Scourge Messenger

Chapter 313 Ascending Dragon Servant and the Path to the Underworld
"I told you to let me do it. I'm really good at Gomoku. I know all the killing moves in the Puyue Formation and Queyue Formation. Even my great-grandfather couldn't beat me. Now you know you were wrong!"

"Yes, yes, you can do it all next time."

"Let me play other games too! I'm really good at games! What reward did you get this time?"

In the Land of Gathering Demons, Yan Qing and Murong Hui stood before a giant Go board. When five white pieces were aligned in a line, the other black pieces let out a wail and disappeared from the board with a series of crackling sounds—playing Go was quite a satisfying experience.

Yan Qing glanced at the bracelet, her eyes lighting up: "It's the Transformation Card 'Blood Sacrifice Ascension,' which reduces the Puppet Card's life value by half to gain half the ascension progress."

"What is ascension?" Murong Hui asked curiously.

"We'll find out soon enough."

Yan Qing used "Blood Sacrifice Ascension" on Long Shi. Suddenly, a terrible wound appeared on Long Shi's skeletal body, from which blood, like emeralds, dripped. Murong Hui even reached out to catch it out of curiosity, but the emerald blood vaporized and disappeared upon contact.

Yan Qing wasn't surprised at all. He had discovered that these puppet creatures had a 'self-cleaning mechanism' when he killed other puppets before. They would disappear directly when injured or killed, without polluting the game environment.

From a code perspective, reducing the accumulation of corpses can also reduce the load on players' computers. After all, the Guiding Lands are too large, and the atmosphere must give way to optimization.

But in Murong Hui's eyes, it was different: "Not even blood can be left... As expected, it's different from other secret realms. This secret realm devours demons and creates demons."

"Create demons?" Yan Qing was taken aback.

"Don't you know? Every time after midnight, the demons in the Demon Gathering Land change. No matter how many demons you've killed before, new demons will quickly appear from all sorts of places." Murong Hui said seriously, "Unlike other secret realms, this secret realm is alive! It doesn't need time to reverse; it will continuously create demons by devouring life!"

Yan Qing's lips twitched as he listened. It was just a difference between a timed refresh and a reset refresh, but in the eyes of the locals, it had become something as awesome as 'devouring life' and 'time reversal'.

However, upon closer reflection, the respawn mechanic in the game, while seemingly a standard feature, is quite absurd in reality. It's tantamount to creating life out of nothing, and even creating extremely powerful individuals. In any mythology, this represents supreme authority, so it's understandable that locals would endlessly elevate the respawn mechanic to an even higher level.

The dragon servant let out a silent roar, and pale gray yin energy surged from its bones. The green flames in its pupils boiled violently, and its jagged bone wings spread out to the extreme. The dragon servant's body grew larger, its dull skeleton turned bright white, and its decaying muscles grew again.

It did not come back to life, but instead went further and higher on the road to death!
"Second-stage Corpse Dragon Clan - Ascended Dragon Servant"

Initial attack power: 800 (1300)

"Initial Health: 200 (700)"

"Trait - Return from Death - Resurrection: Every time you summon an Ascended Dragon Servant, the Dragon Servant will permanently gain a 200/200 attribute bonus (regardless of the Dragon Servant's location)."

"Ascension Trait - Soul Salvation: When a Dragon Servant dies, it will become a soul and continue fighting until the end of the battle (enemies will not attack the Dragon Servant in its soul state)."

"Grass!?" Yan Qing couldn't hold back any longer and blurted out "herbal plant".

"What? What?" Murong Hui squeezed next to him, pressed his shoulder, and stared at the Ascended Dragon Servant Puppet Token, asking, "What does 'ascension' mean?"

"Ascension is..."

The doubling of basic attributes and special effects was within Yan Qing's expectations. After all, ascending to immortality was so troublesome. Either you had to play various games to make up for the ascension progress, or you had to kill dozens of the same monsters. The former seemed simpler, but the problem was that many games had a limit of once a day, which meant that the rewards a player could get in a day were limited. In contrast, killing monsters had no limit.

However, he did not expect that the ascension characteristic would appear after ascension. To be honest, the ascension characteristic of "soul salvation" is not very strong, but it is very suitable for the Dragon Servant and his "resurrection" mutation.

[Resurrection] First, the Dragon Servant is killed at the start, summoning a Soul Dragon Servant, a Resurrected Dragon Servant, and a Primal Dragon Servant. Then, when the Resurrected Dragon Servant dies, it can summon another Soul Dragon Servant. After the Primal Dragon Servant dies, it will summon another Soul Dragon Servant and a Resurrected Dragon Servant... Yan Qing calculated that although he only has one Flying Dragon Servant now, under extreme circumstances, four Soul Dragon Servants can appear on the field at the same time. Moreover, this process will trigger three Death Returns, maximizing the attributes!

This is only the case where Yan Qing can only activate one puppet card. As Yan Qing acquires more puppet slots in the future, his combinations will become more diverse and terrifying.

Moreover, according to Yan Qing's observation, there are at least five different puppet card races in the Demon Gathering Land. The Dragon Servant is just one of the cards of the Corpse Demon and the Dragon Clan, and it is not even a core card!

Yan Qing had been puzzled before: why did the Demon Gathering Lands imprison players for five days? They could have simply required players to participate in activities every day, like in the Wildwood. Forcibly imprisoning players seemed far too domineering.

However, after gaining a preliminary understanding of the puppet card game mechanics here, Yan Qing vaguely guessed the official's intentions.

The Puppet Card gameplay in this dungeon is incredibly diverse, interesting, and complex. To truly master Puppet Cards, players need at least a basic understanding of the characteristics of each card and to find a lineup they like.

If this were a card game like Yu-Gi-Oh!, Shadowverse, or Auto Chess, it would be fine, but this is just a limited-time dungeon in an MMORPG.

Just like some games don't offer a skip button for the story, forcing players to watch the plot to understand the characters, the Guiding Lands forcibly imprison players for five days to compel them to spend all their time researching Puppet Cards. They are so confident, so certain, that players will definitely enjoy Puppet Card combat if they keep playing. If you don't like it, they'll lock you up for five days until you do—a classic case of a domineering CEO forcing love.

No wonder the company ultimately adopted his outrageous Thief's House design; it turns out the company had even more radical plans than him, practically treating players like guinea pigs.

"Let's quickly find a demon to try the soul transfer!" Murong Hui quickly understood the data of the Ascended Dragon Servant and couldn't wait to test it.

Yan Qing had no objection. Anyway, it wasn't long before midnight. If the Ascended Dragon Servant didn't die, there would be one less chance to trigger the Death Return event. Besides, he also had something he wanted to test.

They found a team of three demons, and the Ascended Dragon Servant was quickly overwhelmed and killed. From his corpse rose a ghostly green soul dragon, which lunged at the demons, but the demons passed right through it and attacked Yan Qing. Only after they had killed all the demons did the soul dragon slowly extinguish like a burnt-out candle and disappear into the air.

Yan Qing's heart stirred as he discovered something interesting: even if all the puppets were killed, the battle was not over as long as he was still alive.

If he chooses to run away, wouldn't the Soul Dragon Servant be able to exist indefinitely?
"Huh?" Murong Hui scratched at the spot where the soul dragon servant had disappeared. "It's gone just like that? I wanted to touch what a soul felt like..."

"Why didn't you touch me just now?" Yan Qing asked casually, in a good mood.

"We were just fighting, what are you talking about?" Murong Hui said with a serious expression. "How can you play around during a fight? Little brother, your thinking is dangerous."

Yan Qing stumbled, feeling like she had been turned on and couldn't refute it, because although Murong Hui had been noisy and disruptive along the way, she had never been unreliable when needed.

"Go find a dragon servant first, I need one."

“As for the Dragon Servant… we should be able to find him by following this route.” Murong Hui glanced at the map. “It’s not far; we’ll arrive in a short walk.”

Although they had only known each other for a few hours, Yan Qing had to admit that Murong Hui was indeed very helpful. Not only was she comparable to a navigation system, but she was also very easy to use during battles.

This ease of use refers not only to her outstanding combat power, but also to the fact that she almost never gets into dangerous situations: her Shadow Dancer class boasts unparalleled movement speed at the third job advancement, she possesses the Lightning Blade, a long-range attack that combines single-target and area-of-effect attacks, and her defensive artifacts are also at the third job advancement level of rare treasures... In short, if this build were uploaded to the internet, the title would probably be "A guaranteed fun build for the 'dog-feeding' group, even those with no skill can easily mow down enemies."

Yan Qing originally thought his Blade Dancer build centered around Bingzi Jiaolin was already brainless enough, capable of taking on thousands of enemies by simply standing still. However, he didn't expect there to be someone better. Compared to Murong Hui's Ezreal build with high mobility, high ranged output, and high defense, his Blade Dancer build was still a bit too demanding in terms of skill.

Teaming up with Murong Hui means you don't have to worry about her being in danger; you can confidently leave the enemies to her to handle.

It's a bit noisy.

"I've helped you so much today, how are you going to thank me?" Murong Hui backed away, staring at Yan Qing's flesh-and-blood cage bracelet, her eyes revealing undisguised envy: "Can I play with your treasure for a bit?"

"Aren't you repaying the debt of saving my life?" Yan Qing was speechless.

"But I've fought so many battles for you, and you've gotten all the benefits. You deserve credit for your hard work, even if you haven't done anything special!" Murong Hui grabbed Yan Qing's arm and shook it. "Let me feel it, okay? I won't do anything reckless. If you're worried I'll run away, I can give you all the tokens I have on me. You can hold me and not let me run away!"

“No,” Yan Qing said calmly. “Besides, it won’t have any effect on you.”

Murong Hui pouted, unwilling to give up, and asked, "What about next year? Can you let me play next year too?"

"I won't be coming next year." Yan Qing thought to himself, if I can't even reach the Foundation Establishment stage within a year, I might as well be trampled to death by Shang Xinlei wearing stockings. After reaching the Foundation Establishment stage, I naturally won't be able to enter the Demon Gathering Land, this limited-time dungeon anymore. After all, anyone with combat power above the Foundation Establishment stage can kill their way to the city center on the first day to collect the top-tier flesh and blood puppets and clear the game.

Murong Hui angrily kicked away the pebbles on the ground. This wasn't right, that wasn't right, and his tone was so cold. She didn't really want to talk to Yan Qing anymore… She had thought they were already friends…

However, Murong Hui's anger subsided after a while, because she was already used to it. It was the same when she first befriended the little fox; she would always get so angry that her chest would swell up. It took her almost half a year to finally be able to bathe and sleep with the little fox. She used to be the little devil of Yanzi Army Town, getting whatever she wanted, spoiled rotten by her grandparents. The reason she had such a good temper now was entirely due to the little fox's influence.

She slowed her pace to walk alongside Yan Qing: "By the way, you still haven't told me your name—"

In that instant, Murong Hui suddenly felt goosebumps all over her body, as if she had sunk into the deep sea. At the same time, Yan Qing felt a string in her mind being gently plucked, and the world in her pupils suddenly turned into lines interwoven with black and white, and even the particles in the air became incredibly clear, floating at an extremely slow speed!

Although this was the first time Yan Qing had triggered this phenomenon, it was not unfamiliar to him at all, because he had seen this effect in countless videos before.

A connection to the underworld!

　Previously, the stats for Dragon Servant traits were filled in manually; now they're being reverted to the original model.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)