Chapter 66: Pumpkin Grim Reaper

Following the guidance of the mark, he quickly located his target.

This was a player whose Mage class level was six.

At the current stage, players were no longer completely in the dark as they had been initially.

Whether on the forums or from the carriage merchants, there was plenty of information regarding Hunter Marks and related intelligence.

Therefore, everyone was well aware that the ultimate enemy within the Twisted Dream was essentially other players.

Killing and looting their pumpkin candles and essences was far more efficient than farming monsters.

Relying on his previous experience, he stepped forward to absorb the firepower directly while Feather hid on the side to launch sneak attacks.

This Mage player also seemed to possess a similar warning ability, managing to consecutively block two attacks through a rare spell called Flame Wall.

However, given the huge disparity in level and spell tier, a single mistake soon led to Qin Yuan taking his life.

[Notification: You have obtained thirty-eight pumpkin candles. Your current total is one hundred and fifty-eight.]

Perhaps because he had entered only recently, this player did not possess many pumpkin candles.

This outcome was entirely within Qin Yuan's expectations.

As time gradually progressed, it was evident that the supplies collected by players would exhibit a clustering effect.

Near the end, killing a single person could potentially drop hundreds of pumpkin candles and several points of essence.

Although they were already in the first district, which housed the top 1% of players, most players were only around level five, and level sixes were rare.

As for level seven players, Qin Yuan had not encountered a single one so far.

After all, when he encountered the man in black last time, the man was only level six, and it was uncertain whether he had leveled up since.

With that, Qin Yuan shifted into a routine of primarily farming elite monsters and tracking people down via the Guardian Mark.

Things proceeded relatively smoothly.

A few hours flew by in the blink of an eye.

...

First District.

In a certain mist-shrouded forest.

A figure clad entirely in a black cloak, holding a bizarre staff topped with an embedded skull, was walking swiftly.

A faint black glow emanating from the staff enveloped his entire body.

The wailing wraiths that approached the vicinity seemed to sense some terrifying entity and hurriedly scattered out of the way.

Even when passing by a twisted treant, the creature remained quietly camouflaged in place without showing any sign of launching an attack.

The player did not even spare these monsters a glance, his destination entirely clear.

The scenery along the way receded rapidly.

Soon, a dark cave appeared ahead.

From the skull atop the staff in his hand came a hollow, ethereal voice.

"Is this the place?"

"Indeed. At least according to the information I acquired, this is it."

The man in black nodded, his voice sounding raspy.

Next, he pulled a glowing crystal from his pocket to dispel the darkness and walked forward.

Under the illumination of the light, minute dust motes drifting in the air were clearly visible.

After walking dozens of steps, he reached the end of the path.

A strip-shaped object was embedded in the wall ahead, surrounded by various bizarre patterns painted all around it.

A closer look revealed that this centrally located strip-shaped object was precisely a coffin.

A thick layer of magical seal blocked the way forward, halting any further progress.

As if fully prepared, he swiftly produced a handful of gray powder and sprinkled it over the seal.

A sizzling sound echoed.

The seal appeared to suffer severe corrosion and began to tremble violently.

Then, he raised the staff in his hand.

The skull's jaw opened, and a gush of black mist spewed out, landing directly upon the magical seal.

Under this dual pressure, glass-shattering sounds rang out one after another, and the runes on the seal began to twist gradually.

Shortly after, accompanied by a sharp crack, the magical seal completely shattered, turning into stardust that scattered across the ground.

Taking a breath of the stale air, the man in black walked forward with brisk steps and pushed the lid open to the side, revealing the contents within.

It was a skeleton draped in a gray cloak.

Strikingly, every single inch of its skeletal frame was pure, pitch black.

"Is this the originally designated final boss, the Pumpkin Reaper?"

Gazing with curious eyes, the man in black raised his staff.

"Go," he said softly.

Immediately afterward, a cluster of ghostly green flames flew out from the eye sockets of the staff's skull and landed upon the skeleton before him.

For the first few minutes, nothing happened.

However, this seemed to be within the expectations of the man in black, who stood in place and waited quietly.

Half an hour passed.

At a certain moment, two clusters of green flames ignited within the previously empty eye sockets of the skeleton inside the coffin.

The deep green flames gradually spread to every corner of the skeletal frame.

"Feels rather nice..."

An ethereal, hollow voice echoed from the mouth of the Pumpkin Reaper.

After moving its body slightly, it floated out from within.

The skeleton, which seemed to burn all over with green flames, hovered in mid-air.

At a thought from it, a giant scythe materialized in its palm.

The man in black watched this scene and nodded with satisfaction.

"Then, let us begin..."

"There are still so many pumpkin essences outside, waiting for us to reap..."

...

[Time remaining until the end of this dream: 00:00:05]

[The current session has ended.]

[Returning...]

The moment the voice sounded, Qin Yuan's consciousness returned once again to the room within the tavern.

He began to tally his gains from this excursion.

The lantern wraiths had not been encountered.

He did run into one Pumpkin Lord, whose level had unexpectedly jumped straight to seven.

It had also received all-around enhancements, to the point that even the holy water potions, which previously had excellent effects, were no longer very useful.

That being the case, Qin Yuan no longer spared his mana and instantly annihilated it with a single Lesser Meteor.

The reward was a mere four points of essence.

How meager...

Along the subsequent path, he killed three more twisted treants and collected a single point of essence from them.

It was evident that while these newly added elite monsters could also drop essence, the drop rate was extremely low.

As for the Guardian Mark, he had consecutively killed six players including the initial one, though two of them were Hunter Mark holders who had ambushed him midway, so they were not counted.

From the other players, he had collected a total of seven points of essence.

Qin Yuan deduced that a portion of these essences must have been obtained from twisted treants, while another portion likely originated from the level-five Pumpkin Lords of previous runs.

In other words, by the end of this round, a total of 12 points of essence had been collected, which counted as a bumper harvest.

As for the pumpkin candles, the yield was much higher.

Although he had skipped some minor monsters, he had made up for it in bulk from other players.

The candles provided by those players alone amounted to a grand total of 530 points.

The Pumpkin Lord provided 100 points in one go.

Combined with the leftover portion from last time and what he harvested from minor monsters and twisted treants this time, the total number of pumpkin candles reached 931.

After tallying everything up and seeing that it was already the early hours of the morning, Qin Yuan went straight to rest, quietly awaiting his return to reality.