My Players Are So Fierce

Feel You Poor walked alongside his manticore, holding his Summoner staff in one hand and a hunting revolver that didn’t match the Spirit Mage’s style in the other.

It was the standard Witch Hunter firearm, with nature runes engraved on the barrel to add one point of damage against evil spirits.

Although it was somewhat undignified for a Spirit Mage to carry a gun, he had no choice. Because he had signed a contract with the manticore Stinky Treasure, he couldn’t summon multiple Astral Wolves like Lord Murphy to protect himself, so he had to find ways to supplement his strength externally.

But this was only temporary!

Feel You Poor had already decided to grind Fight Club reputation to unlock his second profession to compensate for his main profession’s lack of offensive power.

He had previously seen the reputation list at “Crimson Lady” Mary’s place, and at 20 wins in the Fight Club, he could buy a “Mejeva Family Sword Arts” book. That advanced sword technique was said to come with a special class change.

According to the veteran player Lumina, the class called “Sword Chanter” was definitely very powerful.

Of course, Feel You Poor was still a newbie, so he was busy searching for powerful hidden professions on the forums, but didn’t notice that Lumina said the Sword Chanter was very powerful under a certain condition.

That condition was that the game’s storyline must progress to unlock the shadow elf reputation.

However, little Rich Brother didn’t have time to consider future matters now. As he walked through this quiet rocky tunnel, he looked suspiciously at Life Is Pretty Good, who was holding a hunting rifle beside him, and said:

“Hey, are you sure you saw a ‘sneaky’ ghoul escape in here earlier? How can a ghoul be described as ‘sneaky’? They don’t even have expressions on their faces!”

“It’s the demeanor! Don’t you understand? That kind of shifty-eyed, wall-hugging demeanor. One look and you know it’s no good.”

Life Is Pretty Good emphasized:

“I definitely didn’t see wrong. It was carrying a lot of things on its back, so it couldn’t run fast. It might be right here! Look what I found?”

The two Rich Brothers stopped.

Life Is Pretty Good crouched down and picked up a shiny gold coin from between the rocks at his feet, flipped it in his hand, and said to Feel You Poor:

“See, I wasn’t wrong, right? That guy knew to bring travel money when fleeing! Tsk, it must be an unorthodox ghoul, maybe it’s gained sentience and become spirit-like.”

“You’re sounding weirder and weirder.”

Feel You Poor dismissed his doubts when he saw the gold coin.

He patted the manticore beside him, and the mentally connected creature immediately lowered its steps and entered “silent hunting” mode.

The two men and the beast quickly moved forward, and soon they saw a black ghoul carrying large and small packages “scratching” at the rock wall at the cave entrance.

Well, it should be trying to grab a hidden board sealed above the wall.

But the ghoul’s claws had highly mutated, making it impossible to perform normal grasping motions. Its jumping up and down on the spot looked extremely comical, and with each jump, more gold coins spilled out from the packages on its back.

“A moving mimic! It appeared! This must be a treasure goblin! The legendary dungeon rare!”

Life Is Pretty Good immediately got excited, raising his gun to aim, but Feel You Poor pushed down the barrel.

Little Rich Brother cautiously hid and cast a detection spell forward. The feedback was strange:

Name: 【Plague Rat King】Vladimir Summer Zweig

Status: Trickster Puppet – Ghoul

Rank: Level 14 – Black Iron Body – Rare

Profession: Level 10 Trickster / Level 7 Coffin Bearer / Merchant – Profiteering Specialization

Status: Multiple Weaknesses – Lost Soul – Panic – Photophobic

Evaluation: Dangerous – Neutral

“It’s a named monster with a intimidating title, but it’s also shown as a strange puppet.”

Feel You Poor said softly to his best friend:

“This is a rare Black Iron monster. Don’t go up, in your current condition, you’ll die if you get scratched. But this is a neutral monster. I’ll go up first to feel it out. If things go wrong, you can shoot, okay?”

“Mm-hmm, be careful.”

Life Is Pretty Good hid behind a rock, peeking out without rashly going up to cause trouble, while Feel You Poor adjusted the microphone plugin of his Computation Bead, took a deep breath, and jumped out holding his staff and gun.

“Don’t move!”

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He shouted, aiming the gun at the sneaky ghoul in front of him and fired a shot.

The latter was clearly startled and made a human-like gesture of surrender with both hands.

He wanted to say something, but the vocal cords of this ghoul puppet were decayed, and he could only make “woo woo woo” sounds that sounded like ghost cries.

However, as a Trickster who had just escaped from Murphy’s hands, Zweig naturally had other ways. While manipulating the ghoul to gesture with its claws, he used spirit energy to simulate a weak voice directly in little Rich Brother’s mind:

“Ah, brave warrior of Lord Murphy, no need to be so tense!”

“Huh? You can talk? What evil magic is this?”

Suddenly hearing a weak and strange voice in his mind, little Rich Brother became more nervous, especially as the Computation Bead was warning him that the other party was undergoing a mysterious process called “mind resonance”.

Although he didn’t know what this guy was doing, if he allowed it to complete this process, his own fate probably wouldn’t be too good.

So Feel You Poor put his finger on the trigger and shouted:

“Who exactly are you? Why are you here?”

“As you can see, brave warrior, I’m a poor Spirit Mage, and an unfortunate small merchant.”

Zweig immediately explained glibly:

“When Kadman City was invaded by the Astral Realm, I accidentally hid here and was captured by the damned rat gang. They used evil methods to extract my soul and stuff it into this decayed ghoul body.

Making me suffer endless humiliation and torture.

It was you!

It was the great Lord Murphy and his brave warriors who defeated the evil rat gang, allowing me to escape! You don’t need to be afraid. Look at my current state, I’m already too ashamed to face people, brave warrior.

My only hope is to escape from here and find a place in the wilderness where I won’t be discovered to end my miserable life.

You are undoubtedly all very brave.

I admire you very much. If it were before, I would definitely have hired you at a high price to be my caravan guards, but now there’s no such opportunity.

How about this?

If you let me go, I can give you what you want.

Do you want wealth?

Don’t be shy!

Which ambitious warrior doesn’t need wealth? These lovely little things can make even devils bow to you.”

The cunning Zweig immediately took out the bag of gold coins and treasures from his back and threw it at Feel You Poor’s feet. A large number of gold coins poured out, mixed with several ornaments emitting spirit energy light.

This kind of straightforward negotiation might have worked with ordinary players, but little Rich Brother was no ordinary person. Trying to buy your life with money in front of him would only be seen as an “insult”. Money? That’s just worthless paper that was destined to be more than he could spend in a lifetime from birth!

Seeing that Feel You Poor was completely unmoved, Zweig asked again:

“Ah, look how dull I am. Since you are brave warriors, what you surely desire is power. I have no power to give you, as you can see, I’m now just a weak ghoul, but I can give you the ladder to power.

That is wisdom!

Wisdom that must be used wisely.”

The ghoul took out a black book from the second backpack, put it on the ground and kicked it over to little Rich Brother. Feel You Poor looked down and saw that the book was full of various mysterious symbols and text.

It should be a rare high-level grimoire.

Just looking at the style, you could tell this thing was definitely not ordinary. To be honest, Feel You Poor was a bit tempted. He knew he must have encountered a hidden storyline, so he didn’t rush to make a decision, intending to see this storyline through.

“This is all I have left. I think this is enough to bribe you to let me go. After all, your appetite can’t be too big, being just a Blood Servant.”

Zweig said in a low voice:

“So now we can pretend we never saw each other, right?”

“I have one last question.”

Little Rich Brother kicked the grimoire aside and asked:

“How did you get that ‘Plague Rat King’ nickname? It sounds pretty cool.”

Feel You Poor was really just asking casually, but these words fell on Zweig’s ears with a completely different meaning!

He thought his disguise had been discovered by Murphy’s servant, and immediately revealed his fierce appearance, howling as he pounced towards little Rich Brother in front of him, but then there was a gunshot that hit his raised claw.

“How foolish! If we take you out, all these things will be ours! We can even get a nice amount of experience for free.”

Life Is Pretty Good stood up and shouted.

Then, under Zweig’s widened gaze, a hidden Astral Realm manticore charged straight at him, opening its huge mouth with a roar.

The bloodthirsty maw came right at him, causing the Plague Rat King to let out a terrified scream.

The ghoul puppet only had time to make a cross-armed block before, with a muffled “poof”, most of its body was swallowed into the manticore’s stomach, leaving only two bare legs standing in the blood-covered spot.

That pose was indescribably comical.

“Ah! I told you not to eat this stinky thing! It’ll give you a stomachache!”

Rich Brother raised his staff to hit his manticore.

But Stinky Treasure completely ignored its foolish Summoner. It was a manticore after all, it needed to eat some toxic things to accumulate them in its body, making the venom in its tail sting more potent.

“Damn, your eloquence is impressive!”

Because it was mental communication, Life Is Pretty Good didn’t know what his best friend had discussed with that rare monster. He only saw the ghoul throw out all its treasures before turning hostile, and thought it was due to Feel You Poor’s strong negotiation skills.

But little Rich Brother just chuckled without saying much.

The two crouched down and began dividing the loot.

The gold coins Zweig brought out were not Portia gold coins, but the more valuable Shaldor halfling gold coins. How these two currencies exchanged was unknown at the moment, but both Rich Brothers weren’t short on money, so they casually split this sum evenly.

The main items were several spirit energy ornaments and that seemingly extraordinary magic book.

Life Is Pretty Good picked up the magic book, flipped a few pages, and received a note:

【You are reading the special item 《Midnight Book – Volume of Trickery and Death》. By reading this item, those with certain spirit energy talents can change class to Trickster Apprentice / Coffin Bearer Apprentice and other two basic dark and death spirit energy faction professions!

Note!

This item belongs to corrupted items. Please ensure proper mental protection when reading to avoid unnecessary dangers!

Note!

This item can be turned in to the Spirit Master of your own faction for a large amount of reputation and material rewards.

Development team note!

The ‘Path of the Fallen’ is currently a test-phase profession system. The gameplay and class change system are not yet fully designed. Testers, please be mentally prepared before changing class.】

Feel You Poor also received this note. He decisively snatched the 《Midnight Book》 from Life Is Pretty Good’s hands and seriously said to his best friend:

“This game doesn’t allow respeccing, so you need to be more cautious about profession choices.”

“I’m not stupid.”

Life Is Pretty Good rolled his eyes.

But Feel You Poor knew his childhood friend best. He pouted and said:

“I know you too well! When we were kids, you were scared to death watching horror movies, but every time we watched, you had to come over, covering your eyes but still peeking. I know you’re interested in these weird things, but let’s turn this in to Lady Tris first.

After confirming there’s no problem, then you can change class, okay?

I won’t stop you then.”

“Fine, fine, let’s go turn in the quest.”

Life Is Pretty Good immediately became excited. As he walked out with his best friend, he enthusiastically said:

“This must be the ‘Hidden Quest’ mentioned on the forums, right? It’s indeed well-hidden! Can I post about it on the forum to show off a bit?”

“No problem, post as you like.”

Feel You Poor was in a good mood.

He patted the corrupted tome in his hand and said:

“Maybe our quest can create a new profession system. Path of the Fallen, tsk, sounds powerful. Look how cool this is.”

——

“Hmm, not bad, they still know to turn in questionable items. Obviously good kids who’ve followed rules since childhood.”

In a cave within the underground tunnels, Murphy released the core bead, very satisfied with Feel You Poor and Life Is Pretty Good’s choice. Actually, seeing that “developer note” earlier, one should know that Murphy was “lurking” again.

He was prepared.

If the two little players couldn’t resist the temptation to try this unverified dangerous profession, he would decisively kick them offline, giving them a small warning.

The little players haven’t been in the game long. Of course, Murphy hasn’t been in this otherworld for long either, but even so, he knows that currently on the continent, the Trickster profession is generally equated with “cultist” in most people’s minds.

If this were really a game, it wouldn’t matter.

Role-playing, you know, the degree of freedom should be maxed out.

But the problem is, if you get too immersed in playing a cultist in the game and it affects reality, that’s not good. So Murphy decided to discuss with Tris that even if they were to open up the ‘Trickster’ profession system, Tris should first remove some of the corrupted forbidden techniques that couldn’t pass censorship.

To avoid negatively influencing the little players’ mental health.

“Master! I’ve brought the former boss of the rat gang.”

Maxim’s voice sounded in Murphy’s ear. He turned around to see Maxim leading a woman with disheveled hair.

That former rat gang boss who was rescued by the little players showed her docile nature in front of a real vampire. In fact, she was indeed exhausted and hungry at this moment, in urgent need of a good rest, so that weakness wasn’t entirely an act.

“Your name is Dorothy? You have a nickname called ‘Razor’, right?”

Murphy sized up the woman with a griffin tattooed on her shoulder. He had indeed heard this name before in Kadman City.

The underground black market run by “Razor” Dorothy was one of the most reputable black markets in Kadman City. Unfortunately, it was a bit far from Tris’s manor, so Murphy didn’t have a chance to patronize it.

There were many rumors about Dorothy.

After all, a woman who could make it in the gang business, where violence ruled, always attracted more attention from peers and others.

From what Murphy knew, some said Dorothy was once a hunter team captain in the Nordtov Kingdom, and fled to Transia after committing a crime. But others said Dorothy actually came from the Anju region and was once a bandit leader who occupied a mountain. There were even outlandish rumors saying she was a runaway noble lady from Greenleaf Island.

But these rumors had one thing in common: Dorothy was definitely not a “local”. When many rumors share the same feature, it’s enough to prove that the common part in those rumors, no matter how outlandish, is very likely to be true.

Faced with Murphy’s inquiry and scrutiny, the female gang boss, who had no intention of showing her bravery by staging an assassination attempt on the vampire lord, answered obediently:

“The ‘Razor’ thing is just praise from peers. I’m actually just an underground black market dealer doing some small business, my lord. I can swear on my mother’s father’s name that the rat gang has nothing to do with the Plague Rat King!

That bastard took us in during the disaster.

But he also imprisoned us. As you can see, if it weren’t for you and your brave warriors’ rescue, I would have become one of those ghouls by now.”

“Alright, I believe you have nothing to do with him.”

Murphy’s ears twitched.

The Power of Desire heard Dorothy’s heart voice full of crude curses, all directed at the female relatives of Zweig’s family for eighteen generations.

“But in my city, there’s no need for things like underground black markets to exist, so I’ll give you a chance, Dorothy, a chance to start anew. Whatever you did before has vanished with the destruction of Kadman City.

However, before granting you the rights of a free citizen, I have some questions for you.”

Murphy stared at her and said:

“How did you meet Zweig? What have you been doing here all this time? What do you plan to do next?

Tell me honestly, don’t leave out a single word.

People say vampires have various supernatural abilities, and I’ll tell you most of those rumors are wrong. For example, our real abilities are often more outrageous than you’ve heard.

I can smell lies.

And considering your current situation, Dorothy, you’d better not let me smell that unpleasant scent. I believe honesty is best for both of us in this situation.

I don’t have to waste time because of it, and you can get back the life that doesn’t belong to you right now.

What do you think?”