If players develop faster than Xu Yuan and unlock certain mods early, it could pose a significant threat to him.
For example, if a player unlocks the "Avaritia" mod and successfully forges the Sword of the Cosmos, but Xu Yuan hasn't yet reached the level to compete with it, he would be at their mercy.
In simple terms, it's all about who develops faster.
Fortunately, Xu Yuan had already gotten some crucial information ahead of time, so he felt a bit more prepared.
Xu Yuan glanced at the first mod available in the MOD Shop.
The first mod was the "Twilight Forest."
It was considered one of the simpler mods.
However, when Xu Yuan saw the kill value required to unlock it, he couldn't help but gasp.
"Damn! It requires five million kill points to unlock?!"
Seeing the enormous amount of kill points needed, he sighed.
"Looks like I've got a long way to go..."
Just the Twilight Forest alone required five million kill points.
Xu Yuan couldn't even imagine how many would be needed to unlock the Titan mod.
To advance quickly, confrontations with players would be inevitable in the future.
Both killing players and monsters could earn kill points.
But the points earned from killing monsters were minimal. Just now, Xu Yuan killed a zombie and only got 1 point.
To unlock the Twilight Forest, he'd need to kill five million zombies...
That number was outrageous. Even if Xu Yuan built a mob grinder, it would take forever to accumulate that many points.
On top of that, upgrading skills also required kill points, likely a substantial amount.
The quickest way to earn a large number of kill points would be to kill players.
But with his current strength, Xu Yuan felt he was still too slow to kill players efficiently.
He needed to strengthen himself further.
After getting a general understanding of the system, Xu Yuan closed the interface.
"I need to gather more skills and set up a mob grinder..."
For now, the safest bet was to gain as many skills as possible.
From the system prompt he received after killing the zombie, Xu Yuan realized that killing a monster for the first time granted him the monster's skill.
This would be easy enough for him.
Once the mob grinder was up and running, his deterrence level would also increase rapidly.
With enough skills and a few monster minions by his side, he'd be ready to face the players.
It wasn't that Xu Yuan was lacking in technique—his concern was that he only had one life.
Players could respawn infinitely without a care, but Xu Yuan couldn't afford to take that gamble.
Moreover, Xu Yuan hadn't unlocked any monster allies yet, and the nearby monsters were still hostile to him.
If he encountered players and the monsters attacked him at the same time, that would be far too humiliating for a demon lord.
While fending off the monsters around him, Xu Yuan planned his next moves.
Just as the second zombie fell at his feet, he suddenly heard a familiar "sssss" sound from behind.
That sound was one that had been etched into Xu Yuan's DNA.
"A Creeper!"
Almost by muscle memory, Xu Yuan didn't even think—he immediately jumped off the dirt platform he had built.
He quickly put some distance between himself and the Creeper.
The Creeper's explosion radius was about 4-5 blocks, and Xu Yuan didn't have enough dirt blocks on hand to tower up.
Putting distance between him and the Creeper was his only way to survive.
Luckily, Xu Yuan reacted fast enough. As soon as he gained some distance—
Boom!
The Creeper exploded.
The spot where Xu Yuan had been standing was instantly blown into a deep crater.
The surrounding zombies were also taken out by the Creeper's blast, its "friendly fire" at work.
"Whew... Good thing I reacted fast…"
If Xu Yuan hadn't moved in time, the Creeper would have had its moment of glory.
Creepers: back in the day, even Herobrine couldn't handle them.
Creepers were the lifelong nemesis of every Minecraft player.
Masters of ambush, they would always show up out of nowhere, delivering a deadly surprise.
By the time players heard the hiss, they were already signed up for an unplanned trip to the respawn screen.
As the dust settled from the Creeper's explosion, the system chimed in.
[Intimidation +10]
[Kill Value +1]
[Intimidation +10]
[Kill Value +1]
...
[Skill Acquired: Explosion]
[Explosion Lv1: Sacrifice 99% of your max health to deal area damage within a 5x6 range. Cooldown: 60 seconds.]
[Upgrade Cost: 5000 Kill Points]
"There's a cooldown too?!"
"Damn... 5000 kill points to upgrade? That's expensive…"
The explosion skill was Xu Yuan's first active skill.
Though killing zombies had also granted him a passive skill, "Pain Immunity," that skill couldn't be upgraded.
Explosion, on the other hand, was very useful. It dealt area damage, and its blast radius was quite large.
If a player didn't have armor and was too close, they could be instantly killed.
However, the upgrade cost was high.
Though the skill had a cooldown, that was understandable.
After all, the skill was highly destructive. If it could be used without restriction, Xu Yuan could take over the world with just that one move.
At level 1, the explosion consumed 99% of his health, which meant he would be left with almost no health after each use.
That was still very risky.
To stay safe, he'd need to level up the skill several times.
After gaining the explosion skill, Xu Yuan's curiosity was piqued.
He looked around. Seeing no monsters nearby, he decided to test the skill.
Though it was risky, he couldn't resist the temptation to try out his first active skill.
He picked up the dirt blocks blown away by the Creeper, just in case another monster attacked, and found a clear space.
Then, he activated the explosion skill.
Boom!
The ground beneath Xu Yuan was instantly blown apart, leaving a crater. He collapsed into the pit along with the surrounding dirt.
At that moment, the system prompt popped up again.
[Kill Value +27]
[Kill Value +15]
[Kill Value +17]
...
Before Xu Yuan could react, he heard a scream.
Looking closely, he realized that three player corpses had appeared in the pit!
The scream came from the only living player left, standing deep in the pit—a player with the ID "Steve."
Steve's eyes widened in disbelief as he stared at Xu Yuan.
Before Xu Yuan could even respond, Steve quickly pulled some dirt blocks from his inventory and started stacking them to escape.
In seconds, he leapt out of the pit and disappeared into the night without looking back.
Xu Yuan was dumbfounded.
"???? What just happened?..."
"Also... if I'm not mistaken... that player's name was Steve?"
———
As a monster, Xu Yuan naturally had night vision.
And now, after killing the zombie and Creeper, his vision in the dark had become even sharper.
He was certain he hadn't misread the ID just now.
The reason he was so surprised was because of the name "Steve."
Any Minecraft player would recognize the name Steve.
Steve's fame far surpassed that of Herobrine.
After all, Steve was the default character in the game.
As Minecraft's iconic figure, he appeared in many fan-made works.
Steve was naturally the main character in those stories.
Some fan works even linked Steve and Herobrine together.
Because Herobrine and Steve looked nearly identical, except for their eyes, some fan works depicted Herobrine as Steve's dark side.
Xu Yuan wasn't sure if this was a coincidence.
The first player he encountered after becoming Herobrine had the ID "Steve."
And that player looked exactly like Minecraft's Steve.
Their appearance was strikingly similar to his own.
"I'll probably see him again in the future…"
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