Chapter 242 Taking A Rest (Part 1)

It was obvious that the Goblin Robots in the depths of the Goblin Palace were superior to the robots stationed at the entrance of the palace. They were more resilience to attacks and could deal more damage while having more abilities. Fortunately for the duo, the machines acted as independent units instead of utilizing horde attacks. With the aid of Ol’ Four and her captured machines, Ye Ci was able to defeat her foes with relative ease. Despite their individual strength, the Elite Robots could not stand up against the onslought of so many attackers.

Whenever an Elite Robot was defeated, Ye Ci would then insert a power core into the fallen machine. Ye Ci was able to replace every single robot in her party with an Elite Robot within the span of half an hour.

With her party bolstered with Elite Robots, Ye Ci’s journey forward was made easier. She was able to clear away all opposition that was encountered along the way. As a lvl60 player, Ye Ci was not able to benefit from the experience points of slaying the enemies within the palace. Her screen, however, was filled with prestige points whenever a foe was slain.

Vo’sok Prestige.

Ye Ci noticed that her Prestige with Vo’sok grew whenever she slew a foe in the map. A Goblin would offer 1 to 2 points upon its death, and a robot would yield 3 points, while her points would increase by 4 whenever an Orc or an Undead was slain. She did not know how Prestige with Vo’sok would benefit her, but she knew that gaining Prestige with any faction was definitely something good.

She sat on the ground and began replenishing her status after all her enemies had been converted into loot drops and Prestige points.

“How are things on your side?”

“I’ve defeated all the robots over here. How about you?”

The duo maintained constant communication after their separation. Coordination was very essential in the dungeon that was full of hidden mechanisms, and the slightest mistake made by either party might lead to disaster.

“I’m done with my side as well, but I need to take a left turn up front.” replied Fleeting Time. The duo would constantly describe their surroundings to each other, “I’m facing the north with the corner to my left. Do you see anything on your end?”

Ye Ci immediately faced north as well after listening to Fleeting Time’s words, “The path ahead of me leads to a corner turn as well, but to the right.”

“Let’s keep moving. Be careful and remain in constant contact with me. Don’t push yourself too hard if you run into trouble.” replied Fleeting Time after a brief moment of thought.

“You too.” replied Ye Ci who was nearly done with replenishing her Stamina. She remain in constant communication as she continued to press on deeper down the corridor.

The machines that Ye Ci encountered after that were no longer humanoid in shape. Her foes were mechanical spiders that spewed special web that could root their enemies in place for 8 seconds. Whenever a target was rooted by a mechanical spiders, smaller spiders would then be deployed to deal damage on the rooted target. Ye Ci had to go to great lengths to avoid getting hit by the spiders’ web in combat.

It was a relatively simple task for Ye CI. As long as she was careful, any misfortune could easily be avoided. The same could not be said for Ol’ Four and the Elite Robots that were under Ye Ci’s control. Due to their sheer numbers, Ye Ci’s entourage of Elite Robots were easy prey for the spiders’ web. Once the Elite Robots were rooted, they were immediately swarmed by the smaller spiders.

The smaller spiders were not notorious because of their attack damage, but because of their ability to self destruct. A single small spider could deal damage equivalent to 10% of the health of a single Elite Robot, and 10 of them would be able to instantly destroy the robot.

Ye Ci was forced to release her AOE skills like Rain of Arrows and Multi Arrows in such a situation. It was the only effective countermeasure she had against the small spiders. In her bid to reduce the damage dealt to her Elite Robots, Ye Ci expended a large amount of her Stamina. This meant that she would run out of Stamina within 15 minutes, and would be forced to take a rest.

Penalties against players from hostile continents were indeed high before the patch was introduced into the game.

With the current stage of the game meant as a period for players to muster their strength, the developers have placed measures to ensure deter players from invading an opposing continent. This included a high penalty that was imposed on players who was on a foreign hostile continent. Even with a way to deal with the spiders, Ye Ci’s progress was very slow as she had to take frequent breaks. When she received a message from Fleeting Time, Ye Ci was replenishing her stamina on the ground.

“How are you doing? Have you taken out the spiders yet?”

“Nope. The little ones are very obnoxious with their self destruct. I’ve expended a lot of Stamina by casting AOE skills to keep them in check.” said Ye Ci as she took a sip of water. Even if she was to replenish her Stamina, Ye Ci’s character was affected by Fatigue after the long hours of battle.

“Are you starting to have a high Fatigue value?” guessed Fleeting Time when he heard a groan from Ye Ci.

“Yup.” Ye Ci was straightforward with her answer. The Fatigue value was a measure imposed by the developers on the character of a player in-game, and had nothing to do with the player themselves in real life. As a game with servers that were operational 24 hours a day, there would always be overly enthusiastic players who stayed logged into the game to endlessly grind for gears and experience. This could be said to be unfair to the vast majority of Fate’s player base. This was why the Fatigue system was introduced and was imposed on players who spent long moments in dungeons or activities like leveling up and crafting items or consumables. Continued and prolonged activities would generate Fatigue for a character, and unlike Stamina that could be replenished by consuming food in-game, players could only recover from being affected by Fatigue by logging off.

Of course, if nutrient packs were attached to a player’s gaming cabin, the rising of Fatigue levels could be slowed down.

Even if it was deemed unfair to certain players, one must understand the world was never fair, and only relative fairness could be imposed in the game.

“How many Fatigue points do you have now?”

“28.” replied Ye Ci after stealing a glance at her Fatigue level.

“That’s a rather high number.” Fleeting Time furrowed his eyebrows.

The maximum points of Fatigue that could be accumulated by players in Fate was set at 100 points. When a player had an accumulated 30 points of Fatigue, the player would have all their stats reduced by 5. A player afflicted by 50 points of Fatigue would face a penalty of -15 on all stats. When the accumulated Fatigue of a player was as high as 70 points, a penalty of -50 on all stats would be imposed on a player. By then, the player would have reduced movement speed and hit rate. The success rate of item crafting would also be drastically reduced. Players would usually log out of the game when their accumulated Fatigue points were at 30.

If a player managed to accumulate more than 70 Fatigue points, the player’s character would slowly die of exhaustion. This was the same problem that was encountered by Ye Ci during her fight with Werebeast Shaman Buru. Things would play out more differently if her Fatigue level was lower at the beginning of the fight.

“It’s alright. I’m fighting against spiders anyways. I’ve been the one who is dishing out all the AOE attacks, of course I’ll have a higher Fatigue level. When I’m done with the spiders, I’ll let Ol’ Four and the robots take over the fighting, and my Fatigue level will not be increasing too much by then.” Ye Ci knew that her high Fatigue level would affect the dungeon exploration process. With the duo now separated, things could go very bad if she was forced to take a break due to high levels of Fatigue.

“I guess this is the only way. There’s another turn ahead. It’s still a left turn this time, so you’ll be taking another right turn I presume? Let me scout on ahead first. I’ll tell you what I see.” knowing that he was of no help to Ye Ci, Fleeting Time decided to advance ahead and relay more information to her.

“Alright then.” Ye Ci took in a deep breath, knowing that gathering information about what was ahead was vital in helping her to conserve her dwindling strength.

Due to her Fatigue level, the recovering speed of Ye Ci’s stamina had become significantly slower. As she sat on the ground with her eyes closed, a system notification rang out, “This is not a safe place. Are you sure that you want to rest here?”

A quick glance on her Fatigue level told Ye Ci that she had no other choice. She actually reluctant to rest at this spot, but she knew that the fight ahead would be tough if she chose to press on without some rest. “I’m going to take a 5 minutes nap. Wake me up in the party channel in 5 minutes.” she sent a message to Fleeting Time.

“Alright. Go have some rest.”

Ye Ci then stationed Ol’ Four and the robots around her before selecting the option to rest. A character in Fate would not lose sleep or have its sleep disturbed. Any character could be put to sleep when a player selected the option to rest, and would wake up at a preselected time or when the character was woken up by another player.

The five minutes of rest passed quickly. Ye Ci felt as if she was immediately woken up after the lids of her eyes were closed. A quick glance at her Fatigue level indicated that her Fatigue was reduced by 2 points. I wonder how long can I rest after taking care of the monsters in this place?

Knowing that she did not have much time, Ye Ci made sure that none would gone to waste. She immediately began clearing away the mechanical spiders with the aid of Ol’ Four and the Elite Robots and continued her advance.

With her high Fatigue level, Ye Ci was forced to relinquishing the main damage dealing role to Ol’ Four and her machines while remaining at the back and fire off some occasional attacks. Most of her time was spent on looting her fallen enemies while her entourage of helper pressed onwards, earning her Prestige points in the process.

Despite her slower progress, it was a safer approach for Ye Ci. She was able to recruit new machines into her entourage of helpers, with larger more powerful machines and the mechanical spiders added to the ranks of party. With Ol’ Four taking the lead followed by the machines and Ye Ci taking up the rear, the small band advanced forward slowly, sweeping aside any resistance they met.

Ye Ci was able to advance down the dungeon slowly with Fleeting Time guiding her with information that he gained. Despite some little setbacks, Ye Ci was slowly catching up to Fleeting Time in terms of progress.

“There’s something weird up front. There seems to be a huge glass.” Fleeting Time was still scouting ahead. The enemies have already thinned out for unknown reasons, and the stone walls of the corridor was replaced with transparent glass.

Fleeting Time could tell that something was unusual with the glasses. Instead of advancing forward, he directed one of his captured robots to move forward. It was indeed strange to have the difficulty significantly toned down after all the challenges he was forced to face.

The robot rumbled on forward with unsteady steps, but encountered no traps that Fleeting Time was expecting. He laughed out loud moments later. So this is how it is. I knew it! There’s no way things will become less difficult for me!

As his robotic companion move forward, Fleeting Time could see countless reflections of the robot on the glasses. They were actually mirrors that formed a house of mirrors. This was also why there were lesser monsters in the area.

A player could not tell the precise location of a monster due to the mirrors that lined the entire corridor, and their judgement would be easily confused by a monster’s reflection.

This was a very clever design that could easily hamper the progress of players, but could be easily traversed by Hunters. With their pet’s strong sense of smell, a Hunter could easily locate and eliminate any monsters within the house of glass.

As Fleeting Time relayed the information to Ye Ci, he could see that her status was already in the red. This was a telltale sign that a player was at the brink of death, or was affected by a high Fatigue value. With Ye Ci’s health still in the green, it was obvious that her high Fatigue was the cause to such a phenomenon. Fleeting Time knew what would happen if the duo could not meet up in the near future.

“You should go offline if your Fatigue is higher than 70 and log back in 6 hours later.” said Fleeting Time as he stared at the shining red light on Ye Ci’s portrait.

“I can hold out longer.” Ye Ci was already making good progress into the house of mirrors, and was even progressing faster than Fleeting Time. From her perspective, it would be a waste to just go offline when she was already near the end of the corridor.

“Stop pushing yourself. If you die of exhaustion, the penalty will be very great. We don’t know what’s ahead of us, so you should log out of the game and take some rest.” Fleeting Time was worried.

Ye Ci knew the truth behind Fleeting Time’s words, but she was still reluctant to follow his instructions, “If I stay offline for too long, the dungeon might reset itself.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t be going offline. I’ll take a rest in the dungeon.” said Fleeting Time. He knew what Ye Ci was worrying about, “I have a feeling that we have a BOSS fight ahead of us. If you don’t take a rest, the BOSS fight will be very tough for the both of us.”

Ye Ci finally relented after listening to Fleeting Time’s words. She knew what the smart choice was, and went offline after bidding farewell to Fleeting Time. A smile appeared on Fleeting Time’s face when Gongzi You’s portrait went grey. He continued to push forward with the help of his captured machines and Ol’ Five, as if Ye Ci was still online in the game. He did not allow himself to relax even after Ye Ci had went offline.

Because of the nutrient pack that was connected to her gaming cabin, Ye Ci was not overly tired after logging off from the game. Despite that, she was determined to grab some precious rest during the six hours window. The sweet scent of the dishes left for Ye Ci by her parents hit her nostrils the moment she set foot into the kitchen. She turned to face the sudden rustling of keys just in time to see Tan Polang entering the house.

“Why are you back? What day is today?” Ye Ci had lost track of the time in real life after the days she spent in the game. When she cast a glance at the clock, she was shocked to see that it was Friday.

Hiya! Here's another awesome chapter of the awesomesauce novel translated by an awesomtacular translator(which is me by the way)! Hope you people enjoyed this release!

Have to say, I was very mentally exhausted after all the midterms and assignments, and you guys probably noticed the quality drop in Chapter 241(?) XD But goddamn it... I somehow am able to drag myself out of the mud after watching some Warhammer 40k lore videos by ArchWarhammer. Enjoyed his in-depth explanation and narration of the Siege of Vraks. The chances of you seeing this is very very small, but thanks a lot Arch! I enjoyed your videos a lot!

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