Chapter 46: I Can Beat Ten More!
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

The spear pierced through a Shielder’s neck through the cracks of his armor, and as the spear pierced him a ‘-723′ floated out of his head, and the Shielder in question turned into particles of light and floated out of the arena.

“Too weak! Next!” The shield knight swung the spear in his hand and shouted indignantly. It was already the fourteenth sacred soul he had killed.

In all fourteen battles, the number of sacred souls that could stand a minute under his flurry of attacks were only four, while none of those four could stand more than two minutes.

Through these fourteen battles, Kaermo had completely gotten a grasp over the average battle prowess of these sacred souls, and he found out that even if they were injured fatally they would be able to turn into light particles and float off the arena, giving him a win.

Other than that, even if he were attacked and his life-force were shaved off with that strange power of theirs, he was healed by a special energy from the old mage hat not only recovered his life energy, and even his mental fatigue.

This made him continue to attack without thinking of the consequences.

The battle style of the shield knight was focused on speed in the first place, and as large-ranged the players’ skills were, they were still normal people in the modern age under the skin of strong sacred souls, and so it was hard for their reflexes to follow up with the movements of the shield knight.

In contrast, the shield knight had been through countless grueling battles, and trained every single day to hone his skills in battle, at the same time strengthening his body with magical power.

His battle sense and reflexes couldn’t be overhauled by the players, even if they had strong abilities.

“Is no one going to challenge me?” The shield knight shouted, realizing no one was coming up to the stage anymore. The players that were spectating continued to increase, but no one heeded his calls.

No matter how much he shouted, the players seemed to not be able to hear him. In contrast, the shield knight heard the gripes and complaints of the players off the arena.

“I knew it! This NPC was really designed by the developers to scam us of our magical stones! You can’t even defeat this monster no matter how much you try!”

“Knock-up combos don’t work on him, and he can block and deflect every move we use against him, and he’s quick as hell too!”

“SilverBullet, wanna go gamble again? The prize pool has already increased to six thousand!”

One of SilverBullet’s friends nudged at him, goading him to battle again.

The magical stone prize in the pool would accumulate along with the players that added magical stones into it, and as soon as a player won against the shield knight they would be able to obtain a whole 6000 magical stones.

These 6000 magical stones were enough to redeem a whole set of Rainbow Unicorn skins, with more to spare in excess.

“Nah, or else I’m really going to go broke! Let’s go clear some dungeons.” SilverBullet was quite attracted by the prize, but he didn’t have the skill to win it, so he didn’t rush in without thought.

The players were all smart, and from the past fourteen battles they had all gotten a grasp over his strength the same way he had over theirs. Granted, they could probably defeat this shield knight if they fought him in groups, but it really required skill for them to beat him one-on-one.

The shield knight could somewhat hear what they were saying, but he couldn’t quite understand some particular words and jargon, so he thought they were just scared.

“Do you not have any stronger warriors?” Kaermon shouted even louder, but no one paid any attention to him.

“I’m going to complain about the developers on the forum, this NPC is crazy!”

“I’ve already uploaded my recording up to YouRabbit, you can use it as proof!”

“What’s the code to the video?”

“21452.”

Jiang Qiao listened in on the conversation, and immediately opened the YouRabbit video sharing site, which was one of the most popular sites of its kind in Hua Nation, and even the whole world.

According to the code that the players said, Jiang Qiao found a video entitled ‘This crazily strong NPC from the newest VR game Sacred Souls, can anyone beat him?’. The uploader’s ID was FrontlineReporter, and she was an extremely popular YouRabbiter with 1.23 million subscribers.

There were more than ten Sacred Souls related videos by her, and most of them were simple gameplay records of her own account. She started recording her gaming ever since she started the game, and she was already a Level 25 Assassin.

She was probably the second batch of players that entered Sacred Souls.

Jiang Qiao glanced at this player called FrontlineReporter, and from the way she designed her skin to look purple, she looked like a classic night elf assassin from classic RPGs.

The popularity of Sacred Souls had recently seen a boost on the internet, and four out of the top ten most popular videos in the gaming section currently were related to Sacred Souls. This video that she had just uploaded had already gone up to the tenth place in such a short time.

Jiang Qiao pointed into it and checked the half-hour long video himself, and from the first SilverBullet to the last shielder called RedClothes, this Assassin recorded every battle with expert cameramanship.

This was amplified even more by Tiangong Game Platform’s excellent recording system.

Glancing at the danmaku, it was all about how ‘This NPC is way too strong!’, ‘Can anyone beat him?’, ‘I need an autolock.’, ‘NPC created by the developers to recollect their magical stones.’

A whole fourteen consecutive losses definitely impacted the players’ morale, and Jiang Qiao could even feel their collective grudges through the screen.

While not everyone that sent danmaku comments were Sacred Souls players, but if they got the bandwagon rolling it would be hard to deal with, even for him.

After thinking for a bit, he decided to find a trump card.

If the regular player couldn’t defeat this shield knight in terms of skill, then what about a professional player?

Jiang Qiao sent a private message to Zhao Mingwei, it was still 9 at night he was still in training, but when he saw how Jiang Qiao described it, he was extremely interested in this NPC and wanted to test his hand later.

This world’s professional players were different than the professional players back on Earth.

Other than regular game training, they also had extensive physical training along with reflex training, and so if they were serious they could even compete with professional sportsmen.

After ten minutes, someone pat Jiang Qiao on his back.

“I’m here. Is he the strongest NPC that you told me about?”

Zhao Mingwei had appeared behind Jiang Qiao, and he was already Level 33, which was barely hanging onto the batch of first-class players.

“I’m not sure myself, but fourteen players have already been beaten up by him without any mercy… You wouldn’t be the fifteenth, would you?” Jiang Qiao was the one who invited Zhao Mingwei in the first place, but he was still unsure about it.

“I’ll give it a shot.”

Zhao Mingwei walked towards the arena, where the bunch of players were still standing around and grumbling within each other, and as he arrived RedClothes, the Shielder blocked him.

“Bro, there’s seriously something wrong with that NPC! You should be more careful as a cloth-armor character.” RedClothes thought Zhao Mingwei was another spectator.

“I saw that video from earlier, and someone dodged an attack with 40 Agility. I use most of my stat points on Intelligence, but my Agility is still 41, so there shouldn’t be a problem.”

Zhao Mingwei had done his research beforehand, checking on the battle recording of this shield knight before he arrived.

The stats in Sacred Souls helped to amplify the character’s battle prowess, and the Agility stat was mostly focused on increasing the character’s movement speed and attacking speed. Of course, the player would still have to train their reflexes in real life.

Even if an Assassin had more than a hundred Agility, they wouldn’t be able to put it into good use if their reflexes couldn’t keep up.

RedClothes didn’t block him anymore upon seeing his confidence, and Zhao Mingwei stepped onto the arena under the gazes of more than thirty players.

“You? Are you going to challenge me without any weapons or armor?”

The shield knight stared at Zhao Mingwei who stepped onto the arena, and the latter was dressed in traditional Chinese monk attire. He wore monk’s robes on his upper body along with loose pants, and his left arm with an aura tattoo was exposed to the air while his hair was tied into a long ponytail behind him.

In the eyes of the shield knight, anyone who wore this on the battlefield would be looking for death! Not only was there no protection, but these long flowing clothes also restricted movement.

“My weapons are right here.” Zhao Mingwei swung his fists in the direction of the shield knight, showing off his Level 30 Purple-grade gloves.

“Your fist? Did you want to defeat my spear with just your fists?” The shield knight laughed, and he wasn’t looking down on him or anything of the sort—He was purely humored by Zhao Mingwei. A few moments later, he stopped laughing and got into a serious stance. “Let’s try it then!”