Chapter 15 Rusty Sword (Survival Game)

In DUST, all humanoid mobs had some form of intelligence, but the difference was only if it was low or high. A normal monster had low intelligence, an elite monster or mini boss monster in the wild would have normal level of intelligence, while the boss monsters although little, had the intelligence that could rivalled a normal human. If you were unlucky and met the super boss monsters, its intelligence would be even higher than normal human players.

Of course, to meet a super boss, it was so rare that Xia Mo could count with her fingers. However, she would not have a chance to even encounter them as these monsters were usually be “booked” by the big or huge clans since she was a mediocre player in her previous life. She was one of those players who were struggling at the bottom of the food chain and only knew about such existences of these bosses from the rumours by other players.

After the mid stage of the game, the players’ alliance (players determine who was the leader to lead the alliance. It was more for the benefits of the players but not restricted to clans, an organisation akin to a senate) started a forum (Translator’s note: I also don’t know how this could be achieved. Currently, I am only reading halfway into the story). She and the rest of the normal players at the bottom rank would be able to see the videos of the battle with the super bosses. And in this forum, there was a section which was the most popular. It was the strategy section.

DUST is different from other games. The design of DUST was to allow survivors to live later, so most players were unwilling to die, so they would want to raise their own abilities first. The players’ alliance released numerous discussions and analysis and with the power of the large masses, it naturally created the most direct and powerful strategies. Of course, such strategies released were not as quickly updated as those clans who were clearing the raids at a faster pace. The contents were useless to the pros but to the normal players, it was definitely helpful.

Therefore, in her previous life, Xia Mo would also study the strategy section whenever she had time. She would memorise all the different strategies well, and sometimes she cleared some quests or raids by following the strategy guide in order to get a better result or accumulate more attributes points.

These matters were common in the past life as most players would do what she did. Now that she had a second life, this vast knowledge was her best weapon. However, since some time has passed, she would unable to recall a few detailed parts of the content. For now, it was more than adequate for her current situation.

For example, the bandit who was doing his patrol duty, did not have much detailed strategies on how to handle him. In the early times of the game strategy section, it only contained a sentence “For the early game in order to increase your survivability, the levels of the monsters were not high, and the humanoid mobs had almost no resistance to poison.” This was an unimportant fact, but in the current timeline, the details in that sentence would determine the success or failure of the mob encounter.

The dart hit the neck of the bandit but it was not able to penetrate deeper into the neck. However, he had suffered some minor injury and the dart just fell to the ground.

After Xia Mo used her blowgun once, she went into hiding again. Since the intelligence of the bandit was not high, he only realized that he was attacked. If the mob was an elite or a mini boss, it would try to analyse where the dart came from and traced it back to Xia Mo’s hiding place.

Since Xia Mo hiding was fast, and the damage of the dart was too little, the aggro of the bandit was only on the surrounding. He tried to investigate around the area to find out who attacked him. Xia Mo calmly observed that the bandit was moving quickly in her direction. She counted the time and then gazed at the bandit again. She started to smile and then it quickly faded.

The bandit was walking briskly at first, but now he was swaying to his left and right and after a few steps, started to shake his head, as though he was extremely sleepy. His footsteps got heavier as he approached the tree where Xia Mo was and when he eventually reached his destination, he fell asleep on the ground.

Xia Mo quietly observed the bandit and after checking the surroundings once more, she landed on the ground. By using all her strength, she dragged the bandit into a deeper area. Then she took out her wooden plank and keep hitting the head of the bandit. He perished a few moments later.

Aconite characteristic was to numb the nerves, so it would cause the person to feel that he had lost control of his limbs followed by his slow reaction. If this poison was refined and applied on a blade, it would cause the opponent to be in a paralysed state. When the other party was paralyzed, it would be a breeze to kill. Therefore, the price of aconite only increase but never dropped. The aconite she was using now only very little effect on the mobs in the starter village map. But to use it against the players, it would be too insignificant.

After confirming the death of the bandit, Xia Mo checked her current attributes:

Endurance 18
Stamina 12
Wisdom 11
Agility 14
Strength 16
Savviness 12

Total attributes: 83

These few days of training had increased her overall attributes, but the increase in each attribute seemed to be too well distributed, unlike Lushan Baomu who had a high distinct attribute.

This was a headache for Xia Mo and she was unable to solve the problem for the time being. If the player had too much of a similar value in each attribute, this would affect how the player could develop in the future and almost impossible to be exceptional among the players.

She sighed, bent down her body to retrieve the rusty blade from the waist of the fallen bandit. This was her main objective for today.