I'm Here to Die

Liu Xuan's mind raced. His Agility was as high as 11 points, a stat likely awarded due to his fast reaction speed.

However, the attributes in this Ascension Battlefield were very broad. Agility simultaneously determined attack speed, movement speed, and reaction speed.

In other words, once he entered the battlefield, his movement speed would also be incredibly fast.

If the monsters couldn't catch up to him at all...

Even if he couldn't attack, he could still use his class traits to gain experience once every minute during combat.

It seemed... it wasn't completely unplayable?

Of course, he still had to see the specific situation on the battlefield to make a final judgment.

Even so, Liu Xuan still felt a bit frustrated. I'm the damn God of Mechanics, and you're telling me I can only kite monsters for fun...

Before he could complain enough, the cold mechanical voice sounded again:

[Class Selected]

[Warrior Liu Xuan is logging into the Ascension Battlefield...]

[Ten, nine, eight... two, one!]

The moment the countdown ended, the pitch-black space around him suddenly lit up.

At the same time, various cries for help and screams pierced Liu Xuan's ears.

"Save me, I want to go home!"

"Those monsters are too strong, we can't beat them at all."

"Are we going to die here?"

Liu Xuan opened his eyes. A dilapidated farm came into view, crowded with numerous terrified people.

Some were squatting on the ground, while others held their heads, trembling.

Inside the farm, it seemed there was no such thing as collision volume; many people's bodies were clipping and overlapping with each other.

Liu Xuan took a rough glance and estimated there had to be several thousand people.

Within the farm, a glowing screen hovered in the air:

[Welcome warriors to the Ascension Battlefield. This is Battlefield No. 2468. Current number of warriors: 4684/5000, all from the Blue Star Huaxia faction.]

[Within the battlefield, you will still feel thirst, hunger, and fatigue, so you need to rest and eat in safe zones.]

[The farm you are currently in will completely collapse in half an hour and will no longer provide shelter.]

[Please capture the village across the fields as soon as possible to rest and eat.]

[There is no level cap in the battlefield; all warriors can continuously improve themselves and achieve ascension.]

[Finally, good luck to you all!]

"What a sick game!" After reading the content on the screen, Liu Xuan couldn't help but sigh.

Dropping us straight into a farm at the start, and we even have to reach the beginner village ourselves?

If we can't make it to the beginner village, we'll be trapped here until we die.

But the next second, a faint look of excitement appeared on Liu Xuan's face.

He had played games with permadeath modes before, but those were just games. Even if he died, it meant nothing more than his character being deleted.

But here, if he died, the account getting deleted would be his life on Blue Star Online.

Liu Xuan pushed through the crowd to the edge of the farm and looked out.

The farm was surrounded by a vast expanse of fields, extremely large, estimated to be hundreds of hectares.

Pitch-black figures were scattered throughout. A few sparse individuals were fighting them, but the situation was too gruesome to look at.

Screams rose and fell. From time to time, someone would be tackled to the ground by a monster and then stop moving completely.

Across the vast fields, the outline of a village could be seen in the distance. That should be the safe zone mentioned on the screen.

Before heading out to meet those monsters, Liu Xuan stayed where he was to adapt to his body's stats.

He looked down at his palms and clenched his fists.

In Blue Star's virtual gaming community, this was a very classic test used to judge a game's level of realism.

Because when clenching a fist, the contact between the five fingers and the palm, along with the force applied, creates highly complex sensory feedback. Companies lacking technical prowess would find it hard to create a completely realistic effect.

But in this Ascension Battlefield, the tactile sensation and the force feedback were almost indistinguishable from reality!

In other words, although the announcement nominally stated it was presented as a virtual game, it was entirely safe to assume that they were physically transported to this battlefield as real people.

Just then, a loud, booming voice shouted, "Fellow compatriots, I have something to say!"

The man's voice was extremely loud, carrying over the chaotic noise of the scene.

Many people subconsciously stopped crying and complaining, looking toward the source of the voice.

They saw a tall, burly man standing on a wooden beam, waving at the crowd.

"Everyone, quiet down! My name is Zhang Meng!" the burly man shouted. "Some of the younger people here might know my name. I used to be a soldier, and now I'm a professional gamer. I'm somewhat famous in the community."

Many people didn't care much about the professional gamer part, but the words used to be a soldier carried immense weight at a time like this!

He was definitely stronger than ordinary people like them.

Liu Xuan was a little surprised. He recognized Zhang Meng too.

In Liu Xuan's opinion, the guy's gaming skills were fairly decent.

A year or two ago, he could probably rank in the top ten in Huaxia. In recent years, as he got older and newcomers rose up, he fell out of the top ten.

To think he was also in this beginner village.

The man must have been here for a while; he was likely among the first batch forcibly pulled in.

Seeing that his identity had gained the crowd's approval and that most people were quietly looking at him, Zhang Meng breathed a sigh of relief.

He relaxed a bit and voiced his thoughts.

"Everyone, I just asked the people who returned from outside about the monsters, and I also checked the stat panels of many people around here to compile this information. Now, speaking as a veteran and a professional gamer, let me analyze the situation for you!"

"The attributes of those monsters are very, very high. They have 150 HP and 30 damage. And us? We barely have 100 HP, and our damage is only around 10 points. If we fight individually, we'll all die in this farm today!"

Zhang Meng was actually quite speechless internally. These were only Level 1 monsters, yet their stats were so high that soloing them was impossible.

Almost no game would be designed this way. It truly was a battlefield rather than a game.

He even couldn't help but suspect: Was humanity on Blue Star just too weak? Did this Ascension Battlefield cater to ten thousand races, making it something they simply had no right to participate in?

Looking at it this way, the future of Blue Star's humanity seemed incredibly bleak...

However, he couldn't say such discouraging words to ordinary people.

Sigh...

Someone in the crowd immediately asked anxiously, "If the monsters are so strong and the farm is about to collapse, we can't just sit here and wait to die, right?"

Hearing that it was a dead end, the others started to panic again.

"Listen to me! There is a way, and that is to pool our resources!" Zhang Meng shouted. "The rest of us will take turns drawing aggro, allowing a select group to take all the kills and experience to level up and boost their combat power. I just had someone test it. Killing one monster gives 2 EXP, so 25 kills will level someone up. Leveling up will definitely grant attributes.

If any equipment drops during this time, we concentrate it all on this group of people too. Only by doing this do we have a chance to fight our way to the beginner village as quickly as possible."

Liu Xuan nodded in strong agreement with Zhang Meng's proposal. The method was indeed solid—the optimal solution for ordinary people.

Just like in certain video games, splitting experience and resources equally among everyone wasn't always the best strategy. Having a portion of the group act as support and secondary roles to allow the rest to scale better often resulted in a higher overall combat power.

That was, of course, assuming everyone was willing to cooperate.

Take their current situation, for example. Even if a dozen people ganged up on a single monster, they couldn't possibly coordinate perfectly enough to land simultaneous strikes and instantly kill it. Monsters could move and fight back, which meant someone had to step up and tank the damage first.

Sure enough, someone immediately raised a doubt. "Then who gets the experience, and who draws the aggro? We all only have one life. Out of the three current classes, the Priest can only toss a pathetic little magic missile. It's completely useless and has absolutely no healing abilities."

Zhang Meng had clearly anticipated this. "My suggestion is that we form groups of ten to twenty. Anyone with a specific attribute at 8 or above gets priority for experience, preferably those with a Strength of 8 or higher. No one knows if we'll have to face higher-level monsters later on, so for now, high-Strength soldiers are our best bet for both tanking and dealing damage.

"Those with an Agility of 8 or above are fine too, but you need to have good enough mechanics. Of course, this is just a suggestion. Time is short, and I can't assign teams for everyone individually. Hurry up and form your own groups; this farm won't hold out much longer."

Hearing this, the people with higher stats naturally agreed wholeheartedly and immediately stepped forward.

"I have 8 Strength! Anyone want to group with me?"

"Damn it, I'm right at 7. I should have worked out more every day."

"8 Agility here! I'm an archer, so my DPS isn't low either!"

Listening from the sidelines, Liu Xuan realized that there really weren't many people with attributes of 8 or higher. Only a sparse handful of people spoke up.

It seemed that having 8 points meant one possessed exceptional physical prowess, a rarity of one in a hundred. As for stats above 8, those were even rarer. After listening for quite a while, Liu Xuan only heard of one person with 9 Strength.

After all, 5 points was the baseline for an average person.

Eventually, with no other options, even those with 7 Strength began to serve as the core of their respective teams.

By that calculation, his own 11 Agility was probably rarer than one in ten thousand.

Liu Xuan's class, Pacifist, dictated that he couldn't join a team. He simply turned around and started walking out of the farm.

A young man nearby noticed his departure and couldn't help but call out, "Hey, man, where are you going? Aren't you going to join a team?"

To save himself the hassle of explaining, Liu Xuan waved his hand without looking back and casually spouted, "I came here to die anyway."

"......"

The young man, Chen Yu, twitched his lips, at a loss for words.

If the guy didn't even want to live, what else could he possibly say?

Chen Yu turned to look at the people left in the farm behind him. Some were huddled in corners, shivering; some wore their terror plainly on their faces; others were humbly begging to be let into a team.

It was hard to say just how many of these people would actually survive when the time came.