Chapter 54: Siege on the Rotten Bones Church I

Leah thought a lot over the past six days.

The players seemed to be unreliable, but that was only because they let themselves be carefree without the fear of death. When they were serious, they could become a force that even the young princess had to concede to.

Within a mere six days, the players almost thoroughly explored the entirety of the underground sewers, achieving the feats that the past lords of Lancaster had wanted to achieve in the past hundred years and clearing the entire underground sewer!

They cleared out the Swamp Fishmen that hid in the sewers to ambush civilians, the rat hordes that cause massive losses in food and cause epidemics, the Sludges that prey on vagabonds, the Skull-crushing Crabs that hunt down pets and even the city guards that turned into Zombies after dying in these sewers…

Even the Berserk Armored Alligator that was unrivaled in these sewers was whittled down by the players after discovering its movement patterns, now on the brink of death.

For context, these were all creatures that caused the sewers to become restricted in the first place.

The past lords of Lancaster had tried to do new sketches and blueprints of the sewers, but it was because of these creatures that the plans couldn’t have been carried out and were abandoned.

Granted, the players died a lot of times while they were fighting these enemies, after all it was hard to react in a short time when an unknown enemy appeared.

Leah couldn’t even remember how many players had revived around her, but not only were they not scared nor depressed, they always kept up their morale and continued to conquer the very enemies that had killed them!

After all, in contrast to other churches, these players weren’t bound to fight by the doctrines of the church. They enjoyed the very prospect of exploring and battling from the bottom of their hearts, and so they continued to improve themselves and make themselves stronger.

Each death was the prelude for the next victory, and each victory became the bases that made them stronger.

Other than that, there was the skill tree that made it easy and quick to become proficient in a specific branch of combat, so it was easy to understand why the players were so proactive in challenging enemies.

After all, what was more fulfilling than witnessing your own growth?

The young princess was honestly a little jealous.

While she was living here, she was too weak to leave her hideout, and now if she weren’t bound by the duties of an event NPC, would she be able to explore the unknown and fight strong enemies to make herself even stronger?

“We found the boss room! The enemy is so strong that even tanks were defeated in one hit!” Suddenly, someone revived from the revival point and shouted, cutting her reverie short.

Hearing so, the players who were still resting at the revival point immediately surrounded the person that shouted and asked for details, starting to discuss amongst themselves.

And so along with more and more players that revived at the revival point, the information everyone had on the boss increased, and they started forming a plan to defeat the boss.

“Other than the main boss and the miniboss, there are twelve elite lackeys. We would have to bait and kill the lackeys first, or else even players that focused on defense would be killed immediately.”

“The main boss adds buffs to the miniboss, so the battle becomes extremely hard as if we’re fighting two main bosses…We have to send out a team and distract the main boss so that we can defeat the miniboss before the main boss has time to interfere!”

“According to our observations, the lackeys have these skills…”

This wasn’t the first time Leah saw a situation like this. When they met with the Berserk Armored Alligator which was the only enemy they couldn’t defeat with levels alone at the time, they did this too.

Even though the rules weren’t spelled out, and there weren’t any specific roles each player took, they would always be able to compile useful information on their enemies from their deaths, and work together to summarize a way to defeat the enemy.

“For the time being, this is our plan so good luck everyone! Let’s defeat the boss, level up, and get some equipment!” Edward who acted as the commander raised his staff and started.

“Let’s go—!!” The players shouted in reply, raising all sorts of weapons and equipment in a cheer.

☆

The high-tier Rotten Bone believers felt frustrated.

As the main force of the Rotten Bones Church, it was a given that they had fought against enemies from other churches. It would not be a stretch to say that they were experienced warriors.

But it was the first time they felt this frustrated.

The enemies weren’t strong at all, and their numbers were only slightly more than their own, but it seemed to be impossible to kill them all. Every time they defeated a group of enemies, new ones would come in their place almost immediately… Even the enemies that came in their place were exactly the same people!

If they hadn’t confirmed that the enemies were living beings using their Rotten Bones Energy, they would have believed that the enemies were golems…

If it were only that the enemies were unending, they wouldn’t feel that particularly frustrated, after all they had bodies like revenants after being blessed with the Rotten Bones Energy, giving them endless stamina.

But after they died the first few times, they seemed to have found out the way that they moved and attacked and started to move and dodge them easily and so it was hard to cause enough damage to them, letting the enemy cause damage to them instead.

The thing that made them the most worried was the fact that these seemingly weak enemies had a strong sense of intuition.

After obtaining Rotten Bones Energy, the high-tier believers started to look like skeletons with skin on them—even if they got hurt they would not bleed so it was hard to tell which was which from external appearance.

So in past battles, they would always switch among themselves when fighting with enemies, exchanging the one that was the most hurt with the one that was in the best condition to give their enemies the impression that the believers of their church were hard to kill, and the member that was hurt could retreat and heal quickly using their Rotten Bones Energy. It was a tactic that was often employed because it worked like a charm.

But for some reason, this strategy did not work on these strange humans at all. Even if they sneakily changed places in battle, the enemy would notice immediately and shout “The enemy is escaping, go aggro them!” and block the path of the wounded high-tier believer.

Not only that, there were enemies that wore a garish red and gold full body armor and were sturdy and hard to damage, and these enemies would stick up their middle finger and shout profanities at them.

And every time this happened, the believers would feel that the enemy was so detestable that they wanted to rip their intestines out and strangle them to silence them…

And so due to the influence of these thoughts, their movements became slow and sluggish and they weren’t able to flee quickly enough, causing them to be surrounded and killed.

“What are you…”

The final high-tier believer asked weakly as he fell, his empty sockets gazing at the enemy.

“Us? We’re just players who are on a quest.”

The young man smiled, and ignored the dying believer as he shouted at his allies, “Alright, those who have to recover back to Princess Leah, and stock up on buffs, don’t skimp on your AP! We’re going to fight the boss!”