, including a metal helmet.
"Samuraisoul?"
Ye Kong saw the player's ID and took a brief moment to recall the details he knew about him: "Right. As I remember, he's a Berserker. In my past life, he was one of the renowned professionals in the Starry Duchy. Unfortunately, he had a run-in with the Witching Hour Guild later on, and they clashed with each other so much that they would either take each other down or die trying.
"Samuraisoul's guild was called the Hengpai Swords Guild. They could only be considered a third-rate guild in the Starry Duchy, as they had no other notable professional players aside form samuraisoul. Also, the Witching Hour Guild was backed by the Ethereal Mirage Guild, so they weren't an opponent the Hengpai Swords Guild could go up against. Knowing this, the Witching Hour Guild was also constantly pressuring the Hengpai Swords Guild.
"In the wake of this, samuraisoul was forced to quit the guild, and he disappeared from the public eye..."
Ye Kong put together what he knew from his past life, and the situation immediately became clear to him—
"It seems like they're about to make a move on samuraisoul. The Yokai Legion Guild is a subordinate guild of the Witching Hour Guild. In that case, I guess it means their feud stemmed from this encounter?"
For some reason, floralteapot had ordered his teammates to surround samuraisoul, and it looked like they were going to attack him in the wilderness.
In the wilderness maps of Demon Realm, PK was a very common activity. If a master wanted to improve himself, he would have to go through countless deathmatches in the wilderness, because only by fighting to the death at full strength could he cultivate an exceptional sense of combat awareness!
In his past life, Ye Kong had fought over a thousand life-or-death battles in the wilderness, with an average of one fight every three to four days!
The high frequency at which Ye Kong added to his PK combat records helped to mold his fearsome combat awareness, and allowed him to quickly overtake his counterparts. He cut a bloody path through the leaderboards, rising up the ranks from among the top ten thousand players to become the 104th ranked player!
Character level, equipment, and character class were a player's hard skills.
Which meant combat awareness was a soft skill. If a player's combat awareness wasn't up to snuff, they would end up like the "Forest Watchman." Even though he was clearly much stronger than Ye Kong, he still ended up getting killed!
This kind of "warlike and bloodthirsty" atmosphere in the game, in turn, encouraged players to more actively engage in PK!
This was especially true in the early stages of the game, when players belonging to guilds would purposely look for all kinds of reasons to "clean-up" the regular or guildless players and their parties, so as to pull ahead of them in strength.
Some guilds were even worse, specializing in hunting "guildless" targets. They wouldn't even bother masking their intentions, and would blatantly using PK as a way to level up!
These kinds of guilds were called "killer guilds" by the game community, and none were more famous than the Darkblood Assassins Guild. They were a special guild whose influence spanned the Starry Duchy, Ishtar Federation, Gorse Federation, and many other duchies!
It was a nightmarish time for regular players, and they couldn't even leave the game, because by then, Demon Realm had been fully integrated into society, and was one of humanity's core industries!
As such, the guild players' murderous activities continued unchecked for a long time, and many guildless players fell victim to them.
It was only afterward that a small yet well-known team came forward to organize the guildless players around the world. They set up the Brotherhood of the Cross, bringing the combined strength of the guilds and the guildless closer together, which helped to improve the situation slightly.
At this time, the Brotherhood of the Cross had not been established, so as a member of the Yokai Legion Guild, floralteapot naturally could act with relative impunity.
Ye Kong was certain that if nobody helped samuraisoul, he wouldn't get out of there in one piece.
"Forget about him. I should get back to the quest."
Ye Kong shook his head and started to head back through the mist—
"Anyway, that 'samuraisoul' has nothing to do with me. I'm not obligated to save him...
"I should just leave him like this."
Snap!
Ye Kong stepped on a twig, and in the next moment he paused, muttering to himself:
"Ah, what the h*ll. Since you crossed my path twice..."
Boom!
Ye Kong kicked off the ground hard and charged in a different direction. As he did so, he put all three stat points he'd received on advancing to level four into his Strength attribute—
"If I let you off again, I would be doing 'fate' a disservice!"
Whoosh!
Ye Kong rushed straight over to where the other players were!
.......
Several minutes earlier...
"Hand over the armor you're wearing, including your helmet equipment!" Floralteapot barked haughtily, his eyes filled with greed as they roved over his target's armor. "Hand over your armor nice and easy, and we'll spare your life. Otherwise, if you die out here in the wilderness, you'll not only drop an item, but you'll also drop one character level and get saddled with the 'Vulnerable' state!"
His other two teammates were standing close by, surrounding samuraisoul, who stood in the middle. At the same time, they added in unison:
"Hand over your equipment at once, and we'll let you off easy!"
"Be a good boy and listen to us. We can do this the easy way, or the hard way!"
Samuraisoul didn't move from where he stood. He was surrounded on all sides, and even though he had reached LV2, his opponents, floralteapot and his two teammates, were also LV2—After all, floralteapot had avoided the "Stygian Night Invasion," and during that time he completed three of the quests in the story event questline and earned a large sum of experience points!
Even though floralteapot and company lost the final reward of the story event, they didn't leave completely empty-handed!
Faced with this dilemma...
Samuraisoul fell into a deep silence, as though he were a lonesome warrior.
At the same time, floralteapot was laughing callously to himself: "Hmph, when that player hands over two pieces of equipment, we can kill him and get a third item. We'll also be ruining his early game foundation, which means he won't be able to catch up to our progress anymore!"
They couldn't take half measures. Now that they had already made an enemy out of him, they couldn't let him get away scot-free. Ruining his early game start was the best way of ensuring he couldn't get back at them.
This was exactly how guild players liked to do things. If not for the fact that floralteapot was trying to swindle his target out of two more pieces of equipment, he would have already attacked. Why else would he be "nagging" his prey?
When players in a wilderness map were killed by another player or mob, they would lose an item. It could be a piece of equipment, or something in their bag, and it all depended on the player's luck. Thus, floralteapot's plan was the best way to maximize his profits and squeeze his target dry!
More time passed, and floralteapot was starting to get antsy.
Finally, samuraisoul's helmet twitched, and he said in a raspy voice:
"Okay!"
Floralteapot was instantly overjoyed. "Our original mission was a failure, and we even got a dressing-down from Boss aosagi, who asked us to look for that 'lacuna' player—Who the h*ll knows where that guy is hiding now?
"Lucky for us, we found this 'fattened sheep' along the way. Judging by the look of his equipment, it's most likely Black Iron Gear!
"We'll make a killing this time!"
Floralteapot's eyes flashed with excitement, while samuraisoul let his arms droop down, as though he had given up, but he was actually sneakily reaching for the weapon at his waist. In the next instant, as the two parties were engrossed in their own thoughts—
Gasp!
The Yokai Legion Guild's female Magician - greenyarn felt a strong breeze behind her. As she instinctively turned to look—
Whoosh!
The gray flash of a blade lit up her face!