GAMMT - Chapter 31

Chapter 31: Deep Night

Ah Qi and Groundhog hurried over to the warehouse. The other players had only just entered the farm; they were exhausted from hunting outside. Before their seats were even warm, before they could even think about what goodies to buy from the farm's kitchen to replenish their strength, they heard the gatekeeper tenant sound the alarm bell. Everyone was instantly on alert, rushing to the windows to see what was happening. Sure enough, they saw a countless swarm of locusts.

"Oh my god!"

"There are so many!"

"Quick, quick! Get into position… Dammit, something's wrong with this dungeon. It's definitely not the level-five small instance it was before."

"Could it be a different type of locust? No wonder the entry limit was marked as 250 people!"

"There are people out there. Could they have led the locusts here?"

"Definitely!"

Everyone immediately took out their potions and weapons, and the small teams sprang into action. On the flat ground outside the farm, they could see numerous airships flying at high speed. They were clearly people from various places who hadn't made it to the farm in time. Terrified by the horrifying locust swarm, they were fleeing to the farm for their lives. Were they the ones who had drawn even more locusts?

The members of the Xie Clan and Teng Family were also startled and immediately prepared for battle. However, when Xie Yong had Xie Jun call for Xie Guangyu, he found that the man wasn't at the entrance.

Over at the warehouse, Xie Guangyu's expression was a bit grim as he watched Ah Qi and Groundhog claim the animal hides. He had, of course, realized they'd had the same idea; they had just been one step faster.

Ah Qi's eyes met Xie Guangyu's. The latter pursed his lips and turned to leave.

Groundhog let out a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness. I thought he was going to try and take them by force."

Ah Qi said, "It wouldn't come to that, but it's a good thing he isn't like that father-son duo, Xie Yong."

Groundhog didn't think much of it at first, but then a thought struck him: Huh, why does she seem to know the Xie Clan so well?

His confusion was quickly pushed aside, as they were too busy.

"What are we actually doing?"

"A trap."

"But you're sprinkling chili powder on them."

"…"

Some of the players fleeing at the front reached the farm just as Ah Qi, Groundhog, and a few others came out.

Then, Ah Qi saw the head tenant dutifully collecting money.

Hmm… she suddenly felt that this Xie Keli wasn't such a bad person after all. At least he paid well. For these impoverished tenants, money and life were often intertwined.

Dignity came second.

The people who had just arrived: "???"

But they had no time to argue. After all, if even the Xie Clan and Teng Family were paying, how could a small team like theirs refuse?

"The monster swarm is coming! What are you doing? Don't go out there, there are too many of them, and there are elite monsters inside. You can't handle it."

The people who had just paid to enter the farm were highly suspicious, afraid they were going out to die.

"We won't die. You guys get inside!" Groundhog said, his tail held high, telling the tenants to drop their things and go back.

The tenants took the money and ran, while the few suspicious Arcanists stayed to watch.

Then they saw the stout, yellow ground rat holding a pile of something and instantly burrowing into the ground.

Everyone: "!!!"

Even the Arcanists lying in wait in various parts of the farm, preparing to attack the locust swarm, were stunned by this scene.

"That big, fat rat is no simple character…" Xie Yong commented. He had misjudged him. If he had known, he would have tried to recruit him earlier.

"To think he can burrow into the earth…"

Xie Guangyu had already rejoined the Xie Clan members. He glanced at Ah Qi, thinking to himself that she was the truly formidable one.

That fat rat listened to her.

Everyone watched, though most had no idea what they were doing.

They hadn't gotten a clear look at what the big, fat rat was carrying.

Instead, they saw the petite girl, not even 1.6 meters tall, walk alone to the farm gate and look out through the iron bars.

In the distance, dark clouds pressed down, rolling toward the farm. They were coming.

Five hundred meters, three hundred meters… When they were two hundred meters away.

Fu Chuan, by the window, saw Ah Qi already chanting. She had high agility and used the prelude of the incantation to recall the system's audio playback from her time in the game. After a moment, she identified it as a composite trap-type arcane art. However, it wasn't a mechanical trap like Groundhog's; hers was more advanced, an air-triggered trap.

"Judging by the prelude, the incantation should be Air Combustion, but it's been modified with a composite arcane key spell chain. What's the subsequent incantation?"

Fu Chuan wanted to hear the rest of the incantation clearly. Even though arcane arts involved more than just incantations, learning more was always good. She needed to adapt to this world as quickly as possible. To leverage her advantage as a resource merchant, she technically had a cheat of her own, but her knowledge was still somewhat limited.

However, Ah Qi's chanting suddenly sped up, and she switched to a different linguistic pattern. Fu Chuan couldn't understand it now and couldn't help but press a hand to her forehead.

That knowledge was probably quite rare.

But as Fu Chuan looked closer, she suddenly saw that the large quantity of hides Groundhog had burrowed out with had been placed in batches around the farm. As Ah Qi completed her incantation, the hides all flew up.

Like a hazy mist, they spread out densely, suspended around the farm like a round, fuzzy canopy. Just then, the first wave of the locust swarm arrived, blanketing the farm. They covered it like a cloud, their shadows enveloping all the farm's buildings, including Ah Qi, who stood in the open space.

The small girl stood there alone. She might not have the aura of an unshakeable master, but she certainly possessed a solitary and tenacious temperament. The incantation was complete, the hides suspended and enveloping. As they floated up, they softly interspersed themselves among the locust swarm. Then, as the locusts crowded together, tearing and biting at them, Ah Qi clasped her hands, formed a seal, and began the final part of her incantation.

Following her clear, cold chant, a groundhog popped out of the ground at the farm gate, shouldering a heavy gun. The muzzle had already been replaced with a high-powered flamethrower head.

"Explode, little bugs!"

The cannon fired into the sky. After firing, he immediately shouldered the gun and sprinted back into the farm. On the other side, Ah Qi, inside the farm, spread her hands. The incantation ended. Fiery red elemental bodies gathered in her palms and around her body, leaping upward from her hands like fire snakes dancing wildly toward the sky. They surged into the air just as the fire cannon's payload arrived. It was like oil meeting fire, an explosive reactant meeting a flame. Combined with the dust from the hides, it instantly… set the sky ablaze.

Fu Chuan stood at the window, witnessing this scene through the crack in the iron plate. She was somewhat surprised, and also a little wary.

"So it's a fire cloud formed by Air Combustion combined with a flame-guiding propagation incantation. This kind of linked arcane art doesn't belong to the skill system; it's a technique from the academies. It seems her educational background is quite good."

"And yet she's here all alone, completely unprotected…"

She was like a genius from an ordinary family, or perhaps a little girl with a complicated background.

As Fu Chuan pondered, a swarm of Scorpion-Tail Locusts was incinerated in the sky, and she received a notification for a large amount of experience.

If the experience for killing a Green-Brown Locust was 1, then the experience for a Scorpion-Tail Locust was 5. The difference was huge. Fu Chuan was level 9, and the experience bar from level 9 to 10 was 50,000. She had only just reached level 9 and thought level 10 was still far off, but in that short moment, she had gained over ten thousand experience points.

According to their sharing agreement, she received one-third of the experience. And this wave was impressive, mainly because the locust swarm was so dense. It was like dropping a torpedo into a fully stocked fish pond—one massive blast.

The effect was astonishing, far more powerful than Xie Yong and the others had anticipated. A look of desire filled many people's eyes, and they immediately ran to find the tenants to ask for the remaining hides. When they learned they were all sold out, they beat their chests and stamped their feet in regret.

"Who is that little girl? So powerful. Is there someone like that in the Jingyang schools?"

Xie Yong had a sharp eye as well. He knew Ah Qi must be a student, so he looked at Xie Jun and Xie Guangyu. The two of them attended the top two schools in Jingyang, so they should have some knowledge.

But Xie Jun shook his head, and Xie Guangyu also said he had never seen her before. "Either she's not from these two schools, or her current appearance isn't her real one. She has green-tier disguise equipment."

Xie Yong was thoughtful. "Is that so? That means she lacks confidence and doesn't dare to reveal her identity…"

His tone was drawn out, full of hidden meaning, as he exchanged a look with Xie Jun.

Xie Guangyu glanced at the two of them but said nothing, because he knew that many people here, including Teng Yunli and his group, were surely thinking the same thing.

Under the envious gazes of the crowd, Ah Qi and Groundhog had wiped out ten thousand Scorpion-Tail Locusts in one go and had burned many others. Subsequent experience would continue to be shared as long as others attacked those locusts, as some would eventually die from their burns, with the final credit still going to the three of them.

"Aaaah! This is awesome, so awesome!"

Groundhog sprinted with his gun, gleefully enjoying the thrill of his skyrocketing experience, when he heard a low shout from Ah Qi inside the farm gate. "What are you laughing about? Be careful!"

Groundhog was startled and suddenly felt a heat behind him…

Bang!

A few of the Scorpion-Tail Locusts were mutated, a qualitative change born from quantity. They were somewhere between a normal mob and an elite BOSS—larger, faster, and with higher attack damage. One of them spat a fireball. Although Groundhog managed a clumsy roll on the ground thanks to Ah Qi's warning, his butt was still grazed by the fireball. Smoke rose from it, and he immediately sat down, scooting along the ground while firing his gun. But there were too many locusts, and their aggro was precisely locked onto him and Ah Qi inside.

After warning Groundhog, Ah Qi was also in considerable danger. A volley of fireballs and poison needles rained down on her, but her precise grasp of the situation was far superior to Groundhog's. She did a backflip, turned invisible in mid-air, and then used some unknown arcane art to cleanse herself of any adhering negative buffs, causing the locusts to lose their lock on her.

Unable to target Ah Qi, they grew agitated and began to frantically attack the farm. By this time, the other players had already seized the opportunity to unleash all sorts of arcane arts on the front-line locusts, which were already suffering from burns.

Level 1 Light Art, Fireball, Arcane Missile, Ice Crack…

Fu Chuan considered herself quite knowledgeable in this area, but upon observation, she discovered there were quite a few arcane arts she had never seen before.

From her window, she saw a cloud of black mist emerge from a room below. The mist floated in the air, wisps of it drifting upward toward a group of Scorpion-Tail Locusts near the building.

Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle. As soon as the black mist touched the Scorpion-Tail Locusts, their carapaces began to hiss.

"A corrosion type? No, it should be a corrosive armor-breaking effect for organic shells."

Fu Chuan hadn't expected to see such a rare and powerful arcane art. She wasn't sure which person in the house had summoned it. Moreover, after breaking their armor, that person immediately followed up with a wave of fire arcane arts.

"Level 10 Fire Snake Art…"

Fu Chuan watched as a two-meter-long fire snake leaped into the air. Its high temperature made contact with the locusts whose carapaces had been corroded away. Even a god of war would be vulnerable if their armor was breached and their flesh wounded, let alone these locusts. Their scorpion tails curled in pain, and their poison needles shot out randomly onto the ground like a bout of diarrhea.

This, too, was a form of slaughter.

Fu Chuan leaned against a pillar, a sense of vigilance rising in her heart. There was a formidable figure in this house.

At least level 15, proficient in a special corrosion-type arcane art, and also had a complementary fire-type arcane art to enhance fatal damage… If one were hit by the corrosion art first, their equipment's defense would be basically useless, and then to be engulfed in flames…

Fu Chuan was just thinking about trying to identify this person.

Suddenly! A flash of red caught the corner of her eye…

A scorching hot fireball smashed against the window of her room.

Flames scattered.

Fortunately, Fu Chuan had already pulled the iron plate fully across the gap.

The fireball hit the iron plate, glowing faintly red, and the window frame trembled from the impact.

Outside, the invisible Ah Qi looked up and saw the situation at the window, then looked at the calf-sized elite BOSS hiding among the locust swarm. She didn't try to take it on herself. Instead, she secretly used an arcane art to provide cover for Groundhog, helping him withstand some of the attacks from above until his burrowing skill's cooldown was over.

"Get ready!" Groundhog shouted a warning, then immediately burrowed into the ground and entered the house. Three seconds later, Ah Qi swiftly leaped onto the eaves, and with two more jumps, she reached their room's window. The tightly shut window opened just in time for her to vault through, bracing herself with one hand on the sill. Swish! The window was immediately closed, leaving only a small hole to support a gun barrel.

Groundhog provided a "rat-a-tat-tat" soundtrack with his mouth as he fired wildly, while Ah Qi, after entering the room, switched to a long-range bow and arrow set…

"Can you not do the 'rat-a-tat-tat'?"

"Sure."

Groundhog casually agreed. Then, as Ah Qi drew her bow, she heard him switch to…

"Pew pew pew! Pew pew pew! Why are your ears so red?"

Ah Qi's expression was indescribable. Her little ears were indeed very red, but her face was just "…"

She suddenly felt that the team captain lady from before had truly been good-tempered.

Was it just because he was fluffy and cute?

Two rooms away, Fu Chuan heard their voices and pressed a hand to her forehead, thinking that this Ah Qi was probably very young, yet just old enough to know certain things… so easily embarrassed.

However, Fu Chuan soon noticed that the Xie Clan and Teng Family were steadily performing as the main force. After all, they had more people, and both their guards and they themselves were powerful, averaging over level ten. If ranked by damage output, Ah Qi and Groundhog's team was certainly first, having seized the initial advantage, but the others were catching up fast. Eventually, they would surpass Ah Qi and her partner's output.

As for whether Ah Qi and her partner would team up with others later, she didn't know, since she wasn't in their party.

After a round of fierce fighting, tens of thousands of locusts were slain. The farm, being well-prepared, temporarily maintained a fortress-like defense, allowing over a hundred Arcanists to hide in the houses and cast arcane arts from a distance. In this back-and-forth battle, the people on the farm temporarily had the upper hand. But because there were simply too many locusts, the entire farm was completely surrounded.

Just as they had originally predicted, they were trapped.

About seventy to eighty percent of the locust swarm remained, but after their initial high-frequency output, their side would soon face two dilemmas.

First, their mental power couldn't keep up with the consumption.

Second, people had limited physical strength and energy and would need food and sleep to recover.

Xie Yong, Teng Yunli, and the others began to rally support and expand their teams. Soon, the people inside the farm were basically divided into three factions. Two were related to them, while the third consisted of independent teams like Ah Qi's. Being independent, they were strong, making their faction the most formidable, though they were all isolated from one another.

The battle raged from afternoon into evening. At noon, the tenants braved the terrifying sounds of attacks outside the doors and windows to cook in the kitchen, providing meals for the Arcanists inside. The cooks were working in a frenzy, one of them shouting as he stir-fried a wok: "I've never been so nervous cooking in my entire life! The fire splashing on the windows outside is bigger than the fire from my stove!"

Amidst such hectic fighting, the dining hall was packed with people taking shifts to eat. As they wolfed down the hot food, they saw servants carrying even more delicious and high-class dishes upstairs.

Oh, the young master is having his meal.

"He won't even come down? They have to deliver it to him? He really knows how to order people around."

"What do you expect from someone who can't fight? Look at how greedy and selfish he is. He's definitely afraid of dying."

"Exactly. Dammit, he's even having lobster! A huge one!"

The group was green with envy, unable to stop complaining in the dining hall.

After receiving her meal in her room, Fu Chuan glanced at the sky. It was almost dusk. As far as she knew, the Scorpion-Tail Locusts had their own biological rhythm. Around ten at night, a portion of the male locusts would be unable to resist their biological clocks and would go to sleep, while the others continued the attack. This was their way of taking shifts to keep their prey trapped.

Fu Chuan knew she had to go out at ten, but… others surely knew this kind of biological knowledge as well. It was taught in the academies.

At ten o'clock at night, after confirming that no one was watching, Fu Chuan jumped up through the chimney opening on schedule. She was already invisible by the time she got out. Just as she was about to get off the roof, Fu Chuan suddenly froze, her gaze fixed on one spot.

Her eyes shifted. While invisible, she saw a tiny and inconspicuous gecko clinging to a corner of the roof.

Fu Chuan's perception was naturally not sharp enough to detect the aura of a mechanical, non-living object. But she knew it was impossible for a living gecko to survive on the exterior of a building. The locusts could detect the scent of living things and would have eaten it.

The fact that it hadn't been eaten and was still clinging there meant it was a non-living object that the locust swarm wasn't interested in.

Moreover, its tail and body could move, and it had miniature camera equipment on its head and tail. It swiveled its head, seemingly locking onto the movements of living creatures to track and film them.

This was clearly an excellent way to monitor who entered and exited the farm.

Fu Chuan's knowledge of mechanical devices was not yet comprehensive, so she didn't know its specific model. However, based on the performance and price of the equipment she had come into contact with and understood so far, she judged that this thing was not cheap—at least several dozen green coins. An ordinary person couldn't afford it.

It was either the Xies or the Tengs.

Fu Chuan narrowed her eyes. She didn't touch the gecko. While the invisibility effect was still active, she quietly descended from the house. She slipped into the tall grass, chose a general direction, and lay in wait.

Amidst the dense, human-height wild grass, she was like a beast melting into the night. Her eyes were lowered in silence, but she was thinking about one thing: the person using this method was trying to determine who would go out to hunt at night, to judge their strength, and then ambush them!

But this also proved that this person was out hunting themselves.

Therefore, this person could also become someone else's prey.

Fu Chuan licked her back teeth. After waiting for half an hour, she saw about fifty to sixty thousand Scorpion-Tail Locusts quietly withdraw from the main force and begin to fall asleep on schedule. These fifty thousand locusts were extremely weak, making it the perfect opportunity to ambush them.

But… Fu Chuan didn't move. She was like a rock. And the rock sensed…

A subtle movement.

Swish!

After confirming that no one was around, a five-person team shot out, rapidly approaching the Scorpion-Tail Locust unit.

Fu Chuan still didn't move. She waited a few seconds, then saw another team emerge from behind a mound to the south. They were swiftly tracking the first team.

Dog eat dog.

Fu Chuan rubbed her fingers together and quietly released her spider silk. It crawled along the ground…

The night grew deep. Was it time for killing?

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