Zhan Long
chapter-21

In the job training center, the healer instructor stood at the same spot as before, with her long hair drifting in the wind. When she saw me walking up, she immediately showed a sweet smile, “Oh, young healer, you have grown quite strong now. Would you like to get promoted?”

Well then, this NPC was quite observant!

I nodded, “Yes teacher, I would like to get promoted!”

“Okay!”

The instructor smiled and stretched her hand forward, “First, you must pay me a processing fee of 10 silver coins before I can start your promotion mission!”

“Okay….” I gave out 10 silvers. After all, I no longer had a lack of money!

The instructor stretched her neck looking at me with an amused expression, “Good. If you want to become a real healer, you must complete this test. Come. This is a sheet of sheepskin. If you enter the graveyard at the south of the city, you will find a spider’s cave there. Find the gravestone at the deepest part of the cave and jot down the text written on the gravestone. That is your mission. But be careful, there are many dangers inside the spider cave. You may die a very painful death!”

My whole body trembled a bit. But the mission didn’t care if people were willing to do it or not, it was forced on you…

System Notification: You received the training mission [The gravestone text in the Spider Cave]! (Mission difficulty: Level C)

Mission Description: Enter the spider cave and jot down the text found from the gravestone deep inside the cave. You are not allowed to form teams. If a player forms a team, or accepts healing from other players, then the mission will instantly fail. At that, you will need to wait another 72 hours before re-applying for the mission!

……

My god, this was quite harsh. I was neither allowed to team up nor accept any help from other players! Qing Qian said she would help me out, but she probably didn’t know about this requirement huh?

Walking out the door and opening the player lists, I took a look at the list of healers in Ba Huang City. The highest level for healers was level 23, but they were all trainee healers. None of them had been promoted! Well of course, this quest was really harsh and it made absolutely zero sense. Clearing a level C mission was impossible for a sole healer. But for me, the healer swordsman who could attack and heal simultaneously, this should be a piece of cake.

In the entirety of Ba Huang City, there were over 1000 healers who were over level 20, but none of them had been successfully promoted. That spoke for itself. I guessed most of the healers’ hearts had been broken at the impossibility of completing the quest….

Well, taking my Bramble Thorn Sword, I hummed a song, and left Ba Huang City, heading straight towards the graveyard at the south. The minimap even recorded the location of the spider cave. This would be a piece of cake. But at this time, I suddenly heard a system alarm——

“Ding!”

System Notification: Congratulations! Your offer at the [Treasure Grove] of 100 gold coins has been bought by player XXX with 2500 Yuan. After a 10% trading fee, you receive 2250 Yuan, it has all been sent to your card with the number of 6227002008730084***!

(That’s the author’s card number)

……

Checking my bank account, yep, it seemed my total balance was over 10,000 Yuan. I was rich baby~

Night quickly fell while I traveled to the graveyard in the south. Near the graveyard, a few soldiers from Ba Huang City seemed to be guarding the graveyard. They were all holding long spears and looking at the crows on the trees. They seemed to be chatting about something. Hm, since there were NPCs, I wonder if there were any simple quests for me. Since I was out here already, I might as well kill a few extra monsters.

Walking up to them, I heard the conversation that the NPCs were having.

“Yeah, those crazy poisonous brutes are getting crazier and crazier these days….” The captain sighed deeply. “Not only do the cows and sheep get attacked by the spiders, even our transportation team got attacked! I even heard that a few people got killed by the poison from the spiders and because of this, commander threw a fit at the guards of the transportation team….”

Another soldier said, “Well it can’t be helped… Those brutes are really sinister….”

The captain looked up towards me, and said, “Oi, you there. Are you an adventurer from Ba Huang City? Why are you eavesdropping….”

I replied, “Boss, I am willing to lend you a hand. Tell me, how can I help you guys?”

“Huehue….” The captain’s eyes taunted me. “A small healer, how can you possibly help us? Can you enter the spider cave, and bring us back 100 spider fangs?”

I nodded, “Yep, I can!”

The NPC looked shocked, “Alright, then show us your strength! This is a reward poster. If you collect 100 spider fangs and give them to me, I will reward you greatly!”

Pacha!

A blood-red reward poster was dropped into my inventory, a necessary component in this quest——

System Notification: You received the quest [Slaughter in the Spider Cave]! (Mission difficulty: Level B)

Mission Description: Enter the spider cave and kill the spiders within the cave. Bring back 100 spider fangs to the captain of the soldiers. If you do so, you will receive a grand reward. If you can kill the Mother Spider, you will receive an even greater reward!

……

I got the quest. Time to go!

Entering the graveyard, I saw random skeletons wandering around. They were all level 19 monster, better avoid them. Killing them took too much time, so I would deal with them after I found the spider cave!

Going around, I opened the leaderboards for Ba Huang City and scanned through them. Waa, there were indeed plenty of skilled players, and I was at… Eh, I was not in the leaderboards huh….

1) Yan Zhao Warrior, level 25 Swordsman

2) General Li Mu, level 25 Swordsman

3) Yue Qing Qian, level 24 Assassin

4) Soaring Dragon, level 24 Mage

5) Yue Wei Liang, level 24 Assassin

6) General Bai Qi, level 24 Berserker

7) Fierce Tiger, level 24 Berserker

8) General Wang Jian, level 24 Swordsman

9) Basaltic Robber, level 23 Archer

10) Student of He Shi level 23 Trainee Healer

……

The amount of players who had already been promoted was over ten thousand. This competition was quite scary. Because I hadn’t been promoted yet, I was quite a long ways off from the top. Oh well, I would slowly catch up. Now, this leadership board was only for players from Ba Huang City. If I included the players from the other two cities, Fan Chu City and Jiu Li City, I think I would be ranked in the 100 thousands. It was even said that the players in Ba Huang City were the most inferior of the three major cities… I felt like crying now….

As I collected more information, it seemed that the first ranked player, Yan Zhao Warrior, was not just any player. He was the guild master of [Prague], meaning he was the boss of Yue Qing Qian. In addition, the 3 players in the leaderboard, General Li Mu, General Bai Qi, and General Wang Jian were undoubtedly from the same group. It was getting pretty exciting here in Ba Huang City with heroes popping up left and right. Something interesting was bound to happen soon!

……

Sasa….

Stepping on the fallen leaves, I went into the graveyard and reached the location that the minimap indicated. But I didn’t see the entrance to the spider cave. Rather, I was standing in front of a huge gravestone. Where was the entrance to the cave?

Looking at the gravestone, I saw that there was a list of initials carved into it——

“Wu Shi Zhe began his journey as a scholar. After three years, he began to practice martial arts. During an archery session, he hit one of the drum officials and was forbidden to continue down the path of martial arts. Afterwards, he became a doctor, fairly well known for his works. Later, he formulated a new recipe, and upon ingesting the new medicine, he died.”

“These guys….”

As I was reading the text, my eyes became wider and wider. What was with these talented yet stupid game designers!?

I heard some rustling sounds coming from under the gravestone. The leaves started to move around, then suddenly a blood-red shadow appeared, giving me a fright. It was a spider that was about the size of a CD, but unlike normal spiders, it had a blood-red body——

[Blood Spider] (Normal monster)

Level: 20

Attack: 85-105

Defense: 40

HP: 700

Ability: [Life Steal (LV-3)]

Description: The guardian of the spider cave. These spiders draw and drink blood, enough so that they can recover themselves in the middle of battle. They are very hard to deal with.

……

Oh, so the spider cave was directly under this gravestone! Make way!

My Bramble Thorn Sword flashed forward, and I performed my proud 3-strike combo: Stab, slash, and punch. I needed about 3 seconds to perform this combo, and although it took a bit of time, every strike landed squarely on the spider. The spider violently shaked, and cried out. Three damage numbers popped up——

“112！”

“91！”

“123！”

Indeed, the last strike was the strongest. If only the last strike became a swordsman’s heavy strike, or some skill that the swordsmen had, it would have been deadly!

After the three strikes, the spider counter attacked. But I responded to this resistance by healing myself, and retaliated with 2 more strikes, and I finished it off. After it died, I picked up the 7 copper coins that it dropped.

Bending over, I used my Bramble Thorn Sword and poked the ground. The leaves separated, and a cave invisible to the outside appeared. Down below was the spider’s cave, so it was a hidden area!

As I was slowly going down the cave entrance, I slipped! Falling into the spider cave, I dropped about 10 meters down before landing on solid ground. After propping myself up, I analyzed my surroundings. It seemed that the environment was fairly damp, and very dark. From afar, I noticed a red shadow quickly heading my way. Oh great, another Blood Spider. Because my vision in this area was greatly affected, I could only see about 3-5 yards away. The easily defeatable Blood Spider became much more dangerous.

After killing the Blood Spider, I heard a Pacha sound. A spider fang dropped! I picked it up and put it in my inventory. Time to continue on.

The spider’s cave had a lot of twists and turns, and there were Blood Spiders everywhere. But after killing dozens of them, a new type of spider showed itself in front of me. The body had an emerald green color. It was a poisonous spider!

Hiss…..

Emitting some strange sound, the poisonous spider jumped towards me. I slashed with my sword to kill it, but before I landed my second strike, the spider sprayed poison at me, and I got a dose of it on my face——

Tick!

Battle Notification: You have been poisoned. Every second you lose 10 HP for 10 seconds!

I quickly cast [Hemostasis] to heal. No matter how long this battle stretched on, I, as a healer, was not afraid of some poison!

……

After wandering around in the spider cave for about an hour, I had collected over 70 spider fangs. But, I had yet to reach the end of this cave. So I continued on. Suddenly a bright light pierced my eyes, and I reached a Great Hall. From a distance, I could see a huge gravestone in the hall, and behind it an immense crystal coffin, which emitted an unholy green beacon; truly a remarkable work of craftsmanship. It seemed like this room was the resting place of an old general. But not only that, there was an enormous green spider peering on top of the coffin. It had a radius of almost 2 meters, and it repeatedly shot out poison, drenching the coffin as it feasted on the old bones of the once mighty warrior.

“Nasty…..”

I frowned, and also scanned the spider. Ah, it was the boss, the [Spider Queen]. Level 21 Silver-ranked boss. It looked like this would be an interesting fight….