Chapter 99: The Barren Giant (1/2)

“That’s right, compared to these poor little villages, the mountain bandits’ hideout is obviously the real treasure trove!” Seeing Edward showing interest, Jom immediately started pushing his sales pitch even harder, “And after the two excursions we’ve had with them, aside from the Boss the Barren Giant, there probably aren’t that many enemies left!”

Indeed, the two battles they had in the afternoon and at night had already dealt with roughly sixty enemy units, and all of them were healthy young men. Even the largest gangs had a limit to how much power they could possess, too big and there would be too much in-fighting and too much commotion, they would be culled by the surrounding churches.

Although the mountain bandits had a track record of beating the Holy Corps of the Garden of Grains, that didn’t say much about their strength. The Holy Corps of the Garden of Grains had basically the worst combat strength among all large-scale churches. I mean, you couldn’t expect a group of farmers without any supernatural blessings to be all the powerful, could you?

This also caused their strength as a whole to not be all that imposing, even though they had many, many believers, the God of the Harvest was still stuck at the edge of the Greater Gods, unable to advance to the status of Divine Father.

“That’s true, do you know where the mountain bandits’ hideout is?”

Edward wasn’t a hot head that made rash decisions—he immediately asked Jom for more information.

“Er…” Jom went mute.

Right, where was the mountain bandit’ hideout?

Was there a hostage they could question? He scanned over the battlefield and found the only thing left breathing was a heavily damaged chocobo… A group of players was currently standing around it debating how long it could live and whether or not Coca-Cola would have any effect on it, the whole scene was very creepy.

No wonder the villagers kept their distance.

Then, the skinny old gray Shar-Pei who had listened in to the entire conversation from the village entrance suddenly stood up, barking at Jom.

“Where’s the dog from?” Gou Dan furrowed his brows, feeling that the situation had more than meets the eye.

The Shar-Pei ignored Gou Dan, continuing to bark in Jom’s direction.

Jom was confused before coming to the realization of what it was trying to do. “You want to get revenge for your owner?”

The Shar-Pei didn’t nod, but it stopped barking and started sniffing the ground, a moment later it ran off in the direction the mountain bandits came from, turning around to bark at Jom after running a few steps.

“Let’s follow it.”

Jom quickly told Edward and the others the story of the dog, thus Edward made his decision.

The other players decided to tag along too—they had come all this way in hopes of being able to take down a Boss, so there wasn’t much point in them staying in the dinky little village anyways.

Most of the villagers stayed at the village, but a few hunters followed the players with Joey leading them.

“We’re going to go duke it out with the barren giant, why are you lot coming?” Terry asked Joey as they followed the dog, “You’ll just get in the way.”

He was a straightforward person and didn’t try to hide what he wanted to say, putting his thoughts clearly right in front of Joey and the rest of the hunters.

—You guys are too awful, you’ll only hold us back while we’re fighting the Boss if you follow us.