"Where are you, mama? Where are you, big bro?"

On the hill, a girl with shoulder-length hair was walking around with an orange lantern and seemingly calling out for her loved ones. From the side, I could see her round butt outlining her red-and-black cloak and her breasts threatening to spill out of her gold mage collar. She was sexy to say the least.

"Gulp…"

I swallowed as I tried to calm myself. "Mob designs sure are cute and sexy these days. She’s probably around the same age as Beiming and Lian Xin, but her figure is slightly better…"

Beiming Xue immediately puffed out her chests angrily. "Did you just say my figure is inferior, big bro?!"

I gripped my fists. "You misunderstand me. To be specific, your front isn’t as good as the mob’s, but your back is absolutely better…"

Murong Mingyue chuckled. "Exactly. Our Beiming’s bubble butt is the best. Come over and let me have a grab, will ya, Beiming?"

Lin Yixin stepped in just as Beiming Xue turned bright red. "Stop teasing Lil Beiming already, you gangsters. Lu Chen, will you scan the mob with your Dark Pupils? You don’t want to go through another humiliating episode like that time with the dragon girl, do you?"

I nodded. One scan later, I sucked in a deep breath to suppress my shock. Not only did the mob have powerful stats, it was a mage. This is going to be "fun"—

Lantern Girl (Fiend)

Level: 300

Magic Attack: 37000~48500

Defense: 39500

HP: 2950000

Skills: Explosion Strike, Icicle Spell, God Devil Break

Property: Indestructible. Magic Shield’s durability is increased by 100%.

Introduction: During ancient times, there were four dukes who led a corrupt and debaucherous life at the borders of Vanished God City. Not only did they kidnap beautiful civilian girls to satisfy their own selfish wants and perverted desires, they specifically targeted young girls between 14 to 19 years old despite being nearly a hundred years old themselves. These girls were also trained to sing, dance, and assassinate. After the devils invaded, the young girls regained their freedom at the cost of their own souls. They are now merely undead puppets with outstanding looks and powerful magic.

……

I read the stats carefully before saying, "Their Magic Attack’s upper limit is almost 50k, so it’s going to hurt like a bitch. It’s also a Level 300 mob, so the level penalty is going to be considerable as well. Finally, we need to watch out for its God Devil Break because its Intelligence must be pretty high. I would’ve preferred not to fight these Lantern Girls at all, but they’re blocking our way, so…"

Lin Yixin unsheathed her Dragonfrost and declared, "So we fight. We’ll lure them to us one by one so that we won’t get overwhelmed by them. Level 300 fiend-rank mobs are no joke after all. Little Cheat will take point, and Sister Eve and I will cover the rear!"

"Mn!"

I gathered the Dragon Slaying Slash in my blade before firing it at the Lantern Girl’s head, dealing over 55k damage with a single hit. If there was one thing good about mage-type mobs, it would be that their Defense was paper-thin!

The Lantern Girl spun around to face us. Her round, pale face looked both seductive yet warped under the dim lighting. She glared at me hatefully as she said, "You dare set foot on this land, damned human? Surrender your life for Lord Bloodthirsty Emissary!"

A golden Magic Shield surrounded her as she spoke. It looked like the Lantern Girl was programmed to summon her Magic Shield the moment she was attacked, and its durability bar looked very long. This was going to take a while!

I gripped the Chill of the Nine Provinces and shortened the distance between the Lantern Girl and me in an instant. I struck her Magic Shield with Burning Blade Slash, warping the golden shield but failing to destroy it. Just how much MP did she have that my Burning Blade Slash couldn’t even delete half of the Magic Shield’s durability? In China, the only mages whose Magic Shields were this powerful were probably Luo River God of the Capital, Lian Xin and Stranger of Three Lifetimes.

Swhoosh!

I pierced the Magic Shield, deleted another chunk of its durability, and dealt another 600k damage to the Lantern Girl with Universe Break. Furious, the mob raised her lantern and bathed herself in flames before hitting my Cyan Dragon Shield with an Explosion Strike. I hadn’t activated Battle Astral Wind, so I was treated to the "rejuvenating" sensation of being burned alive. My HP dropped tremendously!

309182!

Meanwhile, Lin Yixin had finally arrived with an exclamation of surprise, "Even Little Cheat took this much damage from a bigger fireball? Just how strong is this mob?"

My Fruit Knife Goddess shredded the Lantern Girl’s Magic Shield almost instantly. Together with He Yi, it should take them only seconds to shred the mob’s 2.95 million HP into nothing. However, the beautiful undead girl abruptly stopped freezing me with her Icicle Spell and dropped a lightning-fast God Devil Break on all of us. Three massive damage numbers rose above our heads—

229640!

368520!

391240!

Equipment that boosted all four base attributes had never been more important than it was now. Whoever had the highest Intelligence would take the least damage from God Devil Break, and seven pieces of my equipment—the Chill of the Nine Provinces, the Cyan Dragon Shield, the Guardian Dragon Armor, the Sunchaser Cloak, the Nine Heavens Li Fire Bracelet, the Ghost Spirit War Boots and the Dark Magma Poleyns—added Intelligence. That was why my ability to tank God Devil Break far exceeded Lin Yixin’s or He Yi’s.

In fact, most of Candle Dragon and Warsky Alliance’s "elite" mages didn’t even bother to hit me with God Devil Break. It was because their total Intelligence was lower than mine, meaning that their God Devil Break could only hit me for the fixed minimum damage of 1000. Galaxy Storm would’ve done more damage.

……

Crack!

Dragonfrost sliced across the Lantern Girl’s chest one more time and finally deleted her last sliver of HP. As the mob slowly collapsed, she uttered defiantly, "Lord Bloodthirsty Emissary will strip your hides and hang it over Bloodthirsty Castle as flags! Await the punishment of fate, ignorant humans!"

I picked up the legguards she dropped and read their stats. The item was called "Skirt of the Lantern Girl", and it was a Heaven-grade cloth-armor type item that added 44% MP and 7% Magic Shield durability. It was an amazing life-saving equipment for a mage, and it was worth at least 1000 RMB. We rolled for it, and Beiming Xue was the winner. Fortunately, Luck didn’t affect dice rolls, or the person with the highest Luck would get most of the loot every time, and that was just plain unfair. It didn’t stop me from feeling pained at the 3 points I rolled though!

He Yi chuckled. "It looks like the Skirt of the Lantern Girl is a set, and like all other sets, it takes 5—the headgear, the chest armor, the legguards, the boots and the wristguards—to complete them. It adds a lot of Magic Attack, HP and Defense, and its final effect is a 50% boost to the damage of God Devil Break. Let’s do our best to grind a full equipment set and sell it at the auction house later. I bet it’ll sell for 100k at least. It’s not a bad idea, right? We’re still making progress in our quest, and we’re earning gold while doing so…"

Whatever qualms I might have had instantly evaporated when I heard the word "gold”. I nodded. "Okay. We’ll kill all the Lantern Girls there are on this hill before giving Bloodthirsty Emissary the retribution he deserves. It’s the boss of an SSS Rank main quest anyway, so no one’s going to be able to kill him anytime soon. Right now, grabbing this god-given gold is the bigger priority…"

Lin Yixin snickered, "You’re such a goldcon, Little Cheat!"

I shrugged. "How can I not? Houses, cars, marriage; every one of these requires a truck load of money. It’s why people say you can never have enough of it. Plus, it’s not like the Lantern Girls give poor experience. Quite the contrary, this is an excellent map to grind both experience and gold!"

"Yeah!"

……

We continued. The plains were still completely dark besides our equipment luster and the lanterns of the Lantern Girls. It was as if the map was devouring the moonlight from the sky somehow. The good news was that there were no other players in the area, so we could grind this map to our hearts’ content. The Lantern Girl set was a Level 220 equipment set, and that was exactly the level the average player was at right now. I was sure there would be buyers one way or another.

Unfortunately, it seemed like our luck had run out for the moment. We didn’t drop a single piece of the Lantern Girl set even after killing the next 50 Lantern Girls. I was starting to wonder if the item we had gotten earlier was a fluke, or worse, the drop rate was so low that even my 100 Luck wasn’t good enough to improve it to a reasonable number.

"It looks like the equipment drop rate is less than 1 in 10000…" He Yi commented.

Lin Yixin blamed me for some reason. "Is your Luck stat on strike today or something, Little Cheat?"

"Well, I did donate 11 to the guild…"

"What a waste!!"

"The Holy Mages they will produce are totally worth it though."

"That is true…"

It was at this moment my Chill of the Nine Provinces triggered its septuple-damage effect on a Universe Break and one-shot the Lantern Girl I was fighting. As if on cue, she dropped a red-and-black robe that was clearly a part of the equipment set. Just in case, I took a look and yep, it was the Robe of the Lantern Girl. My motivation instantly returned to the peak as I said, "Alright, it looks like our worries were unfounded after all. There are still plenty of mobs in the area, so let us continue!"

……

The grind seemed to go so much faster when you were driven by hope. Five hours or so passed in the blink of an eye, and over half of the plains had been cleared out by us. In the end, we were able to drop 19 pieces of the Lantern Girl set, assembling 3 complete sets from them. I kept all the drops in my bag because I had the least chance of dying out of everyone.

He Yi glanced at the near empty plains and clapped her hands once. "We’re more or less done. We’ll have to wait for a respawn if we are to continue grinding the Lantern Girls. However, they respawn in just 4 hours, so should we continue or should we start making our way toward Bloodthirsty Castle?"

I thought for a moment before replying, "Let’s go to Bloodthirsty Castle. We’ll log out, sleep, and come back tomorrow fresh when we reach the periphery."

"Okay!"

Beiming Xue pointed at the lush forest slightly toward our right. "Big bro, there’s a canyon over there that leads straight to Bloodthirsty Castle. Should we use it?"

"Why not? Let’s go!"

……

I took point with my apparition and the Phantom Wolf King beside me. We didn’t enter the canyon for long before we saw Lantern Girls respawning en masse in front of us. Unless I was sorely mistaken, this canyon was probably the Lantern Girls’ den!

"Stop. There are people directly ahead of us!"

Suddenly, Lin Yixin dashed up to me and pressed me to the ground. We hid behind a bush and watched as a huge party of players—I counted at least a thousand of them—battled against the Lantern Girls. Their guild emblem marked them as members of Candle Dragon!