Ye Xiu actually just smiled again and asked, "Something wrong?"
The tone was so flat, so casual, that Yue Zhongmian couldn't even find words to reply. He could hardly believe this was the guy he'd just spent all that time spamming against. Sure, the crowd might have been fooled, but between him and Jun Moxiao, everything was an open book—this was outright slander. So how could this guy act like nothing had happened? Hadn't he seen the screen-flooding just now?
"Jun Moxiao, you shameless bastard! To keep a hidden boss for yourself, you deliberately withheld healing from the whole team and got everyone killed. Everyone, be careful!"
Yue Zhongmian hurriedly posted the message he'd saved two more times, watching for Ye Xiu's reaction. Instead, he heard Ye Xiu say, "Still spamming? Not going to go level up?"
"I... I wanted to show you what I'm made of! Now you know our Moon Wheel Guild isn't to be trifled with, right?" These were lines Yue Zhongmian had prepared in advance, but saying them now, the whole context felt completely off—like stabbing a knife into cotton. Utterly ineffective.
"Got it. I can't even find a party now," Ye Xiu said.
Hearing this, Yue Zhongmian finally felt a bit better, laughing out loud, "That'll teach you to be a jerk."
But then Ye Xiu continued, "Are you guys short on members? Party me up?"
Yue Zhongmian was instantly dumbfounded. "Damn, you really are a first-class jerk..."
"Heh heh, come on, add me. Now that we know each other so well, why don't we cooperate properly?" Ye Xiu even went ahead and sent a party invite over.
Yue Zhongmian's side was indeed a four-man party—not the original lineup from before, of course. These three were all members of the Moon Wheel Guild Yue Zhongmian had mentioned. But founding a guild was something that would have to wait until they left the starting village, which meant they were all veterans who'd transferred together from the old server to open up Area 10, and had happened to land in the same starting village. Yue Zhongmian wanted to ambush the boss, which obviously wasn't convenient to do with his own people, so he'd gone to join a random party—which had backfired spectacularly when he ran into Ye Xiu and lost both his men and his money. He'd hastily called in guild members as reinforcements, and along the way roped in his former teammates to spam the chat together, hoping to ruin Jun Moxiao's reputation on the spot.
And the result? The result was this: the guy seemed completely unconcerned about all of it, and having lost his party, now simply sent an invite to yours. Yue Zhongmian stared at the party request on his screen, not knowing whether to click accept or decline.
Yue Zhongmian was momentarily at a loss. With the earlier incident as precedent, he felt this person was no simple character—there had to be some purpose behind this, right? As he hesitated, one of the guys beside him sent a private message: "Add him. He's digging his own grave—once he's in the dungeon, can't we do whatever we want with him?"
Yue Zhongmian thought about it—that made sense. His side had four people, all his own brothers. There was no reason at all to be afraid of one guy.
And so Ye Xiu entered Green Forest once more with these four. This time his luck didn't flare up; no Dark Night Cat Demon appeared when they entered. Ye Xiu asked with a smile, "Still need my healing?"
"No need. Everyone attack together." As the four of them spoke, they were already charging at the monsters. These four were clearly not Glory newbies—their technique was seasoned. At this level of skill, two or three players would have been enough to clear the Green Forest dungeon; with a full party of five, the efficiency was lightning fast. Ye Xiu didn't waste words either, directing Jun Moxiao to extend the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella into a spear and charging into the fray.
Sky Strike, Dragon Fang—these two were skill attacks. Besides skills, characters of course also had normal attacks. Normal attacks, through player control of direction and force, could take many forms: straight thrust, horizontal slash, vertical chop, upward lift, and so on. When executed, these attacks sometimes looked very similar to skills, but their effects differed. For instance, Sky Strike was a type of upward lift attack, but its juggle effect was far stronger than a normal upward lift, and the damage was higher. Dragon Fang, on the other hand, was a straight thrust—faster on the wind-up and recovery than a normal thrust, and it could inflict a brief stagger; a staggered target couldn't perform any action at all.
Ye Xiu, setting skills aside for the moment, was more than capable of mopping the floor with Green Forest's minor mobs using normal attacks alone. Only, sometimes when he swung his spear out and drew it back, a monster would suddenly get shoved over from a spot where there had been none. Ye Xiu just smiled and ignored it, accepting everything that came. He knew Yue Zhongmian's crew was deliberately shoving mobs his way, trying to create a scene of him being swarmed.
But swarmed or not, how could someone with the ability to solo-clear dungeons care about that? At most, five Green Forest mobs had surrounded him at once—one Sky Strike launched the mobs flying as he broke out of the encirclement, then a reverse horizontal sweep, chopping and slashing to the right, and the five mobs lined up to be bullied. Yue Zhongmian's four deliberately stood by with arms folded, only to watch Jun Moxiao carve in and out of the monster horde, looking unbelievably magnificent—magnificent enough to make all four of them a little jealous.
"This guy's skills are pretty good." A guy in the party called Tian Qi was the first to nod in approval.
"He's a veteran. Look at that technique—I don't think soloing Green Forest would be much of a challenge for him," another said.
"He's got some real chops. He solo-killed the berserk Dark Night Cat Demon—I really didn't see that coming. His skill level is at least above mine," Yue Zhongmian said.
"At this level, there's no way he's dying in Green Forest," one concluded.
"How about once we hit level 10, we go to Spider Cave?" Tian Qi looked at the other three.
Spider Cave was a level 10-15 dungeon, a big step up in difficulty from Green Forest. If Green Forest was just for players to learn the game, then at level 10, starting with Spider Cave, players needed to begin seriously engaging with more technical gameplay. Spider Cave, as the name suggests, had spiders for mobs, mainly two kinds: one ranged type that spat webs with a chance to bind, and bound players couldn't move; the other melee type, with a chance to poison on bite, and poisoned players lost health continuously. Attacks that inflicted abnormal status effects like these were only found on hidden bosses in Green Forest.
Besides normal mobs, Spider Cave also had three bosses: one ranged mini-boss, one melee mini-boss, and the Spider King as the final boss. The hidden bosses that could be encountered were the Spider Demon, Spider Warrior, and Spider Lord.
Since leveling from 1 to 10 was very fast, a true newbie might well not have developed much game skill yet; opening up the Spider dungeon at that point was basically a one-way trip, so Spider Cave was never recommended in newbie guides. The only ones who would consider this dungeon were veteran players like Yue Zhongmian and company who already had a certain level of skill.
"If we send this guy to his death in Spider Cave, we'll only have four people left. Will we have trouble clearing it?" Yue Zhongmian had some doubts.
"Shouldn't be a problem if we don't run into the hidden boss," Tian Qi said.
"If we do run into the hidden boss, we couldn't take it down with him either. Spider Cave is way harder than this place," one said.
"True enough. Then let's level fast and hit Spider Cave at ten," Yue Zhongmian said.
At this point, one who had barely spoken up till now suddenly said, "So we level him up first? And then engineer his death?"
Yue Zhongmian froze at that. Put that way, their plan sounded pretty damn pathetic, but Tian Qi had already found the right framing: "You should say, use him as free labor first, then kick him to the curb."
"Right, right, exactly like that." Yue Zhongmian was much comforted.