Chapter 129: Eighth Floor Mutation
Translated by Karai of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: Addis
A sudden mishap occurred on the 7th floor. In the pitch-black corridor, an unknown presence quietly approached, and within an instant, it knocked two assassins from the 7th floor, resulting in their deaths.
The situation unfolded so abruptly that no one had time to react. The commander’s voice echoed in the team channel, saying, “ScarletFruit, Cantaloupe, rescue them. Be aware, getting knocked down by the creatures will be fatal.”
ScarletFruit jumped down from a high point and immediately pulled ZenSlasher up. Cantaloupe, who had hurriedly retreated down the stairs, also lifted Watermelon to safety.
Normally, jumping from the 7th floor to the 6th floor would only cause a slight loss of health, not enough to be lethal. However, the two assassins had indeed died. It could only be said that the fatal danger lay not in the fall but in the attack by the creatures on the 7th floor.
None of the murals on the 7th floor were lit, yet the danger had already quietly arrived.
Su Mo immediately reacted and stood back-to-back with the array master, quickly thinking and changing tactics at that moment. “ScarletFruit, go with Team 2 to the 8th floor. Cantaloupe, stay on the 6th floor and be ready to rescue anyone at any time.”
ScarletFruit was surprised and asked, “Aren’t I supposed to stay and heal you?”
“No need. You go to the 8th floor, and Cantaloupe will stay on the 6th. If anyone falls and dies, rescue them immediately.” Su Mo summoned a few beasts to stay around them, with Flower Spirit perched on his head, remaining vigilant of the surroundings.
The creatures were completely invisible, leaving no trace behind. It felt as if they could appear or disappear at any moment. At this time, the array master behind suddenly moved, “There’s wind.”
The judge’s brush spun in the darkness, and a two-layer speed array appeared at their feet. The array master moved swiftly, sweeping his brush towards the sudden gust of wind, striking a peculiar figure hidden in the darkness. The impact sparked a faint light.
Su Mo quickly realized what was happening. He switched his lamp staff to the Wunian Lamp and took a few steps back to avoid a gust of wind that seemed to come directly at him. As if anticipating an attack, he swept the staff horizontally toward a specific spot. The lamp staff made contact with something soft, as if it had hit a switch. Suddenly, two murals lit up in the dark corridor on the seventh floor.
“What the hell are those?! Dressed like that, are they cosplaying as assassins?!” ClearWind, standing on the stairs, saw the two lit murals and also spotted two well-covered hostile units.
The two ‘assassins’ that had been struck became visible. They were dressed head-to-toe in pitch-black nightwear, almost entirely covered in black, with only a pair of crimson beast-like eyes visible above their face masks. Their intentions were clear as they wielded their curved blades and charged straight at Su Mo and Yu Zhen, intent on killing them on the spot.
Su Mo noticed the illuminated murals. One depicted a figure, drawn with chaotic strokes, standing solemnly as if it were a well-trained weapon, ready to break out of the painting and brandish its menacing curved blade in the darkness. There was no doubt that the creatures attacking them were the very beings depicted in the murals.
At that moment, Su Mo’s lamp staff clashed once again with the assassin, and White Tiger leaped to attack. However, instead of harming the assassin, White Tiger was instantly killed by a single strike from the assassin.
Then Watermelon’s voice came through in the team channel, “Its skill deals poison damage. Don’t let its blade cut you—two hits, and you’re dead.”
He checked the battle log and saw that when he was ambushed by the assassins, he had first been slashed, which nearly drained his health. The minor damage from the fall afterward finished him off, killing him instantly. Based on the damage from that skill, two hits at most would be enough for the assassin to deplete a player’s entire health bar.
Cantaloupe asked, “Is the skill damage really that high? Are they fragile?”
Su Mo added, “No, they’re not fragile. Your attacks don’t harm them—they can’t be damaged by player attacks.”
“But they can be controlled,” Yu Zhen said as he cast his Fear array, which directly hit one of the assassins. The swift-moving assassin froze in place, entering a state of fear. “We can’t kill them, but we can control them.”
Su Mo used Zephyr Hawk to slow down another one. “ZenSlasher, Watermelon, go to the 7th floor. Be careful of the wind, and don’t get hit. We need to find all of them.”
He had a general idea of the mechanism on the seventh floor. They couldn’t face these assassins head-on; instead, they had to rely on control and evasion to reduce the frequency of their attacks. Additionally, they needed to locate all the assassins on that floor.
When an assassin was hit, it would reveal its true form, and the corresponding mural would light up. To illuminate all the murals on the seventh floor, they had to control all the revealed assassins and then locate the remaining ones on that floor.
ZenSlasher and Watermelon returned to the seventh floor, quickly moving closer to Momo. Su Mo said, “It’s best to stay close to the walls to avoid being knocked down. I’ll assist you with UnchainedWanderer; you two focus on finding the creatures.”
Watermelon was surprised by the responsibility, asking, “Do we just look for the wind?”
Su Mo replied, “Yes, try to avoid facing them directly. They’ll reveal themselves as soon as they’re attacked.”
The assassins had a variety of control skills, but most of them were single-target, which was almost useless in an environment where they couldn’t locate their opponents. In this situation, the group control abilities of the array master and summoner were far more valuable. With their continuous control, once an assassin was approached, it was relatively easy to force it out of hiding.
“Stay close to the walls to avoid being knocked down,” Su Mo instructed as he and Yu Zhen each watched one direction. “Cantaloupe, get up here quickly and find us.”
Hearing this, Cantaloupe immediately jumped up to the seventh floor. As soon as he arrived, he felt the distinctive atmosphere of the level. After running just a few steps, he suddenly sensed a gust of wind coming from behind and instinctively rolled forward to dodge. At the same time, a Fear array landed behind him, covering his retreat and allowing him to reach his teammates safely.
Yu Zhen remarked, “Ranged skills won’t work; the weapon needs to make direct contact to force the creatures out.”
“Use Cantaloupe as the center,” Su Mo ordered. “Assassins, go out and find the creatures. If your health drops, come back for healing. Array master and summoner, control the creatures. Let’s make the most of our time.”
Su Mo glanced at the remaining skills he had. He and Yu Zhen could indeed chain together continuous hard and soft control, but his skills were divided between single-target and area-of-effect control. The single-target skills could only control one enemy at a time. Judging by the size of the murals and the length of the corridor, there were at least eight more murals left, meaning a total of ten creatures. Their control abilities wouldn’t be enough to manage that many.
“What’s the situation with Team 2?” Su Mo asked, looking up.
“Four people have already jumped across, just Bitter Melon is left,” ScarletFruit replied. “Apple and the others are checking out the murals, and little Firework and I are figuring out how to get Bitter Melon across.”
Bitter Melon’s movement speed was too slow. Even after changing equipment, his initial speed still wasn’t enough to make the jump. In the end, ScarletFruit and the others had to figure out a way to use a rope to pull him up.
“Any unusual situations?” Su Mo inquired.
ScarletFruit glanced back, “The eighth floor is currently safe. We’ve been up here for a while, and aside from the murals, there’s nothing strange. Should we come down and help you?”
Su Mo looked at the setup of both teams. There were only three professions capable of control upstairs, and their movement speed was slow. If they came down, they could control the situation, but escaping might become an issue. “Don’t come down. Leave a few spare ropes for us just in case, and don’t activate the murals yet.”
“We haven’t activated them, we’re just looking,” ClearWind said, keeping his eyes on the mural in front of him and resisting the urge to touch it. In the previous encounters, they had to manually open the dual-layer murals to activate them, so just looking shouldn’t cause any harm.
The murals on the eighth floor were different from those on the previous six floors. The images within the murals appeared to be broken into segments, yet they also seemed to be connected, resembling some kind of special chain. He exchanged a glance with Apple, and they both came to the same conclusion: Could it be that they needed to use this thing to lock down whatever ghostly presence was on the floor below?
Time passed minute by minute, and before they knew it, half an hour had gone by.
Su Mo and Yu Zhen’s chain of controls kept the team safe for the time being. However, apart from the two they found at the beginning, the remaining creatures seemed to have gone into hiding. The wind around them began to grow chaotic, making it harder to gauge the wind’s movements. They tried to knock the creatures down to the sixth floor, but the monsters were clever; they would climb back up after being knocked down. Unable to keep them down, they had to rely on strong control skills.
Su Mo frowned, “They’ve gotten smarter, no longer attacking head-on.”
Upstairs, the others grew bored from waiting and could only stand at the edge, watching the battle below at an angle. “These monsters are that intelligent? They’re even learning to ambush.”
“Assassin-type creatures—they’re no ordinary foes,” ClearWind said as he walked to the edge. “If my range were just a bit longer, I could help them take down the monsters.”
Apple added, “The summoner and magical swordsman have decent range, but there’s the issue of obstacles. They might not be able to hit targets on the next floor, and it’s easy to lose sight of them.”
At that moment, the battle on the seventh floor below suddenly changed. Several gusts of wind rushed toward them. ZenSlasher and Watermelon, who had been prepared, each guarded one direction and managed to force two of the creatures out.
“After the hit, follow up with control. Each of you control one; assassins, chain your soft and hard controls, starting with hard control,” the commander instructed.
As soon as the command was given, two assassins moved in, applied control to the assassin creatures, and quickly retreated a few steps, keeping a close eye on the countdown to the end of the control and preparing for the next one.
“Initiate the next control one second early, and stay around the healer,” Su Mo said, frowning as he looked at the surrounding murals. “If we don’t move, they’ll come to us.”
Their formation shifted, with Cantaloupe being surrounded by four attackers in the center, while four creatures were controlled by the team around them. A single mistake could lead to the creatures pouncing. Given the damage these monsters could inflict, if the control slipped, they’d be easy prey, and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that one strike could take down a player.
At this point, he had no choice but to focus on their commander. The main control responsibilities of the entire team were on the array master and summoner. The array master was in charge of group control, while the summoner focused on single-target control, managing two creatures at once. Theoretically, given their current control skills, under ideal conditions, they could control up to about six creatures. The assassins would each handle one, the array master would group control two, and the summoner would use summoned beasts to single-target control two more.
And this was under ideal conditions. With the array master’s skill chaining, the perfect control chain had a chance of holding together. If there was a disruption, it would result in a complete collapse. With the few people upstairs only watching the murals and nothing else to do, if they could come down to help, it would ease some of the pressure and stabilize the control chain.
Cantaloupe, maintaining the continuous buffs on his teammates, suggested, “Boss, you should have two more DPS come down. I’m worried that our control chain might break…”
He had just started speaking when the wind around them became chaotic, causing everyone’s hearts to race.
“Be careful, these monsters might come at us all at once,” Su Mo said, focusing on controlling the creatures. Suddenly, he felt a gust of wind coming straight at him. He swiftly sidestepped and used the Wunian Lamp to force it out.
Suddenly, a strong wind hit him from behind. These winds seemed to be targeting him deliberately. In addition to the one he had just forced out, there were two more! Su Mo decisively swung his staff again to deal with one, and as another monster attacked, he quickly activated his skill, evading the damage and crashing into Yu Zhen, who was not far behind him.
However, the monsters did not give up. After losing their initial target, they quickly locked on and transformed into swift winds charging toward Su Mo. Su Mo used his [Line Link] skill to shorten the distance, avoiding a critical blow at the last moment. The disorienting effect of the teleportation quickly faded, but Su Mo didn’t have time to reposition himself and shouted, “Brother!”
Yu Zhen reacted swiftly, grabbing Su Mo by the belt and pulling him back half a step. The Judge’s brush swung through the air, forcing the ambushing monster out. “Momo, seven of them!”
In an instant, three of the murals on the seventh floor lit up, bringing the total to seven illuminated murals.
Cantaloupe’s pupils contracted. Seven monsters meant they were likely about to lose their control loop! At that moment, the commander nearby rushed in, using his lamp staff to pin one of the small monsters, continuously disrupting its attacks with basic strikes. “Continue the loop. Stay close to the walls, gather the monsters, and then spread out!”
As soon as the command was given, the array master sprang into action, casting a gathering array that pulled all seven monsters together. He then followed up with a Fear array, quickly saying, “Assassins, cover the left and right.”
The two assassins repositioned and maintained control over the left and right sides.
At this moment, the summoner summoned two more beasts, bringing the total to five on the field: Solitary Wolf, Zephyr Hawk, Spectral Fox, Thunder Lion, and Lunar Feline. Almost all of their available control summons were in play, with three providing group control and two offering single-target control.
“The monster gathering array is on cooldown,” Yu Zhen reminded.
Su Mo released another ferret, saying, “I’ll handle getting them in.”
Cantaloupe, anxious, said, “It’s not enough; the skill cooldowns can’t keep up.”
Watermelon and ZenSlasher shared this concern. While the assassin’s single-target control could handle one monster, they were powerless against the others. With all their focus on control, there was a risk they might overlook the remaining three hidden monsters. This situation was indeed pushing their limits, and they couldn’t understand why Su Mo hesitated. Wouldn’t it be better to have a few more teammates come down to help?
“Just keep to the control as planned,” Su Mo said, frowning. “Brother, place the next gathering array further out.”
Yu Zhen asked, “Push them to the edge?”
“Yes,” Su Mo quickly replied. “Apple, FireworksAndLanterns, adjust your positions to the edge of the eighth floor, slightly to the front. FireworksAndLanterns, place a summoner marker. Assassins, stop control for the next cycle.”
The two people on the eighth floor immediately understood the situation and quickly found a suitable output location. FireworksAndLanterns positioned a summoner at the maximum summon range, saying, “Momo, this is as far as we can go.”
The summoned beast was positioned at the outer edge, at the maximum distance reachable on the eighth floor.
“They’re coming,” Su Mo said. As soon as the assassins’ control stopped, he dodged the assassin’s curved blade and used his staff to sweep at the assassin’s waist, sending them directly into Yu Zhen’s gathering array. Using a few seconds of the gathering array, he pushed the assassins to the edge and into the attack range of FireworksAndLanterns and Apple on the eighth floor.
FireworksAndLanterns, excited, called out, “They’re here, they’re here!”
He immediately used Zephyr Hawk for a group slow and, along with Apple, managed to group control the swarm of small monsters.
Cantaloupe was stunned. He hadn’t expected Momo to use the edge of the floor and the terrain’s slope to create a narrow output space for the high-level teammates. With two additional controllers, they could effectively manage the excess monster control.
Su Mo took the opportunity to mark the monsters for the team, saying, “FireworksAndLanterns, focus on controlling these two red-marked targets. Apple, coordinate with UnchainedWanderer’s group control; make sure it’s continuous. Be careful not to use displacement control—avoid confusion and knockback effects.”
Displacement control would disrupt the monsters’ positions, causing them to move out of the control range.
“Watermelon and ZenSlasher, continue focusing on the two blue-marked targets on the left and right. I’ll handle the rest,” Su Mo said, glancing at Cantaloupe. “Healer, keep an eye on the monsters. Alert us if the wind changes!”
Aside from the occasional need for the assassin to advance for control, the healer, array master, and summoner were all stationed at the wall, handling long-range control. Therefore, Cantaloupe’s main protection focus was the two vulnerable assassins.
Su Mo asked, “ClearWind, do you understand the mural content?”
ClearWind responded quickly, “I think I got it. I promise not to act prematurely!”
“Then, those not involved in controlling on the eighth floor should pay attention. As soon as all the murals on the seventh floor are illuminated, immediately activate the murals on the eighth floor,” Su Mo instructed. “The eighth floor murals might also pose a problem for us, so be vigilant.”
At that moment, the last three hidden assassins appeared, charging directly toward the two assassins at the edge.
Cantaloupe shouted a warning, and the healer’s buffs immediately fell on the teammates, quickly restoring their health the moment it started to drop. Watermelon and ZenSlasher seized the opportunity to counterattack, immediately forcing the monsters out.
ZenSlasher shouted, “Momo, there’s one more heading your way!”
Hearing this, Su Mo reacted immediately. The ferret’s boost in movement speed allowed him to evade the attack at the first opportunity. He then swiftly countered and forced out the last assassin. At that moment, all the murals on the seventh floor lit up completely. He shouted, “Activate the murals on the eighth floor!”
[[Senro Tower – Seventh Floor] The terrifying assassins have emerged; we’re all doomed. Stop them quickly.]
ClearWind started muttering, “Chains, chains. I must have guessed right!”
He reached in, quickly pulled his hand back, and saw the murals on the eighth floor lighting up one by one. Countless chains shot out from the murals, charging straight down to the seventh floor.
[[Senro Tower – Eighth Floor] You’re clever. We can use the chains to bind them, so they won’t be able to kill anyone.]
The chains, as flexible as snakes, descended rapidly and quickly bound one of the monsters under the gathering array. The bound assassin lost its ability to move and was lifted high into the air.
“Everyone scatter! ScarletFruit, throw down the ropes for us!” Su Mo’s eyes narrowed as he observed the chains moving erratically, binding one assassin and then quickly rising and stopping. “No, everyone else, run! Stay away from the chains!”
The people on the eighth floor quickly moved to the edge to prepare the ropes for rescue. Suddenly, Cantaloupe caught sight of the chains emerging from the mural and, after counting a few numbers, exclaimed in shock, “There are 16 chains!”
There were a total of 8 murals on the eighth floor, with 2 chains emerging from each mural.
With only ten assassins on the seventh floor, who would the remaining six chains bind?
ScarletFruit’s face changed slightly upon hearing this. “Run quickly!!!”
The ten assassins were swiftly captured by the chains and hung high, swaying in the wind. After securing the ten small monsters, the remaining chains did not stop. Instead, they quickly targeted the five people remaining in the seventh-floor area and rushed towards them.
ClearWind was stunned. “Oh my god, do these chains not distinguish between friend and foe!”
Cantaloupe turned around. “Hurry up! Find the positions of the five extra chains, or everyone will be bound.”
Su Mo pursed his lips, evading the chains’ attacks with his high movement speed. The chains seemed to ignore all forms of control, and even a brush against them could cause a loss of control. While running and contemplating, he was about to use a healing potion when he suddenly noticed that his health was fully restored.
He realized with surprise that the healing mark on him was from the ninth level.
The mark had a duration of 6 seconds, indicating it had been applied by the healer when the chains emerged.
The team on the seventh floor had already dispersed. Su Mo had not paid much attention to Cantaloupe before; his impression was that of a chatty healer among the group. However, in that critical moment, he had not only continued to provide healing buffs but had also used a ninth-level buff with a duration of 6 seconds. This continuous healing mark showed that Cantaloupe’s attention was fully on everyone, ensuring that even in the midst of danger, his first priority was to maintain the healing buffs for his teammates.
Without that healing mark, they would have likely been left with critical health from the chains just moments ago.
Su Mo quickly searched for Cantaloupe’s position and saw the healer at an angle behind him. Cantaloupe’s movement speed was not as fast as ScarletFruit’s, so in this situation, it was only a matter of time before the chains caught up with him.
Cantaloupe was still desperately running, but the speed boost from his escape skill was about to end.
He was about to be caught.
At that moment, a massive bear landed in front of him, and a summoned creature suddenly appeared on its neck.
Momo’s ferret enveloped him, providing an 8-second speed buff.
Cantaloupe shouted, “Be careful!”
The chains smashed through the bear without any difficulty; the summoned bear’s tens of thousands of health points were insufficient to withstand even a single hit.
Su Mo’s expression turned grim. The bear couldn’t even take one hit? In a critical moment, he activated his dash and rolled out, hurriedly avoiding the chains that pierced through the bear.
At that moment, a powerful gust of wind came from the opposite direction.
His vision instantly turned black and white.
