Genius Chapter 110: World Boss

Chapter 110: World Boss

Translated by Karai of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: Addis

The wind and rain had grown stronger, and the booming thunder seemed to foreshadow some kind of conclusion. ChatMasterWu glanced at his teammates and finally understood what they meant. He then turned his head to look at the vast expanse of fish monsters in the woods, and for a moment, he felt as if a mountain had been placed on his shoulders.

“Can we do this?” ChatMasterWu asked, uncertain.

ScarletFruit continued to urge, “We can! Watermelon has thinner blood than you and can still handle it. You’re the top assassin; your skills aren’t worse than Watermelon’s, right?”

ClearWind added, “Yeah, if you die halfway, you’ll be even worse than Watermelon.”

ZenSlasher chimed in, “Watermelon pulls mobs reliably. ChatMasterWu shouldn’t be worse than him.”

ChatMasterWu was speechless. Fuck!

He immediately activated his state and charged out.

ClearWind exclaimed, “Brother, fiery blood!”

ScarletFruit couldn’t help but sigh poetically, “A decade as an assassin, passion never cools.”

Apple remarked, “Being the top in the Sect isn’t that easy.”

Su Mo, surprised by his charge, couldn’t help but praise, “ChatMasterWu is good, very decisive.”

The silhouette of the assassin disappeared into the woods. The fish monsters around them made eerie sounds as they rushed fervently in the direction the assassin had moved. Without hesitation, ZenSlasher confirmed that all the monsters had been drawn away and immediately led the way towards the cave discovered earlier in the day.

The cave wasn’t far from them, and soon Su Mo and the others arrived. They saw the narrow crevice in the mountain wall, only wide enough for one person to pass through. This location was indeed cleverly chosen; the large fish monsters outside clearly couldn’t enter through such an entrance. Perhaps this spot was pre-reserved by the mastermind and was part of this mission’s plan.

One by one, the three helped their teammate into the cave. Inside, the cave was a hidden paradise, remarkably spacious, with even a small path leading to an unknown destination. Seeing this, Su Mo became even more certain that this place was not ordinary. He sent a text message to ChatMasterWu in their team channel, instructing him to prepare for retreat while carefully observing the appearance of the cave.

“Little Bear, what’s the deal with that ‘Honey-roasted Goose’s mission? Could you explain? My brother only mentioned it briefly.” ScarletFruit sat down and remarked, “I feel like this place is really strange.”

Little Bear briefly explained the prerequisite tasks.

The quest for Honey-roasted Goose revolved around a fishing village in the East Sea. The prerequisite task involved him accidentally getting injured and being taken care of by the villagers in a small fishing village. He helped the villagers drive away monsters in the Vicinity Mountains, gaining their trust and learning about the stories of the practitioners in the small fishing village.

Rumors spread about an exceptionally talented practitioner in the small fishing village, catching the attention of the elder of Mountainless Blade Sect, who took him as a closed-door disciple, soaring to great heights. It was a big deal for a practitioner to emerge from a remote village in the East Sea area. According to those in the know, this practitioner was discovered due to an opportunity he found in the small fishing village, leading to an increasing number of explorers coming to the village to investigate.

“We just made it here, and then the villagers told us we needed to seek out Liu Da for opportunities. But after receiving this mission, our task list suddenly displayed the emblem for a 10-person team,” Little Bear continued. “That’s why we came to find you guys.”

“The elder of Mountainless Blade Sect…” Apple couldn’t help but interject, “Isn’t that a newbie move? I was the first disciple under the Sect Leader!”

ScarletFruit asked, “First disciple of the Sect?”

ClearWind explained to him, “Under Mountainless Blade Sect, there are two schools, each with a top disciple. One is a physical swordsman known as ‘Void,’ and the other is a magical swordsman known as ‘FirstUnderHeaven.'”

Apple added, “Although he didn’t stay that way for long.”

ScarletFruit remarked, “Your sword sect manages to have a ‘first disciple’ title for the top of the sect. Big sects are indeed different.”

As they chatted, ChatMasterWu, barely alive, stealthily squeezed through a crack in the mountain wall. The fish monsters outside seemed ordinary, but dealing with them as an assassin was excruciating. Assassins naturally had low defense, and even with slightly higher health, they couldn’t endure being chased and attacked by so many fish monsters.

ChatMasterWu had been adept in Celestial Horizon PvP and PvE battles. In previous battlegrounds, he could vanish and escape, but now, pulling dungeon mobs, his teammates weren’t safe, and he couldn’t leave combat.

Barely alive, he had never been in such a sorry state before.

It was hard enough to find the cave entrance, and finally getting inside, a bunch of people were sitting around talking about some Sect’s first disciple. No one bothered to remind them to heal him. With his health so low now, even a small skill could kill him instantly, can you believe it?

Before he could even ask for healing, a sudden chill wind blew behind him. Immediately after, there was a swishing sound, and a prompt appeared in front of him:

You have died

ChatMasterWu: “?????”

Death instantly emptied his health bar on the team list. Su Mo quickly realized what happened and turned around to see ChatMasterWu’s body lying near the crack in the wall. He paused slightly, “Your death position is indeed quite obvious.”

ChatMasterWu: “… Help me.”

ScarletFruit hurriedly ran over, “Brother, how did you end up dying here?”

As he ran halfway, he heard a strange noise and took a few steps back.

And just then, a tentacle suddenly shot into the crack at the cave entrance. As soon as it entered, it thrashed around wildly, sending ChatMasterWu flying directly away.

“Holy shit!” ClearWind froze in place. “What the hell is this!?”

Taking the opportunity, ScarletFruit rescued ChatMasterWu, gave him a heal, and quickly retreated. Along the way, he also pulled ClearWind, who was lying on the ground, dragging them to a safer place. Watching the tentacle that appeared out of nowhere, ScarletFruit felt very uneasy.

“How did a monster suddenly appear? Did you attract it, ChatMasterWu?” ScarletFruit asked.

ChatMasterWu: “??? I didn’t see anything like that among the fish I pulled.”

Can he be blamed for this? There were no long-armed creatures among the fish monsters he pulled, and he was sure he had disengaged. This thing appeared out of nowhere; who knows where it came from? It could reach across a mountain wall and kill him with a single strike.

Su Mo quickly said, “Get everyone inside and move deeper. Staying outside will make us vulnerable to its attacks.”

The others swiftly moved, bringing their three incapacitated teammates deeper into the cave. As they went further, the tentacle outside the mountain wall ceased its attacks. ScarletFruit couldn’t help but sigh with relief. He had never done such a quest before, and everything seemed so nonsensical. Unlike fighting a boss where you could just attack directly, this quest involved twists and turns, splitting into two teams, and half of their teammates losing their ability to fight… How could they understand this kind of gameplay?

“Should we be safe now?” ScarletFruit asked.

“No way,” Su Mo glanced back, “Do you think that monster suddenly appeared just to attack us? Obviously, its appearance is just to force us deeper into the cave.”

The others hadn’t fully grasped Su Mo’s meaning yet. However, as they walked about ten meters further into the cave, they entered a sunken cavern filled with countless white bones, emitting a chilling and terrifying atmosphere.

“These are buried corpses!” ClearWind exclaimed in shock. “Wait, it forced us in here… Could it be trying to kill us?”

Su Mo checked the quest list. The current task still showed a countdown of nightfall, indicating their main objective was to survive in this nighttime scenario. However, the passage of time in this scene was clearly abnormal. Even though the game’s global time moved faster, they had never encountered a situation where night lasted for over two hours.

“Was the scene we entered initially a special scenario?” Su Mo frowned. “Or was the place we walked into the East Sea fishing village?”

“It should be. There were other players doing quests in Vicinity at the time, and the East Sea fishing village map has always been there. I even encountered many NPCs and players on the way,” ClearWind added. “Brother, are you suspecting that we entered a special scenario from the beginning?”

Little Bear asked, “What’s the difference? Isn’t it normal to enter a scenario to do quests?”

In the process of game tasks, entering scenarios was indeed very normal. Even when the countdown of nightfall first appeared, they didn’t feel that anything was wrong. Entering scenarios was normal, everything seemed fine…

“But what if, instead of people at sea, it’s us who have lost contact?” Su Mo furrowed his brows slightly. “It could be that we’ve entered a specially constructed Global by the mastermind.”

Upon hearing this explanation from Su Mo and observing the eerie surroundings, the rest of the team couldn’t help but shiver.

“Brother, what should we do now?” ScarletFruit asked. Their group consisted of only four members capable of fighting.

Meanwhile, Momo continued forward without stopping. “Let’s go see ahead.”

Beneath the stone path they were on lay a sea of bones stacked layer upon layer. At the end of the stone path stood a grayish-green stone platform knee-high to a person.

Su Mo noticed the lime spread over the platform, seemingly covering a totem underneath. He reached out, wiping away the lime. After a moment, as the gray faded away, the green totem gradually lit up.

***

In the East Sea fishing village, the sun was shining brightly as fishing boats returned to the shore.

Yu Zhen stood by the coast, chatting with several fishermen. In the team list, the positions of his teammates showed as unknown. No matter how they tried—through voice channels, text channels, or emails in the friend system—they couldn’t contact any of their teammates.

“What’s going on? How did they lose contact?” Honey-roasted Goose went out to sea to look for Liu Da but couldn’t find him after circling around. When he returned, their teammates had completely disappeared. Asking nearby fishermen only confirmed that they had returned to the small fishing village.

Mage Salted Fish rushed over from another direction. “I asked the NPCs in the village. They said they hadn’t seen Momo enter the village. I searched the surroundings of the fishing village too, but found nothing.”

Yu Zhen closed the chat with CloudTraveller. “Can we teleport back to the main city?”

“No problem, the teleportation function here is working fine,” Honey-roasted Goose asked, “Is there something wrong?”

“The timing doesn’t make sense,” Yu Zhen glanced at the sky. “We went out to sea in the evening, but we returned at noon. If communication and teleportation are normal here, then our scene is normal, but they entered a special scenario.”

Honey-roasted Goose hesitated, “If they entered a special scenario, they should be okay, right?”

“But if this special scenario isn’t simple… we’ve got a big problem.”

Yu Zhen glanced at the resurrection scrolls in the package, then looked at momo on the team list. “Have you ever considered a problem? Special scenarios have their own rules. Setting aside our team for a moment, if it were a normal setup with two tanks and two healers in a 10-person raid, how would you allocate roles during a split task?”

Honey-roasted Goose replied hesitantly, “… Allocation? It should be one tank, one DPS, and one healer.’

Mage Salted Fish realized, “Cutting down healers and tanks means reducing healing capacity and lowering error tolerance.”

“Moreover, the healer left inside has a resurrection cooldown of 10 minutes,” Yu Zhen realized. From the very beginning, the mastermind had been manipulating them. Perhaps during their interaction with Liu Da, they had already crossed paths with the special scenario, entering a dimension set at dusk. When they chose to leave by boat, they had actually exited that scene, returning to the normal timeline.

From personnel allocation to the scenario, they were first led to believe that split tasks were more dangerous, assigning main forces and healers to go out. Then, they were induced by the scene to believe that the scenario of the task was no different from a normal scene, where items like healing potions and resurrection scrolls could be used normally.

So now, inside the scenario, seven people have to face the pressure of a 10-person raid.

“Find clues. How did you originally proceed with the preliminary tasks? Take us through it,” Yu Zhen furrowed his brows slightly. “We’re running out of time. Hurry up.”

Honey-roasted Goose suddenly became nervous. “What happens if we run out of time?”

Yu Zhen looked at him. “Not game time. It’s currently about three to four o’clock in the afternoon. Momo logs off at five thirty to have dinner.”

Honey-roasted Goose nodded. “I almost forgot the schedule. Little Bear mentioned that Momo rests no later than five thirty.”

Salted Fish asked, “?”

In other words, if they didn’t hurry inside, when time was up, command might be overrun, possibly facing a 6 vs. 10 situation inside.

Turning a corner, they returned to the vicinity of the small fishing village and encountered CloudTraveller, who had come over after receiving an email. CloudTraveller was fond of researching various peculiar quests. Upon hearing Yu Zhen talk about how the mastermind used scenes and time to influence team allocation, CloudTraveller immediately rushed to the small fishing village to assess the situation…

“Generally, when unusual mechanics appear, there’s usually a special gameplay involved, like when the Apocalypse just started, strange task formats unfolded,” CloudTraveller continued, “During the time of ‘Four Seasons Gods,’ they even directly opened a faction system. The task you’ve taken on might not be simple; it could trigger other hidden gameplay, and the triggering mechanism might be related to the sub-tasks in the vicinity of the small fishing village.”

CloudTraveller asked, “Honey-roasted Goose, do you mind sharing the task list with us? We can exchange materials or gold for information.”

In the game, side quests were endless, while main quests could be completed as updates rolled out. Side quests were plentiful, and NPCs encountered randomly on the road could also be quest targets, so Celestial Horizon had its share of storyline enthusiasts among players who enjoyed exploring the map and completing quests.

Honey-roasted Goose happened to be one such player who enjoyed running side quests. He had indeed encountered the [East Sea Fishing Village] series of quests during his exploration. Upon hearing CloudTraveller’s words, he quickly said, “No problem. I can’t complete this task alone. It was Little Bear who called on Momo for help. I’ll send you the completed task list. Finding clues would be beneficial.”

Salted Fish suddenly interjected, “Wait a moment, do you see something coming over the sea?”

Normally, there weren’t many people in the small fishing village, but in the East Sea vicinity, there was a guild battle resource point that had previously belonged to Zenith Expanse. Recently, it had been taken over by the Fruit Gang. Today, Watermelon brought guild members to transport resources from the resource point. Upon arriving at the vicinity, they heard teammates mention seeing CloudTraveller and UnchainedWanderer in the area.

“Deputy Leader, it looks like they’re doing a quest. Should we go over and ask what’s going on?” the guild member asked.

Upon hearing this, Watermelon immediately refused, “Why bother? Don’t just stand there watching. Be careful not to get involved.”

The guild member persisted, “Deputy Leader, don’t worry. I only saw UnchainedWanderer, not Momo.”

When Watermelon logged in at noon, he received a message from Apple asking why he hadn’t been online in the morning. They needed an assassin for a group, but no one was available, so they ended up recruiting ChatMasterWu instead. After hearing what Apple had to say, Watermelon didn’t log in until 3 PM in the afternoon. As soon as he logged in, he quickly took on the job assigned by Strawberry and rushed to the East Sea to work as a laborer.

Upon hearing the guild member’s report, he sighed with relief, “He really wasn’t there?”

“No, he wasn’t,” the guild member confirmed.

Watermelon said, “Then let’s finish up and go take a look…”

He was cut off mid-sentence as he noticed a huge figure gradually approaching from the sea in the distance. “Damn, what is that?”

The guild member climbed to a higher vantage point and was equally stunned. “Deputy Leader, it’s a giant octopus, and wait… it seems to be heading towards us.”

Watermelon replied with confusion, “What?”

At that moment, everyone suddenly saw a dazzling golden announcement:

[Server-wide Announcement] Player momo discovered the [Terror Sea Monster] during Fisherman’s Night in the village, triggering the Bone Cave Sea Monster Totem. Successfully awakening the East Sea Global Boss [Lord of the Deep Sea]. Wherever the Lord of the Deep Sea passes, devastation follows. All practitioners of Celestial Horizon across the continent are urged to rush to the East Sea for extermination!