Chapter 102: Pets (1/2)

Joe had wanted to say something cool, but he slipped and fell off the barren giant’s body before he had the chance.

That was when he realized that the gunk covering his body wasn’t blood or anything, it was a slick and sticky petrol-like substance.

The barren giant only had a sliver of health left, so the players were less fighting it and were rather fighting each other for who could get the last hit.

The barren giant, on the other hand, had lost its will to fight, running back towards the cliff hoping the Mountain Bandits could come and hold the players off.

But a few eagle-eyed players (mainly the Rangers) noticed that the mountain bandits’ hideout at the side of the cliff was completely empty. Some time during their fight with the barren giant, the bandits climbed to the top of the cliff through a secret passage to escape.

Looks like they had never intended to help the barren giant from the beginning.

It wasn’t hard to understand the mountain bandits’ choice. In their eyes, the barren giant was an invincible being capable of destroying even the Holy Corps.

It was this mentality that gave them a false sense of security, but when the player’s toppled the earth elemental with their ferocious attacks, the image of an unstoppable giant faded in the mountain bandits’ minds, and with it their pitiful ‘bravery’ vanished.

As for why not a single mountain bandit came to help the barren giant, even Xi Wei, the God of Games himself, couldn’t completely disable ‘Friendly Fire’, so the Lord of the Peaks wasn’t able to do so either. For a monster the size of the barren giant, even their steps were AOE attacks, if the mountain bandits tried to assist the giant, they would most likely get wiped out before the players even had the chance to attack…

The players understood their reasoning, but as the victim (and as a monster), the barren giant was distraught.

The giant let out a loud wail full of sorrow and anger, it was deserted by the people it had trusted the most.

The barren giant seemed to have lost all its will to live, using all its force to drive its rocky head through the cliffside, its thousand-ton body slamming into the mountain with the force of a meteor, turning the previous mountain bandits’ hideout into little more than dust!

The cliff wasn’t structurally sound enough to be able to withstand such a beating, roughly ten seconds after the mountain bandits’ hideout had been destroyed, the entire cliff face started to collapse. The fleeing bandits couldn’t outrun the destruction and almost all of them were buried alive under the rubble of their former base!

The barren giant was trapped too, only its neck, head, and one of its shoulders sticking out of the rock. It lay there, taking in its last breaths.

Joe stood in front of the dying giant, he was chosen to be the one who would deal the final blow. After all he had gone through the quite traumatic experience of dying a couple dozen times…

Joe wasn’t laughing or celebrating like the other players for finishing their quest. Being covered by the blood (oil?) of the barren giant and having its gigantic singular eye staring him down, Joe felt the giant’s sorrow and frustration.

He didn’t mock the giant to get back at it for the damage it had done, instead Joe became serious. “In your next life, find some better masters.”

With that, Joe plunged his sword into the barren giant’s eye, killing it once and for all.

The very next moment, almost every player involved in the fight was showered with light indicating that they had gained a level!

But the players hadn’t expected the defeated barren giant would vanish too, leaving a hole in the pile of rubble where it once was and causing a small-scale landslide. So the number of players who were damaged increased too…

What was even more troublesome was that all the equipment and items that the barren giant had dropped were all buried under the huge mound of rock and stone, they still had to dig them out.

But they were rewarded with quite a few pieces of Elite equipment, so the whole process was somewhat bittersweet.

And this sweetness reached its peak when they pulled out the golden Legendary-tier sword, the Giant’s Toe.

Almost every player was making a fuss over who this piece of equipment should belong to.

Based on the player who had the highest ‘Damage dealt to enemies’ and ‘Damage taken’, the players decided that Joe should be the one to receive the first Legendary weapon sent to them by the God of Games.