Protection from an NPC

The moment the Boar King died, a pile of equipment radiating a rainbow of lights fell to the ground.

With all the speed of a lowly thief, Meng Jingtian put all five of the stat points he had just received into Agility, jumped down from the tree, grabbed two pieces of equipment, and ran.

Only now, when they saw that white silhouette jump down from a tree, did the guild players realize that it was not one of the spectating players in the back who had gotten the last hit on the boss, but a player who had been lying in wait this entire time to steal the kill!

“Shit! Kill him!”

“Where did this scoundrel come from?”

“I heard that brat Tian Xuance is also in Seaside City. Could it be him? We should have been watching out for him ages ago!”

The guilds fell into disarray, all kinds of curses and insults filling the air.

For an ordinary, unaffiliated player to accidentally get the last hit was one thing. Other than titles, which couldn’t be traded, the guilds could use threats and promises to pry the equipment from the hands of other players. Thus, they had not been too worried, only surprised.

But the situation was completely different if it was someone who had been waiting to steal the kill. How could someone who had been intending to kill-steal a monster be willing to hand over anything?

Almost all the guild members attacked Meng Jingtian in rage, but Meng Jingtian, with his 15 points in Agility, was rather fast. By the time the other players reacted, he had already escaped their attack range.

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In order to avoid the boss’s skills, the guild members stood together in groups, but now that they were chasing Meng Jingtian, this tactic caused them to push and shove against each other as they pursued, sowing chaos.

There were only seven or eight guild players who had favored agility that successfully managed to break away from the group and use their skills on Meng Jingtian.

Three to five homing skills flew at Meng Jingtian, and with no way he could dodge, the players smiled.

But as those skills landed on Meng Jingtian, their smiles froze. What the hell was going on?

Why didn’t his HP drop?!

They flipped through the combat log in disbelief.

‘Boomerang’ hits Meng Jingtian for 350 damage.

‘Sword Qi Breeze’ hits Meng Jingtian for 500 damage.

Meng Jingtian used ‘Divine Recovery’: HP + 5000.

‘Blood Curse’ hits Meng Jingtian for 233 damage.

What in the freaking world?!

The players were rendered speechless. Their skills each hit for several hundred hit points, but Meng Jingtian had a recovery skill that healed five thousand?

Were they playing the same game? Weren’t they all around the same level?

“Divine Punishment!” As Meng Jingtian ran, he didn’t forget to fire off his skill at the closest pursuing player.

In a white flash of light, the player was sent back to the spawn point.

But the other players didn’t give up and continued to chase Meng Jingtian. Several big guilds had worked together to beat a boss. If they let a random player snatch their victory, how could they show their face in front of the other guilds?

Whoosh!

In another white beam of light, another player was sent back to the spawn point.

Relying purely on Divine Punishment and Divine Recovery, his two starting skills, Meng Jingtian managed to run back to Seaside City, with a large pack of players right behind him.

Alas, he was still guilty of provoking several large guilds. While Beacon wasn’t one of the high-ranked guilds in ‘Grand Desolation’, it was still a familiar name.

The moment he returned to Seaside City, he was surrounded by guild players who were coming from the city and his pursuers behind him.

“Run! Rascal, keep running! Hand the items over and then get out of Seaside City!” The handsome and aloof Lan Xi emerged from the crowd, inspecting Meng Jingtian with narrowed eyes.

“No way! I sniped that monster with my own abilities. Why do I have to hand over anything?” Meng Jingtian, seeing the situation, decided to stop running, shrugging his shoulders as he frankly spoke.

In the end, he would just die once. Even if he dropped one or two pieces of equipment, he would still have made a profit. It wasn’t like he could be so unlucky as to drop Stupa, right?

“You’d better have thought this through clearly! Hand over the items, or do you want us to kill you back to Level 1? You’ll probably have dropped everything you own by then,” Lan Xi threatened.

Meng Jingtian smiled and confidently said, “If you have the guts, come and kill me! What are you still chattering for?”

Unless they had their entire guild give up on leveling to spawn-camp him, Meng Jingtian really wasn’t afraid of a few players standing guard.

Lan Xi’s face darkened. He glanced at several players, who immediately came forward and attacked Meng Jingtian, not caring that the city was a safe zone.

Meng Jingtian had stopped, but that was because he was surrounded and couldn’t run. This didn’t mean that he couldn’t counterattack. As he dodged, he took aim at Lan Xi and fired off a Divine Punishment.

Though this was a game, the principle of battle still applied: capture the king to subdue his subordinates.

No matter how many minor characters of a guild one fought, one would never be able to influence a guild’s decisions.

But if you beat up their officers,they would understand that this wasn’t a person to lightly offend!

Whoosh!

In a white beam of light, the well-equipped Lan Xi was instantly sent back to the spawn point.

At the same time, the crowd surrounding Meng Jingtian grew restless.

As Meng Jingtian wrangled with the guild players, he saw several city guards and some NPCs he had done missions for walk up.

A few moments later, the gathered guild members had all been arrested by the city guards. Meanwhile, the city NPCs were being led by Blacksmith Zhang in what seemed to be some sort of protest.

“Punish the thugs! Bring justice back to Seaside City!”

“Lawless! Far too lawless! In broad daylight, these hoodlums dare to gang up and commit crimes in Seaside City!”

Several of the city residents conversed with each other, anger in their voices.

Let alone the guild members, even Meng Jingtian was taken aback by this development.

No way? He knew that his status as a god made NPCs innately friendly toward him, but how was it that quarrels between players had provoked protests from the NPCs?

Not even in other games would maximizing NPCs’ Friendliness produce this sort of result!

After all, players and NPCs were different. In the game world, the two followed different sets of laws. Unless there was a system activity going on, NPCs basically wouldn’t interfere in player struggles or activities.

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Even if a player were attacked in a safe zone, the most that would happen was that the offending players would be seized.

But this situation was entirely different. Not only had all the players surrounding Meng Jingtian been taken away by the guards, the NPC residents were marching around in indignant rage, calling them thugs that threatened the safety of the city. What the hell was going on?

“Great God, our utmost apologies!” While Meng Jingtian was still in a daze, an armored NPC who appeared to be some sort of general came up to him, a look of shame on his face. “We didn’t think that our Seaside City’s public order had gotten so bad! We’ll definitely punish them properly. Please do not take this incident to heart.”