Chapter 84: Missing Each Other by a Hair's Breadth

The Legend of the Mage – No Pop-up

Old Fourth hadn't even finished his sentence when suddenly the screen turned black and white. He stared in disbelief as the massive pile of equipment and potions in his inventory spilled out like paving stones, while several of the surrounding warrior players also collapsed to the ground, and the rest scattered like startled birds.

On the corpse of the Pig Boss, for some unknown reason, five or six red-and-black wild boars spawned in a cluster, and around them, nearly a dozen wedge moths, black larvae, scorpion snakes, and more red-and-black boars appeared. In the distant corners, monsters sprouted up like mushrooms after rain!

“Damn! We've run into a monster mega-refresh!” Old Fourth nearly fainted from shock. The so-called monster mega-refresh occurs when players kill monsters too quickly, causing a concentration of monster deaths on a single map. This leads to a synchronized refresh, where the system suddenly respawns all dead monsters at once on that map!

This phenomenon is actually a normal system logic, not a revenge scenario where minions avenge their leader. Some players may have experienced this: for example, in the first floor of the Fragrant Stone Crypt, if you patiently lure all the zombies from every corner into one spot and slaughter them in a very short time, after repeating this a few times, you'll find that all the zombies spawn almost simultaneously, densely packed and even overlapping in that same corner, while the rest of the crypt is nearly empty. It's as if the system is saving you the time of luring monsters by spawning them all together—a truly bizarre sight!

If you keep this up for more than half an hour, even those bald monk zombies that leave holes in the ground when they emerge will refresh together. After using Blazing Fire or Hell Thunder to kill the other zombies, running a circle across the ground in that corner will show monk zombies sprouting like wheat in a field, with the ground filled with holes—a spectacular sight!

[Trouble: This was something I discovered when I was bored playing Legend in the Fragrant Stone Crypt. I'm not sure if other players have tried this, but I know it works on many maps and saves a lot of time luring monsters. Examples include Fragrant Stone, Zuoma 7-1, the fifth floor Bone Demon Hall (the wide area for farming the Yellow Springs Lord), and so on. Of course, it only works if no other players interfere; if someone runs around the map, the rhythm is disrupted. Back then, Trouble, Boss, Third, and Fourth would farm Zuoma 7-1 for Zuoma sets to sell for RMB—those were glorious days! Fourth helped buy and deliver potions, Boss assisted with stealth, healing, and monster-luring... Anyway, this story will appear later!]

The five or six red-and-black wild boars spawned on the Pig Boss's corpse seemed to be the same elite boars Lin Jia had just encountered—not only high defense, thick health, strong attack, and fast speed, but most crucially, their response time was instantaneous. At the very moment they spawned, they attacked nearby players.

Ordinary monsters usually stand around confused for a moment after spawning, but these elite boars immediately attacked the group of red-named warriors. Those who had just tanked the Pig Boss were already low on health, and since these elite boars hit almost as hard as the boss, three warriors dropped dead on the spot!

Terrified, Old Fourth opened his equipment panel and collapsed onto the sofa, wailing, “Damn it! Half my stuff is gone! Quick, help me pick it up!” The four pieces of gear on the right side of his inventory now lay scattered on the ground amidst the heap.

In Legend, red-named players are punished for deliberate killing: their entire inventory is guaranteed to drop, and their equipped items are randomly dropped as long as the inventory has items. If the inventory is empty, then congratulations—as punishment, all equipped items drop at once!

Who knows what luck Old Fourth had; his packed inventory of gear and potions all dropped, and his right-side column of equipment was wiped out—even his candle wasn't spared! Dropping four pieces of equipment at once—such luck can only be attributed to poor character.

If someone picked up the Death Gloves and Skull Ring, at least those could be bought with money. But if Old Fourth lost his elite gold necklace with +0–2 attack, he might not be able to reach the 30 attack needed to wear the Skull set.

“I’ll grab it!” Boss charged into the monster pile with heroic vigor, but before she could lure the elite boars to an open area, she was already overwhelmed by attacks from the red-and-black boars behind her. She cast Group Invisibility on herself and frantically healed with Cure.

The surrounding players gazed greedily at the dazzling items strewn across the ground. Seeing someone take the lead, they all rushed in like a hive, scrambling for loot. Old Fourth had shouted for Boss and Lin Jia to watch for the huge axe dropped by the Pig Boss; even on the ground, its dark blade showed its enormous weight.

Old Fourth, caught off guard by the sudden monster spawn and death, shouted anxiously, “Pick up that axe first!” Although no one knew its stats, anything dropped by the current top-tier boss, the White Wild Boar, was guaranteed to be far more valuable than any other monster’s elite or branded gear—this was unquestionable.

But no matter how desperate Old Fourth was, Boss had to be able to lure away the surrounding monsters first. The other players also coveted the conspicuous axe, throwing themselves at it with reckless abandon. In the chaos of luring and pulling, a swarm of monsters ended up camping on the 16*16 grid where the Pig Boss dropped its loot, nearly making Boss and Old Fourth vomit blood in frustration. Several greedy mage and priest players carelessly died in the monster pile, adding more sparkling items to the already crowded ground.

Old Fourth's warrior lay dead, frantically searching for any other good gear in the loot pile with his mouse. But in that brief moment of distraction, the huge axe vanished without a trace!

The red-named player lying next to Old Fourth suddenly went berserk, flooding the screen with “hahahahaha…” before logging out in a flash. This unexpected turn stunned all the players still wrestling with the monsters—how could the axe on the ground simply disappear?

That warrior died with his body covering the handle of the huge axe. Could it be that dead characters lying on the ground can still pick up items?

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