DSMC Chapter 105.1

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“Hahaha, Kitty Baby is so naughty. Ever since becoming the zoo director, his tricking ability has grown.”

“I’m going to visit that Level 4 livestream just now. Can’t even deal with a newbie… how miserable.”

“Let’s form a group and go scold them. How dare they underestimate our Kitty Baby.”

“Kitty Baby, keep it up! You even managed to trick that Hard-level player into being useless, so you can handle the others too. You’re not worse than Hard-level players. They don’t get first place in every instance like you do. You’re the real boss!”

Yan Jiyun couldn’t save that player, but he wouldn’t kick someone while they were down either. He had already displayed the skills he knew as much as possible. In a game where players could kill each other, that was already more than enough kindness. Asking him to rescue someone after that would be impolite.

If the wild bear hadn’t appeared, that Hard-level player would have ambushed passing players to steal points. The fact that Yan Jiyun was willing to share his skills was already generous. The other player was only dealing with a wild bear, but he definitely had a way to escape. Besides, that player had surely robbed plenty of points from others already. Yan Jiyun had no reason to worry about a stranger who possessed several times more points than he did.

After leaving the bear’s attack range, he immediately sped up and left the forest.

Other players were around as well, trying to ambush people heading in this direction. But after learning his lesson earlier, Yan Jiyun carefully listened for sounds to determine their positions and quietly slipped past them.

However, appearing in human form meant he couldn’t avoid every player on the road.

Nearly five hundred people were all inside one forest. It was still the chaotic free-for-all phase. Inevitably, he ran into a player who silently robbed points.

The other side was a lone bearded man in his early thirties. He wasn’t very tall, but his body was packed with muscle. When he looked at Yan Jiyun, it was like looking at a piece of meat about to enter his mouth.

Yan Jiyun noticed a player lying at the man’s feet, blood flowing from the chest. The blood on the bearded man was probably from that player.

They had clearly just fought a fierce battle, and the bearded man had won.

The bearded man didn’t seem tired at all. He looked excited instead.

“Kid, if you don’t want to die, hand over the points you’re carrying.”

In his eyes, Yan Jiyun wasn’t just meat, he was a lamb waiting to be slaughtered.

Yan Jiyun had a youthful face. He was indeed young and rather thin, so being underestimated by players was normal.

Facing a player who had no fear of killing, Yan Jiyun had to be even more cautious. He couldn’t relax his guard, and it would be best to avoid direct confrontation.

In this situation, of course Yan Jiyun chose to run.

Running back meant the wild bear. So he could only run roughly toward the town’s direction. As long as he didn’t stray too far from the main route, it would be fine.

Not running at a time like this would be stupid!

The bearded man hadn’t expected the player to run so quickly. He didn’t even exchange a word with him, let alone beg for mercy or offer up his points.

Without thinking, he immediately chased after him.

Yan Jiyun had long prepared for the possibility of being discovered by other players. The path forward was extremely difficult. Running was slow because wild, low plants were everywhere. But fortunately those plants blocked him from accidentally falling off the cliff nearby. If he rolled down, he’d also become a points box.

The bearded man was big and strong. His stamina was solid. Even if his speed wasn’t faster, his endurance might surpass Yan Jiyun’s.

Yan Jiyun had run into a dead end.

He quickly searched for an escape route. When he spotted vines hanging from the trees, an idea formed.

Yan Jiyun climbed a tree and moved along the direction where thick vines grew. Standing on a trunk, he tugged one vine after another until he found a sturdy, thick vine strong enough to support his weight.

The bearded player was already catching up from behind.

Yan Jiyun took a deep breath. If he swung from this side to the other and mistimed it, he could fall off the cliff and end up flattened.

‘Jump, or don’t jump. Jump, or don’t jump—’

The bearded player was now only fifty or sixty meters away.

‘Better jump!’

Yan Jiyun hugged the vine, clamped it between his legs, and swung across with the momentum of Tarzan. Timing his descent carefully, he tightened his waist and abdomen, using both hands and feet to leap onto a vine extending from another branch. His toes landed on a rock, which shifted slightly. After stabilizing himself, he grabbed a tree trunk on the cliffside. The moment his foot left the rock, he heard it slide off the cliff below.

Incredibly dangerous!

When the bearded player arrived, he saw the curly-haired youth moving as agilely as a monkey, swinging along a vine and landing lightly on the ground.

He muttered regretfully, “Tsk, he got away. Pretty agile… coward.”

The bearded player assumed Yan Jiyun couldn’t hear him. But when he looked up, he saw Yan Jiyun hugging a tree with one hand and raising an “internationally friendly” hand gesture with the other, all without saying a word, yet enough to make someone furious.

Bearded player: “……”

Yan Jiyun quickly disappeared beyond the cliff edge. If he could swing across using vines, other players could too. Leaving immediately was the right choice.

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“With that vine swing, Kitty Baby just flew straight into my heart. My heart is still pounding, ah~ I think I’ve fallen in love with Kitty Baby!! He’s so, so, so, so, so, SO cool!”

“Is the Peak Competition arena this difficult? The game just started and Kitty Baby is already using all kinds of escape techniques.”

“I think it’s fine. For Kitty Baby this is nothing. He’s always running wildly in every instance. The forest must feel like home to him, after all, he was trained by that black panther in the zoo, remember? Haven’t you noticed he’s becoming more and more skilled, looking more like a high-level player? Calm in a crisis. Just now, in a few seconds, he came up with the vine plan to avoid fighting that bearded guy. Avoiding direct conflict saves a lot of energy.”

“By the way, does the Peak Competition arena change every time?”

“The monthly events are all different. The Peak Competition specifically only appears once every six months and it’s quite difficult. Players from the Easy levels rarely survive. Those who manage to survive usually have good abilities. And not just that. Even Intermediate and Hard-level players fight fiercely among themselves. Kitty Baby’s luck is really something else. We still don’t know what kind of stages will appear this time.”

“I’ve always missed the Peak Competition before, but this time I happened to catch it. Sisters, how do you clear the Peak Competition?”

“I remember last time the player who got the black entry ticket had to run the map. Finish running and you clear it. But this time the rules seem to have changed. Hard to say what direction it’ll go. Honestly, even if we knew the direction, I feel like Kitty Baby wouldn’t follow the usual strategy.”

“You’re right. Still, I hope Kitty Baby clears it successfully. I still want to watch him run more instances.”

At this moment, Yan Jiyun was heading toward the town according to his watch. Because of the earlier detour, the journey might take longer than initially expected. The shortcut was no longer possible.

It was the first time he had entered the same instance as his shovel officer, and he didn’t know whether Qi Feng had already reached the center of the town.

Yan Jiyun felt both excited to be in the same instance as Qi Feng and worried about failing to clear it. On top of that, he was currently in human form, which reminded him of the miserable moment during the parachute jump when the other person let go of his hand.

Ah, men. Always so fickle.

Of course, Yan Jiyun had never thought about running up to Qi Feng and telling him he was actually that cool, badass black cat. That would look stupid. Better to clear the stage separately. If cooperation became necessary, he could directly seek out his shovel officer. In his impression, his shit-shovel officer was omnipotent and very reliable.

No. He couldn’t become lazy or depend on Qi Feng. 

This was a life-or-death game. He couldn’t slack off.

Yan Jiyun continued searching for an exit from the forest.

The forest truly was vast, and the number of players kept decreasing.

The system hadn’t set up a leaderboard. No one knew how many points others had. Perhaps they had misunderstood something. Players could indeed steal points from others, but nowhere did it say that having more points was necessarily better.

But then again, if a player had no points, the system shop would be useless. Points still had to be obtained.

How would the game balance the points among players?

High-level players could bring the full 10,000 points into the instance. But lower-level players might have just entered the Easy level and might not have saved up that much yet. Even if they had, they might not bring it all in. Every player entered with a different amount. How could the system balance the combat strength between beginners and veterans?

If things continued like this, beginners would only die faster, while veteran players would remain at the top. In the end, the arena would belong entirely to veteran players, leaving beginners with no place.

In the previous four instances Yan Jiyun entered, the system balanced each player’s starting values. But in this Peak Competition, the starting values were completely different. Players began at entirely different levels. How could beginners have any chance of a desperate comeback?

While paying attention to the surroundings, Yan Jiyun calmly thought about this problem.

If the game wanted to balance players’ points, then high-level players should have stricter limitations. But right now it was obvious that high-level players had the advantage.

If the game only needed veteran players, then there would be no reason to constantly recruit new players. If newcomers all died in the arena, how could the game continue in the future?

Just as Yan Jiyun was thinking about where the trap of the Peak Tournament lay, the system issued a new notification.

[Please find the exit of the “Demon Forest” and enter “Angel City” before nightfall.]