MoP: Ch. 189

---Third POV---

[Chronicles of Aeltia: Test Server v1.6 Update Announcement]

[Key Updates:

I. Special Event: City Lockdown

The magic tide is imminent.

To protect civilian safety and prevent the spread of the magic tide, the two cities within The Federation's territory will enter a lockdown state one month from now. At that time, all entry and exit will be strictly restricted until the magic tide ends.

We therefore urge all Returnees to make preparations in advance to get through this difficult period.

II. Version Event Replacement: "Autumn Harvest: The Approaching Crisis"

Short-cycle crops are about to mature, monsters preparing for hibernation are appearing more frequently... Autumn not only marks the beginning of decay for all things, but also represents harvest. During the event, experience gained from resource-gathering quests is increased by 20%, and a limited-time event quest, Autumn Harvest, is added.

Duration: one month. Please pay attention to the schedule.

III. An additional "Affinity Detection" feature has been added to the player attribute panel.]

[Version Changes:

Due to the special lockdown event, prices for food, weapons, equipment, and medicine in the shop have all increased. The time for price rollback is undetermined.

The active period of monsters is approaching. Please do not provoke hungry monsters.

Temperatures are dropping, remember to keep warm.

Other Updates:
- Optimized the presentation of the autumn season and removed excessive rainfall
- Adjusted NPC favorability values and fixed a small number of bugs
- Current number of reservations: 52,333]

[CowardlySurvivor]: I'm first!

[Hedgehog]: Damn, this guy got it before me!

[BobBobby]: Third place. The most failed moment of being a cloud player

[Blade]: Looks like the transition version really is boring. You all have time to fight for comment slots

[Hedgehog]: If there aren't any combat events soon, I'll die of boredom

[DroolingEvenCured]: I don't mind it being boring. Please use beta access to abuse me

[SoySauceLeader]: Same. Knocking chopsticks and waiting.

[Actually_Hitler]: You people who only switched allegiance last version have the nerve to talk? Back when there were only three beta players, I already signed up.

[ExpiredKid]: Whether I get beta access isn't important. I want a new expansion, new story. I want to see my wife Claire!

[ChestBurster]: +1, let's look at my wife's giant poster (image)

[Thor]: Hey, you guys up front, don't you have wives of your own?

The players fighting for comment slots had basically not finished reading the announcement. The discussion content was all related to the previous version and hot forum topics.

For example, Claire, who replaced Luminaris as the forum cover almost overnight thanks to a video less than two minutes long.

Some people spotted a business opportunity and quickly released a series of Claire-themed merchandise such as phone ringtones and badges, selling like hotcakes.

For example, complaints about the skyrocketing number of reservations and the suspension of beta access distribution.

At this rate, who knows what year or month it would be before they got selected.

Viktor said there was nothing he could do.

In order to safely get through the magic tide, he did not plan to issue any new beta access over the next month. He could only ask his dear players to wait another month.

By the time NeverShowOff arrived late, the announcement's comments had already been flooded into the triple digits.

[NeverShowOff]: The most profitable profession in version 1.6 should be hunting. Keyword: stockpiling food.

[Hedgehog]: What? Not weapon hoarding?

[CowardlySurvivor]: Weapons factories haven't stopped researching gunpowder at all. Are you planning to blow up the entire forest?

[Thor]: Actually, besides hunting, there's another, more convenient way to obtain food.

[Hedgehog]: What? Setting up electric nets in the forest?

[Lux]: Setting fires to the mountains gets you thrown in prison, and where are you even getting electric nets from?

[MemeKnight]: Did Daddy manage to build a mana generator?

[Thor]: I'm not talking about bird hunting. I mean a tense, exciting activity with maximum sense of achievement: fishing!

[Thor]: To store energy for the winter, fish activity will be extremely frequent lately. With crisp autumn weather, it's the perfect time for fishing! I've already found two siren guides. With them supervising underwater, we definitely won't come back empty-handed. Now recruiting like-minded folks...

[CowardlySurvivor]: Damn it, another fishing addict's scheme. Muted!

[Lux]: Claims like "guaranteed not to come back empty-handed." I feel like I've seen that countless times on the forum...

The players joked around in the comment section, and the conversation drifted further and further off topic. They even bragged boldly, saying they were going to make a big move and drink hot chocolate right in front of the monsters when winter came.

Viktor sighed, thinking "Being young really is nice," while banning a batch of suspicious, anonymous blank accounts. Then he calmly opened a certain Steam-like platform.

"Another day of striving to be a good game developer."

He silently gave himself a thumbs-up.

---

"Viktor!" Booze came running in, shouting at the top of his lungs. "This is bad!"

Viktor reacted instantly, pausing his save, exiting the game, then looking up with a quill pen in hand.

"What happened?"

He quietly glanced out the window.

Was it morning or evening now?

Booze didn't notice Viktor's distraction. Still out of breath, he grabbed Viktor and pulled him outside.

"Come take a look! Edgar has gone berserk! He killed several players for no reason! He even skewered them together like kebabs and said he was going to barbecue them. The scene was unbelievably bloody!"

"Barbecue?" Viktor was both shocked and doubtful.

The more he heard, the more absurd it sounded. Still, it did fit the players' exaggerated storytelling.

What the truth actually was, he'd have to see it on site to know.

"Where are they now?"

When he reached the unfinished gate outside the magic wall, he really did see five player corpses pierced together by a sword.

Edgar, David, and a group of onlooking players led by ProGamer_Daddy were gathered nearby.

Booze's finger trembled as he pointed. "See? I wasn't lying! Too brutal!"

Viktor glanced at him.

"Well said, but you'd better wipe that smile off your face first."

Why did this guy look happier than if he'd solo-killed a level two monster, when players had died?

As Viktor walked closer, the full view of the sword came into sight. It was Edgar's personal weapon. The magical runes on it flickered, absorbing the blood continuously flowing from the corpses.

Booze egged him on from the side.

"With witnesses and evidence all here, staying silent means admitting guilt, talking means sophistry. There's no escaping the truth now, Viktor. Do it!"

The players watching the drama nodded in unison.

"Viktor, I believe in you!"

"We support you in enforcing justice, even against your own!"

"A purple-name NPC who breaks the law should be punished the same as any NPC!"

Viktor sighed.

Edgar remained silent.

David struggled to suppress his laughter.

"Your recruitment standards for new members are quite special."

Viktor let out a long sigh.

"Explain what happened."

Before Edgar could speak, the other players reacted strongly.

"Don't listen to his excuses! Five vibrant, promising young men were just walking along and got stabbed for no reason. Justice must be served!"

"Is that really how 'vibrant' is supposed to be used?"

"Anyway, the five victims are crying their eyes out on the forum!"

"He didn't even give us a chance to save. This is unforgivable!"

Everyone started talking over one another, and the scene quickly descended into complete chaos. Suddenly, a streak of white light shot through the air like an arrow.

Splurt!

The right side of one player's corpse burst open, and a wave of nauseating stench spread outward.

"Ugh!"

The smell was on par with a biological weapon, instantly cutting off everyone's chatter. People covered their mouths in unison and retreated more than ten meters.

"What the hell is that?!"

"Block it! I request olfactory suppression!"

The next second, Viktor lightly swung his staff. A layer of radiant runes immediately appeared in the air.

As a gentle breeze passed through, five corpses were flipped upside down and sealed beneath a green, bowl-shaped barrier. The surrounding air became much fresher.

Booze lowered his hand and took several deep breaths, replacing the stench in his lungs.

"I'm alive again!"

It was his first time encountering a smell with such rich layers and such a lingering aftertaste. Every extra tenth of a second of exposure brought a new experience.

A player who had turned his head away because it stung his eyes looked back and couldn't help sucking in a sharp breath.

"Look at the corpse's face. What is that?!"

Beneath the sliced-open facial skin, there was no fresh red flesh or blood vessels. Instead, there were green-veined tissues and toad-like lumps, rotting membranes of flesh that kept swelling and pulsing. The stench from earlier had come from the moment those membranes were exposed to open air, as surface bubbles burst and released gas. Even now, the membranes continued to produce and pop bubbles, emitting faint sounds. The noise alone was enough to give everyone goosebumps.

"Parasitic?!"

"No wonder the runes on the sword kept flashing. Were they purifying the wound caused by the stab?!"

"What the hell is this thing?"

Edgar shook off the residual magic on his fingers and announced the answer.

"A monsterized slime."

"A slime?" Booze frowned. "Aren't slimes those low-level monsters that look like jelly?"

One player pulled up a copy of the Species Encyclopedia from the Magicians Guild, which had been imported into the game's bestiary system.

It contained a detailed entry on slimes.

According to the book, slimes were an ancient elemental lifeform. Their bodies were transparent and gelatinous, composed purely of water and magic. They moved slowly and were extremely weak in terms of aggression. They usually appeared in wilderness areas rich in magical elements and were considered excellent blending materials in alchemy.

Booze pointed at the green flesh membrane that kept bursting.

"Did the encyclopedia use a beauty filter or something?"

ProGamer_Daddy twitched the corner of his mouth.

"That's not just a filter. That's maxed-out beautification. It turned kitchen slop into a state banquet."

Edgar emphasized each word at the start.

"It's a monsterized slime. Not an elemental lifeform. When magical beasts were twisted into monsters by the fall of the gods, slimes were no exception."

Viktor nodded and added, "Monsterized slimes possess extremely powerful vitality and digestive ability. They don't just eat brains. They eat flesh too."

It had shed its original oval shape and its bouncy body structure, instead relying on its overwhelming vitality to divide itself into microscopic slimes invisible to the naked eye. For monsters whose intelligence was essentially zero, the concept of an individual "self" never truly existed. These micro-slimes were both a single entity and a collective made up of countless independent monsters, able to merge and separate at will. The advantage of micro-slimes was that they required only a very small nest, allowing them to parasitize other organisms and gain a far wider range of movement.

From there, they would slowly consume the host's body with their powerful digestive abilities, growing stronger in the process.

When the host comes into contact with other living beings, it releases microscopic slimes to latch onto new hosts. Because monsterized slimes can freely alter their shape, they replace devoured internal organs with gelatinous matter and continue operating in their stead. Until the very moment it finishes consuming the nutrients and bursts out through the abdomen, the host can still think clearly and live a normal life.

"The good news is that parasitic monsters have a massive flaw. A monsterized slime spends most of its life in a dormant state. Only when a magic tide erupts, stimulated by the 'magical pheromones' released by other monsters, do they awaken and begin searching for hosts."

The group looked at the five corpses sealed in the center, their expressions all different. David swept his gaze around, looking as though he had expected this all along.

"The Magicians Guild knows far too little about monsters. Without supporting data, they'll have a hard time believing that a mere level two monster could cause such devastating destruction."

Humans who had been lively and bleeding just moments ago, less than two hours later had turned into a pool of rotting green pus. This was completely at odds with what the Church, the Magicians Guild, and the Kingdom all uniformly proclaimed: that a high-level mage could easily handle a level two monster.

To deal with it, the only option was to cut off every source of infection in advance.

David shook his head.

Young mages with limited experience were the easiest to mislead by "authoritative texts." Especially when their companions had just died horribly on the spot, emotions running high and everyone's rationality completely offline.

Without realizing it, he voiced his thoughts aloud.

Viktor replied calmly, "Someone will believe it, because they were never part of that 'emotional frenzy' in the first place."

David blinked. "What?"

As soon as the words fell, from the previously grim crowd came waves of disappointed sounds.

"Failed again."

"No way, my acting was flawless!"

"I thought we'd really get a free 5D special-effects showdown..."

"Combat-power faction, total defeat. Disband, disband!"

David stared in confusion and shock. Looking at David's bewildered face, Viktor, who knew players all too well, shook his head, his mind as calm as still water.

Still too young.

Compared to the fact that five more highly active forum accounts with beta badges had appeared today, these players clearly cared more about whether he and the purple-name NPCs had combat power enough to flatten an entire street, or an entire city. Preferably with precision down to what shops lined that street and what materials they were built from.

From the moment Booze arrived with the warning, wearing that eager, barely-contained expression, Viktor had already guessed their goal.

His gaze swept across the surrounding players one by one.

"The motive for the murder has been found. Now we move on to the next question. At present, the activity level of monsters in the outer forest is nowhere near enough to awaken monsterized slimes in their dormant phase. So who can tell me, where did the monsterized slimes on their bodies come from?"

The life cycle of monsterized slimes is divided into a long dormant phase and an active growth phase that lasts no more than five days at a time.

Therefore, they usually awaken only during magic tides, when it's convenient to accumulate enough energy to last until the next eruption.

So where did the players find monsterized slimes that were in their active growth phase?

---

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Is anyone still reading?