Chapter 540: Cooperation
In The New Age, each race’s language was different. For those of the same camp to be able to communicate, the Guild and Tribe had their respective lingua franca. The language used by the Guild was just named as Guild language, regardless of one’s race, be it Night Elves, Humans, Fallen Humans, Angels, and so on, they could all freely communicate. Similarly, the Tribe was as such.
However, the common language between the two camps was different. Thus, according to such a rule, Lin Jie should not understand the Tribe’s language. However, why could he understand what this Tribe player was saying?
Lin Jie suddenly remembered something. In the past, he had learned a language when searching for the Kiara Beast King Armor Fragment—Truman’s Language of the Undead! That was quite a minority language, which could be compared to China’s dialect—people that could speak Mandarin might not necessarily understand the dialect.
‘That female Bandit must be a Truman Undead? Looks like that’s the only explanation,’ thought Lin Jie.
From the game’s point of view, the so-called Truman’s Undead would refer to the Undead born in Truman Town. There was no practical significance.
Graceful Snake moved her skeleton-like body and activated Dark Shadow Steps. She instantly reached behind Lin Jie, and her jagged axes shone coldly, piercing towards the back of Lin Jie’s head!
At that moment, a radiant Broken Blade was swung from the bottom to top, accurately blocking the attack from the jagged axes from an unthinkable angle.
Graceful Snake took a closer look and realized that this person had slashed with his longsword from his back—such an attack without the help of one’s line of sight would normally be hard to hit its target, unless the one was an expert! Graceful Snake also noticed that this person’s body was filled with the aura of life, while he had a ruddy complexion and was muscular. Obviously, he was a human!
Just as she was thinking, suddenly an outburst of strength came from the longsword and pushed her body away. When she wanted to chase Lin Jie, Graceful Snake realized that the longsword was already pointed right at her throat. Lin Jie pushed his right hand forward and made Graceful Snake retreat quite a few steps.
Lin Jie spoke coldly in an obscure tone. “Scram!” Then he left.
Graceful Snake was stunned, but now was not the time to be thinking of that as the situation was still dangerous—the Holy Archer NPCs behind her had already wiped out all of Dark King’s team members. Graceful Snake made a prompt decision to immerse herself into the swamp and swim towards the outside. One of the racial talents of an Undead was not needing to breathe, so in places like underwater, swamps, and so on, which lacked air, the duration of time they were able to stay in there was 500% longer.
Lin Jie threw away partial of his Kusa Mochi to pull the swamp monsters’ attention away, and then he madly dashed for about two hours before he found a dark cave to hide.
—’You have entered [Swamp Saurolisk Overlord’s Cave].’
Lin Jie heaved a sigh of relief. Swamp Saurolisks were the natives of the swamp map, so no monsters could enter the cave they lived in. The Saurolisk Overlord would go out to search for food one to four times a day and would spend 30 minutes each time. It looked like the Saurolisk Overlord of this cave was currently looking for food.
Lin Jie took out the messenger’s backpack, looked inside, and found only two items.
[Soldier Eller’s Token]: A token proving the messenger’s identity.
That token was an identification, so when the messenger was sending a letter, the messenger had to wear the token at the same time, or else the messenger might be regarded as a spy and executed.
The other was a letter!
[Letter Sent Towards Deathknell Town]: Mission item, can be browsed. (Reading the letter will deduct 2,000 Tribe Reputation Points)
Since Lin Jie was not a Tribe player, such a thing did not apply to him. Thus, he directly opened it.
“To respectable Mr. Alpistin.
“Respectable Mr. Alpistin, your request to send Orc soldiers to attack the Deathknell Swamp and build the Deathknell Town has been rejected by the Chief. However, as the Orc Prophet under the Chief, I agree with your proposal. If you are willing to provide 10,000 Undead bodies that are still in development, I will lend you my personal soldiers. I promise in the name of the Orc Chief that the contents of our cooperation will be executed meticulously.
“—Orc Prophet Mercas.”
Lin Jie slightly frowned and silently analyzed the current situation.
Lin Jie had no interest in finding out what happened in the Tribe, but now the parts related to his mission were very obvious. It could be summarized in the few conditions as below:
Firstly, Alpistin was at the Deathknell Town, and most probably, his strength had yet to recover. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have asked for reinforcements from the Orcs.
Secondly, the Orc Prophet was willing to send soldiers, but the price was 10,000 corpses.
Besides that, it could be inferred from the letter that the political situation within the Royal Capital of Darkness was unstable. Still, it was unrelated to the mission, so Lin Jie decided to ignore it.
‘Now, the mission progress is quite clear. Although the information on Fallen is still unknown, the first target mentioned in the mission, Alpistin, has already been confirmed to be at the Deathknell Town. The first mission should be to kill Alpistin!’ Lin Jie pondered for a while. ‘Then, the first step is how to draw Alpistin out. This letter, I can make use of it—’
Just as Lin Jie was thinking, he suddenly smelled a rotten scent.
‘A Bandit!’
“Keen Sight!” Lin Jie’s eyes shone with the array of a hexagon, and instantly, the unit that was in Stealth Mode was exposed! That person was Graceful Snake, and she was casually leaning on the wall of the cave. She was boringly throwing her jagged axes up in the air, catching them repeatedly, until she was exposed. Only then did she stop playing around. She smiled and said, “You’re quite vigilant.”
That sentence sounded like strange noises in Lin Jie’s ear. He could not understand it.
‘She’s the Undead female Bandit!’ Although Lin Jie did not understand her, he suddenly moved, immediately activating Army Obliteration and pierced at Graceful Snake’s heart four times consecutively!
Graceful Snake’s face turned pale from shock, and she instantly used her jagged axes to block. Unfortunately for her, Broken Blade was overpowering! Just as the weapons came in contact, the jagged axes were repelled, and Army Obliteration descended upon Graceful Snake.
“Hey, I have no ill intentions,” shouted Graceful Snake as she changed her language to Truman’s Language of the Undead.
What she said fell on deaf ears. Lin Jie did not care if she had malicious intent or not—he just wanted to kill her!
“If you continue to attack, then I will expose your identity. I repeat, I have no ill intentions, so stop attacking now! Use your brain to think which is the correct choice!” Graceful Snake’s eyes turned cold. If Lin Jie continued to attack, she had to make a move. Although the possibility of her winning was not high, at least she could get some information.
The good thing was Lin Jie stopped.
“What’s your business?” asked Lin Jie, using the obscure Truman’s Language of the Undead.
“Looks like you can only understand my race language. The game’s setting was that one’s language would be automatically changed to the language that one would be able to communicate with. Thus, I specially changed my language settings to the Tribe language. As expected, you didn’t understand it,” said Graceful Snake as she stared at Lin Jie.
Seeing that Lin Jie seemed to be convinced, she raised her outstretched hands to show that she had no malice. Then, she stretched out her right hand. “Introducing myself, my name is Graceful Snake, a member of the Royal Capital of Darkness and Scarlet Mercenary. Of course, this organization has already been destroyed.”
Lin Jie did not bother about Graceful Snake’s outstretched palm and asked coldly, “Aim?”
“Do you always speak so concisely?” Graceful Snake awkwardly pulled back her hand and said, “Simple, I want to cooperate.”
Lin Jie smiled and asked in doubt, “Cooperate?”
“Yes, cooperate. You don’t need to deny. I can see that you are from the Guild and a player. NPCs don’t have such high intelligence,” said Graceful Snake. “Maybe you might not understand how Tribe players increase our attributes, so let me explain it to you first—”
“There’s no need, I understand, physical strengthening.” Lin Jie shook his hands.
A shred of astonishment flashed past Graceful Snake’s eyes. “That’s right, physical strengthening! It is equivalent to equipment, the source of difference between players. To us Undead players, the best item is corpses, corpses full of nutrients. You are a Guild player, the Guild NPCs are just mission releasers for you, but great nourishment to us! Therefore, I hope to obtain a batch of NPC corpses.”
Lin Jie understood.
This woman wanted to increase her strength, but the race monsters in the Tribe mostly had bodies as strong as iron, which were strengthened. Hence, even if they had become corpses, there was no influence, it was still difficult to consume them. To increase her strength, she had to obtain corpses of Guild NPCs—that was the content of the deal. The judgment ability, courage, and insight of this woman were all quite high. If not, she would not have come here to meet Lin Jie.
“What about me? What can I obtain?” asked Lin Jie.
“To Guild players, the most valuable thing in the Tribe is most likely slaves, right?” Graceful Snake said, “Of course, such a thing is called follower at your side. Tribe players can each have 10 slaves, but you can only have one follower. Also, you still need to treat them with good hospitality, or else the follower might run away anytime. Am I right?”
Lin Jie’s eyes lit up, as what Graceful Snake said was correct. The reason why there were so few followers was that firstly, players only had one Follower Space, and secondly, all the followers were the players’ boss. Not to mention their battle strength might not be much, and once they died, their favorability would drop. Once their favorability dropped to a certain extent, they might even escape, and that would affect the master’s reputation, reducing the success rate of recruiting other followers.
However, slaves were different! The slavery system in the Tribe was complete—every healthy and robust slave would 100% not betray its master. Even just giving the slave food to eat would make them grateful. Also, the slaves’ battle prowess, mainly Orcs, was outstanding. If one built an Orc slave team and suddenly released them in the critical moment of the battle, then...
“Why should I trust you? We are from opposing camps. I cannot guarantee you won’t trick me,” said Lin Jie as he shook his head. Although the conditions were tempting, he had to survive to be able to enjoy them. Maybe now, this woman had already informed many players to come and surround him?
“Hehe, you can only trust me as you have to cooperate with me now, no?” Graceful Snake licked her finger with a grin—such action was obviously her habit in the real world.
“Hm, you’re right.” Lin Jie raised his brows. “If I don’t cooperate with you, then a huge crowd of Tribe players would surround and kill me, right? However, as the premise of cooperating, you have to give me some benefits, no?”
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