Calamity Messenger-Chapter 75 - 61: Camp Tremors

The fifth wave of attack brought the Fourth-Turn Demon Fiend ’Thunderclaw Beast.’ Compared to the Thunder Frenzy Lion, though the Thunderclaw Beast’s claw strikes don’t inflict thunder damage, it has a more terrifying beastly charge. It can power up on the spot and then dash forward, and if you get hit head-on or even grazed, you’ll lose half your body.

Even Qian Gongyu and the others, and even Yan Qing himself had to be extremely cautious, not daring to get too close and only helping to trim the Thunderclaw Beast’s feet from the edges.

After an earth-shattering fierce battle, the Thunderclaw Beast finally collapsed outside the city walls.

It took three and a half minutes.

"Is this... the power of Foundation Establishment?" Jie Yuan Shao murmured.

Standing at the forefront of everyone are the ’Blade Battle General’ and the ’Tear Crown Mermaid,’ upgrades of the Blade Warrior and the Daffodil Mermaid, respectively, short-named high-level statues. Upgrading to high-level statues requires a lot of rare resources. Even after several rounds of accumulation by Yan Qing and others, they could only upgrade these two statues.

Before the upgrade, they guessed that the high-level statues would likely be at the Fourth-Turn level, but they didn’t expect such a vast difference between Fourth-Turn statues. The Thunderclaw Beast, which could smash Third-Turn Messengers like toys, appeared like a big dog being toyed with in front of the Blade Battle General and the Tear Crown Mermaid.

The Blade Battle General didn’t gain any special abilities, except that its speed became extremely fast. It could slash away the Thunderclaw Beast’s teeth in the blink of an eye and dodge its charge with a gliding step, a level of perfect evasion that Yan Qing couldn’t achieve — Jiang Shi’s evasion range was too short, he would still get hit after dodging. Until the Thunderclaw Beast fell, the Blade Battle General didn’t lose a drop of blood.

It wasn’t just the Blade Battle General’s merit. In fact, the Thunderclaw Beast seemed to have a token that unleashed extremely fierce wide-area claw strikes. But each time it attempted this, the Tear Crown Mermaid would gently point its long spear, forming a massive Water Mirror before the Thunderclaw Beast, reflecting its deadly attack back onto itself.

The Tear Crown Mermaid’s attack was far less effective than the Blade Battle General’s, not even as strong as other Comrades Association statues, but without it, this battle would not have been so easy; its unique functionality stood out.

This is the true Fourth-Turn combat power, Foundation Establishment creatures. Throughout the battle, everyone was essentially just watching them perform. Yan Qing and his team, let alone the ordinary statues, appeared lackluster in comparison.

Compared with them, the Thunder Frenzy Lion and the Thunderclaw Beast were just small soldiers or minor leaders at the Fourth-Turn level. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

Once the statues returned to their original state, Qian Gongyu couldn’t wait to touch the Tear Crown Mermaid’s long spear, full of envy, "Is this the Fourth-Turn Token? Is there a way to borrow it for a while to play with it?"

"Please, Jiang Shi, if you can, please don’t tell me," Shang Xinlei put her hands together, "I’m just an ordinary person with money and influence, unable to handle such a great opportunity."

"Is it really possible?" Jie Yuan Shao suddenly turned her head, this aristocratic lady’s throat moved, and her expression was filled with fear yet a bit of anticipation, like a wild cat seeing a stranger offering cat food, eagerly asking, "Can we really get a Fourth-Turn Token?"

Yan Qing couldn’t be bothered with them, glanced at the countdown, and was momentarily stunned.

"The next wave of monsters will attack in 64:15"

He looked several times to make sure the time was correct before breaking the bad news to his teammates.

Qian Gongyu hadn’t reacted yet, stretching and saying, "So tired, we have to search for another half an hour."

"No, that’s not right!" Shang Xinlei said, "We accelerated the fifth wave of attack, don’t we get to stack two rounds of search time? Why is it only an extra tea time?"

"That means, after the fifth wave, the search time is only a cup of tea," Jie Yuan Shao analyzed calmly, "But yesterday, after the fifth wave, we clearly had half an hour."

At this time, Yan Qing clicked the [?] button next to the countdown. It took three days, and only by the third day did he remember to understand the specific rules of this instance instead of blindly playing by feel.

"The first four waves are beginner levels, with rewards for passing: 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, and 60 minutes of rest time. After the fifth wave, each completion only awards 5 minutes of basic rest time."

"Special rewards of 60 minutes of rest time for first-time completion of the fifth, tenth, and twentieth levels."

"Starting the next wave of monster offensives early stacks rest time."

There’s only reward time for the first four waves, and thereafter it’s pretty much just five minutes?

But Yan Qing reasoned that this made sense — what player has that much time to soak in this instance? The first four levels alone total two and a half hours, and even though most of that is spent collecting resources, such lengthy playtime is quite outrageous; except for university students and the unemployed, who can casually carve out two and a half uninterrupted hours to play a game?

Not to mention, the instance’s limit is ninety-nine levels; if every level ends with an hour of searching, wouldn’t players have to play for over a hundred hours? It would sound absurd not just to players; the government would suspect the creators of ’The Messenger’ of conducting large-scale sudden death incidents through virtual games.

The correct way to play this instance should be to use the first four waves daily to gather resources and then speedrun through the later levels, adapting on the fly when hitting tougher challenges. Yan Qing had been stuck in the first five waves, only realizing this truth today.

Once kids step out of the ivory tower, they will find that the world doesn’t give you much prep time.