Chapter Ninety: One-Eyed Seven, the Bandit Horseman

Bandits had always plagued the lands of Qi and Lu. Whenever famine struck, mounted raiders gathered in packs and roamed everywhere, bells hanging thick from their horses’ necks as they galloped through towering mountains and steep ridges, smoke of alarm rising in rolling clouds.

The six members of White Fiend usually dealt with ordinary bandits in B- and C-rank instances. This time, however, their enemy was the mounted outlaw One-Eyed Seven. His gang numbered more than thirty men, averaging level twelve, while their chieftain himself was above level fifteen.

All thirty-odd bandits had horses. They came and went like the wind; after sweeping down the mountain to loot, they would retreat at once to Toad Rock, beyond the reach of government troops. The reason the six dared challenge them was that the raiders’ weapons were fairly poor. Aside from a few leaders, most of the bandits still relied on firearms and long spears of a rather crude sort.

Chen Hao arrived at Luming Town, over twenty kilometers from Penglai County, where the six had accepted the quest. The NPC who issued it was a local landlord. His daughter had been carried off to the mountain by One-Eyed Seven, and he begged the players to rescue her.

By the time the six took the quest, it was already the third day in game time. Since the bandits’ lair at Toad Rock was easy to defend and hard to assault, White Fiend and Lin Xiaofeng had discussed the matter and decided on an ambush. Yesterday, when One-Eyed Seven led his men back from raiding a village, the six lay in wait at a dangerous pass. They managed to kill two bandits, but most of the gang escaped.

Without superior numbers, ambushing cavalry was difficult. In special map quests, the more players who joined, the more monsters the map generated, so increasing their numbers was of little help. These bandits were not especially strong, and their arms and equipment were mediocre; only their speed and mobility made it hard for players to wipe them out completely.

After realizing this, the six decided to attack the bandits’ stronghold at Toad Rock. The place was steep and well fortified, with only a single dirt road leading up the mountain. If they could force their way up, the mounted raiders would lose the advantage of their horses, and then they could be destroyed in one stroke.

The raiders were no fools. They guarded the road to Toad Rock with extreme vigilance, placing a sentry post at a strategic choke point. Four of their best marksmen rotated duty there, armed with ordinary Quickshot rifles. If the six players could not deal with those sentries, then the moment they charged the post, not one of them would survive.

The six had already attempted an assault once. Chen Feng and Lin Xiaofeng crept toward the sentry post while the others provided covering fire. But their shooting attributes were too low and the quality of their suppressing fire too poor; before the two men could even get close, they were shot dead.

After meeting up with the six, Chen Hao went to the landlord, accepted the quest, and walked more than ten li with them to nearby Toad Rock. The rock rose over three hundred meters high. At the mountain’s waist stood a boulder more than eight meters tall, and it was there that the raiders had built their sentry post. From that height, the post commanded the entire mountain road below. There were no prominent obstacles on the road to provide cover; the instant one stepped onto it, one became a living target.

To attack terrain like this, there were only two choices: spend lives to force the way through, or find a means of killing the sentries first. But the players were already outnumbered, so they could not possibly rely on sheer sacrifice. And yet to kill the sentries, they still had to go by the dirt road. It seemed a dead knot with no solution.

After observing for a while, Chen Hao gave a faint laugh. “Actually, the first stage of this special map isn’t difficult.”

White Fiend looked unconvinced. “Brother Chen, ours isn’t the first team to try this special map. More than twenty teams before us took the quest from Landlord Lin, and every one of them failed. We only dared test an A-rank map because clearing a B-rank one made us overconfident. In the end, we couldn’t think of any way through at all, and now you’re saying this map is easy?”

In War, special maps like this were all one of a kind. Clearing such a map did not merely test a player’s combat strength; it also tested whether the player could find the proper method. If Chen Hao’s group of seven completed this map, One-Eyed Seven and his mounted gang would disappear, and after some time the system would generate a new quest instance in their place.

That was why clearing a special map involved a great deal of chance. Chen Hao had no memory of this particular One-Eyed Seven map. The reason he could think of a solution was that his mind held countless classic examples from old games, and the terrain before him closely resembled one of them.

“Fiend, if Brother Chen says it’s simple, then he must have his reasons. Just listen patiently,” Liu Zixuan said. She had the habit of finding fault with anyone she disliked and trusting completely anyone she favored. Now that their misunderstanding had been resolved, she had developed an almost blind faith in Chen Hao.

“I believe Boss Chen has a way too. We all thought that church fight was hard, and he handled it with ease,” said Fishing Bystander. His level had been rising quickly of late, and he was becoming more and more convinced that coming to Penglai had been an exceptionally wise decision.

Chen Hao did not bother with further explanation. He took out a standard Quickshot rifle from his satchel, switched its attributes to visible display, and said with a smile, “The answer is right here in the rifle’s stats. Do any of you notice anything?”

The six were utterly baffled, unable to guess what he was getting at. Chen Hao explained, “The effective range of an ordinary Quickshot rifle is no more than one hundred and twenty meters, but the standard version has an effective range of about one hundred and fifty. You’ve all done bandit instances before, and you know their equipment is poor. The ordinary raiders all use the ordinary version, so our rifles outrange theirs by thirty meters...”

“But what good is thirty extra meters?” White Fiend could not help muttering. “With shooting attributes in the twenties or thirties, our hit rate is only acceptable within about thirty meters. Beyond fifty, it drops below twenty percent. Past eighty, the chance of hitting anything is practically negligible.”

Usually taciturn, Rain Butterfly spoke thoughtfully. “I think I understand what Brother Chen means. Beyond eighty meters, our hit rate with these shooting attributes is negligible, yes, but once in a while luck will favor us. If we keep more than one hundred and twenty meters away from the two sentries on the mountain and fire from there, we may be able to hit them, while they will have no chance of hitting us...”

Chen Hao clapped his hands and laughed. “Exactly. Even if our hit rate outside one hundred and twenty meters is only one percent, there is still a chance to land a shot. If the raiders station men at the post, we’ll make them test their luck against that one percent. If they stop posting sentries there, then charging up the mountain becomes much easier.”

Lin Xiaofeng frowned. “Boss Chen, we did have Fishing fire at long range before with his scattergun. But even though that weapon has range, its pellets lose all power past one hundred meters, so we gave up on the idea. Your method could indeed kill the sentries with rifles, but it would consume far too much ammunition. We don’t have that many bullets.”

Chen Hao pulled out ten boxes of ammunition from his satchel. He had bought them at the foreign trading house: some were eight-millimeter rounds, and some were 7.62-millimeter rounds for the Mauser. Smiling, he said, “Did you think an A-rank instance would be that easy to clear? I made preparations before coming. Zixuan, Xiaofeng, just treat this as firearms practice.”

Liu Zixuan took three boxes of eight-millimeter ammunition and said, “These three boxes are worth sixty silver dollars. Deduct it from my quest reward later and pay Brother Chen back.”

White Fiend shook his head. “That won’t do. If we complete the quest, everyone benefits. This mission is special, and the ammunition cost is too high. We should split the cost evenly.”

“I have no objection,” said Lin Xiaofeng, “but my shooting attribute is too low. Rain Butterfly should use the Mauser rifle.” He handed the Mauser G98 to Rain Butterfly.