Chapter 23: The Dream Eater
From the outside, the island looked like an ordinary deserted island, with a mountain in the center and lush forests surrounding it. What was strange was that there were no birds singing or insects chirping in the forest, as if it had fallen into a strange silence. Only the rustling sound of the sea breeze blowing through the leaves made it seem extraordinarily mysterious in the night.
“Everyone, pay attention, I’m going to introduce the dungeon rules now.” Asker clapped his hands, attracting everyone’s attention.
“Dungeon?” The good student Nuo raised her hand. “What is a dungeon?”
“Let’s first clarify a concept.” In order to make it easier for himself to command later, Asker decided to instill some “player common sense” in everyone. “During the mission, we may explore some dangerous areas, so we need to be vigilant throughout the process and adhere to the team combat regulations. We call these dangerous areas ‘dungeons.’ The act of entering a ‘dungeon’ is called ‘running a dungeon.’”
Strange terms… Everyone looked at each other, silently memorizing them in their hearts.
“When running a dungeon, you need to pay attention to the difference between mobs and bosses.” Asker continued to popularize professional terms. “Mobs are weak enemies. Bosses are powerful enemies. A dungeon is often composed of several bosses and many mobs. The standard for fighting mobs is efficiency and pursuing no injuries, while the standard for fighting bosses is to preserve oneself. Of course, the most important thing is to obey orders, listen to commands, understand?”
“Understood.” Everyone replied sparsely.
“Medea.” Asker snapped his fingers. “Open the team communication channel.”
“Communication channel?” Medea wondered.
“Establish a mental link with me and the others.” Asker said.
Medea curled her lips and established a mental link with everyone. Immediately, everyone began to communicate online:
“Is this mental communication?” Nuo’s voice sounded in everyone’s minds. “It’s real! I just thought about it, and the sound automatically sounded in my mind!”
“I’ll try it too!” Eleanor followed suit in the mental communication. “Hello, Nuo, how are you?”
“I’m fine!” Nuo responded.
“aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa！.” Peggy started spamming.
“Stop making noise!” Medea said angrily. “Frequent communication is a great burden on my spirituality!”
“Everyone keep quiet, private chat is prohibited in the team communication channel.” Asker said. “If anyone disobeys the instructions, Medea, you ban her… that is, cut off her connection.”
Immediately, the channel fell silent.
“That’s it.” Asker said, “Eleanor, take the shield and go to the front. Peggy on the left, me on the right, Medea and Nuo in the middle. Next, once we encounter an enemy, Medea will first cast a group mental suggestion to make them try to attack Eleanor. Eleanor, don’t think about counterattacking, just focus on blocking with the shield.”
“Peggy will flank from the left and kill the enemy, prioritizing those without armor or with light armor, leaving the heavily armored enemies to me. Nuo will pay attention to the battlefield situation throughout the process, focusing on taking care of Eleanor and healing her in time. Have you all remembered?”
“No.” Everyone shook their heads repeatedly.
“Then I’ll say it again…” Asker said, both amused and annoyed. These were very simple dungeon running knowledge, and players wouldn’t need any nonsense, but unfortunately, the girls in the team were all newbies. He repeated it twice, and everyone finally understood.
Eleanor had the best defensive equipment in the team, so the task of rushing to the front and attracting attacks was given to her. In order to ensure that the attacks would not accidentally injure others, Medea needed to continuously cast mental suggestions (which was also known as directional hatred).
Without having to worry about being attacked, Asker and Peggy could focus on output, one dealing with lightly armored enemies, the other dealing with heavily armored enemies. Nuo was responsible for healing, this was the so-called five-corner combat model.
“Let’s go when you remember it clearly!” Asker waved his hand. “Speed up, move!”
So everyone set off in a chaotic manner. The reason why it was chaotic was because the team formation was not strict, and there were often people who fell behind because they walked too fast or too slow. If the opponent was a team of professional players, they could basically seize the opportunity to break through the formation with a surprise attack and isolate and divide the team members.
However, compared to ordinary players, the girls’ discipline was still much higher, and the NPC mercenaries in this world were even more incomparable. Did NPC mercenaries have any tactical awareness? This was still a question.
Entering the forest, everyone scanned their surroundings vigilantly and nervously. Since it was not yet 4 a.m., the depths of the forest, where the oil lamps could not reach, were shrouded in deep and thick darkness, and for a while, everyone even felt a little paranoid.
However, seeing the calm demeanor of their leader, Asker, everyone felt a little more at ease. At this moment, a gunshot suddenly rang out.
Asker had somehow drawn out Aphrodite and pulled the trigger at the back of a tree. A scream rang out, and a figure was blown out.
It was a transparent monster, which began to bleed after being hit by the bullet, and its figure gradually emerged. It had the size of a porcupine, curled ears and long hair like hard thorns all over its body, but its mouth was a long and thin tube, curled up and tightened like a whirlpool.
“Be careful, everyone, this is a Dream Eater!” Medea warned in the channel.
Eleanor immediately shuddered. She remembered the legend her father had told her when she was a child. It was said that this invisible extraordinary creature would sneak into people’s homes in the middle of the night and suck people’s brains with its thin tube mouth.
Sometimes the victims would wake up in their sleep, but even though their consciousness was awake, their bodies could not move, and they could only feel that they were being pressed down by some invisible monster.
“Eleanor, charge and shield bash, Peggy, flank and backstab, Medea, use suggestion!” Asker immediately gave the order.
Eleanor charged forward with her shield. Under Medea’s suggestion, the Dream Eater also quickly turned its head towards Eleanor, its curled long mouth suddenly stretched out like a chameleon and hit Eleanor’s steel shield hard.
The force of the long mouth’s ejection was so great that Eleanor was even slightly knocked back, and the steel shield almost flew out of her hand. In the next second, Peggy appeared behind it at an almost instantaneous speed, her short sword stabbing fiercely at its buttocks.
The sword entered the flesh, and blood gushed out. The Dream Eater cried out in pain, raised all its hard thorns, and suddenly bit back. However, Peggy had been taught the essence of agility output, which was “one hit, then move,” and she had already run far away, not even taking the short sword that was stuck in it.
“Eleanor, advance, everyone else retreat, Medea, maintain the mental suggestion!” Asker said quickly, firing three shots in a row with Aphrodite in his hand, forcibly pulling the Dream Eater’s attention back with new pain.
Eleanor took the opportunity to approach, slammed her left shoulder against the shield and slammed it hard, knocking the Dream Eater’s head back, and her right spear shot out like lightning, piercing its soft abdomen.
There was another loud bang. The dying Dream Eater ejected its long mouth again, violently colliding with Eleanor’s shield. At the same time, Peggy had already rushed behind the Dream Eater, pulled out her short sword, and stabbed it again with her backhand.
The Dream Eater, covered in wounds, finally ran out of its last bit of HP and collapsed to the ground with a wail. Light blue extraordinary power emanated from its body and disappeared – automatically absorbed by the five people present, becoming everyone’s experience points.
The first battle was won. Because it was the first time they had successfully killed an extraordinary creature, the girls were both relieved and excited. Nuo was the first to rush forward, taking out her mobile phone and taking pictures of the Dream Eater’s corpse.
“Can I post it on my social circle, Asker?” She turned to ask Asker, her big eyes full of hope.
“Go ahead.” Asker said, both amused and annoyed. Why were these girls’ thought processes completely different from those of players? Shouldn’t they check the drops first?
“If only we were in my father’s territory.” Eleanor said regretfully, “Uncle John could make it into a specimen and hang it on the wall of the castle’s inner hall as a trophy.”
“It would be a waste to make it into a specimen.” Asker said, “The spiritual material on the Dream Eater is the skin at the base of the longest thorn on its back, the color will be a shade lighter than other places.”
“I see it.” Peggy said as she pulled out her short sword, grabbed the longest thorn of the Dream Eater, and cut off the skin around it and put it away.
Nuo had already finished taking pictures, it was a picture of her making a victory gesture in front of the Dream Eater’s corpse, and she uploaded it to her CM social circle, and soon people started liking it.
“Our newcomer is very strong, killing an extraordinary creature at level 1? And it’s a Dream Eater?” A user from the Life School commented.
“Nuo? Where have you been? You haven’t even called home for so long, our father is furious!” This comment seemed to be from her sister, whose nickname was “Eldest Daughter of Dawn, Capasirin.”
“Dream Eater? Could it be that you encountered people from Dreamland Paradise?” This comment was posted by Kieran Bonat.
Nuo was about to ask what “Dreamland Paradise” was, when Kieran followed up with another reply: “If you confirm that this Dream Eater is not wild, I suggest you run away quickly. Those people from Dreamland Paradise are crazy about finding the fragments of Paradise Mountain, they are like mad dogs biting and killing everywhere, they can’t be messed with.”
“Asker, is Dreamland Paradise some kind of secret organization?” Nuo looked up and asked Asker puzzled.
“It’s a secret sect that masters the Dream Sequence and possesses the ‘Dream Angel’ bloodline path.” Asker said, “The Dream Sequence is the natural enemy of the Desire Sequence, Medea will have to be careful later.”
“???” Medea was stunned for a while, then suddenly said, “My Queen Mother did seem to warn me before that I must be careful of extraordinary people from the Dream Sequence when I’m outside.”
“Queen Mother?” The other girls turned their heads when they heard this.
“Ah, no.” Medea said casually, “I mean mother… slip of the tongue. Speaking of which, if it’s really those people from Dreamland Paradise, what should we do?”
“What else can we do when we are already in the dungeon?” Asker said with his arms crossed, “Treat them as bosses and take them down. Let’s review this battle first, there are still many problems.”
He walked to the place where the Dream Eater was hiding at first, behind a big tree, turned back and said to everyone:
“I fired the first shot. The question is… why didn’t Eleanor, who was walking in the front, find it?”
“Ahem.” Eleanor said awkwardly, “It was hiding in a very good position, covered by trees, it was hard to see in the night, and it could also turn invisible.”
“It’s true that we can’t blame you for this.” Asker said, “Eleanor’s main task is to focus on how to guard against sneak attacks from the surroundings. Otherwise, if you are killed at the beginning, there will be no more dungeons to run. For enemies who are not attacking but ambushing, you can’t devote more attention to finding them.”
“Nuo, write it down.” He stared at the Dream Eater and said, “Our team needs a scout next.”
“A scout?” Nuo wrote down quickly. “We need a character who can scout the enemy.”
“A ranger, thief, or assassin will do, responsible for controlling the overall battlefield situation and providing an early warning mechanism for the team.” Asker said, “Second, one problem exposed in this battle is that our output is still too weak.”
“The Dream Eater’s attack burst is very strong, which means that Eleanor can’t counterattack while defending with her shield. Peggy is an agility output, her output curve has ups and downs, and my pistol’s firepower is still weak. If we had another output, then when Peggy made her first round of flanking attacks, we could attack from both sides, focus fire together, and shorten the kill time by half.”
“So we need to find an output?” Nuo also roughly understood that “output” meant damage dealer. “What kind of profession do we need specifically?”
“For a creature like the Dream Eater, another gunman would be enough. I mean a professional gunman.” Asker said, “If the Dream Eater had more HP, what we need might not be a gunman, but a melee warrior, equipped with armor-piercing weapons such as a heavy axe or a mace.”
“Then recruit another gunman and a melee armor-piercing warrior.” Nuo quickly wrote it down.
“In very few cases, if the enemy has very high physical defense, such as ghosts, then we need an Arcane Mage.” Asker concluded, “Before the roles are filled, I can act as the gunman, Medea can act as the mage, the key is to recruit a thief and an armor-piercing warrior.”
Leave a Reply