34: Chapter 34 Teammates Questioning Their Lives

The four of Shen Qingci all looked at Lu Yang, their eyes filled with utter confusion.

Facing everyone's gazes, the corners of Lu Yang's lips hooked up slightly, and he let out a light chuckle: "My luck has always been quite good."

The four of them: "..."

Can this be explained by good luck?!

You call this luck?!

… Perhaps it was Lu Yang's Soul Talent?

But… this is just too strange.

Isn't his Soul Talent related to skill learning?

How did it suddenly become related to drop rates now?

Between these two, surely one of them isn't this strong because of the Soul Talent, right?

Their thoughts were flying everywhere, but none of them spoke up to ask more.

Obviously, Lu Yang didn't want to say much more, and continuing to press him would show a lack of tact.

Lu Yang didn't give them time to keep pondering, and spoke up: "Alright, let's go, forward!"

Rebecca took a deep breath and nodded slightly.

She hoisted her half-shield back in front of her body, rested her golden longsword on the edge of the shield, and stepped forward.

The plates of her white heavy armor made a tiny metallic friction sound with her footsteps, exceptionally clear in the quiet cave.

As for Zhu Tongchen, he left a sentence hanging in the air: "I'll go scout ahead."

As soon as his words fell, his voice, along with his entire presence, disappeared into the dimness.

Only a small patch of gravel on the ground was stepped on by something, making an extremely faint rustling sound that proved he had indeed gone ahead.

Lu Yang and the others proceeded steadily, walking deeper along the cave passage.

The rocky road beneath their feet was rough and uneven, moss became denser and denser on the rock walls on both sides, and the musty smell in the air grew stronger.

Soon, after walking more than a hundred meters, they saw corpses on the ground.

Those were Goblins, lying sprawled across the ground, covering a slightly wider area ahead of the passage.

Some Goblins were huge in size, exceeding one meter eighty, and even reaching a height of two meters.

This kind of Goblin had broad shoulders, and their muscle-bound arms were thicker than Lu Yang's thighs.

Their skin was a deep olive color, as rough as sandpaper, with short, thick fingers and thick, yellow nails.

This was a Hobgoblin.

It was also the most common elite monster among the Goblin tribe.

Goblins as a monster type were quite widely distributed throughout the Universe.

In quite a few dungeons, the figures of these monsters could be found.

The basic unit of this tribe was the most ordinary Goblin.

Ordinary Goblins were short, standing only around one meter twenty tall, with dark green skin, pointy ears sticking out on both sides of their heads, murky and fierce triangular eyes, and sharp, jagged teeth in their mouths.

Ordinary Goblins were quite timid; as long as casualties occurred in battle, the other Goblins would scream and scatter in all directions, and then they would call over a large crowd of their own kind in a very short time.

Don't look at Goblins as having extremely weak individual combat power, yet many novice professionals eventually fell into their hands.

Because most ordinary monsters basically fought to the death; only gregarious creatures with a certain level of intelligence like Goblins would constantly flee, call for help, and surround.

Novice professionals had few skills and ordinary attributes, so facing a siege, even by the weakest Goblins, could cost them their lives!

Moreover, the mutation rate of the Goblin tribe was extremely high, and various mutated elites frequently appeared.

The most common mutated elite was the Hobgoblin.

Besides the Hobgoblin, there was also the Goblin Shaman, holding a bone staff, with a face smeared in beast blood and mud, standing about one meter fifty tall.

There was also the Goblin Hunter, who was leaner and smaller than ordinary Goblins, wielding a blowgun or a short bow.

Or the Goblin Thrower, whose arms were disproportionately long, reaching a height of one meter seventy, considered tall among Goblins.

At this moment, the corpses of these monsters were sprawled haphazardly on the ground.

There were still scorch marks left by flames and white frost from freezing on their bodies, and some even had half their bodies completely frozen while the other half was charred black.

This was clearly a small Goblin camp, with a few crude and shabby tents propped crookedly in the corners, sewn together haphazardly from unknown animal skins, stained with dark brown blemishes and dried mud.

In the center of the camp was a still-burning campfire, its flames listlessly licking a charred wooden frame on which a humanoid object whose original appearance could no longer be distinguished was roasting, emitting a disgusting odor mixed with burnt stench and scorched protein.

Seeing this dirty Goblin camp, Shen Qingci frowned slightly.

The thing on the campfire made her somewhat uncomfortable, but her expression quickly returned to calmness.

However, back at school, all students had undergone environmental adaptation training.

This was to prepare for becoming a combat professional.

After all, before Awakening, no one was sure if they could become a combat professional, so all students had to learn it.

Environmental adaptation included all kinds of filthy, chaotic, and poor environments.

Although girls like Shen Qingci and Rebecca naturally had some aversion to these things, after training, they wouldn't show any abnormalities.

And just as they arrived at the camp, dense damage numbers floated out from the deeper darkness ahead.

The amount of damage this time was even more than last time, lighting up in the darkness one after another like a sea of red and blue intertwined lights.

Moreover, the damage values had also increased a lot compared to before.

Seeing this in their eyes, Shen Qingci and the others once again showed expressions of shock and confusion.

They clearly remembered that during the first wave at the dungeon entrance, the damage they saw was over a hundred and over two hundred.

That should be the different damages of the two aura skills.

But now, even the lowest damage had already exceeded two hundred.

How could the damage increase so fast?

Soon, the four of Shen Qingci thought of a few possibilities.

These were all things learned at school, or knowledge taught by elders since they were children of professional family lineages.

Among them, the most common was stackable buff effects.

By killing monsters, they gained buff stacks; the more monsters killed, the stronger the buff effect.

For now, this buff effect seemed to be within a 100% bonus.

However, very soon, they found something was wrong.

Because as they continued to go deeper and killed more and more monsters, the damage caused by that aura became higher and higher.

From just reaching two hundred originally, to over two hundred, three hundred, over three hundred...

In the end, that aura with originally lower damage reached a full eight hundred plus points per tick!

Among them, the aura with higher damage even caused damage exceeding eleven hundred!

Every second, the aura would tick a damage instance.

The two damages stacked together were even approaching two thousand!

This terrifying damage made the scalps of Shen Qingci and the others go numb.

What was the concept of two thousand damage per second?

You must know that even for a boss-level monster, a Level 5 one only had around two thousand health!

This meant that in just one second, the health bar of a boss-level monster would be emptied.

The most outrageous thing was that they found the coverage area of the aura was also continuously increasing and expanding.

Originally, damage numbers popped up continuously within a little over a hundred meters.

Then it was two hundred meters, three hundred meters... Ultimately, the damage coverage area exceeded eight hundred meters!

Several people walked like this in the gloomy and dark cave, stepping on the rough rock road under their feet, with rock walls on both sides illuminated by red and blue auras casting flickering lights and shadows.

In the darkness ahead, dense damage numbers constantly emerged, lighting up and going out one after another, followed by the miserable screams of various Goblins before death.

There were sharp shrieks, muffled growls, and the wails of Goblin Shamans being interrupted while casting spells, surging from all directions and echoing between the rock walls.

They didn't even know where these Goblins actually were!

And the System's monster kill notifications almost never stopped, popping up dozens of notifications every second!

And when they checked the drop notifications, their minds were even more full of question marks.

Elite-level Goblins dropped entirely green Excellent-tier items and equipment.

The occasional boss-level monsters like Goblin Warriors, Goblin Soulwalkers, Goblin Tracking Great Masters, or Goblin Blasters all dropped Rare-tier items and equipment entirely.

Monsters of every template dropped items of the corresponding quality!

There were no lower-quality drops at all!

This terrifying drop rate simply made them doubt their lives.

Zhu Tongchen, who had originally intended to go invisible and scout ahead, had silently returned at some unknown time and was no longer invisible either.

His tall and thin figure gradually emerged from the darkness, his leather armor still stained with dust brushed off from the depths of the cave.

He stood at the rear side of the group, with an expression on his face that was hard to tell whether it was numbness or trance.

The four of them walked forward silently like this, with only the rustling sound of boot soles stepping on gravel and the distant, ceaseless screams of Goblins.

Along the way, groups of fallen Goblin corpses could be seen from time to time, scorch marks and frost traces overlapping to cover the ground, some still maintaining a fleeing posture facing away from them.

After a long silence, Lance spoke faintly: "... How come I feel like we came here for a stroll?"

He hugged his black wooden staff, the expression on his round face looking like he was spacing out or contemplating life.

For a moment, Shen Qingci, Rebecca, and Zhu Tongchen completely didn't know how to retort.

What Lance said was far too right!

Shen Qingci gave Lu Yang a somewhat resentful look, her pure and serene pretty face showing a mix of amusement and exasperation: "I finally understand why Lady Shangguan said that to you earlier. Classmate Lu Yang, we can't even touch a single monster."

Rebecca nodded silently, complaining: "Zero combat experience... I'm almost bored enough to spin my shield..."

As for Zhu Tongchen, he had long since given up caring.

Scouting?

Heh...

He ran out several hundred meters, and all he saw were corpses.

What the hell was there to scout anymore?

What they completely couldn't understand was, what on earth kind of Soul Talent did Lu Yang have?!

Not to mention that the aura skill's Rank and quality were ridiculously high, the drop rate was also shockingly exaggerated.

There was also the terrifying buff bonus of gaining multiple times the amplification from killing monsters!

They always felt like the other party didn't seem to be in the same art style as them.

If they were Geniuses, then Lu Yang's... should be considered a freak, right?

No wonder... even top Geniuses like Shangguan Yunshu acted as a guardian for him!

This guy simply defied common sense!