Dice In The Darkness: Cthulhu Calls

Chapter 505: Initial Exploration of Myriad Beast Mountain

Chapter 505: Initial Exploration of Myriad Beast Mountain

"Of course, back then I was also a bit out of it, so I can’t guarantee everything I heard was true," Miguel added.

Liu Xing nodded, no longer dwelling on that aspect.

Anyway, they would find out soon enough.

It had to be said, the taste of sand rats was quite good, much better than Liu Xing had imagined... except for their appearance, which was nothing to compliment.

After finishing their meal, Liu Xing and the others set out once again to search for the remaining beast retreat grass.

By the afternoon, Liu Xing and his companions had found five clumps of beast retreat grass, hunted three rabbits, and one mountain goat.

"It seems our luck today isn’t bad at all. We found seven clumps of beast retreat grass so quickly, and finally, we can have a wild meal," Ling Ishikawa said with a smile.

Liu Xing shrugged, expressing some doubt. "Speaking of which, don’t you guys find something odd about the situation on Zekiel Island today? The frequency of animal sightings seems too low."

Of course, Liu Xing naturally knew the reason. After all, most of the animals on Zekiel Island had gone to Myriad Beast Mountain.

Unaware of the truth, Zhang Wenbing nodded and said, "Yes, I feel the same. Yesterday we wandered around Zekiel Island for over half an hour and saw hundreds of animals hunting each other, but today I only saw a dozen or so animals fighting each other, and then more than twenty animals wanting to attack us. This is clearly abnormal, so I suspect these animals were affected by the fluctuations yesterday."

Liu Xing chuckled, revealing the mystery. "I think those animals must have gone to Myriad Beast Mountain. From the appearance of those mist traps, yesterday’s fluctuation likely triggered the Ancient One’s research facility to activate its defense mode. So, those animals chose to go to Myriad Beast Mountain, which is the defense perimeter of the Ancient One’s research facility."

Zhang Jingxu and others nodded in agreement with Liu Xing’s idea.

"It’s getting late. Let’s head back first. We can discuss these matters slowly when we return," Buke said, looking at the sky.

Indeed, it was not early anymore; the sun had already begun to set.

So, Liu Xing and the others returned to the underground camp.

In the underground camp, Liu Xing and the others began discussing whether they should enter Myriad Beast Mountain ahead of schedule.

Now, Liu Xing’s group had obtained seven clumps of beast retreat grass, which theoretically should be enough to enter the Ancient One’s research facility using beast retreat grass. Moreover, the help of getting the remaining three clumps of beast retreat grass wouldn’t be significant.

"So, can we head straight to Myriad Beast Mountain now?" Ling Ishikawa asked.

Liu Xing stroked his chin and said cautiously, "We can, but should we send someone first to investigate the situation at Myriad Beast Mountain using beast retreat grass?"

"I agree with Liu Xing’s idea. It’s better to be cautious now. Sending someone to check the situation at Myriad Beast Mountain is necessary since the situation has changed," Zhang Jingxu said seriously.

So, Liu Xing and the others decided to send someone to investigate Myriad Beast Mountain first.

And the choice for this investigation member naturally fell to none other than Liu Xing.

After all, Liu Xing still had the identity of a member of the Ancient One’s clan. Perhaps he could get some "preferential treatment" from those animals.

So, Liu Xing followed the method provided by the English authorities and used the beast retreat grass. After confirming the appearance of the "beast retreat" effect in the buff column of his character card, Liu Xing left the underground camp and headed towards Myriad Beast Mountain.

On the way to Myriad Beast Mountain, Liu Xing didn’t forget to test the effect of beast retreat grass on some small animals along the way. The results of the experiment were satisfactory to Liu Xing because those small animals retreated as soon as they saw him.

This also reassured Liu Xing.

Soon, Liu Xing arrived at the outskirts of Myriad Beast Mountain.

At the outskirts of Myriad Beast Mountain, Liu Xing found a large number of animals occupying certain territories according to their races, facing each other at a distance of over ten meters, but there seemed to be no intention of starting a fight.

Roughly estimating, Liu Xing found that there were over two hundred animals here, and this was just a corner of the outermost part of Myriad Beast Mountain.

So, Liu Xing roughly estimated that there were at least thousands of animals surrounding Myriad Beast Mountain.

Therefore, a head-on confrontation was definitely not realistic.

Thinking this, Liu Xing continued to move forward slowly, paying attention to whether the animals around him had any hostile intentions.

Fortunately, the effect of the beast retreat grass was still good. Those animals just watched as Liu Xing moved forward. Sometimes, when Liu Xing got too close to them, they would take a step back.

Finally, Liu Xing relaxed.

With a relaxed mind, Liu Xing’s pace became lighter, and he soon arrived in front of Myriad Beast Mountain.

At this moment, Myriad Beast Mountain was exactly as Rundell had described. The research facility of the Ancient One, which was originally covered by rocks and soil, had now revealed its true appearance—a wall that looked very high-tech, along with some strange symbols.

Liu Xing estimated that those symbols should be the words of the Ancient One, representing the meaning of the research facility.

But since Rundell had already stated that their group couldn’t enter the interior of the research facility through that wall, Liu Xing went straight to the loophole that Maisky had mentioned.

However, Liu Xing had not taken two steps when he was attracted by a monster beside him. Yes, it was a monster, not an animal.

Because in Liu Xing’s view, this monster could be described as a hellhound—about the size of an adult bull but with three heads... though it could also be wolf heads. Unfortunately, its tail was not a snake but just a normal dog tail.

Seeing this three-headed dog, Liu Xing suddenly realized something. He then looked around and found another monster with a tiger head and a rat’s tail, as well as a leopard with four rabbit legs.

Liu Xing frowned, knowing that most likely it was because of the fluctuations emitted by the research facility yesterday, which forced some animals to start fighting and devouring each other prematurely, thus giving rise to a batch of small synthetic beasts.

From the looks of these synthetic beasts, their combat power shouldn’t be underestimated. After all, the three-headed dog had three attack points, the tiger-headed rat-tailed creature was versatile, and as for the leopard with rabbit legs, it seemed highly agile.

In short, if their group encountered these three small synthetic beasts, the only possible outcome would be annihilation.

Unless their group succeeded in a big win in every judgment.

To be honest, Liu Xing is now very worried about the final stage of this module, where he and his team will need to fight these synthetic beasts when they rescue the Ancient One and other members of the Chinese Taoist faction. If they really have to fight, their team might run into a lot of trouble.

Thinking this, Liu Xing continued to move forward.

When Liu Xing arrived at the loophole mentioned by Maisky, he had already encountered over a dozen small synthetic beasts along the way. Among them, the most memorable one for Liu Xing was a gorilla with a pig’s head, looking like it could star as Zhu Bajie with just a change of clothes.

In addition to this, Liu Xing also saw a medium-sized synthetic beast occupying the main entrance of the research facility. This medium-sized synthetic beast had a horse face with bull horns, an elephant’s body, and long deer legs, while its tail looked like a rabbit’s round tail...

In short, this medium-sized synthetic beast looked very strange to Liu Xing, and it seemed its combat power shouldn’t be too strong. After all, Liu Xing even doubted whether this medium-sized synthetic beast could walk normally, given its less-than-ideal ability to support its weight with those long legs...

Returning to the main point, Liu Xing easily identified the "loophole" wall mentioned by Maisky because the color difference between this wall and the adjacent walls was quite obvious upon closer examination.

After determining the location, Liu Xing began to return to the underground camp because according to the instructions from the English authorities, the effect of the beast retreat grass should only last for over twenty minutes now.

So now they must leave the vicinity of Myriad Beast Mountain as soon as possible.

However, before Liu Xing had taken a few steps, he saw a hippopotamus suddenly rushing up and stepping on a large rat, then swallowing the rat in one gulp.

Liu Xing shook his head, about to mourn for the rat’s death for a second, when he suddenly saw wings sprouting from the hippopotamus.

Wings?! Liu Xing frowned and looked again at the similar creatures beside the large rat, only to realize he had mistaken them; those were actually a group of bats!

Liu Xing then remembered that bats were also mammals.

Bats belonged to the order Chiroptera, and this order was the only group of mammals that had evolved true flying ability. Besides bats, there were also animals like sugar gliders and flying squirrels that could glide short distances.

Seeing this scene, Liu Xing realized that their group might encounter "air forces" later.

That could be troublesome.

Liu Xing quickly returned to the underground camp and then recounted everything he had seen and heard on the way.

"It seems it’ll be easy to get in but hard to get out this time. If the Ancient One can’t come up with a good idea to help us escape the pursuit of those synthetic beasts, then we’ll have a hard time escaping Zekiel Island while being chased by them. It’s going to be very difficult," Zhang Jingxu said.

Liu Xing nodded, expressing his concern. "Especially those potential flying synthetic beasts. That will be a big problem for us, considering our anti-air capabilities are close to zero..."

After all, old-fashioned rifles had very short ranges and weren’t very powerful. When facing such large synthetic beasts, the damage they could cause was very low.

As for bows and arrows, Liu Xing and the others’ archery skills were dismal because they only had basic values. To entertain the idea of "bending the bow and shooting the eagle," they would probably need to roll a 1 on the dice.

"Well, since we’ve confirmed the location to enter the research facility, let’s wait until tomorrow to start the operation. It seems that if we delay any longer, more synthetic beasts will appear for sure. By then, our pressure will only increase, so we need to act quickly," Zhang Wenbing said seriously.

So, after enjoying a meal of roasted lamb, everyone returned to their rooms.

Of course, Liu Xing and his group gathered again and started a Private Room session.

Firstly, Liu Xing mentioned the matter of the key.

Ling Ishikawa rubbed his chin, somewhat surprised. "This special module is quite interesting. Since it doesn’t limit the number of players or the area where players are, we can indeed recruit a large group of players to participate in this module. However, the difficulty of the module is directly linked to the number of players, so we shouldn’t find too many players to join this module."

"Most importantly, the timing of this module is likely to be in the past or even the future, because it involves the teleportation device of Yis People. So I suspect that if we do this module, we’ll probably have to face a large number of mythical creatures. By then, our sanity points might be reduced to zero..." Zhang Jingxu said worriedly.

Zhang Wenbing nodded in agreement and said seriously, "Yes, I once saw a post on the forum mentioning a player who was teleported to Earth tens of thousands of years ago during a special module. Then they were chased by a group of Deep Ones for several blocks. Just as they barely escaped from that group of Deep Ones, they encountered a Moon Beast that wanted to capture them as slaves. After finally killing that Moon Beast, they were targeted by a group of Byakhee... In short, those players were constantly attacked by mythical creatures, suffering both physically and mentally."

Liu Xing raised his eyebrows, somewhat surprised. "Are you sure this module was played by humans? In the end, those players must have been wiped out, right?"

Zhang Wenbing shook his head and said, "No, no, no. The players in this module were not wiped out because this module is an advanced module in the Hound of Tindalos area. Moreover, the players participating in this module are basically combat-oriented players, so they weren’t completely defeated when facing those mythical creatures. Therefore, after defeating a team of Yis People guarding the teleportation device, the six players in that module successfully completed the module with two of them surviving."

In this kind of module, having two players pass the module was already a very good result.

"So, Liu Xing, you’d better not use that key to activate the module temporarily. I think this special module might last for several years because according to the rules deduced by those players on the forum, the longer the duration of the module, the more players participating, and vice versa. For a module like this that doesn’t limit the number of players, it probably won’t end in just a few years." Zhang Jingxu said with a furrowed brow.

Liu Xing nodded in agreement and said, "That’s right. Before we embark on this special module, we must first deal with the things in reality properly to avoid problems arising from our prolonged absence."

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