Another player frowned and approached Qi Yifang, interrupting his imagination.
He was a player who couldn’t stand the attack just now and was saved by Tang Erda. Now he was still gasping with fear in his tone. “Brother Qi, I feel like something isn’t right…”
Qi Yifang was the strongest player in the trio from the King’s Guild and the one more likely to enter the core team of the guild. The other two players were more inclined to discuss with Qi Yifang than the unfamiliar and taciturn Tang Erda when they encountered something.
Qi Yifang withdrew his gaze that was on Tang Erda and turned to the player to ask, “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”
“Brother Qi, don’t you think…” The player’s face was solemn. “The roses around us are decreasing…”
Qi Yifang was stunned when he heard this. Behind him, Tang Erda’s attack also paused and the gesture of putting away the gun stopped for half a second.
The two men looked around in unison. The roses showed no obvious signs of diminishing.
However, this wasn’t normal at all!
They had been attacking the vagrants for three hours and the roses should be increasing!
Qi Yifang’s expression changed. “Has someone come to steal roses? Has Bai Liu come?!”
They had persevered to kill these crazy monsters in this confined space in order to wait for Bai Liu to come and steal the roses that dropped!
“Impossible. Apart from the monster vagrants attracted by the smell of perfume, I haven’t seen anyone else near here,” Tang Erda retorted.
Yet after saying this, Tang Erda’s expression was extremely ugly. He had been paying attention to his surroundings. If Bai Liu (6) really appeared to steal the roses then he had to have seen it.
So who stole the roses?
In the distance, Bai Liu held up the binoculars while smiling. There were already piles of dry leaf roses around him of considerable height and they were still increasing. It was because someone was constantly transporting, or stealing, the roses.
The people who came and went to help transport the dry leaf roses were a group of ragged but sane vagrants!
Based on their faces, this group of vagrants was the same group that attacked Bai Liu at the abandoned factory during the day.
These vagrants quietly lurked among the crazy monsters that attacked Tang Erda’s group and pulled the roses to the edge of the Magic Space with small movements, trying not to attract Tang Erda’s attention or enter his attack range.
The vagrants who regained their sanity could maintain a relatively clear mind despite the scent of the perfume. This meant they wouldn’t be confused and attack Tang Erda.
During the time when the four players attracted the attention of the monsters, the group of normal vagrants transferred a huge number of dry leaf roses to Bai Liu’s side.
Previously, Bai Liu had considered directly using the vagrants in the flower fields to help him steal from other flower pickers. Then after talking to the vagrants at the factory and experimenting himself, Bai Liu realized that the group of vagrants who mixed in with the ground of the flower fields were completely hopeless.
Even the highest concentration of perfume couldn’t keep them awake. The perfume could temporarily stop their attacks, since it was their weakness, but there was no way to make them regain consciousness.
The vagrants who wandered at night had become complete symbiotes of the dry leaf roses and lost their human souls. They were already complete monsters and this was why they appeared in the monster book of the Rose Factory game.
Fortunately, Bai Liu found out at the factory that the vagrants who weren’t addicted to the perfume could still recover their consciousness. Bai Liu and Liu Jiayi had guessed this or else the setting of ‘perfume=mental bleach’ would be useless in the game.
The game didn’t make useless rules.
“Mr Bai Liu, there are already 160 kg of dry leaf roses here. Do you want us to continue to grab them?” One of the vagrants bowed respectfully. His face was still extremely withered but his eyes were much clearer.
Bai Liu nodded. Currently, Liu Jiayi was next to him and healing some of the vagrants who had been injured in the process of bringing the roses here. The vagrants who stole roses generally didn’t enter the center of the battle so their injuries were relatively mild. Liu Jiayi could basically take care of them with a drop of antidote.
Yet these healed vagrants were both afraid and overwhelmed that they could be treated. They hadn’t been treated as human beings for a long time and the people of the factory called them pariahs.
The vagrant who reported to Bai Liu about the dry roses left hesitated for a moment. Then he raised his head in a weak and hopeful manner and looked at Bai Liu.
“Thank you very much for your kindness. You came to the abandoned factory during the day and were willing to distribute the precious perfume to pariahs like us who are crazy because we don’t have the perfume. This allowed us to briefly talk to you with a human mind.”
He pursed his lips, took a step forward and asked in a nervous voice, “Please forgive my abruptness and long-windedness. I want to ask you sincerely again. Are your words about all the vagrants being able to use the perfume true?”
“Of course, it is true.” Bai Liu put down the binoculars and turned around in an unhurried manner.
Bai Liu had a smile on his face that gave Liu Jiayi goosebumps as he sincerely promised, “As long as you are willing to keep cooperating with me and support me to become the factory manager, I promise that all vagrants will no longer degenerate and will be able to live normal lives.”
“Tomorrow, I will continue to distribute the perfume I have earned to you. Just wait for me at the old place,” Bai Liu instructed.
The dream-like promise stirred all the vagrants who were carrying roses. Then they soon obediently fell quiet under Bai Liu’s gaze as they stared at Bai Liu with disbelief.
“Of course, there is one more thing I have to trouble you with,” Bai Liu continued. “Please try to gather as many vagrants around you as possible tomorrow and bring them here.”
Bai Liu smiled and stretched out his hand. “I will do my best to help them recover their sanity. Then everyone will work together.”
The first vagrant looked at Bai Liu’s outstretched hand. The roses in his eyes were about to wither and tears filled his fleshy eye sockets.
He wiped his hands several times on his tattered clothes before carefully reaching out his dry hand to grasp Bai Liu’s hand.
“We believe in you!” He choked out through tears and was incoherent. “W-We are willing to do everything we can for a kind person like you who selflessly rescued us. We can even give our lives!”
Bai Liu smiled brightly. “Don’t thank me. We have a cooperative relationship and this is what I should do.”
The vagrant shook Bai Liu’s hand and his tears couldn’t stop. “No, you only have so many perfumes. You have worked hard to earn it yet you brought it to help us. You are a really good person!”
Liu Jiayi silently looked at the 160 kg of roses that were brought here by the vagrants at the risk of their lives. Then she looked at the four players who were trapped in the Magic Space in the distance and who were still fighting.
Eventually, her numb eyes fell on Bai Liu, who was smiling but had done nothing tonight.
“It wasn’t very hard.” Bai Liu waved his hand and sighed as if sharing the same illness as the vagrants. “There is no time to enjoy it when working for capitalists and having my blood sucked by the capitalists. It is better to take the perfume to do some good.”
The vagrants were touched beyond measure. “Wooo! Mr Bai Liu, you are a great man!”
Liu Jiayi, “…….”
Bai Liu was really terrible.
Dawn appeared in the sky and the roses in the fields gathered their petals. The waves of vagrants who were constantly attacking finally stopped emerging. It wasn’t known when but the invisible wall disappeared.
Once the last vagrant was shot by Tang Erda, Qi Yifang fell to his knees on the ground.
His hands and feet were spasming and he couldn’t stand upright at all. After hours of uninterrupted, fast-paced attacks, the intense muscle and mental exhaustion was something no good physical strength recovery agent could relieve.
Even though Qi Yifang had been specially trained by Hearts in the ‘game pool’ for a while, he had a hard time resisting the intensity of this all night combat.
The other two players also collapsed in the mud.
Tang Erda was the only one who could stand firmly after putting away his gun. It was as if he was accustomed to this type of high intensity fighting.
Tang Erda lowered his head to collect some roses. He packed them in a few sacks and put the sacks on his shoulders with one hand. Then he told them in a cold voice, “I will take these with me. The rest of the roses can be divided equally among you. The factory worker who counts my roses is waiting for me in the flower field over there.”
Then he walked away without looking back.
Qi Yifang stared blankly at Tang Erda’s back. He reached out to try and stop the other party but he didn’t know what to say.
He felt as if he should thank the mighty hunter who protected them all night but the fact that Tang Erda had left coldly made it clear that he didn’t need anything like Qi Yifang’s thanks.
The mysterious hunter’s protection of them all night seemed to be a habitual protection of his teammates who fought around him.
The player next to him saw that Tang Erda had taken away some of the roses so he quickly got up and counted the remaining roses.
Halfway through the counting, the man turned to look at Qi Yifang with a bit of trepidation. “Brother Qi, the number of roses we gained last night didn’t reach 80 kg per person, right?”
“…No, I counted it halfway and it was still a long way off.” Qi Yifang sat up from the ground, rubbed his temples and asked in a tired manner, “What’s wrong? Did that hunter take away a lot of roses?”
“Still, it is true that he fought the most last night. More than 80% of the enemies were killed by him. It is right for him to take away enough roses to complete the task…”
The three of them had collected less than 80 kg of roses last night and some roses inexplicably went missing. He calculated that the final amount of dry leaf roses that the people on the King’s Guild side had after one night would only add up to 80 kg.
Therefore, Qi Yifang felt that the hunter should be the only one who completed the task.
“Brother Qi.” The player held up the roses and interrupted Qi Yifang in a dull manner. “…The hunter seems to have left each of us 80 kg of roses. We can all accomplish our task today.”
Qi Yifang, “?!”
Qi Yifang was really shocked. He sat up straight and stared in a stunned manner. “In the case of the continuous disappearance of roses, the hunter left enough for each of us to gain 80 kg of roses?”
The player replied to Qi Yifang in a daze. “Y-Yes.”
“How many monsters did this hunter kill alone…?” Qi Yifang murmured in disbelief.
Once the three of them left Bai Liu’s flower field and returned to their flower field to settle accounts, Bai Liu belatedly came out of the shadows with Liu Jiayi.
The two of them had stayed away from the flower field last night in order to reduce the speed at which their mental value fell. They had both distributed the perfume so Bai Liu and Liu Jiayi hadn’t sprayed perfume on themselves last night to restore mental value. This made their mental value low right now.
This soon became less of a problem.
The processing worker who came to count Bai Liu’s flowers was startled by the amount of roses pushed out by Bai Liu.
He went around the pile of roses and weighed it three times in disbelief. He looked at Bai Liu and Liu Jiayi, who were standing upright, in a suspicious manner.
“200 kg of dry leaf roses?” The processing worker raised his eyebrow in disbelief and questioned, “You picked them all overnight?”
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