Chapter 2632: Battle Doll
"It’s from over at the Expedition Canyon." Gao Ming said, "The sound can travel here but there’s no wind, the explosion must be blocked by the canyon."
"The pollution over there is severe, full of toxins and abnormal bacteria. We don’t know who’s fighting in there, and if it’s too large in scale, the surrounding area could be affected."
As he spoke, he took out a medicine-soaked towel and covered his face, then said to Xu Huo and the other person, "I need to go over and take a look."
"Let’s go together," said Xu Huo, taking out three full-body protective suits, "It’s safer to wear these."
Gao Ming did not refuse. After changing into the protective suit, he reminded them, "Near the canyon, there’s a kind of thorn tree. If anything touches it, spikes will shoot out from the trunk and branches. Those spikes are poisonous, be careful not to let them pierce your clothes."
Xu Huo and the girl in the painting nodded.
They still had a considerable distance to the canyon. To inspect the surrounding conditions, they didn’t move quickly, only advancing about a few hundred meters at a time before stopping briefly to continue forward.
When they were less than a thousand meters from the canyon, Xu Huo’s instance activated.
[Player Passerby A has been detected entering the Rank-B instance "Illusory Spark" trigger point, successfully launching this instance. This instance is divided into attacker and defender camps, please choose one camp to unlock the instance background.]
After a brief thought, Xu Huo chose the defender’s camp.
[Instance Background: Yu Country, Yongta Country, and Moon Corner Duchy are the only three countries left in Zone 039. A century of continuous war has concentrated the surviving people in this zone almost entirely in these three countries. The coexistence of different nations and races has resulted in ongoing conflicts. After the establishment of the Three Kingdoms, the zone remained unpeaceful.]
[Twenty years ago, an internal strife in Yu Country led to a change in regime. The former Chief Governor fled with the national treasure. The new Chief Governor issued a wanted warrant, offering a hefty reward for the help of all players entering Zone 039.]
[Instance Task: As a member of the defender camp, locate the treasure taken by the former Chief Governor to maintain the stability of Yu Country’s regime, ensuring the legitimacy of the new Governor’s rule.]
[Instance Time: Unlimited.]
The instance background, as usual, was brief. Coupled with the situation in Zone 039, Xu Huo thought choosing the defender camp would save some effort compared to the attacker camp, but he still had to run around the entire zone.
The former Chief Governor fled twenty years ago, and the instance’s trigger point is in Yongta Country and Moon Corner Duchy. The new Chief Governor has issued a zone-wide wanted warrant, and with complicated forces involved, extracting the treasure ensuring the ruler’s legitimacy is extremely difficult.
Xu Huo looked at Gao Ming, thinking, he is from Yu Country, right...
"Bang!" A considerable sphere flew from the horizon, rolling across hundreds of meters of flat grassland before stopping near Xu Huo and his companions. The flying grass fragments and dust hadn’t settled when a few mechanical twisting sounds were heard, and a figure emerged from within.
The person wore a protective mask that concealed their face, but parts of the protective suit were damaged. One wound had sliced through its inner layer and skin. However, the torn skin revealed no blood, only a faint view of mechanical supports within the cavity.
Xu Huo squinted slightly: the figure had a heartbeat and breathing, yet no emotion towards him.
Just as the person across lifted their foot to walk toward him, several figures approached from afar. A few individuals unleashed powerful strategies, with a chaotic mix of props and spatial instruments slicing through the forest.
Swathes of trees were torn up, and the ground was continually plowed, visibly turning the area into chaos. Xu Huo turned around, pulling the girl in the painting and Gao Ming to flee into the distance.
The battle behind them persisted, with another major explosion occurring on the ground. As players in the sky were hurled away, they were also swept along. Xu Huo was just utilizing spatial instruments for defense when the masked figure dashed out unexpectedly, with an intersecting cut line shooting from its chest, instantly shattering the space defense barrier!
Deploying several defensive instruments simultaneously, Xu Huo expanded his spiritual world, additionally using "dreamy false teeth" for a spiritual control on the approaching figure. However, even Rank-A Player level spiritual control that should have disrupted a bit had no effect on the opponent.
Blocking the incoming short knife, as he sought to gain some distance, several small bombs unexpectedly appeared, exploding near his face. The blast flung him several meters away. Before he could steady himself, the masked figure skated towards him with a strangely fast and bizarre ground-skimming posture!
Close to the masked figure, Xu Huo released five long-range attack props. The masked figure should not have broken through the prop defense line so swiftly after being blasted away, but using that ground-skimming method greatly minimized the props’ attack range and frequency. It then instantly breached three layers of defense barriers with instruments, before springing up on the spot, taking out a slender, willow-like long sword from behind, and sliced towards Xu Huo’s face!
It was an instrument, as the sword swung down, it lengthened slowly. Retreating without a sufficient distance would inevitably hit. However, Xu Huo seized the opportunity to use a prop to move behind the opponent, penetrate their protective suit, and apply the "metallic clay."
With characteristics and props ineffective against humans, zero effect of mental interference, compounded by the opponent’s combat style revealing metallic limbs, the masked figure was most likely a combat item. Observing its accompanying instruments and inherent resilience suggested that prolonged combat would only result in meaningless exhaustion.
"Metallic clay" grants a metal contact area the ability to condense into a clay-like shape; if the masked figure is entirely metal, then this prop is most fitting.
The instant "metallic clay" adhered, Xu Huo used a short-distance teleportation prop to retreat several hundred meters. The masked figure first stiffened in place, then its body contorted unnaturally, and within seconds, it stood there half-bent. On its "torn skin" hand, a black rabbit shape bulged out, with several other protrusions on its body, but they weren’t obvious through the protective suit.
A few players pursued the masked figure onto the ground, not even glancing at Xu Huo, setting fire to the masked figure’s protective suit from a distance. As the two layers of clothing disappeared, sparse gaps appeared on the masked figure’s skin, and an unusual scent wafted out.
It turned out to be real human skin.
With clothing and human skin burnt away, the masked figure’s true appearance was finally exposed to all:
A human-like skeleton made entirely of metal, lacking muscles and internal organs, with only a small device in place of the heart. However, now this device, along with the skeleton, had been reshaped by the "metallic clay".
Xu Huo intended to retrieve that device, but the other party obstructed him first, with someone going to recover the battle doll, others standing in his way, "This isn’t your loot."