Absolute Death Game

Seeing the appearance of the zombie, Xiao Buli was momentarily stunned, followed by a bone-chilling cold rapidly seeping into his whole body. He felt his scalp exploding and was almost frozen in place—that zombie looked exactly like the elusive hooded man.

That’s right, exactly the same. Even though one was clad in tattered leather armor, and the other was wearing a black leather jacket, one’s skin was pale with a green tinge, and their eyes emitted a deathly aura, while the other looked no different from an ordinary person, the resemblance between the two was uncanny. n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

What in the world was going on? Were the NPCs in this game designed based on the appearances of real-life people? Or was it just a coincidence? Xiao Buli’s mind was a mess of thoughts. No, it couldn’t be a coincidence. If it were, wouldn’t that be too much of a coincidence?

Piecing together the fact that the hooded man was the nephew of the chairman, Xiao Buli gradually formed a seemingly reasonable explanation—this game was most likely developed by the company itself, and the production team based some of the NPC designs on real people’s appearances, such as the hooded man’s.

But even if you turned yourself into an NPC, you’d want to make it look nicer, right? Why would you make it a zombie? Maybe the game developers really despised the hooded man? Xiao Buli knew of similar incidents in the gaming community; for instance, in Diablo by Blizzard, there was a corpse named White who was said to represent a guy in real life that the developers despised.

It was highly likely that this Remains of Lu Jiang was a similar case, or at least, that was the only explanation he could think of.

While he was momentarily lost in thought, a myriad of ideas had already spun through his head, but the others didn’t know what he was thinking. They had already charged forward. Xiao Buli quickly gathered his wits and focused on the battle ahead. Whatever the case, he had to deal with the present situation first.

It has to be said that as the leader of a Great Guild, his psychological quality was very high. Even when faced with such bizarre and almost eerie situations, he was able to calm down instantly, without affecting his emotions.

All four were veterans of such games, and almost in unison, they flanked the zombie from either side, swiftly surrounding it in a textbook cross formation.

It seemed that because Li Baocheng had shot it with two arrows earlier, the zombie targeted Li Baocheng straight away. It extended its forelimbs and let out a low growl, moving towards Li Baocheng in slow, shuffling steps.

Is it really this slow? Well, then I won’t hold back. Li Baocheng shot arrow after arrow at the zombie, thinking this while numbers indicating minor damage of 2 and 3 health points each popped up. Although the damage was slight, he was safe, and the reanimated zombie was almost like a stationary target, allowing Li Baocheng to shoot at will.

He even felt that if he had enough Scissors Arrows in his bag, he could kite this minor boss all by himself.

But just as the boss was about five meters away from him, something unexpected happened. The zombie suddenly lurched forward, leaping four to five meters in one bound, instantly reaching Li Baocheng and swiping at him.

FUCK! Li Baocheng cursed in fright. Thanks to his quick reaction, he managed to dodge the strike with an Emergency Dodge.

Seeing this, the other three knew they could not just stand by and hurried forward to join the assault, Chain Sword Strike, Coordinated Six Strikes, Earth Cleaving Slash—a series of attacks landed on the zombie, red numbers flashing wildly. Still, it was uncertain how high the zombie’s defense was because after taking three solid hits, its health points had dropped by less than one-tenth.

The zombie seemed to feel pain and let out a wild howl, its claws swiping back in a wide arc. The three men backed off quickly. Xiao Buli and Sun Bin almost instantly reacted, stepping back to dodge the attack, whereas Han Baiqiang was a step too slow and got hit, instantly losing one-third of his health points.

What a powerful attack! Han Baiqiang was taken aback. He was protected by his heavy leather armor and had the Copper Body Iron Arm skill to reduce damage, yet he had lost a third of his health points in a single blow. If it had been someone else, they would probably be below half health by now.

The zombie’s attack power was on par with the combined force of the seven Corpse-eating Dogs they encountered earlier.

Not daring to show off, he executed a Spin, forcing the zombie to stagger back. Spotting an opportunity, Li Baocheng quickly moved up behind the zombie and, with a swift forward thrust of his dagger—Backstab! The tripled basic damage was not for show, plus the blue dagger in his hand he had looted from the Pig Farm Owner dealt a hard blow, taking down a tenth of the boss’s health points in one go.

After delivering that stab, Li Baocheng immediately retreated; he did not dare to withstand the boss’s attack directly.

The boss had well over a thousand health points, and its defense and attack were ridiculously high. Fortunately, unlike World of Warcraft, where the game used a targeting system, and considering the zombie’s slow speed, it gave the four players room to maneuver,

The group exchanged blows back and forth, and after several rounds, the boss had lost half of its health points. Perhaps feeling that it couldn’t go on like this, the zombie suddenly stopped and let out an extremely mournful howl. Xiao Buli checked his character’s status and saw no negative effects, so he immediately looked around and sure enough, the ground at their feet began to move.

One by one, dry and rotten hands emerged from the ground, followed by the mutilated bodies of Walking Corpses, as seven or eight of them were being awakened from the earth.

This is bad; the boss is summoning minions.

What to do?

Xiao Buli almost immediately made a judgment. He had a lot of experience with this kind of situation, having led the main group from the guild to pioneer dungeons and fight bosses many times before; often, it was his on-the-spot decisions that secured victory.

"Sun Bin and the fatty will clear the minor monsters, I’ll hold off the BOSS with Little Li, hurry up!"

Sun Bin and Han Baiqiang both possessed AOE skills, making them the perfect candidates for dealing with the minor monsters. Meanwhile, Xiao Buli and Li Baocheng each had the Emergency Dodge skill, which gave them a degree of self-protection while dealing with the BOSS.

Because the situation was urgent, the proud Sun Bin didn’t have the time to argue with Xiao Buli about who was in charge; he just snorted coldly and charged towards the Walking Corpses that were emerging from the ground.

Wild Dance! Wild Dance! Still Wild Dance! Although this AOE skill was average in damage, its advantages were a short CD, low cost, and a decent attack range. It could be used frequently. A series of three Wild Dances successfully attracted all the Walking Corpses, leading them towards Han Baiqiang.

"It’s up to you now!" He said as they passed by each other.

"Just watch me!" Han Baiqiang’s Spin Skill had already recovered, and he went straight in for the tightly packed group of Walking Corpses, swinging his Bone-breaking Knife wildly. With one sweep, five or six Walking Corpses lost half their health points. Several of them were also afflicted with the bone-breaking effect, slowing their already sluggish speed even further.

The two quickly cleared them out.

Without its minions, the Zombie BOSS was utterly out of options. Despite regaining health once through absorbing earth qi and attempting to close the distance with leap attacks several times, all attempts were dodged by the four well-prepared players.

Its health points kept dropping, ten percent, five percent, two percent—"Done!"

Finally, accompanied by cheers from the four players, the Zombie BOSS collapsed with a thunderous fall.

"Well done!" Xiao Buli said excitedly. Although he had played countless games and conquered numerous BOSSes before, this was undoubtedly the most thrilling. After all, dying meant losing his job, and the no-failure premise made the battle exceptionally stimulating.

Once they had calmed down a bit, the question of who would open the corpse arose again.

Normally, this task would have been handled by him, but this time he had to yield. He glanced at Sun Bin, who also looked back at him, but before they could speak, Han Baiqiang had already sauntered forward brazenly.

"Hahaha, the great lucky hand, opened four items in one go." Han Baiqiang seemed oblivious to any wrongdoing, and the others didn’t bother to comment, as the four pieces of loot dropped by the BOSS had already appeared on their screens.

Pale Ring: (Accessory—Ring): Luck -1, health points upper limit +40.

"Enslave Zombies" (Skill Book): This is a tattered sheet of paper that contains methods to enslave Zombies, appearing to be a page from "Enslave Undead." To learn this skill, 12 points of spiritual power are required.

Corpse Pill (Gray—Material): This is a common inner core found within Zombies, frequently used in the creation of Magic Artifacts and refinement of Elixirs. It’s also a precious casting material for Necromancy Spells. Since it has only absorbed Yin Energy for a short time, the quality of this Corpse Pill is quite ordinary.

The Diary of Lu Jiang (Quest Item): Using this item can trigger a quest.