The Boss King actually disguised himself as a novice village chief?!
Chapter 455 - 384: Receive Cyber Eggs

Chapter 455: Chapter 384: Receive Cyber Eggs

Lind had obtained a set of Scavenger’s Abyss Equipment.

The resource distribution among the Undead was still extremely uneven, with some having scavenged several sets while others hadn’t caught even a single hair.

Rangers occupied the lowest tier, and unless incredibly lucky or had played in the beta test, it was rather painful to play.

Grouping together for warmth could save a lot of trouble, and besieging could cover many weaknesses, with everyone complementing each other.

Lind couldn’t see the so-called attributes on the armor, but those things were unimportant to him. With a light tap and pinch of his fingers, even without using any abilities for identification, any veteran could easily tell where this suit of armor excelled.

Lacking numerical values certainly wasn’t convenient, but as long as one saw enough, one could distinguish the differences.

"Isn’t this just like the armor and weapons of the Snake People and Dragonized Soldiers?" he mused.

It couldn’t be said to be weaponry with basic attributes. Rather, it was the kind of thing ordinary Soldiers would avoid at all costs.

Born from evil, Cursed Equipment almost guaranteed that wearing it would earn one disdain in conversations with others.

However, disregarding those aspects, armor that bore various curses truly aligned more easily with the needs of the Undead.

After being cursed, there was a clear transformation, the target would gradually assimilate, including the non-human armor and weapons which would merge into the body, even becoming a part of the bodily tissues.

Lind suspected this was similar to that castle, where Abyssalization meant corrupting the target, then converting both organic and inorganic matter into the same kind.

Even now, some Undead still wielded weapons like the Dragonized Soldiers’ tail spears, which came with various effects and were both solid and durable.

A bold yet reasonable action plan had begun to form in Lind’s mind, but he wasn’t ready yet and needed more experimentation.

Recently, Lind was busy attempting to encounter more curses. For instance, the Abyssal curse that came with the Scavenger wasn’t strong enough. It was removed by Lind as soon as it was inflicted, as it was just taking up space and wasn’t worth retaining.

Compared to these, William had been very busy lately.

Just as Lind used to easily take potion formulas from William, when the Undead sought guidance from him, this guy actually taught without charging!

Teaching skills for free, you’re disrupting the market.

Thus, William’s workload had also increased significantly recently. Unable to settle down to teach the Undead, as the Expedition Army’s progress had been impressive, he revered Lind greatly and prioritized his arrangements, pushing teachings for the Undead to a lower priority.

But the Undead still managed to find moments to squeeze in, seizing the chance to learn skills for free was rare after all, knowing that William had free time after dinner, the Undead would gather punctually at that spot.

During dinner, Lind, William, Wen, and Boyd, among others, sat together—it was a high-level dinner.

"They’re here again?" Boyd turned to look at the Undead eagerly waiting outside the door and found it very amusing before turning to look at William.

"They are very serious!" said William, whose outlook polarized with Boyd’s negativity. As long as it could enhance the overall combat capabilities within the Abyss, he was happy to teach.

Wen Riven shared William’s sentiment, but now he could only look on with mild envy, a "jealousy" that made William shiver unexpectedly.

For he only sensed a killing intent. William, always sunny, preferred talking with Lind, finding deep meanings in Lind’s behaviors.

Although he and Boyd had different philosophies, they could still communicate; the idea of making resistance drugs from his own curse was like a grand kind of self-sacrifice.

But Wen felt cold, his personality sharp as a cold blade to William.

The reason was simple, previously some Undead sought to learn skills from Wen whose strength was even above William’s, and she was also quite beautiful, her expressionless face even more suited to the Undead’s XP. Wen had an extremely decisive mindset, even more decisive than William.

William would at least consider a person’s specific combat strength, awareness, style, etc., whereas Wen was ready to teach if you were willing to learn, regardless of whom you might kill. For her, any blow dealt to the Abyssal Calamity using her power was a profit.

However, after learning, the Undead found Wen’s combat style bizarre; her go-to move was suicide, all attacks were predicated on killing oneself first.

The Undead indeed didn’t fear death, but without the extremely strong "instant kill" capabilities and the exaggeration of immediately respawning were too much, so she was placed as the unlikely choice for learning skills among the NPCs, even some who approached Boyd to learn how to draw.

Lind put down his soup spoon, looking at the queue of Undead outside. Wasn’t this just like leading a contest to collect the most eggs?

He didn’t interfere with William. The basic combat knowledge William taught wasn’t well-suited to the Undead, only those on the Sun Knight Path, which was related to elemental fire power, could truly benefit.

As a "pseudo official," his authority was lower than anyone might imagine.

William quickly finished his meal and continued to go out to burn brightly.

Lind then asked Boyd, "Does drawing different figures each possess certain special effects?"

"Yes!" Boyd nodded excitedly. The topic was first brought up during that night at the Exile’s Outpost when Boyd, having witnessed the power of Lind, was very eager to depict him in a painting.

But Lind had declined without a second thought, citing lack of time.

"Iris Flower, I think it makes a good subject," Lind then said.

He had already seen how the Undead complained about how hard Iris Flower was to defeat.

Average lv45, kills on sight, with an average HP of about 15,000, and they don’t mind swarming in at all.

If it weren’t for their momentary lack of intent to charge out from the great iron gate, the entire fortress would surely have been retaken.

Expedition Armies in other regions that had pushed to the Great Rift had not encountered such powerful Catastrophe Executioners; every region’s situation was different.

Nearly a hundred BOSSes, even if Lind encountered them all at once, he would indeed have a headache, but as long as that did not happen all at once, the problem wouldn’t be too severe.

Now, the entire fortress was filled with the figures of the Undead, who kept generating resurrected corpses or stripped-clean Scavengers.

The reason was still the "Iris Flower Instance" that trapped all the Undead. Once someone spotted a BOSS ahead, almost everyone would drop their current less important missions and go respawn the BOSS.

This game does not value balance, maintaining the principle that the quick get while the slow miss out; no one wanted to miss out.

Then, they encountered the toughest enemy ever...maybe not the toughest ever because whether it was Baron Ronan, who initially spread poison fog that enveloped the entire fortress blocking the approach of the Undead, or the Dragon King Kote’s storm and thunder slaughter of every Undead, they all recognized their own weakness, too feeble even to approach the BOSS.

So, with no better options, the Undead began to focus on gathering as their main task in order to sustain the exchange for antidotes.

Still, there was a group of Undead who couldn’t afford the antidotes and had to take on some missions transporting supplies, reducing expenses by making the journey from the Gate of Mephisto outpost to the Catastrophe Executioner’s fortress.

Even resource plundering teams that prohibited others from sharing their mining sites slowly became powerless, as thousands of people partook in destructive mining, still driven by insatiable greed, only returning when they couldn’t move due to severe overloading of collected resources.

Not even Abyssal Contamination had seen such an assembly; growth fell far behind extraction.

If there was no further progress, they might be forced to leave the fortress, despite having a promising start to the day.

"What is Lind planning to do?"

Lind suddenly moving caught the attention of the Undead.

"Could it be a plot development?"

"After such a long holdup, is it finally Lind who’s showing us the CG?"

"I want to see the CG!"

Apparently, failure to overcome was for a reason, not because of our lack of skill, but because of the plot setup.

Thus, some began to replay what they had done to finally trigger the plot, as previously the NPCs were all quite calm.

"The clues" are hidden in the details, and this was when the Ring Scholars should step in, these folks who once double-jobbed as Soul Scholars, Librarian Squad members, etc., studying the game’s historical backgrounds and ecosystems, which could definitely say are their areas of expertise.

"It must have been triggered by a conversation, I remember someone taking the initiative to chat with Lind, and later I asked that guy, and he said he had triggered hidden dialogue with Lind more than once, emphasizing madly that he had to annihilate the enemies from the Abyss, and even earning a +1 favorability, well-known for being hard to accrue with Lind."

"Actually, it also relates to the fortress occupancy progress. Only after completely annihilating the Scavengers and the Exiled did Lind begin to act, which means it is still unsafe."

The Ring Scholars offered many convincing theories, compelling one to almost shout out in admiration: too detailed, man!

In reality, Lind merely wanted to push the progress forward, and recently the Undead haven’t been meeting to kill monsters, besides the antidote, they had no other expenditures.

War Points, Military Merits, etc., all belong to the default salary of the Expedition Army. If this continues, the Rand Kingdom might end up with ten thousand Barons promoted by merely signing in for attendance.

Just thinking about that scenario seems absurd.

Lind could allow a portion of people to grow rich, even get a full return, but he wouldn’t allow everyone to become wealthy. Only when the Undead lack everything and want everything, would they obediently complete missions without causing trouble.

The Undead, assuming a CG was about to start playing, followed willingly.

But they were stopped as they approached the castle.

While they might be skilled at crowding around, once the battle starts, the Undead would only cause chaos. It’s better to keep them off the field and let them watch the livestream from outside.