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Chapter 076 Now It’s Just Frustrating, Extremely Frustrating

“You really can’t do this?!” Wen was dumbfounded.

“I can’t break it!” Haonan was also dumbfounded. “I thought I was strong! Can’t even break a wall?!”

Ling Mo was equally dumbfounded: “If you can’t break it, then push it! If you keep dawdling, we’re all going to die here!”

The female ghost was closing in from behind, just about ten meters away; they probably had around half a minute left.

This was definitely giving off that standard horror game vibe—never directly killing players, but instead making them experience deep fear and despair in this drawn-out manner.

Haonan was also flustered, but under Ling Mo’s shout, he snapped back to reality and changed from hammering to pushing. His muscles bulged as he finally managed to push the stone slab aside with a roar, opening up a path for escape.

“Go!” Wen was the first to cross the slab and dash forward, with the others quickly following.

However, when they were only about five or six meters from the main door, the female ghost suddenly sped up, almost instantly catching up to them, shrieking as she lunged.

At that moment, everyone could barely manage a “What the hell.”

But the anticipated slaughter didn’t happen.

As they slowed down to look back, they found that the ghost’s speed had inexplicably slowed down, almost as if it were in slow motion, and at the back was Wen.

“What’s going on?” The fat guy was stunned.

“My ability, time stagnation.” Wen’s movements also appeared to slow down a bit, though he was still significantly faster than the ghost. After taking a step back, he returned to normal. “If it weren’t for Haonan showing off, I would have nearly forgotten I have abilities too—stop talking, let’s hurry, I can’t hold this for long!”

The others didn’t linger, making the final few meters count, finally escaping the haunted mansion.

The rain continued to fall, the night remained dark, and the weather was still chilly, but at that moment, they felt the environment was incredibly comfortable, as if they had returned home.

Until…

“What the hell, how did she come out?!”

Seeing the female ghost floating out from the door, Haonan was shocked: “Is this a never-ending nightmare?!”

Almost simultaneously, a man’s voice suddenly came through their walkie-talkies: “Hey? Trainees? Are you all still alive? We just detected another evil spirit in that villa. Dealing with evil spirits requires lightning power, which you lack, so get out of the villa quickly. We’ll be there for support in three minutes.”

Three minutes sounds short, but given the ghost’s current speed, hanging on for three minutes might be harder than escaping earlier.

Moreover, Xia Xinyan’s severed hair had already burned out; they had lost that means of control, and they could easily be dragged back into the villa, which would be a guaranteed death trap.

It’s just that…

“Lightning power? I have that!” The fat guy suddenly got fired up. “Damn it, it’s still up to me, Zhang Dayi, to end this! Fine, let me show you what the hell lightning magic is—”

As soon as he finished speaking, the calm night sky erupted with a thunderclap, followed by a dazzling display of lightning that nearly illuminated the entire sky, all concentrating over here.

“Lightning Wizard Zhang Tianshi is online—eat this, father!” With a mighty swing of his right hand, countless bolts of lightning descended violently from the sky, creating a thunderous explosion that made everyone close their eyes involuntarily.

This was Ling Mo’s first real glimpse of the power of their abilities.

Including the fat guy.

He finally realized how terrifying the fat guy’s abilities truly were.

As for Haonan and Wen’s powers, even a casual glance revealed their immense potential.

This brought significant pressure to Ling Mo.

Compared to them, his abilities… truly felt too inconspicuous.

This was the nth time he yearned to become stronger.

He also hoped that one day he could show such powerful visual effects in front of Xia Xinyan, letting her know that he was actually very strong.

Perhaps that unique competitive spirit among men awakened in him at this moment.

But when he suppressed those thoughts and slowly opened his eyes, what he saw was the ghost simply standing there.

…Not dead?

“…Damn it, brothers, I think… I missed.” The fat guy’s voice rang out awkwardly yet fearfully in everyone’s ears.

The scene fell silent for two seconds.

Then everyone turned and fled.

The fat guy was still in shock over his misfire, lagging a beat before he turned to follow the group, and at that moment, the ghost sprang into action, chasing after them at double their speed, naturally catching the straggler fat guy.

The four in front didn’t look back, nor did they dare to.

All that registered for them were the fat guy’s screams and the occasional flash of lightning illuminating the dark, rainy night.

【Mission Complete, Returning to Hall】

With the system prompt appearing, the survivors simultaneously chose to leave the dungeon and returned to the hall.

Their team was still together, so the moment they returned to the hall, the fat guy’s voice came through: “What the hell?! We cleared the dungeon?! Did you guys clear it?!”

“Yeah, did you die?” Ling Mo asked.

“I’m dead! I’m dead!” The fat guy immediately lost it. “I died one second before dawn! I was stupid! Is this how this game is played?!”

“…You were the one who insisted on making it big and missed, right?” Wen couldn’t help but roast him.

“It’s not like it should be played this way! I still think there’s something wrong with this dungeon—let’s compare notes with Old Ling about the rewards.”

“Alright.” Ling Mo nodded.

The others hadn’t quite processed what had just happened in the dungeon, but upon hearing the fat guy’s words, they all headed over to discuss the situation with Ling Mo.

Regardless of whether they cleared the dungeon or not, there were rewards; mainly divided into three major parts: basic rewards, mission rewards, and performance rewards.

Basic rewards are fixed game points gained from clearing the dungeon, mission rewards are self-explanatory, while performance rewards are determined by the player’s contribution at each stage of the dungeon, mainly focused on their contribution to advancing in the dungeon—this part would become the bulk of dungeon rewards later in the game, because the first two are pretty easy to score points in.

It’s worth mentioning that this dungeon had two main missions, one was to gather information about the female ghost, and the other was to escape the villa. They completed both tasks, but none of them noticed when the second task was issued. It probably happened around the time the fat guy pissed off the ghost, since they were all thinking about escaping at that point and didn’t have the bandwidth for anything else.

As for the first task… it was ironically completed completely accidentally. At that time, Ling Mo only recorded two sentences from the ghost, with the last sentence being forced out by the fat guy, earning them quite a few game points.

However, the fat guy died at the last moment from the ghost’s hands, so he didn’t obtain the basic rewards. The interesting part was that his performance rewards were the highest after Xia Xinyan, even surpassing Haonan, who had been directing the whole process, by several hundred points, and his performance score largely came from the last few minutes of the dungeon.

The game allows players to check all the settings of the dungeon after clearing it, aimed at helping players learn and make up for their shortcomings, so the fat guy checked why he had so many performance rewards at the end, and the answer he got was—

He blew up the villa with lightning.

That’s right, the NPC over the walkie-talkie hadn’t told him to use lightning to blow up the ghost, but to blow up the villa, because the villa was the ghost’s territory—it was her home. Evil spirits are a type of earthbound spirit; to destroy her habitat was to eliminate her.

In other words, if the fat guy had tried to electrocute the villa from the start, they could have cleared the dungeon right away.

—This was also one of the game’s dark humor, teaching players what it means to “adapt” in such a uniquely twisted way.

After realizing all this, the fat guy felt nothing but frustration, extreme frustration.

 

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