Chapter 96: Stealing the Kill

A mage’s legend with no pop-up windows.

“Pfft!” The big brother, having run to a safe spot, figured the rest was all up to Lin Jia, the high-magic mage, so he relaxed and lifted that enormous teacup for a sip. Just then, when he read that line from the little girl, he spat the tea all over the computer. The fourth brother burst out laughing on the spot, while the big brother flailed around frantically for tissues to wipe the monitor.

Lin Jia felt sure there were three black lines and a huge sweat bead hanging over his forehead. Grinding his teeth, he even stopped roasting pigs and typed at the girl: “How old are you?”

“Sixteen! ^-^” The little girl was delighted that Lin Jia was talking to her and answered at once, even adding a smiling emoticon.

Lin Jia felt the veins on his forehead bulging. A sixteen-year-old little sister, and at this hour of the night she was still awake, playing games like a grown-up? Watching the girl happily tucked inside the wall of bodies, laughing to herself without end, he thought, “Oh! Oh! Big brothers and sisters are so nice! They’re protecting me too! Wahahaha~” The overly friendly little sister left him completely helpless. Too annoyed to bother with her, Lin Jia went right back to throwing firewalls all over the map.

Beside them, the Daoist named Southern Hidden Horse saw that Lin Jia and the others were busy talking to the little girl, so he swung the Demon-Piercer in his hand and sent poison talismans dancing through the air, luring four or five wild boars that were already half-dead from Lin Jia’s flames over to him. Soon he had hacked them all to death. Apparently having tasted the sweetness of killing boars left with only a breath in them, Southern Hidden Horse brazenly coated more than a dozen pigs and scorpion snakes within the fire zone with poison and lured them away too.

That made Lin Jia and the big brother and fourth brother very unhappy. Wasn’t that just stealing food from a tiger’s mouth? We worked ourselves to exhaustion luring monsters, burned them down to a sliver of health, and then you come over for the finishing blow and the experience? Worst of all, you didn’t even have the decency to say hello?

Lin Jia could only stop casting flames and type: “Hey! Buddy! Take your little sister somewhere else to play, all right? Stop stealing our monsters!” But Southern Hidden Horse, as if he heard nothing, kept using Poison so he could snatch the monsters they had nearly burned to death, silently reaping experience. Strangely, though he was a high-level Daoist, he had no skeleton with him. He simply waved the Demon-Piercer in his hand, hacking madly at the wild boars, while Soul Fire Talismans kept flying out and he constantly healed himself.

Frowning, Lin Jia said nothing more. He simply used Violent Flame to draw back any monsters that slipped out of the sea of fire. Poison from the Daoist and Violent Flame from the mage were both skills that strongly attracted monsters, making them especially useful in monster-stealing. In no time, dozens of monsters had died beneath the blades of both sides.

When most of the monsters were dead, a few scattered, half-dead boars snorted and huffed their way toward the T-shaped wall where Lin Jia stood. At that moment, new monsters spawned again around them. Because they had lost a little time talking to the little girl, the area had refreshed before they finished clearing it. The big brother and fourth brother again charged out first to lure monsters, and the remaining boars, as usual, were left for Lin Jia to pick off with lightning.

Perhaps wanting to steal the last few half-dead boars, Southern Hidden Horse suddenly rushed forward, stepped across the fire wall that Lin Jia had not yet extinguished, and immediately let out a muffled groan of “Mm—ah!” His body even leaned back slightly. Lin Jia paused, then remembered that whenever he teamed up with the big brother and fourth brother, they usually used party mode, so the flames had burned Southern Hidden Horse as well.

But at that very moment, as Southern Hidden Horse lunged forward, something flashed behind him with a “whoosh!” A blue skeleton teleported to his back, paused for a split second, then lunged straight at the mage who had harmed its master.

Lin Jia had never seen a skeleton of such a deep color before. The big brother’s bone servant was only a level zero white skeleton, with a plain white name. Since the big brother usually treated it as nothing more than a firebreak and an obstacle, he seldom summoned it, only bringing it out when he needed a meat shield.

A Daoist’s skeleton-summoning skill only levels up through repeated use. Like all skills, it takes several thousand uses to raise Summon Skeleton to level one, and as for when the big brother would finish training it, who knew how many years that would be.

This skeleton of Southern Hidden Horse’s was clearly an advanced one. He had already trained Summon Skeleton to level two, directly summoned a level two mutated skeleton, and then trained it all the way to level five. A Daoist’s skeleton pet, like the player, can level up: once the player reaches the required level and maxes out the skill at that tier, they can directly summon a higher-level mutated skeleton. For example, when a Daoist learns Summon Skeleton at level 19, once that tier’s skill experience is full, they can directly summon a level one skeleton. At level 23, a Daoist who has maxed level two Summon Skeleton can directly summon a level two skeleton. The third level cannot be used until the Daoist reaches level 26.

A skeleton’s level is constrained by the player’s skill level. A level zero Summon Skeleton can summon a mutated skeleton that can only be raised to level one. A level one Summon Skeleton can summon a level one mutated skeleton and raise it to level three. A level two Summon Skeleton can summon a level two mutated skeleton and raise it to level five. Once level three Summon Skeleton is maxed out, the directly summoned mutated skeleton can be raised to a terrifying level seven.

A skeleton’s strength is distinguished by the color of its name: the deeper the color, the stronger the skeleton. The big brother’s white skeleton looked weak at a glance, with no real intimidation at all, while Southern Hidden Horse’s level five skeleton was not only swift in movement but also horrifyingly powerful in attack.

The reason its skeleton had not appeared all this time was probably because it had been stuck behind another section of the T-shaped wall not far below Lin Jia and the others, unable to get out. When a player moves too far away from their pet, the pet is automatically teleported to the player’s side. Just now Southern Hidden Horse’s sudden forward rush happened to exceed the system’s distance limit between pet and player, so it was teleported over automatically.

But by sheer bad luck, the Daoist stepped on the embers of Lin Jia’s fire wall, and the system registered it as an attack. The skeleton, with its very low intelligence, naturally assumed someone was attacking its master, so it came brandishing an axe to settle the score.

As the skeleton came over, Lin Jia did not yet pay it any mind and was still fighting the Daoist for the remaining half-dead boars. But once the blue skeleton drew near and swung its axe, Lin Jia’s health instantly dropped by nearly half with a flash. Terrified, Lin Jia immediately gave up the few half-dead boars he had been competing for and ran out from behind the T-wall. Even while dodging, he was still slashed across the back by the blue level five skeleton, and his full health bar was left only a thin sliver.

In rage, Lin Jia roared, “Get back here! I’m being pk’d!” Southern Hidden Horse saw that his skeleton had actually gone to chop the mage whom the system had marked in brown for intentional injury, and without hesitation he went all in. He rapidly threw a red poison and a green poison, then sent “tissues” fluttering through the air like mad while swinging the Demon-Piercer at Lin Jia!!!

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Trouble: Damn it! I’m furious! The power’s been out since around six in the morning, and I finally managed to sneak back from the company to update a chapter! Curse it! During the push, they actually cut the power for repairs! I’m so pissed I could xxoo the whole lot of them! Now I still have to rush back to work—the leaders are coming for an inspection today, and I risked my life sneaking back here! I’ll keep updating after work tonight!

I’m crying! My big push was ruined by that damn outage!