One Hundred and Twenty-Two: I Want to Change Teammates (Part One)

From the very first step we set foot upon this plateau of snowy highlands, we were forced to contend with two enemies simultaneously: one was the Chaqink Bigfoot savages, an indigenous race of short-tempered residents who had multiplied and survived on these snow-capped mountains for generations; while the other was the soft, frigid, deceptively sacred yet treacherous blanket of white snow beneath our feet.

Every patch of accumulated snow here seemed like a death trap meticulously laid for weary travelers coming from afar. With each forward step, we had to plunge our feet deep into the heavy snow layer. These snowdrifts were soft and fluffy, feeling uncomfortably mushy underfoot, much like treading on a suspended thin board. It always left an uneasy feeling in our hearts, constantly fearing that the snow might fail to bear the pressure at any second and completely collapse beneath our feet, turning into a white abyss capable of swallowing lives. Every step forward required a struggle to pull our boots back out of the thick snow heaps. These white demons bound our legs and feet without a single moment of respite, and we were entirely helpless against them. The only thing we could do was persevere and endure.

Our opponents, however, had no such worries. As I have mentioned before, their naturally wide and thick bigfeet allowed them to move freely across the snow surface without suffering any speed penalties from the terrain. This deformed physique made them look rather like slow-waddling ducks as they walked. Perhaps you might think this means they are not terrifying, and of course, I will not dispute your wise judgment. But perhaps you could look at it from another angle: a slow duck is certainly not terrifying; what is terrifying is that you are even slower than the duck.

Consequently, when a group of Bigfoots wielding large wooden clubs came charging slowly toward you, you ought to have been able to dodge these haphazard, sluggish attacks. Instead, you found yourself forced to drag your cumbersome legs and brace yourself to meet these primitive, flying weapons of murder head-on.

What was deeply distressing was that this group of uncivilized highland barbarians could not possibly have undergone the rigorous, exacting combat skill training of battle-warrior trainers, nor could they have mastered the upright yet precise and practical combat techniques of professional adventurers. The large wooden club in their hands resembled a maddened viper, sometimes striking wildly from top to bottom, sometimes sweeping horizontally from side to side, occasionally thrusting straight at you face-first, and even vulgarly delivering a reverse uppercut from bottom to top. With the painful experience of my own firsthand trial, I sincerely and earnestly advise you: in this completely devoid-of-technique, messy brawl, the only positive thing you can do is to clamp your thighs tightly together while summoning all your piety to pray to the Supreme God that these haphazard, random beatings do not accidentally strike your vital areas—a friendly warning, especially your crotch.

At least... ouch... do not get hit twice in a row...

I have never been able to understand what use the "Battle-Warrior's Manual"—a booklet handed to me along with the "Battle-Warrior's Emblem" upon my successful class advancement, possessing no attribute bonuses, being neither droppable nor destructible, nor tradeable—was actually for. To be honest, I once suspected that this manual was merely a tool used by the grand trust monopoly organization of the official adventure qualification certification agency on the continent of Falvi to defraud people of their money. Its primary purpose was to forcibly collect a so-called fifty-silver-coin "certificate processing fee" from adventurers like me—when in reality, its production cost was barely more than five copper coins.

Of course, after deep introspection, I finally repented of this dark and pessimistic attitude: I really ought not to have doubted the bureaucrats of the Falvi continent with such extreme malice—there was simply no need to doubt it at all. It was fucking set in stone as a bald-faced fact!

This crudely papered, poorly printed, handmade humorous publication was filled with strange, tongue-twisting high-sounding principles that were utterly useless to your adventure. It was crammed with useless nonsense such as "Courage is the source of a battle-warrior's strength," "Battle-warriors believe in discipline and order," "Sacrificing one's life to protect comrades is a battle-warrior's duty," "Battle-warriors charge to the front and never retreat," and so on. If every battle-warrior strictly followed everything written in it, I guarantee this would be the shortest-lived profession in existence. It never told you anything genuinely useful for saving your little life, such as what I am now deeply experiencing: before embarking on an adventure, you must first choose your comrades carefully.

It was not until those crude and barbaric highland aborigines charged right up to us that I realized this problem: in our adventure party, there were more than the normal proportion of three ranged attackers, one shadow thief who fought through stealthy ambushes and cunning traps, and one extremely ill-fated battle-warrior who had been temporarily tricked into serving as a doomed human target. When facing wave after wave of incoming enemies, our only option was to kick that battle-warrior—whose life was worth less than a sheet of paper—right into the mob, letting him rely on his sturdy defense to draw the enemies' wrath. If it were merely wrath, drawing a bit more wouldn't matter; but the trouble was that among the many things he drew, wrath was the least lethal one—all to buy enough time for the other teammates to unleash their full damage output and slay the enemies.

You could discover countless advantages in this simple yet effective five-person basic tactic, such as: reducing health loss, increasing the survival rate of the entire team, maximizing killing efficiency, accelerating the party's pace... and so on. It was truly an irreplaceable choice for an outdoor adventure party with ultra-high killing power like ours.

This was an almost flawless tactic, and if you insisted on saying it had a flaw, there was only one flaw that could barely be called a "flaw." Yet this barely tenable flaw was so glaringly obvious that I could not bring myself to like it no matter what:

That destined, unlucky human target was me!

Seven or eight big-bellied, thick-waisted Bigfoots surrounded me tightly, massive wooden clubs dancing above my head. Being surrounded and beaten by such a mob of barbarians is a miserable thing for anyone, and what was even more miserable was that my duty was to firmly keep them attracted to me. If any of them shifted targets and stopped hitting me, I still had to wrinkle my nose, twitch my ears, and pull a hideous face at them, using a skill called "Taunt" to provoke their anger and make them beat me even harder, thereby fulfilling my vocational requirements.

To put it simply, my task right now was to offer up my body to a group of robust, hulking, hairy barbaric men, letting them unleash and vent their devastation upon me with all their might. And if they turned away and left me, I had to rack my brains to seduce them back... I simply cannot go on—is a battle-warrior really a "noble profession" as the manual claims?

Burying my head deep inside my shield, leaving those thick instruments of murder to splatter blood all over my body, I was on the verge of tears, suffering from both psychological and physiological devastation. A thought of wavering, which was both demoralizing and utterly inglorious, quietly grew in my heart: I wanted to change teammates.

When a person suffers through hardships, what they need most is the support of companions. As the old saying goes: when someone shares the pain, the pain is cut in half. Remembering the comrades fighting alongside me, a trace of warmth finally rippled through my depressed heart: at least while I was suffering, my comrades were still fighting unyieldingly. They would not waste my sweat and blood and tears, they would...

"Whoosh..." Just as I was placing high hopes on my companions, a piercingly cold chill grazed past my shoulder, and a deep-blue, sharp ice prism instantly appeared in my field of vision. Refracted by the sunlight, the ice prism emitted a colorful halo, shooting straight into the lower abdomen of a Bigfoot.

This gorgeous yet dangerous strike was a level-fifty single-target ice-type offensive magic known as "Crystal Ice Projection." It was currently the most powerful offensive spell mastered by Finyin. Not only did it carry the supplementary effect of slowing down the opponent possessed by the vast majority of ice magic, but it also inflicted piercing elemental damage, further increasing lethality on top of the original magical damage...

"Pop." Just as I was pinning high hopes on Finyin's all-out, powerful magic strike, a tiny blood splatter, no bigger than a piece of popcorn, shyly bloomed on the Bigfoot's head, accompanied by the appearance of a number reading "-76"—even if I took off my shoe and threw it, it would have dealt more damage than that.

"Why is the power so weak?" I shouted back, risking being beaten to death by a flurry of clubs.

"I don't know either..." Finyin was equally outraged. "It must be that these white fat guys have high resistance to ice-type damage!"

"Why didn't you say so earlier?!" I yelled, cowering beneath my shield.

"Didn't I just find out too, you moron?!" Finyin roared back with a voice even louder than mine—this woman never seemed to worry about the problem of avalanches.

"What should we do then? I can't hold on much longer!" I swung my long sword blindly to counterattack, abandoning even the chance to witness my own results. "Hold on, I still have a way!" Finyin did not give up her efforts. She chanted in a strange, low tone for a moment, and a misty, frost-covered white gas mass gradually condensed in her hands. A moment later, the sound of her chanting suddenly vanished, and this gas mass drifted toward me like a shooting star, attaching itself to my body. Immediately, I heard the teeth-grating "creak" of the air freezing, and a layer of magical armor glittering with icy radiance formed around my outer body.

This magical armor forged of frost greatly enhanced my defense without hindering my movements in the least. Particularly practical was the fact that whenever the Bigfoots' clubs struck this armor, they suffered a certain amount of rebound damage—and more importantly, their movement speed was reduced due to the freezing effect of the ice-type magic.

Bolstered by this assistance, my spirits instantly soared. I braced myself to counterattack twice, and then continued to demand support from Finyin: "Good! Very useful spell! What's next?"

Finyin told me with composure: "Next, you pray."

"Pray?" A cloud of unease floated into my mind. "Pray for what?"

"Pray that this frost armor doesn't vanish before you die..." Finyin said with deadly seriousness.

"Can't you do something substantial besides making me pray?" I was beside myself with rage.

"I haven't been idle for a single second!" Finyin looked aggrieved.

"Then what on earth have you been doing all this time?" My grief and bitterness were unappeasable. "I've been helping you pray..." The Guild Master put her palms together, looking at me with a merciful expression.

"Don't put your palms together yet, I'm not dead..."

Wuwuwu... I want to change teammates... Wuwuwu...

It seemed the assistance I could get from Finyin ended right there. Although she was still painstakingly attacking this group of native bandits with ice magic, the meager lethality made it impossible to pin any real hopes on her, meaning that the member with the best equipment and highest killing power among us could thankfully not be relied upon—though, fortunately, not everyone in my party used ice-type attacks.

"Xiange Yayi, where the hell have you died to?! Why haven't I seen you attack this whole time? I'm about to die, hurry up and save me!" I shrank my neck and shouted at the top of my lungs.

"Stop shouting, I'm the one who's about to die!" the elven sharpshooter screamed in despair. His cry sounded as if someone were violently tearing a tattered piece of cloth, and the near-collapse, shrill shriek made one's heart ache helplessly. If a scream being more miserable meant encountering more enemies, then even by the most conservative estimate, the enemies he was facing were at least ten times mine.

Yet the reality was that there wasn't a single savage over there.

Our dashing, elegant, peerlessly handsome pure-blood elven sharpshooter was kneeling on the ground at this moment, sticking his rear end high up in the air, desperately trying to shove his handsome, slender, pretty head straight into the snow. He looked as if he wanted to bury his head completely in the frozen soil, waiting to take root and sprout when spring returned the following year, so that branches would grow out from his vertically pointing asshole and stretch all the way up until they formed an evergreen tree covered in leaves shaped like a pair of long elven ears—this way of ending one's life certainly fit the elven race's long-held worldview of yearning for a return to nature.

The problem was that this fellow didn't seem to be doing something of monumental significance related to his racial faith: his entire body was trembling uncontrollably, and the armor on his body was making a "rattling" sound, as if he were shaking every bone in his body to pieces.

"What the hell are you burrowing down in that ghost place for..." My teeth itched with hatred, and I desperately wanted to kick his poked-up backside hard—in fact, had it not been for the entangled Bigfoots in front of me, I surely would have done so long ago. "...We came here to save the world, not to sunbathe your backside—and even if it really were for sunbathing, you should at least take your pants off!"

"Save me..." Xiange Yayi wailed miserably with a thick tearful sob, his voice sounding so weak that it was on the verge of fainting. "...It's simply too high up here... Wuwuwu... Mother, I'm scared... I want to go home..."

I glanced speechlessly behind me: we were situated on a steep hillside. The hillside was barren, covered only by vast sheets of white snow, with no trees whatsoever to obstruct the view. Below this hillside, an endless expanse of open fields stretched toward the infinite distance. Even with this casual glance, I couldn't help but feel my heart stir with emotion for the magnificent rivers and mountains of our homeland, like a homesong winter bird gazing down upon the earth.

The trickiest problem was that among those winter birds gazing down upon the earth, one of them seemed to be suffering from an incurable fear of heights...

May the all-knowing and all-powerful Supreme God grant me the courage to face this cruel reality: the teammates I could count on had unquestionably decreased by one more.

I want to change teammates. Really, I want to change teammates...