Chapter 410: Growth-hunter’s key…..
Translator: Translation Nation Editor: Translation Nation
The trio were drenched in perspiration and blood, looking rather forlorn. Fortunately, this scene was commonplace to the base interior workers. Hell’s Gate’s healing facilities were very robust, and skillful in treatments.
Apart from the cruelly tortured Mogensha spending more time and money to heal himself, Sheyan and Reef only enjoyed a careless bath. As they wrapped themselves up, they immediately felt incredibly refreshed. Next, they headed off to the internal canteen for a meal. After 10 minutes, brother Black whistled as he reunited to them.
The weather was presently blistering hot. Previously, with the absence of Reef and Sheyan, the duo tanks by his side, the nervous Mogensha had sorely felt a lack of security. In addition to the strain of full-on collision and fleeing, he was already dying of thirst. Eyeing the cup of dark-green freshly pressed juice, he picked it up and drank it cleanly.
At this moment, the canteen served the trio in succession; nothing else but steak, sandwich, borscht and so on. Sheyan devoured his food ravenously while sharing the RDA company report with Reef and Mogensha. To them, examining it carefully now would be considered as honing the axe to prevent mishaps while cutting firewood.
Seated inside the air-conditioned canteen for a brief while, they observed several defeated and blood soaked contestants fleeing back along the path to Hell’s Gate; some had decapitated limbs. Quite a handful suffered crippling injuries, and one was roasted like coke but also with layers of condensed icicles at the back. To even endure till now, one had to credit either that contestant’s willpower or his luck.
As time elapsed, surviving contestants returned in scattered bits. In the end, a sunken faced Zi returned with the group of dejected and depressed Illume-union members; of which Archeaphill was in the worst condition. Covered in blood and semi-conscious, he was being lugged back. Even in this tropical climate, Archeaphill’s violent coughing released fogs of cold air, looking as though he was trapped in near-death state.
“Why’s he like that?” Sheyan asked curiously.
Mogensha pondered and answered.
“I heard that will happen if one repeatedly sinks into near-death state within a short span of time. Medicinal effects would gradually worsen, and finally become ineffective. Archeaphill was actually beaten into this state, how chaotic the battle must have been…..”
“Eie!? Yuan Zhan didn’t return with them. Who knows if he had been directly eliminated, or forsaken his interest and deployed some sort of item to forcefully exit this world. It seems those bunch clearly had a sinister purpose, to focus on eradicating the summoner; because summoners can frequently communicate with biology, they are massive aids in accomplishing missions here on planet Pandora. Seems like after their hidden mission failed, those guys are now striving to wreck our missions!”
At this juncture, both Mogensha and Reef felt a chill down their spines.
Back when Mogensha had triumphed 3 times consecutively duelling them, he earnestly stepped on their reputation to forge military fame for his Golden AK. While Reef was the cornerstone during the party battle, and roared victoriously with his ‘Shattering Cardiac Roar’.
The ultimate defeat of those Growth-hunters, was something they both could claim great credit for. Right now when Prince Stalo led his party and unscrupulously laid ambush outside, naturally it was for revenge. If not for Sheyan recalling them back in the nick of time; foiling their ambushing plans and compelling them to hastily act, their corpses would probably be getting violated as of now.
Noteworthily, their ambush had not only inflicted casualties, it even caused those class 1 mission looters to spin a cocoon around themselves. There was a deadline for missions received at the biolab, and if they failed to complete the mission, punishment would be extremely harsh……...
Basically, one mission failure was sufficient to declare withdrawal from the competition! Furthermore, with the hindrance of Prince Stalo’s party outside, who would dare venture out?
As the saying goes, blessings and calamities coexists. Those contestants that had snatched those class 1 missions could only weep sorrowfully. Instead, those contestant that failed to acquire a class 1 mission rejoiced in their misfortune. Hence, an upheaval arose with people shouting to form groups, instigating to teach those guys a lesson. Nevertheless, few responded, with some even mocking; “Why didn’t you think about unity when you snatched a class 1 mission in the first place?” Under such predicament, an internal great divide shook the contestants severely. Evidently, rallying together to kill their way out was now a futile obsession.
At present, Sheyan couldn’t care less about them. After slaying those 3 contestants, they had obtained 2 blood keys. Regrettably, that bowman didn’t contribute to them. Also, they could confirm that Ruby Cards were really gems with immensely tiny drop rate. Zeiss.Carl was a Growth-hunter but only dropped a blood key.
Though military rank mission included delivering blood keys; after a series of discussions, Sheyan still decided to activate Zeiss.Carl’s blood key, besides a Growth-hunter’s blood key was no small matter. Not only was his attack supremely powerful, one could imagine the grade of his equipment.
To straightly defeat 7 contestants, he had relied on pure talent; and even Illume-union’s core, Demondream, had lost to him. If not for Sheyan wearing a ‘supporter class’ cap to lower his guard, and being very clear on Zeiss.Carl’s capabilities beforehand; trying to kill him would not be as easy as it looks!
However this time, Zeiss.Carl’s key failed to surprise them. Reef normally didn’t meddle in such things much, but for some reason, he was suddenly very excited for today’s draw. The 3 deliberated and felt that drawing an equipment would be more worthwhile. In the end, Reef didn’t draw nothing, but who knew he actually picked up an unthinkable equipment.
[ Birmingham ‘Stuka’ Hand-dart, pocket sling ]
(TN: Stuka is a German dive bomber and ground-attack aircraft used in the 1930s)
[ World: The Exorcist ]
[ Origin: England, Birmingham ]
[ Equipment rarity: Black ]
[ Equipment position: Long-range weapon slot ]
[ Material: Nylon fibre ]
[ Weight: 138g ]
[ Attack: 10 fixed damage + summation of user’s strength, agility and physique ]
[ Usage requirement: Strength 17 points, Agility 20 points, Physique 15 points ]
[ Usage requirement: ‘Basic long-range combat’ lvl 2 ]
[ Durability: Nil ]
[ Details: Strength / agility +2 ]
[ Details: Perceptive sense -3 ]
[ Equipment special property: This hand-dart contains mystical sorcery. After expanding all hand-darts, it will self replenish at a rate of 2 minutes/dart. Generated darts are attached with magic, inflicting speed reduction, weakening, burnt, blood loss negative effects on striked enemy. Maximum capacity of 4 hand-darts. You can use utility points to reduce the hand-dart replenishment rate to 15 seconds/ dart. ]
[ Details: Hand-darts hurling. Hurl sharp hand-darts to inflict damage on enemies. Effective range of 3-33 metres. After initial damage to enemy, the dart-tip would lodge deeply into enemy’s body; resulting in long sustaining damages. ]
[ Details: Equipment contains a tiny probability of generating ‘Uncommon’ dart-tips. This dart-tip will deal x2 damages and overlapping negative effects. ]
[ Equipment battle score: 21 ]
[ Description: If you like employing this weapon, then I believe during an appropriate time, you can consider participating in the PDC (Professional Darts Corporation) World Darts Championship. ]
************
As this equipment required to be equipped in the long-range weapon slot, Mogensha passed on it. Sheyan possessed his ‘Ambition’, and thus expressed regrets. Instead, Reef’s current long-range weapon slot was equipped with an agility +1 light-blue grade handgun, which he never seemed to use at all. Coincidentally, this hand-dart filled in his gap of lacking offensive methods, and thus Reef accepted it.
Zeiss.Carl had never employed this weapon during the previous battle; because pursuing and killing to him, would require him to halt and hurl out a hand-dart, which wasted loads of time and wasted his life. What he seeked was to conclude the battle in the shortest time, and thus he probably only used it for the 4 attribute bonus.
In Reef’s perspective, someone who grinded slowly with his enemy, wasting them slowly for a long time…….he placed significance on the additional negative effects of this hand-dart. No doubt, this weapon should rightly be allocated to Reef.
Following that, the trio obviously wouldn’t exit the RDA base, but instead visited various departments. Worth mentioning, the 3 direhorse neural whips that they acquired previously were exceptionally valuable, indeed worthy of being hailed as ‘valuable objects’. They actually managed to exchange for 250 reputation points each at the research institute.
(TN: They got the direhorse neural whips back at chapter 27 of this volume.)
********************
Pandora had massive loads of bioluminescent organisms. Even at night, one would rarely encounter situations of losing vision of their own fingers. On the contrary, the luscious vegetation of the forest sparkled brilliantly; splendid and magnificent, releasing an impression of a neon metropolis.
The trio was currently trekking through this dense forest. An fantasy orchestra of insect buzzing filled their ears, as their eyes beheld the monstrous and multi-colored scenery. Hadn’t this already surpassed the visual impact of broad daylight?
If it was day time, Pandora’s tropical rainforest would have roughly 70-80 percent resemblance to Earth’s. Yet the forest was an entirely different world when night descended. Sheyan suddenly halted his steps, as he squinted his eyes and whispered.
“..........stop!! Yes yes yes, right ahead should be that striped bracken that we need to dig out for the mission. Ah Reef, take note. Our source’s operating manual describes plainly; that plant lives by the waterside, and its roots are extremely developed. You must be careful not to break too much while digging, if not it would affect the mission rating.”