Mistville

Besides the Carrion Monsters, this place also hid another kind of creature known as a Parasitic Beast.

As the name suggested, these monsters lived inside the bodies of other creatures.

And what creatures were there in this place?

Naturally, Carrion Monsters.

Liu Xuan had discovered one entirely by accident. After he killed a Carrion Monster, its body suddenly burst open, and a creature crawled out from inside. It looked somewhat like an armadillo, except it had no scales. Its entire body was wrapped in a mass of black, tentacle-like strands.

【Parasitic Beast】

Level: 25

Attack: 500

Health: 5,000

Armor: 10

Magic Resistance: 10

Skill: 【Venom Spray: Sprays sticky mucus over a certain area in front of itself, reducing the movement speed of enemies hit by 50% and inflicting 【Poisoned】.】

This creature was truly insidious. It hid inside a Carrion Monster, then burst out and sprayed poison right in your face just as you approached to collect the loot.

Its damage might not have been especially high, but it was disgusting to deal with.

And an attack of 500 was already deadly to most people.

Its relatively low defenses were about the only weakness it had.

Liu Xuan sent the monster's information to Zhang Meng so he could add it to the monster intelligence files. After reading it, Zhang Meng wore an expression of utter misery.

“Anyone who still wants to farm monsters along this road is a damn idiot…”

Liu Xuan, on the other hand, was suffering and enjoying himself at the same time. The creature had a lot of health, after all.

【Thunder Aura】had once again gained a 5,000-point damage boost.

After traveling for roughly half an hour, Liu Xuan finally crossed the road covered in bones and arrived at a crossroads.

There were broad roads to the left and right, just like the one he had been traveling on, while the road straight ahead was somewhat narrower.

The two side roads led to the two major cities. The road in the middle, supposedly, led to a place called the Godless White Tower.

Neither Finch nor the village chief had gone into much detail about it. They had only said that it was a place where criminals were judged and executed.

Liu Xuan was somewhat curious, but he was in no hurry to investigate. He could always come back later.

Of the two roads on either side, he chose the one on the right, since it was closer to Count Samos's territory.

If he had enough time, he planned to go there and take a look as well.

……

United States Battlefield No. 1357.

After seeing the announcement about the promotion defense battle, Tom, the former captain of the healing squad, still decided to join forces with Vaughan and capture the outpost first.

It had to be said that the gap between people in this battlefield had been magnified to an absurd degree—greater than the gap between a human and a dog.

While Liu Xuan's side was already considering starting the fourth stage ahead of schedule, many countries were still idling around in the second stage.

Vaughan looked at Tom with undisguised contempt.

“So now you need me?”

“We had some differences in our approach before. You wanted to clear the stages as quickly as possible, while I wanted to keep as many people alive as I could. Neither of us was wrong. Now that most people's levels have caught up, many of them have reached Level 8 or 9. As long as several thousand people work together, we can definitely take down that big fish.”

“If that's what you think, then why come to me? Can't you do it yourselves?”

“Of course we can. We're here to make sure things go smoothly and minimize casualties.” Tom looked at Vaughan. “There's no benefit to continuing this rivalry. Vaughan, you don't want to become the Chinese people's lackey, do you?”

As he spoke, Tom brought up another point.

“The monsters around the starting village have limited levels. There are some high-level monsters on a mountain to the east, but once they're killed, they won't respawn. If you don't cross the river soon, you'll run out of places to level up too.”

Vaughan thought for a moment.

“I'm not opposed to working with you, but I have one condition.”

“What condition?”

“I get to choose one item from that fish's drops first. After that, the rest goes to the highest bidder.”

Tom considered it, then nodded.

“Deal!”

……

After traveling for some time, Liu Xuan arrived at a small town in the forest before nightfall. It was called Mistveil Town.

According to the distances marked on the map, he had already covered roughly a quarter of the journey.

That was a little faster than he had expected. Liu Xuan had originally thought he would not arrive until nighttime.

At first, he had planned to kill some monsters along the way.

But after traveling the route himself, he realized that perhaps because of the broad road, the regions they passed through did not contain particularly dense concentrations of monsters.

As a result, he could no longer be bothered to waste time farming monsters along the way.

He had originally chosen Mistveil Town as his destination because he planned to rest there for the night.

Ever since crossing the river, Liu Xuan had gone a full day and night without closing his eyes.

Fortunately, while he was at the outpost, he had seen carts loaded with supplies that contained an item resembling a sleeping bag.

It allowed people to rest outside safe zones—in other words, in the wilderness.

Finch had said that once the defense battle at Orenburg was over, the supplies would be transported there, including these sleeping bags.

The region north of Orenburg was simply too vast. The soldiers might not be able to capture even one safe zone in the short term.

If they had to return to the city every time they needed to rest while exploring and adventuring through such a massive area, it would greatly delay the northern campaign.

That was why sleeping bags had been developed.

Liu Xuan was making use of one ahead of schedule.

However, it was not dark yet, so Liu Xuan decided to explore Mistveil Town before resting.

The entire town had been built in the forest, and the damage here was not as severe as in Orenburg.

At the very least, it did not look as though there had been a fire, or the surrounding woods would never have survived.

The battle back then might not have destroyed the buildings, but the passage of time had inevitably caused enormous damage.

Many of the wooden structures had completely rotted and collapsed. The air was filled with the damp, moldy stench of decaying wood.

Weeds, moss, and mushrooms had grown inside some of the houses. In some places, trees had even burst through the roofs.

Liu Xuan soon discovered a type of monster in the town that could, for lack of a better term, be described as “living here”: humanoid trees with deeply cracked bark and pitch-black bodies.

They stood more than two meters tall and looked like tree trunks that had grown arms and legs.

They had no eyes, only a very wide mouth from which a disgusting gray-black resin constantly dripped.

【Diseased Treant】

Level: 28

Attack: 410

Health: 5,800

Armor: 100

Magic Resistance: 50

Skill: 【Drag and Devour: Releases vines that seize all enemies within ten meters and pulls them toward its mouth. Biting an enemy deals 1,000 points of true damage.】

【Sticky Resin: When attacked, the body continuously oozes resin, reducing the attack speed of enemies that come into contact with it by 20%.】

This was another monster that attacked by biting, but it was even more vicious. Anyone it bit suffered 1,000 points of true damage immediately.

And these treants did not fight alone. Although they were not bosses, each one was accompanied by several small creatures roughly the size of soccer balls that looked like blobs of black jelly.

【Diseased Resin Drop (Minion)】

Level: 28

Attack: 100

Health: 1,200

Magic Resistance: 20

Skill: 【Burst: Explodes upon death, dealing 200 points of physical damage to enemies within three meters and inflicting the Sticky Resin effect.】