Chapter Eighty-Six: The Killing Aura

A single blink spanning a full five hundred meters was enough to carry him across the front line where players and monsters were locked in slaughter. And at this moment, with the city’s defenses weaker than ever, he could have walked in with complete ease, as if the place were his for the taking.

After that one blink, Li Ren arrived in the players’ district of the Skyward City. When the players at the front line were killed by the monsters’ mass spells, an endless stream of others surged up from behind to replace them.

Every player who took part in the battle would receive rewards after the quest ended, according to their contributions. So long as they were inside the city at this moment, not a single one of them did not want to rush to the front. After all, with NPCs drawing aggro ahead of them, so long as they paid attention to their positioning, they generally would not die.

Thus, more and more players were being teleported in through the gate, while those already inside the city were also advancing heroically toward the front.

Li Ren landed amid that tide of people.

He fell from the sky once again, but there was no helping it. With players packed shoulder to shoulder here, there was simply no suitable place to teleport him to, so the system could only dump him in midair and leave the landing to chance.

The instant Li Ren’s figure appeared from above, the long sword in his hand swept mercilessly outward. Rain of Dust and Destiny, this large-scale offensive skill, had already become Li Ren’s favorite in moments like this.

The players could not resist the overwhelming suppression brought on by Li Ren’s absurdly high level and monstrous stats. They could only watch helplessly as the world before their eyes turned gray-white, then see their experience bar cut in half before they cursed their way out of the system’s random revival point.

Li Ren had no interest in their petty troubles. Before he came here, he had brought along five of the ten skeleton royal guards entrusted to him by the Skeleton King, and sent the rest directly to the front line to do their part. In truth, that was nothing more than sending them to die. With these five aiding him, and with his hundred skeleton underlings besides, dealing with these players was far too easy.

The reason he had come to kill them now had absolutely nothing to do with some twisted taste for cruelty, nor with the pitiful little stats the players carried. It was for the ragged equipment on their bodies!

Right now, Cloudfall City lacked nothing except a huge quantity of gear that players of the current level could use. After this siege, Li Ren’s Ashes Ring was already packed full of top-tier drops from high-level monsters, and there was even a red-quality accessory waiting for him to equip in the future.

The good stuff was limitless; the low-grade junk, by contrast, was scarce.

It could only be said that this siege had not yet truly burned its way into the players’ flesh.

So he did not mind, in these final moments of the siege, staging a skeleton feast that would sweep across the whole of Skyward City. This time, he had no intention of relying on any particular strategy. Every order received by the skeletons was simple: kill, kill, and kill every player in sight, as quickly as possible.

He relinquished all control, leaving his underlings free to act however they wished. All at once, a white skeleton flower slowly bloomed among the sea of players in Skyward City.

It was not as though no one had tried to resist, but the players were utterly disorganized. One after another they rushed up only to die, accomplishing nothing at all. Even when the occasional cluster of destructive magic came crashing down and blasted Li Ren’s skeleton underlings into shards, in the very next instant new skeletons would already be rising from the ground again.

Equipment had already begun dropping in waves before Li Ren’s eyes. The Ashes Ring truly lived up to its legendary name; just its automatic loot collection over a certain range was enough to deserve dark gold quality. Add to that its infinite storage, and Li Ren even felt that labeling it merely dark gold might, in fact, be selling Ashes short.

He paid it no mind. The players before him were vanishing at a furious pace, and one living life after another was being reaped at high speed.

Li Ren charged at the forefront. Once Half-Moon Cleave was activated, his Five-Star Combo swept through one patch after another. Instant death, followed by the instant disappearance of dropped equipment, turned the area around him into a terrifying blank zone.

Another wide sweep went out, and yet a system notification rang in his mind.

"Congratulations on killing five thousand players. You have obtained a hidden title: Slayer. Passive effect: Savage Aura. All humanoid targets within the aura suffer a five percent reduction to all stats."

A faint scarlet glow appeared upon Li Ren’s body. It spread outward in a ring from him, softly blanketing everything within fifty meters. Within this aura, all players had their stats reduced by five percent. Though the effect was not especially obvious at present, perhaps not even easy to notice, the system’s wording suggested that the aura could very likely continue to level up.

And the source of that growth was the number of players he killed.

At that point, Li Ren was even less inclined to hold back. He simply ordered all of his skeleton underlings to freely activate their blood essence conversion skill, since he no longer cared how the players reacted.

From the moment he gained that aura, his relationship with the players had become that of hunter and prey. There was nothing more to say.

Since the prey was right before his eyes, why not feast heartily?

Even if the blood essence these fellows could provide was, for him, almost negligible now, as the saying went: a mosquito may be small, but it is still meat. Small gains, when gathered together, always made a workable path.

And so, with that thought, he swung his long sword without pause.

As he advanced, he no longer even bothered to look at direction. Wherever there were more players, he charged there. After every skill, the surrounding area was cleared clean, especially with the hundred skeleton underlings behind him working hard.

As for where the most players in Skyward City were gathered now, there could be no doubt: the teleportation array near the city lord’s manor.

Not only was there a wide open space because of the manor’s presence, but more importantly, the teleportation array was there.

And at a time like this, it was impossible for the place to be guarded by anywhere near as many sentries as usual.

Drawn onward by the sheer number of players, Li Ren gradually approached the direction of the teleportation array.

If Li Ren had truly known that the teleportation array was actually near the city lord’s manor, and that the area around it happened to be a vast plaza, he would probably have blinked straight there long ago. Why would he have bothered butchering players one by one like this?

He continued moving forward slowly. The teleportation array was now only three blocks away.