Chương 92: Reborn as the Dragon — Chapter 92 - The Great Shit Disturbance

The minutes ticked by. The monster army waited. The Sakura Island players suffered. After about an hour, the showers finally tapered off, but nobody wanted to step outside. Two shit-yellow debuffs had appeared beneath their health bars, and those weren't going anywhere. [Willpower Reduced (Foul Odor Effect) (15 min.)] [Weakness (Foul Odor Effect) (Vomiting Effect) (15 min.)] The stench left them dizzy and lightheaded. The vomiting left them hollow.

Turning off pain perception didn't help with this, the only real fix was a purification potion from the shop, and nobody was spending a thousand Invasion Points on one bottle. The Priest players hadn't even learned Purification yet. That was a level twenty skill. Fifteen minutes. They'd just wait it out. That was one of the perks of having a data-based body. Without it, those two debuffs would have stuck around for a day or two at minimum....

"Preparations are complete." Bolikri made his way to the front of the monster army, barely containing his excitement as he leaned close to Grey Wolf and reported in a low voice. Grey Wolf said nothing at first. He stared at the silent Starter Village, his eyes slowly darkening, crimson pupils glinting with cold, cruel light.

"Execute the plan." The order passed from Bolikri to one Kobold, then the next, traveling down the tunnel in a chain until it reached the last one in line. Before it stood a support pillar. There were others throughout the cavern. But this one was different. This pillar was the keystone, the point the entire structure balanced on. Destroy it, and everything comes down. The Kobold raised its rust-eaten shovel and swung it hard at the pillar's weakest point. A small, precise fulcrum. CRACK! The pillar snapped.

The Kobold ran. The reinforced tunnel was the only safe place. It sprinted for it without looking back. Like dominoes, the pillars fell one by one with a RUMBLE, and the entire ground began to shake.

"What's going on? Is this an earthquake?" The Sakura Island players looked at each other. Instinct, the kind bred deep into their bones, kicked in immediately, and half of them dove for the nearest triangular corner before they even thought about it. Then they caught themselves. They were powerful warriors and mages now. They had debuffs, sure. But an earthquake? Nothing to actually be afraid of. The shaking got worse. Much worse. Bad enough that they couldn't stay on their feet.

Cracks spread across the ground like fracturing branches, splitting wide as the earth groaned and sank. The collapse started gradually, then it hit a tipping point. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. BOOM! Dust swallowed the sky. Sakura Island Starter Village No. 1 dropped into a rectangular pit, swallowed whole.

"Baka! How did a sinkhole happen here?! Isn't this supposed to be a Starter Village?!"

"Damn it, there's filth everywhere!"

"Mom — wuwuwu — I want to go home, it smells so bad, wuwuwu..." Hiding in the houses hadn't helped. Under the force of the collapse, every structure was torn apart by the stress. Even if Newton himself had shown up, he'd have had no choice but to lie down peacefully in his coffin. The players cursed and crawled out of the rubble, faces gray with dust and grime. Wet soil, rainwater, and feces soaked them from every direction, stacking fresh debuff layers on top of the old ones. Another round of vomiting began.

Yamaguchi Murakichi was retching too. But his composure held better than most. He was, after all, a proper young master of the Yamaguchi family. Good education, rigorous special training since childhood. He understood what it meant to endure humiliation and keep your head. Right now, the most important thing was to observe the monsters. He pressed a hand over his mouth and nose, squinted against the grime, and wiped a hand across his forehead and cheeks, smearing the mixture around more than actually removing it.

He staggered out of the dust cloud from the collapsed buildings and looked around. Sheer earthen walls, over three meters high. Pitted and uneven. Not natural at all. A trap pit. Deliberately dug. He was about to curse out loud when a chill crawled down his spine and his scalp prickled. He looked up. All along the edge of the pit, monsters ringed the entire Starter Village. Eyes bloodshot, mouths twisted into vicious grins, flexing their hands, leering down at every last Sakura Island player below. Nowhere to run.

Despair flooded through Yamaguchi Murakichi. It felt like being dragged into a small dark room by a dozen hulking, fierce-faced men, bad enough on its own, and then looking up to find every wall covered in torture instruments.

"Shit balls, withdraw! Switch to spears and poison arrows!" Grey Wolf let out a sinister laugh and snapped the order at the gnolls behind him. Honestly, the entire monster army had grown to despise the shit balls. They were simply too foul. Even just being the ones throwing them had taken a real toll. Probably nothing would taste right for weeks. Banana Wolf, however, was a separate case entirely. He heard that his shit balls were no longer needed and looked genuinely crestfallen.

With obvious reluctance, he cinched the leather bag shut and tied it off tight. These remaining shit balls still had uses. He wasn't wasting them. Being a diligent keeper was hard work. He'd put serious effort into cultivating his Tyrant Stink Bugs. And on top of that, he still had to feed the captured humans back at the dragon's lair. A storm of spears rained down into the pit, thick as a swarm of locusts.

Before the collapse, the players had the houses for cover and stood at the same elevation as the monster army. Now the houses were rubble, the ground was three meters lower, and the entire Starter Village was fully exposed. The Sakura Island players scrambled in every direction with their heads down.

"Don't panic! Mages and Priests — shields on yourselves and the warriors, now! We charge up and fight!" A few clear-headed players managed to cut through the chaos with their voices. The monsters' average level wasn't high. Even if they couldn't win outright, storming up to kill a few was better than getting pelted at the bottom of a pit. Besides, they could always resurrect. Even now, the Sakura Island players hadn't grasped the real danger. Resurrection. Something so routine for players.

Even as the timer kept stretching longer, they could always wait it out in the World Square, eat, drink, watch other people's streams, kill time. Across the entire otherworld, most players were still happily treating this like a game. Only a handful of smarter ones, after dying once or twice, had started taking their lives seriously. If you had Invasion Points, the World Square wasn't so bad. You could eat and drink while you waited, catch other players' livestreams, pass the hours.

But if you had no Invasion Points. And your death timer climbed past seven days. Then you would starve. Or die of thirst. Right there in the World Square. And that was true death.

(Author's note: This mechanic was actually mentioned back in Chapter 31, but it seems nobody caught it. The World Square works like a between-lives waiting space. The first batch of selected players can only return to Water Blue Star once a month, most of their time is spent in-game, and when they die they wait for resurrection in the World Square. Which means that without Invasion Points, starvation is a very real possibility.) Daily power request, ying ying ying~ (\ ′? \) (\ ′? \) Liu Liu Anna ➤ Next: Between Life and Death