Global Game: I Can Choose Instance Rewards

Chapter 839 - 518: Resurrection and Farming Experience_2

"The two players who ambushed me last night and got killed by me don’t need to be resurrected. They’re too weak—up against the Guardian, they’re basically free loot. But where did the others go? I only saw three white guys and two black guys... that’s weird..."

The abnormal survival situation made Wang Zhifan feel something was off. After searching for a while without results, he decided to use his Underworld Envoy abilities to talk with the ghosts he ran into and have them provide some clues.

"Hungry... so hungry..."

"Blood... fresh blood..."

"Humans... over there... kill them all..."

...

Ghosts were different from ordinary human souls. Most of them only retained the instinct to kill and had very little intelligence; only powerful or special individuals had any real ability to communicate.

After some effort, Wang Zhifan finally got some useful intel and learned that people had indeed died last night, including a few players he had seen before.

Following the directions of the ghosts to the relevant area, he used his Underworld Envoy power to summon souls, temporarily calling back from the Underworld the souls of several dead players—four in total.

He was more familiar with two of them; they were members of that Xia Country party he’d met in Xiaohe Village. Aside from the female player in that party, the other two had both already turned into wandering souls.

"Hate... I hate so much... Ah Ning actually betrayed... killed me... I’ve never treated her badly for even a moment..."

As soon as the soul of the leader of the Xia Country party was summoned, he started muttering to himself, radiating a huge amount of resentment.

"What happened... what’s wrong with me... my whole body feels so light and floaty..."

The gunner player’s soul looked utterly confused, as if he had no idea what had happened to him right before he died.

"Xia Country people... damn them... revenge..."

"My skill is almost off cooldown... I can turn around and kill those Xia Country people chasing us..."

The two Han Country players were the same. Right up to the moment of death they were focused on the Xia Country players pursuing them and didn’t realize they had suddenly dropped dead, wiped together with almost everyone else.

Seeing this, Wang Zhifan focused his questions on the leader of the Xia Country party. From him he learned the cause of their deaths, and was speechless to discover it actually had something to do with himself.

"These players were insta-killed when that female ghost Guardian’s eyes flashed red? But they weren’t even nearby at the time—that far away and they still died? I got hit by that red light at close range and was fine!"

The unexpected truth struck Wang Zhifan as a bit absurd.

Back when he was fighting, he hadn’t paid much attention to that red-light skill; it barely left an impression. He hadn’t expected it to be the main culprit behind multiple players dropping dead, and from an extremely long distance at that.

"Looks like these players were nowhere near strong enough... they can’t even tank one skill from the Guardian. They’re not qualified to support my plan at all... resurrecting them would just be a waste of effort."

After wrapping up the matter, Wang Zhifan sent the souls back to the Underworld and left, without resurrecting them.

Besides the fact their corpses were basically gone—making a proper resurrection that required a physical body too troublesome—their displayed strength had disappointed him. He didn’t think they were qualified to be part of his plan.

"I can only hope the remaining players are strong enough. And that the NPCs pull their weight too. Otherwise they might not be able to deal with the Guardian..."

After some thought, Wang Zhifan felt his grand plan might not be as solid as he’d hoped. There was likely a problem with the main combat power, which left him conflicted, since he didn’t want to act personally and trigger punishment from the Underworld.

"Judging from how I’ve been using it so far, the Underworld Envoy identity is incredibly useful. And I’ve got infinite lifespan, which perfectly cancels out the resurrection cost it brings, so there’s no way I can give it up...

If the other Guardians don’t drop Gold Coins, then I can only settle for second best and just kill some ghosts the Underworld doesn’t care about, farm more EXP."

For the first time, Wang Zhifan realized that his plan might very well fail. So he considered everything and made his final decision: he would keep his Underworld Envoy identity, even if that meant the rewards from subsequent instances would be much lower.

Time passed day by day, and he started following his own schedule.

Aside from acting as the behind-the-scenes organizer, gathering people to eliminate the Land of the Dead Soul Guardian, he spent almost all his remaining time on grinding mobs.

And he wasn’t just grinding randomly; he ignored the truly weak trash mobs.

Because those gave almost no EXP; some of them didn’t give any EXP even if you killed them.

Only the elite ghosts were to his liking: they provided decent EXP, and the Underworld didn’t care if they were killed.

After more than half a month of this, he had basically killed off seventy to eighty percent of the powerful ghosts in the Land of the Dead Soul, all of them one-shot by him face-to-face—approaching under the cover of his Underworld Envoy status and then giving them a quick end.

With each reward he gained, his player level kept going up, and he grinded his way from Lv23 all the way to Lv26.

After that he noticed his EXP bar was barely moving, which meant he’d hit the EXP cap for a single instance and continuing to grind would be pointless.

He’d learned about this EXP cap from posts on the player forum.

Allegedly, many player organizations had run systematic tests in instances and found that you couldn’t power-level a newbie to a high level just by grinding in one instance—every instance had an EXP cap.

For example, in most settlement-type instances, players could at most gain one level. The idea of a veteran player carrying a newbie up dozens of levels in one run was impossible.

In fact, in early- to mid-game instances where leveling was relatively fast, the highest recorded gain in one run was around seven or eight levels, and even that was extremely rare. For most players, gaining two or three levels per instance was already hard to come by.

And supposedly, in late-game instances after Lv50, EXP became even more scarce. Players often had to clear two or three instances to gain a single level; being able to level up once per instance was considered very fast.

Exactly because it was so hard to level in the late game, all countries attached special importance to high-level players.

They were rare resources. Anyone who could fight their way to a high level and stay alive definitely had some real skills.

After discovering that he could only grind up to Lv26 in the Land of the Dead Soul, Wang Zhifan stopped directly and put most of his energy into cultivation, not even bothering to kill ghosts for loot anymore.

He couldn’t help it—over the past half month of EXP grinding he’d acquired way too much gear. He’d even newly gotten two pieces of Epic Layer gear, and nearly thirty pieces of Excellent-tier gear. He was completely numb to it by now.

The problem was that all this equipment had too strong a Land of the Dead Soul flavor—basically all related to ghosts and the supernatural. Not that it was useless, but it was highly homogenized. For a player like him with a rich collection of high-tier gear, it was barely better than nothing. Taken together, they weren’t as powerful or practical as his Underworld Envoy identity.

Of course, this situation only applied to Wang Zhifan.

If other players got this much Land of the Dead Soul equipment, they’d be so happy they couldn’t sleep, convinced they’d reached the peak of their player career and could gradually become big shots dominating Planet Earth.

If a summoner-class player got this gear, it would be even more ridiculous. Land of the Dead Soul gear would push their summons into a grim, horrifying style—flashy and powerful.

Only a special case like Wang Zhifan truly looked down on all this ghostly stuff.

His own strength was already enough to crush the ghosts in the Land of the Dead Soul, so he didn’t really need such summons.

He also already owned quite a few weird/occult-type items, and had long since lost any particular interest in that line of gear.

The Blademaster class didn’t mesh well with ghost-type equipment anyway, so this new batch couldn’t replace the old gear he was wearing. All he could do was toss them into his personal storage.

In the final few days, bored out of his mind, he pinned his hopes on the NPC team that had entered the Land of the Dead Soul.

They had all been hired at a high price by that Western-dressed young man he’d resurrected, and Wang Zhifan also spread the news of their arrival among the surviving players, hoping they would join forces to defeat the Guardian and get some good drops.