Volume 19, Chapter 46: Russian Elites Digging Holes Everywhere
"Can you tell me what kind of adventurer you are?" Ling Zai asked the skeleton lord directly after exchanging opinions with my eyes.
The skeleton lord heard Ling's question and immediately replied: "I didn't see that group of people specifically. I was in another area at the time. I didn't know until I came back here that the master was dead. But I can call the people who were there at the time." Come and tell you in detail."
Ling nodded and told him to hurry up. The skeleton lord quickly summoned the insider to report the situation to us.
The person summoned by the Skeleton Lord was a void spirit. This undead creature's frontal attack ability was average, but its ability to escape and sneak attack was first-class. If the entire team was killed, it would not be surprising that he survived. .
Because the Void Spirit is also a high-level undead spirit, it has very high intelligence. After understanding our intention, it quickly introduced the situation at that time. According to the introduction of the void spirit, their team of undead was absorbing the evil atmosphere in a cursed land. Suddenly, for some reason, an undead team outside reported that there was an intruder. Then they went to fight, but they were defeated by the opponent. All destroyed.
"Is this person very powerful?" I asked aloud.
The void walker quickly explained: "It's not very powerful. We were wiped out not because we couldn't defeat them. In fact, the opponent's average combat power was not as good as ours. Although more than thirty high-level undead were killed on our side, the opponent was More than two hundred people died, so in terms of losses alone, we actually had a bit of an advantage. The reason why they were able to wipe out all of us was just because they had more people."
"How many people did you meet?"
"The exact number is uncertain. I glanced at that time and saw at least five hundred people. I don't know if there are more later. You also know that you can't see too far in the forest!"
I nodded and said, "In addition to the number of people, do you also know what their characteristics are? For example, their appearance and so on?"
The Void Spirit immediately said: "The opponent's personnel have many races. As you know, it is normal for adventurers to mix multiple races, so if they have any special appearance, I really can't say. But... "
"But what?"
"But there seem to be many strong warriors in the opponent's team. These people are usually beasts, and their heights are amazing, at least among adventurers, they are quite amazing."
Tall stature is also a characteristic of Russians, but this is only side evidence. If you want to confirm whether the ones who attacked the undead are Russian elites, you need more direct evidence. However, we were not present at the time, so it is not easy to get more direct evidence. After thinking for a while, I suddenly asked: "By the way, have you seen a kind of person with many tattoos on his body in the team?" What I was talking about was actually a barbarian warrior, which is considered a professional profession in Russia. Popular professions, if there are a large number of professional players of this type in the team, then there is no chance.
The void spirit immediately said after hearing my words: "Yes, there are many guys with a lot of tattoos on their bodies in the team, and many of those guys are naked, and the muscles on their bodies look like It’s like a piece of stone, giving people a very strong feeling.”
After hearing what the Void Spirit said, I have determined that those people are the elites of the Russians, but what are they planning to do with so many of them coming to the national barrier? Even if the Russians plan to invade China by force, there is no need to send so many elites to eradicate the monsters within the national barrier in advance, right? Besides, I don’t think they really plan to invade China from here. Let’s not talk about how they are going to get through this mountainous area. What if this is a flat plain and they can bring troops in directly? ***This is not like the eastern region. This is a standard city with vast land and sparsely populated areas and basically no important resources. The Russians entering here will not harm our fundamental interests at all. Even if they can capture one or two cities here, they will be able to plunder a little property, and they may not even be able to spend enough to send troops. Therefore, the Russians will definitely not invade China from here. The strategic depth of the *** area is too great, and the invasion from here will not give full play to the advantage of surprise attack.
Since they are not planning to pave the way for an invasion, the Russians must have some intention of transferring all the elites from across the country here, but we still have no way of figuring it out.
"Do you know where those people are now?" I suddenly asked the Void Spirit directly over Ling.
The Void Spirit shook his head and said, "Sorry, I haven't gone back since I left, so I don't know."
As soon as the Void Spirit finished speaking, the Skeleton Lord next to him immediately said: "I know this, they are still in that area. After the Great Lord was killed, I sent people back to conduct reconnaissance, and they seemed to be still in that cursed land. But according to the reports, a lot of people came from the other side and kept coming in and out. It seemed like they were preparing something."
"Do you know what exactly you are preparing for?"
The Skeleton Lord shook his head and said: "I don't know about this. The scout said there were too many people on the other side, so they didn't dare to get too close."
I nodded and said, "Then could you please send someone to take us to have a look?"
"That's no problem." The Skeleton Lord nodded and agreed to my request, and then said to the Soul Eater who brought us here before: "Send the guests back. I will send a scout to take you there right away."
The Soul Eater nodded and sent us back to where we left before. When we returned to our previous position, Sauter shouted in surprise: "Why are we back again? We didn't see them using it just now." Teleportation?"
"That's not teleportation." Ling explained to them: "It's a kind of soul projection. We haven't moved just now. It's actually our souls that saw the skeleton lord, and our bodies have never left this place at all." Place. As for coming back, it's easier. Once the other party cancels the spell, we will naturally return."
"That's it. I didn't expect the undead to have such powerful skills."
"This is a strategic skill of high-level undead, and ordinary undead can't use it." I said and said to Sauter: "I'm going to investigate the situation of that group of players later, but I guess I'll need to sneak by then. You Just wait here with Aduo, I will arrange for the Soul Eater to protect you, and we will leave together when I come back."
"Can't you take us with you?" A'duo obviously didn't want to stay with the Soul Eater.
I shook my head decisively. "No, the opponent should be very powerful and have a large number of people. You are just guides, not assassins. What if you expose the target and prevent me from completing the mission? So you should just wait here for me to come back."
"Okay!" Although they are very reluctant, the customer's mission is the most important. As guides, Aduo and Sauter still have some professional ethics.
When I told Soul Eater to help me take care of Sauter and the others, a void spirit suddenly appeared next to us. No need to ask, this guy must be the guy the Skeleton Lord said was leading us. However, I don’t know if he is the void spirit that talked to us in the cave over there before. To be honest, in my opinion, these guys look exactly the same. It is definitely a technical job to distinguish between two void spirits.
This spirit of the void is very impatient. As soon as it saw us, it immediately said: "I am the leader sent by the Lord. Can you leave now?"
I nodded and took Ling back, and then said, "Lead the way."
The Void Spirit didn't waste any time, turned around and floated in one direction, and I quickly followed.
The Void Spirit doesn't move very fast, but it took a lot of effort for me to follow this guy. It's not because I'm slow, but because the Void Spirit doesn't know how to turn when he walks. Just from the name, you can tell that this guy has a void constitution, which means that ordinary obstacles are of no use to him. Whether it was a rock or a big tree blocking the road, this guy could pass through them all, but he could pass through me but not me. I can jump over small rivers and so on, and I can fly at low altitude when encountering rough places, but I can't help but avoid big trees, right? This guy floated in a straight line in the forest, but I had to walk S to keep up with him. As a result, I walked at least two or three times as far as he did. Do you think I could not be tired?
"Phew, could you please drift slower next time? I can't keep up with your speed!" Finally I saw the Void Spirit in front of me stop, and I finally found a chance to take a breath.
The other party didn't even mean to answer my words. Instead, he pushed me behind a big tree nearby. I knew there must be something wrong with this guy pushing me, and in this situation, there was only one more direct reason I could think of.
"Hurry up, hurry up. You have to work harder! I can't hold on anymore!" As soon as I was pushed behind the tree, I heard a voice coming from not far away. Although I could understand the words, But this is the result of the simultaneous translation of the system, not because the other party spoke Chinese. In order to prevent encountering Russian elites on the way, I turned on the Russian translation before. Now that the other party's words have activated the translation system, it means that what the other party said is It is Russian, because other foreign languages or Chinese will not cause the translation system to start.
Listening to the other party's words, I carefully opened the opening under my wrist, and a group of ghost beetles quickly crawled out of the opening and spread out along the ground and branches. Now it's not convenient for me to probe the situation, so I have to rely on these little guys.
With the help of the ghost beetle's eyes, I soon discovered a group of Russians carrying a long barrel-like object and struggling to move forward in the forest.
"Okay, this is it." A barbarian warrior shouted and asked the people around him to stand up the gun barrel-like thing, and then several people next to him took out something that looked like a hand-operated drilling machine. Things started digging holes in the ground. Although the ground in the forest is made of mulch on the surface, it is full of plant roots below. Moreover, this is a cursed place. There are many bones and other things under the ground. In short, it is very hard work to dig holes here.
Those people used the hand-operated drill to continuously dig and dig on the ground. Once they encountered an obstacle, they had to pull out the drill, then use a long sharp weapon to reach into the hole to cut off the obstruction and remove it. Dig it out before you can put the drill in again. Although this kind of work does not seem very strenuous, it is extremely troublesome, and the drill must be retracted and retracted repeatedly.
Those few people worked there for more than half an hour before digging a satisfactory hole. Judging from the shape of their drilling rig, the hole should be a vertical well with a diameter of 30 to 40 centimeters and a depth of more than 1.5 meters.
After completing this strange hole, those people threw the drill aside and began to lift the gun barrel-like object next to it. Finally, they moved the upright gun barrel above the newly dug hole, and then Put the barrel down little by little along the hole. Because the size of the newly dug hole was exactly the same as the outer wall of the gun barrel, the gun barrel was not inserted all the way into the hole, but there was a lot of resistance. Those people seemed to have been prepared, and they took out a wooden hammer covered with cotton and started to knock down.
Probably because the gun barrel-like thing was some kind of mechanical device, these people were afraid of breaking the thing, so they didn't dare to use too much force. They could only carefully smash it down little by little. In the end, it took a full ten minutes. Only then did he knock the thing completely into the ground. Finally, when the opening of the thing was parallel to the ground, a Russian player took out a strange fork-like thing and 'inserted' it through the mouth of the tube. Then the people next to him helped to grab the handle of the fork and started to rotate it counterclockwise. stand up. With their combined efforts, the fork was quickly twisted more than ten times. Judging from their actions just now, the function of this fork should be similar to a winding key, and the barrel-like thing is a mechanical body driven by a mechanism such as a spring. As for the function of this thing , I still can’t figure it out for the moment, after all, it looks like a thick pipe from the outside.
After placing this thing, the group of Russians began to divide into four two-person teams and began digging holes along the roads on both sides of the pipe. The holes dug this time were not deep, each only about half a foot deep and about the same size as an ordinary rice pot. In these teams, one person concentrates on digging a hole in the front. After digging one hole, he changes places and continues digging, while the people in the back take out a metal pot as big as a rice cooker after the person in front digs the hole and leaves. The object was stuffed into the dug hole.
After arranging at least fifty or sixty small things around the vertical metal barrel-like thing, most of these people quickly left the area, and then one of them stayed and started camouflage with branches and leaves. Those things. After confirming that everything was covered up, these people left the area together.
After sending a few ghost beetles to follow the group, I walked out from behind the hiding tree together with the void spirit. Probably knowing that I would ask, the Void Spirit said to me as soon as it came out: "I don't know what these things are. They have been setting up such things since they arrived here. Now there are already all these things in this forest area." It’s almost filled with them. Except for a deliberately left passage, these things are almost everywhere here.”
"so much?"
"Yes, there are a lot of them. These guys have been here for three days and haven't stopped. Moreover, there are so many of them that they can divide the work and arrange the work very quickly."
"Have you seen the effects of touching these things on other creatures?"
The Void Spirit shook his head and said: "There were many local small creatures running over these things before, but I don't know whether it was because they were too small to be triggered or for some other reason. Those things didn't react at all."
"This is a national barrier area. There must be many high-level creatures. Normally, there should be a lot of big things? Isn't there one that can step on it?"
"No." The Void Spirit said with certainty: "Those people have special people patrolling nearby. If they encounter large creatures, they will summon their companions to kill them in advance, so no large creatures have ever encountered these things."
From what the Void Spirit said, it seems that even if I want to use any method to experiment, I can't do it, because the other party has obviously planned to expel the creatures that may trigger this kind of thing. If I trigger one inexplicably, it is very likely that the other party will be killed. I know someone is coming in. Therefore, I could only give up the idea of triggering one to see the effect. However, I don’t know whether I should say that I am lucky or the Russians are unlucky. Just after I gave up the intention of triggering this thing, I unexpectedly saw the triggering effect of one of the sets of this thing.
After the group of Russians who finished displaying those strange things left, they were targeted by my ghost beetles, and after they returned to an artificially cut clearing in the middle of the forest, they picked up another set of gun barrel-like ones. The same thing as many small rice cookers went out. After these people left, I only left one ghost beetle to continue to monitor them, while the others stared at the clearing.
Less than three minutes after that group of people left, another group of people came from outside the open space. It seemed that they were also here to get these things. However, there seems to be a guy in this team who has a brain problem. Anyway, that guy was quite sloppy in his work. He actually knocked over one of the cannon barrel-like things while transporting them. As a result, the thing not only fell over by itself, but also hit several people. On a small rice cooker-like device. Immediately, several small rice cookers were triggered along with the fallen gun barrel.
I said before that this thing looks like a cannon barrel, which is absolutely correct. This thing is a door cannon, but it doesn't fire steel cannonballs, nor does it compress energy, but a black ink-like substance. Thick liquid.
The fallen gun barrel spurted out a large black liquid ball the moment it fell, and the liquid ball suddenly exploded after flying more than two meters horizontally. The nearby group of people who came to move things and the surrounding forest were instantly sprayed into darkness. It is conceivable that if this thing had been placed vertically instead of upside down, then the area of tens of meters around it would have been sprayed into pitch black by this thing.
Except for the barrel, those things that are similar to the rice cooker are another kind of equipment. There is a round opening on the top of these things that looks like a bear trap. It snaps shut the moment it is touched, but I don't see how advanced it is compared to ordinary bear traps. But since the Russians There must be a reason why it is made like this, but I haven't thought of it yet.
After confirming the function of that thing, I immediately asked one of the ghost beetles to bring me a leaf with a lot of that liquid on it. But when I got the leaf, I became even more suspicious. 'Confused'.
"Is this... kerosene?"
The kerosene mentioned here is not ordinary kerosene, but a petroleum extract. It's no secret that there is oil in the map of "Zero". Many guilds also use oil to make incendiary bombs, so oil is also considered a resource here.
In reality, people will use cracking technology to separate oil into various products such as diesel, gasoline, and asphalt. However, few guilds in the game can replicate the equipment in reality, so they use local methods to decompose the oil to obtain It's not gasoline and diesel, but this dark and extremely viscous black liquid. In fact, to put it bluntly, this kind of kerosene is basically not much different from petroleum. Except that the specific gravity is slightly lower and it is easier to ignite, it is basically similar to crude oil.
After figuring out what this black liquid was, I summoned Ling and several other familiars with better brains. After concentrating everyone's wisdom on speculation, we finally came up with this. a conclusion. No matter how the shapes of things like rice cookers change, they cannot change the basic function of their clamps. However, it is obvious that things that are buried shallowly and are not fixed are difficult to trap large creatures, and its Trigger sensitivity is obviously not prepared for small creatures. Therefore, we determined that this rice cooker-style clamp was not designed to restrict the movement of living creatures, but was only designed to slow down the opponent. As for the gun barrel that can burn kerosene, it was obviously developed to completely coat the target with kerosene. Coupled with those clips, it is not difficult to imagine that the function of these clips is to limit the speed of the target creature so that the kerosene launcher can completely cover it. In other words, the clips are not the point, the key is to cover the target with kerosene. .
Although we understand that covering the target with kerosene is the purpose of the Russians, we cannot figure out what they intend to do. Generally speaking, after dousing your opponent with kerosene, the next step is to burn them with fire. But the problem is that if you want to burn an enemy to death with fire, it will definitely take a long time. Even if the Russians plan to kill some creatures, there is no need to go to such great lengths to arrange kerosene. Wouldn't it be more straightforward to just bury a few magic crystal steam mines?
Therefore, the purpose of the Russians is definitely not to kill the target. Otherwise, they would not bury such a scary-looking but completely non-lethal weapon. Instead, they should directly place many easily installed mines. But what do they plan to do if they don't kill the target? Is it to capture him alive?
The purpose of catching monsters is nothing more than a few situations. Either a certain mission goal specifies a creature to be captured alive, or it is to capture prisoners to obtain information. The last one is to capture magic pets. Except for these three situations, generally no one will Choose the ones caught alive.
The situation of capturing prisoners now seems obviously inappropriate, because these things do not seem to be prepared for humanoid creatures, and as for the possibility of capturing demon pets... it doesn't seem like it either. Even if you want to catch a magic pet, you have to do it alone. I have never heard of any high-level players from all over the country gathering together to catch a magic pet. Even if the Russians wanted to set a Guinness World Record for multiple people to catch magic pets together, they would never do it at this juncture, so this possibility can basically be ignored.
Remove the last two possibilities, and there is only one reason left. The Russians have a mission, and they have to capture this creature alive to complete their mission. However, this answer is actually the most useless answer, because just knowing that the Russians have a mission, but not knowing what mission they have, neither their mission goals nor their mission rewards, ultimately equals nothing. have no idea.
"What do these guys want to do?" I held the leaf stained with kerosene and thought about it so hard that my head cramped, but I couldn't think of an answer.
Just when I fell into a dead end, Xiaofeng's words suddenly reminded me. "In fact, instead of guessing the purpose of the Russians here, it is better to first find out what kind of creature they are trying to catch."
"Yes." It suddenly occurred to me that when we discovered the doubt before, it was because Sauter found a fragrant fruit. Our inference at the time was that a player picked the fragrant fruit and then dropped one halfway through. Based on this idea, the fragrant fruit must be related to the mission, otherwise the Russians would not need to pick it. However, according to Sauter, fragrant fruit has no use at all except for being edible, and it has no taste, so most people will not eat it at all. However, Sauter also said at the time that there was a creature that liked to eat fragrant fruits. So, based on this clue, it can be deduced that the Russians collected fragrant fruits to make bait, and then combined with the kerosene traps set up by the Russians, it is not difficult to guess the general plan of the Russians. "Yes, it must be like this." I said with great certainty.
"What did you think of?" Ling asked curiously. I told Ling what Sauter said before and my thoughts, and Ling understood immediately. "So as long as we know what kind of thing likes to eat this fragrant fruit, we can know what kind of creature the Russians are trying to catch."
Xiaochun also followed: "Don't you know that Sauter? Just go and ask."
"Darts." I reached out and summoned the darts. It would be too time-consuming for me to return to Sauter by myself, and let the darts convey the message the fastest.
After understanding the mission, Dart disappeared into the forest in a flash, and then ran back in less than five minutes. With Dart's ability to move at the speed of light, this journey took less than a second, and the delay was estimated to be five minutes. It's all time to talk to Sauter.
"Darts, what on earth is that thing that likes to eat fragrant fruits?"