MS Chapter 79

The richest man had been here for so long that he knew the system’s tricks all too well.

The reaction was practically telling them blatantly that there was something fishy about the clock factory, and it was eager to use the mission to restrain them.

However, on the way there, he asked, “If you reject the mission, it’s tantamount to allowing the system to punish you. Now that thing probably wants to eliminate you as soon as possible. Have you thought of any countermeasures?”

“The mission time limit is a full half day, which is more than enough for us to clear it.”

Indeed, once out of the Game, what could a second-rate system do to the Players?

When the two arrived, they saw a building in Victorian style. At the top was a huge clock, diligently fulfilling its duty.

The richest man was furious at the sight and said, “I’ve passed by this place many times.”

The richest man had no restrictions in this world, as his business spanned all regions. Therefore, the rules had to allow him to inspect everywhere.

“I thought it was just a factory that hadn’t yet found an operator. When there are enough people, sooner or later, stranded Players would be assigned here, and it would become a new mission point.”

“Heh, I was careless, thinking that a place without anyone stationed was meaningless.”

Lu Qingjia said, “Complaining is pointless. Why don’t you try attacking that clock?”

The richest man was startled and looked at him, “Are you serious?”

Seeing that Lu Qingjia wasn’t joking, the richest man remembered this guy’s previous feat of bombarding the job center. This guy’s actions always alternated between meticulousness and recklessness, and he had to adapt quickly.

So the richest man also took out a shoulder-fired rocket launcher he bought from Infinite City from his space and fired a shot at the big clock—

After the smoke cleared, they found that the building was completely unharmed. The powerful and close-range physical attack didn’t even cause the second hand to pause for a second.

The richest man grinned and nodded, “Well, that was unnecessary worry.”

“It seems we can only break in from the inside,” Lu Qingjia said, then took out his phone and sent a few messages before entering the clock factory’s main gate with the richest man.

Although Lu Qingjia felt that this Game was quite challenging, with traps throughout the entire process.

In general Games, even if you fail to clear, as long as you’re alive, you can return to reality. But here, they lust after the Players’ bodies. Although they might not easily let the Players die, the risks are no less than those of death scenes.

But once you figure out the gist, you’ll realize that the existence controlling this instance is nothing special.

From the way it operates, you can tell it’s not someone skilled in strategy and planning. It lacks a broad perspective, the ability to control the overall situation, hasn’t preset unexpected situations, and its adaptability is poor, hence full of loopholes.

But even so, that existence’s abilities and strength are far above theirs. And it’s quite adept at exploiting human weaknesses.

Lu Qingjia hasn’t suffered much, so he doesn’t feel it, but the richest man has been trapped here for almost three years, right? After realizing that his business direction had many problems, and that a different approach was quite simple, and that the existence wasn’t as terrifying as he had imagined.

He was completely enveloped in a mix of shame and anger.

He kicked the door open, and what greeted him was a giant octopus tentacle.

At an unexpected speed, it wrapped around the richest man’s body, trying to pull him in.

But suddenly, a cannonball was fired towards the inside of the door, and the giant octopus tentacle that was wrapped around the richest man fell to the ground. A roar that shook the earth and mountains came from inside, but it reluctantly retreated.

Although the octopus was huge and inexplicably appeared in the house, it still suffered serious injuries under the rocket launcher’s power.

The richest man sat on the ground, disgustedly removing the octopus tentacle from his body, and complained to Lu Qingjia, “Can you make less noise next time? With this power, what if you accidentally hit me?”

“I believe in your strength, my temporary partner. You couldn’t possibly lack the ability to protect yourself.”

Hearing this, the richest man was indeed swayed, fully believing this was Lu Qingjia’s affirmation of his strength.

He was about to laugh until his mouth split but pretended to be calm and said, “That’s for sure. Don’t think I’m relying on you to save me, just a thicker octopus leg, I have plenty of ways to deal with it.”

Lu Qingjia believed this, to say the least, just the richest man’s space splitting could buy him time. As long as he wasn’t pulled in immediately, then a giant creature with only physical attack power was nothing.

But after this incident, the two had to be more cautious.

After all, an octopus couldn’t survive in a clock factory for long. Its sudden appearance meant that anything could appear.

The two stepped through the door, and the entire house was pitch black, like a giant beast’s mouth.

In the richest man’s hands appeared two light sources the size of night pearls, but with high brightness. He let go, and they flew directly to the ceiling, illuminating the clock factory as bright as day.

The full view of the hall was revealed. On the walls, display racks, and various furniture, there were all kinds of clocks everywhere.

Some were as tall as a person, bulky and cumbersome, while others were as small as buttons, in vases on the table, replacing plastic flowers as decorations, looking very delicate.

The time on each clock was the same, matching the huge clock in the clock tower on the roof.

Perhaps it was because there were too many clocks, or because the two, as Players, had excellent hearing.

As they observed their surroundings, the ticking sound of the clocks gradually became more obvious, causing an inexplicable irritation.

“Got it, there’s at least the ability for mental attacks here, be careful,” Lu Qingjia suddenly spoke.

Whether it was an illusion or not, after these words, the ticking around them seemed to freeze for a moment.

The richest man laughed, “Hahahaha, the idiot who set this up expected others to be more dull?”

But who knew that Lu Qingjia was someone who would never ignore his intuition and make instant judgments.

The richest man said, “Where did that octopus come from just now?”

Lu Qingjia: “I don’t know, but it can’t be separated from this hall.”

As soon as he finished speaking, he heard the richest man say, “Don’t you think these clock hands have a problem?”

As soon as he raised the question, the hands of all the clocks in the room seemed to come alive, turning into flexible live snakes, crawling out of the clock faces.

The richest man immediately had a few vines in his hand, lush and full of vitality, and he whipped them towards the largest clock.

The live snake that crawled out bit the vine, and the vine immediately withered, even the black gas spread towards his hand at an extremely fast speed.

The richest man reacted quickly, and with a flick of his hand, the vine left his palm and fell to the ground.

However, he and Lu Qingjia were already surrounded by densely packed live snakes.

Some of the normal size were fine, but some clocks were so small that the hands were as thin as hair, making them hard to notice.

The snake’s venom was so strong that just one bite would absolutely make someone suffer.

The richest man waved his hands, and the floor and space began to shift, and a powerful incineration Item appeared in his hand.

But Lu Qingjia stopped him, “Don’t burn it, this is good stuff.”

The richest man: “…”

A large puddle of Sludge appeared under Lu Qingjia’s feet. He himself couldn’t manipulate the Sludge to the desired position in the richest man’s Ability.

So he said to the richest man, “Help me spread the Sludge out.”

The richest man could only comply, and then those live snakes were covered by the Sludge, like dropping live loaches into a chocolate hot pot, the struggling appearance wrapped in mud was quite terrifying, and finally they sank into the mud, no longer making a sound.

The richest man rubbed his arms, “You’re such a clean person, why do you always use such terrifying Abilities?”

Lu Qingjia said, “You should still check if there are any snakes that got away? If a hair-thin clock hand escapes, it could jump out and bite us at any time, and we’d be in trouble.”

“No, once I activate my Ability, I have complete control over the space, and I know exactly how many living things are in it.”

As he spoke, he restored the entire hall to its original state, but as soon as he finished speaking, a hair-thin object that was hard to see with the naked eye fell from the ceiling.

It landed on the richest man’s shoulder, then suddenly raised its head and took a bite at his neck.

With the speed at which the venom spread, if this bite had landed, there was no chance the richest man would survive, unless he had a life-replacing Item.

However, after a few seconds, the richest man remained motionless.

The hair-thin object, seeing this, wanted to escape, but Lu Qingjia picked it up with a pair of chopsticks, and it twisted wildly.

A thin film also appeared on the richest man’s body, expanding, it was the bubble that Lu Qingjia had wrapped him in.

Although the venom was powerful, it was ultimately just a low-level piercing object attack, which was easy to defend against.

Seeing this, the richest man’s face turned ugly, “I’m sure I had already cleared the entire hall, unless it appeared out of thin air.”

“Pretty much,” Lu Qingjia said, looking up at the ceiling.

As if speaking to some existence in the air, he said, “Honestly, is this it?”

“With such tear-jerkingly stupid operations and full of loopholes traps, how did you even climb to a high position?”

“Is it true that even a pig can fly when standing on the vent?”

Lu Qingjia sneered, “But the Game indeed has its rules, some fools can mix into positions that don’t match them, but if you really want to reach the top, it’s impossible no matter what.”

As he spoke, his hair grew wildly, directly extending to the ceiling, hooking onto a mirror hanging there, trying to take it down.

Since the entire hall had no lighting, and outsiders’ lighting wouldn’t directly embed the light source at the highest point, a mirror on the ceiling was hard to discover.

But from the moment the octopus appeared, Lu Qingjia was very sure that there was something like a passageway or a biological storage bag here.

That octopus was probably summoned or released from somewhere else, so what they needed to be wary of wasn’t just what they could see with their eyes.

Sure enough, after completely eliminating the clock hands, the other party couldn’t wait to add a sneak attack, allowing Lu Qingjia, who already had a guess, to directly catch the source.

However, when Lu Qingjia tried to take down the mirror, a pupil suddenly appeared on the smooth mirror surface.

The pupil was so large that even the sizeable mirror couldn’t contain it, staring at Lu Qingjia with an aggressive look.

The condescending posture and the absolute pressure that could be felt through the mirror surface made people’s legs go weak just by looking at it.

The richest man hurriedly said, “Quick, take it back.”

But Lu Qingjia didn’t listen to him, instead smiling and staring at the pupil.

“Is this—hmm, this must be a creature from a high-level instance, right? Let me guess, is it a dragon? Or a lizard?”

He even excitedly waved at it, “Can you step back a bit? I want to see your full appearance.”

The richest man really wanted to tie this guy up and drag him away, saying in fear, “Don’t provoke it, you idiot.”

“Our strength might allow us to show off in the Intermediate Level Game, but anything casually pulled out from the Advanced Zone can crush us.”

“Especially something like a dragon, it’s not just big, it can also use magic.”

Lu Qingjia said, “I know, but I’m not planning to fight it, so no matter how powerful it is, what does it matter?”

“Is this about whether you want to fight or not? It can just release you directly.”

“Hahaha!” Lu Qingjia laughed, the laughter full of extreme disdain and mockery.

“Then let me put it this way, this crawling creature will never come out no matter what,” Lu Qingjia said to the other side of the mirror with a smile, “In fact, I deeply hope it will come out.”

He even made a particularly cheeky gesture of clasping his hands together, “Please, come out? Aren’t you angry looking at me? Don’t you want to beat me up? You can crush me with just a fingernail, right? You don’t even need to come out completely, just come out with one leg, and beat me up?”

The creature with the giant eyes should be able to understand human language. After watching Lu Qingjia’s entire performance, its eyes turned red with anger, bloodshot, and let out a series of angry heavy breaths.

“Roar————”

The creature stepped back a bit, allowing people to see its full appearance, and as guessed, it was a Western dragon.

It opened its terrifyingly large mouth and let out a threatening roar at the mirror, the pressure seemed to directly press down on Lu Qingjia’s head through the mirror surface.

But Lu Qingjia remained motionless, his face showing a disappointed expression.

“What, even at this point, it’s still not coming out. I thought a single-celled beast raised by an idiot should be more impulsive. Turns out there’s a restriction.”

“How boring,” he said, and his hair continued to exert force, taking down the mirror.

But when the other party saw that the purpose of the threat couldn’t be achieved, and didn’t want this thieving bastard to gain anything, the demon dragon disappeared, and instead, countless creatures with strange appearances and various attack powers appeared.

They continuously poured out of the mirror, rushing towards Lu Qingjia, this time seemingly not considering his life or death.

But Lu Qingjia put a bubble on the mirror surface, blocking the source, and then the Sludge surged around, flooding the entire room like a flood. Even the richest man, who had cooperated with him before, somewhat underestimated his control over this.

The whole process was flexible and fast. The creatures that came out of the mirror were numerous and bizarre, and there was even a kind of Strange Worm that could corrode Lu Qingjia’s defensive bubbles, but under the rapid and powerful sweep of the Sludge, they were still swept into the space.

And when he realized there were creatures that could break through the bubbles, he also replaced the foam layer covering the mirror surface with Sludge.

If the other party didn’t feel distressed, they could continuously send things into his Sludge space, he welcomed it.

The Sludge space that Lu Qingjia could control was already very large, and even if the other party had a thick family background, they obviously didn’t want to use the stupid method of bursting his space to break this move.

But this hesitation allowed the mirror to be taken down, and Lu Qingjia threw it into the Game backpack, severing the connection with the other party.

Lu Qingjia said to the richest man, “Let’s go, upstairs.”

The richest man hissed, “How are you sure that the dragon won’t come out?”

“Are you kidding? This is an Intermediate Level Game instance,” Lu Qingjia looked at him with amusement, “No matter how high the difficulty is, it’s still an Intermediate Level.”

“Even if a big shot at the administrator level enters, the adjustment made by the instance world is to limit the big shot’s strength and adjust the instance difficulty to the highest level of the Intermediate Level.”

“But no matter how high the difficulty is, an Intermediate instance is an Intermediate instance, and it absolutely cannot artificially place creatures and Items beyond this level, unless they were originally evolved by the world itself.”

“So for such an artificially created instance, aimed at absorbing Players’ spiritual power, the Game won’t deal with it itself due to the rules, as this is also a part of the Players’ test. But if the Game has to follow the rules, how dare a shoddy imitation violate them? It probably wants to die on the spot.”

After saying this, Lu Qingjia added with some regret, “I was quite looking forward to it losing control of its anger and letting that dragon step out of the barrier. Then we wouldn’t need to make any effort to clear the instance, what a pity.”

After hearing this, the richest man was somewhat dazed, “There’s still such a rule? How come I didn’t know? No, how do you know?”

Lu Qingjia smiled, “I have good connections and know many people.”

The richest man felt his teeth itch.

The two walked along the stairs next to the hall all the way to the top of the building, inside the huge clock.

Inside was a huge structure composed of countless gear rings and machinery, looking very spectacular.

“All the power supply is here, what should we do? Just destroy it?”

But Lu Qingjia was silent for a while, and asked, “When you cleared the instance before, what was special about it?”

The richest man said, “Let me think, basically, under the system’s traps, we had to deal with the refresh and our own memory problems. After finding a reliable method to transmit information like you did today, the problems were solved, and we could focus on the mission.”

“The mission wasn’t too difficult, but it was trivial. I had to go through five big missions at the time, which took many days.”

Analogous to Lu Qingjia’s experience this time, for example, on the first day he went to the job center to find a job, and on the second day he successfully made a wax figure at the wax museum and delivered it, which counted as completing a big mission.

The richest man continued, “The mission difficulty would increase, and the required team cohesion would also increase, because many things could only be opened if all team members were present.”

“Because I was the strongest in the team, everyone relied on me to clear the instance at first, and the atmosphere in the team was also good, at least my words had authority.”

“But at the last step, I don’t know what got into those guys, they suddenly betrayed me for some petty gains, damn it, this is good, they became NPCs, and I’m trapped in the Game, it’s really harmful to others and not beneficial to oneself.”

The richest man’s frustration was understandable. According to reason, the person who contributes the most in a team should naturally get the most when it comes to profit distribution.

The importance of the richest man in the team at that time should be similar to Lu Qingjia’s in his team now. Along the way, Lu Qingjia has also encountered cunning and stupid people, but the unspoken rule of more work more gain, unless you want to make a deadly enemy, or be despised by other Players, otherwise, most people would still weigh it, especially when the other party’s strength is far above you.

Lu Qingjia pondered for a while, then nodded, “The Clearance Ticket is invalid in this world, and NPCs who lose their memory neither return to reality nor die.”

“All the rules are set to retain Players as much as possible, so correspondingly, the exit of this world must also be relatively narrow.”

“Exit? There’s such a thing?” The richest man frowned.

“It’s just a metaphor. For example, in a normal instance directly controlled by the Game, there are many ways and methods to log out.”

“Complete the mission, die, use the Clearance Ticket, or go through the process, in short, if you just want to get out, there are many ways regardless of the cost and life.”

“But the outside world has already made a big fuss about the disappearance of Players.” Even Yang Qian, who had just entered the Intermediate Level not long ago, knew about it, “Which means, no one has ever gotten out of this Game, without exception.”

“Those stranded Players, not one of them has someone to miss? Or feel despair about this endless life? For so long, you didn’t trust the system, so even though you’ve accumulated many mission points, you disdain to exchange them for a chance to leave, but others couldn’t have not accumulated enough for so long, right?”

“So many people for such a long time, trying all kinds of ways but unable to log out of the Game, the only thing I can think of is that perhaps there’s only one and only one exit to log out of the Game.”

After hearing this, the richest man thought for a while, “You mean the mission endpoint? After all our hard work, we still have to honestly continue doing missions?”