The game has become a real alternate world

Chapter 1149 - 799: Slow Progress

The Tariel Continent is vast and extremely dangerous.This arrival is merely the first batch of the expedition team.

This batch is the most dangerous and busiest, but once they have gains, they will undoubtedly be the first to taste the crab.

This is why many people flock to it.

Because the price they pay could potentially bring great rewards and they might write their legends that spread across the world just like the pioneering histories of various countries in the past.

The young female ranger, Martha, and her team, including the human warrior Karl, the half-elf scout Pik, and the stone giant apprentice Shi Dun, are struggling through an area marked as E-3, known as the "Glowing Vine Path."

The mission was supposed to be a relatively simple task of clearing out "Stinger Poison Scorpions"—a type of mutated arthropod creature that likes to ambush under the dense glowing vines.

However, the scene before them was far from this.

After all, this is the Tariel Continent, a ghostly place exaggerated by legends due to the dangers caused by war.

From start to finish, every mission considers the possibility of encountering more dangerous surprises, so the actual difficulty of each task is adjusted one level higher.

This is the respect owed to the Tariel Continent.

"Damn it! This is not a scorpion nest!" Karl slammed a shield onto a fist-sized scorpion emerging from the side vine.

There were already quite a few of these small creatures’ corpses piled on the ground.

"The marked threat on the map is... a large nest of scorpions? It’s a ’Scorpion Nest’! A nest enlarged and twisted by chaos!"

In the dim clearing in front, a huge, wriggling nest made of decayed mud, hardened glowing mucus, and countless stinger scorpion tail bones stood prominently.

In the center of the nest, a scorpion queen body, swollen to the size of a calf and covered with a purple-black chitin shell, equipped with three pairs of compound eyes and a pair of large poisonous pincers, was continuously laying sticky egg sacs and fist-sized worker scorpions.

The surrounding ground was full of pits, big and small, from which worker scorpions kept emerging.

No, where do scorpions come like this?

Isn’t this more characteristic of ants?

Why would ants and scorpions mix into such abominations?

The evil chaos power, unlike the evil gods outside.

Complaining is complaining, cursing is cursing.

What needs to be done must still be done.

"Martha! There are too many of them! Pik’s bug repellent powder isn’t covering enough!"

Shi Dun, in panic, smashed approaching scorpions with his massive stone fist, but his clumsy movements allowed a stinger to pierce his thigh from a tricky angle.

The stone skin did not affect the sharpness of these scorpion tail needles.

"Ugh!" Shi Dun grunted, as a strong paralysis sensation spread instantly from his leg.

The datafication experience immediately allowed him to make a judgment.

The toxin was recognized as a debuff effect.

Otherwise, even if it pierced a hole, it wouldn’t affect his mobility.

Karl quickly supported him, but more worker scorpions surged like a black tide.

At the critical moment when Martha’s team was surrounded, with Shi Dun’s mobility drastically reduced and Karl’s shield swinging speed slowed due to excessive protection range.

Martha suddenly remembered the "Strong Group Dispel Alchemical Bomb" from the Night Watcher’s issued kit.

Commonly known as the big bomb.

"Pik! Fuse with ten-second delay!"

"Target the central nest! Others cover! Shi Dun!

Put Karl’s spare shield on your injured leg as a splint, don’t move!"

Pik, without hesitation, like an agile mole avoiding scorpion pincers, rushed to a close enough position, took out a bomb that looked like a metal honeycomb briquette, pulled out the safety, set the time, and accurately tossed it into the central opening of the wriggling nest!

Even if stung by a nearby scorpion, the toxins were manageable; his blood volume was still healthy, and he could always drink a potion, although such extravagance wasn’t necessary before, it didn’t matter now.

"Retreat!"

Martha shouted.

BOOM!!!

A muffled but immensely powerful explosion, with pungent but strongly dispersive yellow smoke, erupted from inside the nest and swept across the entire scorpion horde area.

The strongly irritative smoke had a deadly nerve dispersal effect on all low-level chitinous creatures; the mother body emitted a sharp, painful hiss, and its egg sacs and just-hatched worker scorpions stiffened, paralyzed, and died instantly as if boiling water was poured over ants.

Even the adult worker scorpions staggered about like drunkards, losing their group coordination ability.

Apparently they had evolved a hive-mind-like capability.

It’s unimaginable how many such abominations existed in this ghostly place over the centuries.

Especially with chaos worsening in recent years, and the energy convergence results over the past year.

"Now is the time! Focus fire on the mother body!"

Martha rapidly shot enchanted arrows with a cold gleam straight into the mother body’s compound eyes.

Karl, with a roar, charged like a siege hammer with his shield against the mother body, whose movements were slowed by pain and smoke.

Despite the paralysis in his leg, Shi Dun gritted his teeth, grabbed a stone the size of a basin, and with all his might, smashed it against the mother body’s huge abdominal shell.

Finally, under the cover of smoke and the Night Watcher’s specially-made alchemical bomb tearing through their defenses, with Martha’s command and the desperate struggle of her teammates, the scorpion queen collapsed with a heavy slash from Karl.

The crisis was averted, and Shi Dun immediately injected an antidote, his complexion slowly relaxing.

As they cleaned up the aftermath, heart still trembling but with eyes more resolute—the mission was completed.

Thanks to that "Alchemical Honeycomb Briquette."