Genius Chapter 41: Item in the bag

Chapter 41: Item in the bag

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: Karai

After watching the sightseeing video, Su Mo made plans for the trip to Purple Water Star. After dinner, he took a nap for an hour before logging back in.

During his offline time, his teammates had briefly explored the vicinity and located the location of the altar. Passing by the beautiful Purple Water Lake below, they could walk all the way to the deepest part along the lakeside path where the altar was located, the ultimate destination of their dungeon — the depths of Purple Flower Valley.

“What type of challenge will the third level be?” Su Mo asked after logging in and rearranging his inventory, realizing he hadn’t used items like Illumination Scrolls at all. “A quiz?”

“Quizzes are mainly in the second level. I checked the forums at noon, and several teams have cleared it, but they didn’t encounter quizzes in the third level,” Yu Zhen continued, “The chances of us encountering a quiz are slim.”

So far, in Qixi Festival’s five-star difficulty dungeon, quiz levels had always been in the second level. There hadn’t been any quiz levels in the third level encountered yet, which was good news for them. Quizzes mainly tested the understanding between the two people. At most, they had only gone through dungeons and tasks together, so their level of understanding certainly didn’t match that of other couples, so it was best not to encounter this kind of test.

After preparing, they walked down the nearby path. Just as they entered the range, the sound of the third level opening appeared in their ears. The scene didn’t change, but there was a new change in their system view. The original team status, plug-in system, and others were all hidden. They could still use skills, but couldn’t access related interfaces to view details.

Various game systems disappeared, but their teammate was still by their side.

“Did they close our interface system?” Su Mo was a bit surprised. “Is this related to the third level, or are they just letting us enjoy the scenery?”

“Obviously not possible,” Yu Zhen surveyed the surroundings. There was only the sound of the wind, no other strange noises. “The forums say the third level is a monster level, similar to what we experienced in the second level this morning.”

Su Mo knew that the main AI wouldn’t make the third level a simple scenic level. Turning off the interface system meant that they couldn’t see detailed status information and couldn’t communicate with others for the time being. The lightness skill had no restrictions, but the cooldown time was hidden. The only visible information was personal health points—

The purpose was very clear. The game designers believed that the interface system settings would affect the game’s balance or hide something in the upcoming level.

Keeping health points visible suggested that health was crucial information, indicating that the failure criterion was likely a health depletion.

As the two walked halfway down the path, Su Mo saw various small monsters distributed on both sides. These small monsters seemed unusually quiet, unlike the vines they encountered in the second level.

“Be careful,” Yu Zhen warned.

Su Mo focused his attention on them.

The small monsters were gargoyles, composed of greenish-gray stone blocks stacked together, without limbs. From a distance, they looked like stone lanterns standing by the path. Su Mo took a few steps closer, intending to observe the two nearest gargoyles. Suddenly, he stepped into their attack range. Red light flashed from the stacked stone blocks, and strings of red flames spread among the gargoyles, lighting up all the monsters.

“Crap,” Su Mo stepped back a few steps and summoned his bear.

Yu Zhen quickly stacked two damage-boosting arrays, concentrating all his attack power on the nearest small monster. Suddenly, something unexpected happened—

“Wait!” Su Mo’s health bar rapidly decreased and, in an irreversible full-force attack, instantly hit zero.

[player Momo has died, challenge failed]

[You have died, losing 500 gold coins.]

The red text warning and the main AI alert sounded in their ears. The sudden event caught them off guard. As they returned to the starting point, Yu Zhen realized, “Reflective monsters?”

Reflective monsters reflect all the damage dealt to them back onto the player.

The initial combo, bolstered by the array master’s two damage-boosting arrays, concentrated most of their powerful skills. By the time they noticed their health, the reflected damage had already killed Momo completely.

“Not just that, the reflection probably had a double damage boost,” Su Mo observed the distant monsters. “No wonder they disabled the interface; we can target the monsters but can’t gauge their status. It looks like we can’t attack recklessly. These monsters have some trick to them.”

The two approached the gargoyles again, this time without rash actions. Instead, Su Mo used his summoned beasts to attack. The monsters’ attack power was high, cutting down half of the bear’s health in seconds. Moreover, Su Mo noticed a damage-boosting array under the monster’s feet.

“Damage-boosting array…”

“The bear?”

They both voiced their confusion. The next second, the summoned bear died, and the alerted gargoyles rushed towards them. Su Mo immediately retreated several steps, “Fall back! These small monsters are problematic.”

However, retreat was impossible; these monsters had no disengagement range and kept attacking until their challenge failed.

The small monsters relentlessly pursued, forcing the two to split and run in opposite directions along the path. Su Mo glanced back and clearly saw the array master’s damage-boosting array under the monsters’ feet. From the outside, the monsters used only basic attacks, but they actually possessed the array master’s skills.

These monsters… could they be…

“Something’s wrong, we should abandon the challenge,” Yu Zhen suggested.

[Player UnchainedWanderer died, the challenge failed]

Su Mo snapped back to reality, hearing the challenge failure notification. Both were back at the starting point.

“They’re skill monsters, the batch following me had array master’s skills,” Yu Zhen said, having lost a piece of equipment. “My situation was a bit worse. The monsters following me had summoner skills and summoned a bunch of small monsters to follow me.”

These gargoyles were not ordinary monsters. They not only had reflective damage skills but also fully copied the summoner and array master’s skills. Array master’s skills could boost damage and defense, while the summoner’s skills included controlling a horde of summoned beasts. These two professions had complex, functional skills, and the presence of so many skill-wielding monsters meant they might have to face multiple system-controlled summoners and array masters simultaneously.

Fighting wasn’t an option due to the reflective damage. Not fighting meant they couldn’t hold out for long, as they only had defensive arrays and no healing.

Su Mo frowned slightly, thinking about the peculiarities they had encountered since entering the level: the majority of their interface system being disabled and then encountering gargoyles with the same professions as theirs. This wasn’t a coincidence. Since it was a game setting, every arrangement had its purpose.

Su Mo suggested, “The monsters might not all need to be fought. They could be mechanism monsters.” He added, “If I’m not mistaken, there should be nine of each type, making a total of eighteen gargoyles. But this is the Qixi Festival dungeon. If we use traditional thinking to find mechanism monsters, it probably won’t work. Cooperation? Tacit understanding? Trust?” Su Mo hesitated slightly. “Given the theme, these mechanism monsters must test related themes or conditions. Could it be cooperation? Do we need to work together to kill a specific monster within a certain time?”

“The monsters are triggered together. The mechanism monster might be one in eighteen, or one in nine,” Yu Zhen pondered aloud. “But how do we find the mechanism monster? Do we test or keep fighting?”

Su Mo said, “Another point is that you can see the summoner gargoyles while I can only see the array master gargoyles, meaning they don’t overlap.”

Yu Zhen paused, “Then there must be two mechanism monsters; you need to find one, and I need to find one.”

Reasoning and fighting the monsters seemed the most logical approach. Random attempts would just waste time and resources. The Qixi Festival dungeon’s content varied for different teams, but the event’s theme remained the same: tacit understanding and trust. Su Mo paused, “We missed something. We didn’t go through the quiz level. What does the quiz test?”

“Understanding each other…” Yu Zhen suddenly realized, “You mean the mechanism monster might share similarities with us?”

“It wouldn’t arbitrarily set up monsters identical to our professions, and make us see only our own. Obviously, it doesn’t want us to exploit loopholes, like me finding the summoner’s monster and you finding the array master’s. The one we understand best is ourselves,” Su Mo’s gaze returned to the distant monsters. “Voice channels are still open. All the monsters look identical except for their skills. The main AI is confident that even if we communicate, it won’t affect the outcome.”

Yu Zhen followed Su Mo’s line of thought, “The key to the mechanism monster lies in you and me. We must look to find it, and it won’t be surface-level clues.”

They quickly organized their thoughts and decided to try again with the gargoyles.

As they engaged the monsters again, Su Mo focused entirely on them. The monsters looked almost identical, and the array master’s arrays could be placed on other monsters. To Su Mo, it seemed like all the monsters carried arrays. Without being able to mark monsters or see health bars, determining the monsters’ types among the crowd was challenging.

“Let’s split up,” Su Mo decisively pulled away from Yu Zhen. The monsters then split into two groups, changing the number of monsters each needed to observe.

After an observation round, they identified two mechanisms:

1. There were 18 monsters, nine summoner monsters, and nine array master monsters. When they separated, the monsters also divided and followed different people.
2. Attacking the monsters caused reflective double damage: attacking a summoner monster hurt Momo, and attacking an array master monster hurt UnchainedWanderer. The monsters had high attack power but low health and moved quickly, dealing significant damage to players.

Su Mo initially thought of attacking each monster to find differences, but by the fourth monster, UnchainedWanderer was nearly dead. This indicated that the mechanism monsters were likely indistinguishable from ordinary ones, and their health would only allow them to survive the reflective damage from killing one monster each.

Without a probing method, they had to identify the mechanism monsters amidst the horde.

Su Mo landed on the water, using his lightness skill to gain some distance. The monsters followed him straight across the water. His focus remained on them, and he noticed a detail. The monsters were indeed stacking arrays, but the arrays under each monster were different.

Array masters could stack up to four arrays, with the earliest arrays at the bottom and the latest at the top, each with distinct visual effects. Each gargoyle had different arrays under them.

“Could it be operating habits?” Su Mo paused at the thought.

Yu Zhen said, “It shouldn’t be that simple. I used different opening arrays to deal with various bosses or opponents. I just looked, and these monsters have different summoning sequences, which also appear in the same order.”

At that moment, Su Mo suddenly noticed the monster farthest from him. This monster had two layers of buff arrays and two layers of defense arrays, but nothing else. Realizing something, he dashed forward. Just then, the system displayed a failure notification.

Outside the battle.

“Damn, why did we fail again?” ClearWind was completely baffled. From his perspective, these monsters looked exactly the same. Apart from seeing the summoned creatures by switching to UnchainedWanderer’s view, there was no other difference. “How are we supposed to deal with these mechanism monsters?”

[Other than knowing we might need to hit the mechanism monsters, I’m clueless.]

[Isn’t this the Qixi Festival challenge? Shouldn’t it be a high-difficulty dungeon mechanism?]

[How can we play without a healer? We lose health whether we attack or not, and if we make two mistakes, our teammates are done for.]

[Suddenly, answering questions seems better. At least I can understand the questions; this, I can’t comprehend at all.]

[Is this a 5-star difficulty? Feels like it’s almost 6-star.]

“I can’t figure out these monsters. They all look the same when mixed together,” ClearWind said in confusion, “Isn’t this a bit much? Testing coordination? It’s already a brain-teaser.”

[I think it’s based on luck.]

[Not being able to mark the monsters is really annoying. They easily get mixed up unless you keep an eye on one.]

[I remember momo’s memory is excellent. Shouldn’t he be able to keep track of a few?]

[Reminder, there are nine on the field.]

“Why isn’t my buddy moving?” ClearWind was racking his brains but couldn’t figure it out. They, as spectators, couldn’t understand it; how could the players inside the game? Just then, he saw momo seemingly take out an item, a flash of light appearing momentarily. “What’s that?”

Inside [Purple Flower Valley].

Su Mo was thinking quickly.

This failure was due to their misjudgment of each other’s health. With all the interfaces turned off, they couldn’t see their teammates’ health bars. Health reduction was related to both their own attacks and the boss’s attacks, affecting both sides’ monsters. Even if they reported their health changes timely, there was still a margin of error, making it hard to judge directly, leading to a miscalculation that resulted in teammates’ health dropping to zero before the gargoyles’.

“This time, we lost too much health during the probing phase, plus the cooldown of the red potion is long.” Yu Zhen had just discovered a monster that operated like momo, but before he could test it, they received a failure notification. “I just found one.”

“Should I say it’s several?” Su Mo looked at Yu Zhen. “I observed that at least five monsters on my side are using your common array routines, such as those for dealing with groups, bosses, and even the ones we used for ambushes in the wild. I think these monsters have our battle records as templates, so it’s not just one. Maybe five, six, or even all nine are our battle templates.”

Yu Zhen was surprised, “You remember all that?”

“I have a good memory.” Su Mo was distracted, casually replying, “I’ve coordinated with you so much that your array routines have almost become my habits… Wait, I have a guess. Should we try again?” He smiled, “Since we don’t know which template it’s using, we might fail several more times. Let’s be prepared for level drops and money losses.”

“No worries.” Yu Zhen relaxed, “At worst, we’ll just lose all our equipment, and we can go out and exchange gear.”

Su Mo didn’t want to imagine, “That would be too miserable.”

“Losing equipment isn’t too bad.” Yu Zhen looked at Su Mo, “You can try freely. When the time comes, I’ll go exchange the gear.”

“Wasting money like that isn’t wise.” Su Mo stretched, “It’s not too hard. You just need to focus on the gargoyles summoning Zephyr Hawk and Solitary Wolf.” He paused, “Oh, and extend your hand.”

Yu Zhen extended his hand.

Suddenly, a red thread extended from the summoner’s hand, wrapping around his wrist and disappearing. Yu Zhen was slightly puzzled, “What’s this?”

“It’s an item I got last time, called [Fate Thread Connecting a Thousand Miles].” Su Mo quickly activated a skill. The shared health state appeared on his body, and his health jumped by 1000 points, distributed evenly due to the array master’s health distribution. “It has a shared health mechanism. With this, health loss will be averaged.”

“Our health judgments are too slow, and it’s hard to distinguish between attack damage and counter-damage, which affects our skill estimates.” Su Mo said satisfactorily, “This item finally comes in handy. Now, when you lose health, I’ll know immediately, and we can distinguish the damage type. You will also know my health.” He thought of another benefit, “Oh, right, the red potion won’t be wasted either. One dose, two heals.”

Author’s note: 

Brother Zhen: Is it really like this?