Chapter 93: Bumping the Thread

The octagonal three-section staff instantly dissolved into countless glowing fragments of data and vanished.

One Beast understood at once what had happened. Mikiro Beast must be dead. Only if he were dead would the octagonal three-section staff, as part of his body, disappear with him.

As for why he had died, One Beast did not dare to make a firm judgment, though a faint suspicion had already formed in his heart. In short, Mikiro Beast had been burned to death.

Perhaps it was simply his nature. Perhaps Mikiro Beast felt he could not defeat One Beast. In any case, when faced with that sea of fire, he did not flee. Instead, he found a place to lie in ambush, intending to launch a surprise attack on One Beast.

But trapped in the midst of the flames, no matter how cleverly he concealed himself, he could not avoid taking damage from the blaze. In truth, by the time he tried to ambush One Beast, Mikiro Beast was already at the end of his strength. If One Beast had not rushed in at that moment, and had instead chosen to wait, Mikiro Beast would likely have died not long after.

One Beast had not expected that, in the end, he would still fall into Mikiro Beast’s trap. But Mikiro Beast had also overestimated his own defenses and vitality. If he had held out just a little longer, he might have found a far better angle from which to strike One Beast.

If the ambush had truly succeeded and One Beast had failed to react in time, then Mikiro Beast would naturally have been the one to win. Unfortunately, there are no ifs in this world.

In fact, One Beast had been ambushed, but Mikiro Beast could not hold on any longer either. Both sides lost, yet One Beast survived, while Mikiro Beast was already dead.

After Mikiro Beast died, a large mass of glowing data drifted out from where the octagonal three-section staff had burst apart and flowed into One Beast’s body. On one hand, it raised One Beast’s base attributes; on the other, it restored him to peak condition.

Afterward, One Beast also obtained Mikiro Beast’s Proof from that place. He did not know what use it had, but surely Digital Beast Enterprise would not bother updating some useless item merely to waste space on its own servers.

After dealing with Mikiro Beast, he emerged once more. However, this time, he did not continue fighting. Instead, he logged out directly.

After logging out, when One Beast logged in again, his position would be within this instance—more precisely, within this vast expanse of space.

This was a benefit given by Digital Beast Enterprise. Perhaps even they knew that it was already very late, and that the number of twelve gatekeeper bosses was too great. If they were all defeated in one go, to put it exaggeratively, the battle might last until dawn.

Still, night was meant for rest, and by the next day, there would surely be many people who needed to go to work, attend school, or go on dates and the like. Besides, there was no need to rush the assault on the instance. For that reason, Digital Beast Enterprise had set up this feature.

Being able to log out inside an instance and then log back in while still inside it was something One Beast had seen for the first time, and for now, it was the only time. But he suspected there would be many more such occasions in the future.

After all, there were countless holidays throughout the year, and the game would certainly continue to update with these large-scale instances. The only question was when they would appear. In the past few days, there had already been so many updates that it seemed unlikely another would come in the near future.

One Beast even suspected that such a large-scale instance might only appear after someone fulfilled some kind of condition. After all, with everyone’s levels so low right now, there were indeed no shortage of powerful and formidable mature-stage Digital Beasts, but in the end, they were still only mature-stage Digital Beasts.

In any case, One Beast had already logged out of the game. Afterward, he handed the headset to the nurse and fell into a deep sleep. He slept all the way until the next morning.

Because he still needed an IV drip, and because nothing in the game was urgent, One Beast did not log in again that morning. Instead, he sat in his hospital bed and browsed posts in Digital Beast Enterprise’s game forum on his computer.

It had to be said that today’s posts were nothing like those from the previous few days, no longer brimming with such fierce hostility. On the contrary, most of them were from the day before.

One post in particular was little more than a boast. The gist was that the poster had sold a dungeon ticket, and had sold it for fifteen hundred yuan. The seller himself was only a college student, yet in one stroke he had earned a month’s living expenses, and was overjoyed.

That kind of bragging was probably within Digital Beast Enterprise’s tolerance. After all, it was only natural. Besides, one side was willing to sell and the other willing to buy, so there was little point in them interfering.

However, after One Beast clicked into the post, he was surprised to find the poster’s newest reply to himself. It said that he had been killed many times inside the instance, so many times that even the tickets on his person had been used up.

At that moment, he remembered the ticket he had just sold, and wanted to go to the marketplace to buy another one. But he discovered that all the tickets in the marketplace had already been swept clean.

Wizard Beast’s reset time had already passed, which meant the total number of tickets would no longer increase. Every ticket consumed made the rest all the more precious. Of course, precious was one thing, but whether they could still be sold was another matter entirely.

Those willing to spend more than a thousand, even two thousand yuan on a ticket must have had some spare cash to begin with. But once they cleared the instance, no one else would be buying tickets anymore. And besides them, how many others would still be willing to buy one? There would be some, but very few.

Not to mention the poster One Beast was reading about. He had used up all his tickets, and was still lamenting to others that he had actually been foolish enough to sell one in the first place. But if a ticket really appeared in the marketplace at that moment, would he rush to grab it?

Of course not.

Setting aside whether he could even get it, just think about it: if a ticket were sold to him for two thousand yuan, that would already be five hundred more than the price he had sold it for. By present standards, that was pretty good. And yet, he still would not buy it.

Because fifteen hundred yuan was enough for him to live quite comfortably for a month, and if he spent carefully, even a month and a half would not be impossible. Two thousand yuan, if he were frugal, might even last him two months. To gamble two months’ living expenses on a ticket, to gamble on whether it might bring him greater returns, was something few people would be willing to do. After all, the future is hazy and uncertain, while the present is already in one’s hands.