Chapter 260: Giant Creatures 18

Following Perry Yates’s lead, the banyan tree’s resistance grew weaker and weaker. Finally, when the elephant slammed its long trunk down one last time, the trunk of the banyan tree snapped in half with a CRACK.

The scene made Perry Yates pause. She then shot a look at Amber Sheridan, a silent question in her eyes.

’Wasn’t our goal to have the tree and the elephant take each other out? What have you been doing, Amber Sheridan?’

In response, Amber Sheridan felt quite aggrieved. It wasn’t that he was slacking; the elephant’s hide was just too thick. He had been hacking at it for ages and had only managed to break a tiny bit of skin.

After the banyan tree died, a black card materialized above where it had stood.

A three-star card!

Before the pair could get excited, the elephant, having just finished off the banyan tree, didn’t calm down. Instead, it grew even more frenzied.

It began to indiscriminately attack all the creatures in the area, Perry Yates and Amber Sheridan included. In fact, they seemed to be its main targets.

Seeing this, Perry Yates decided to snatch the three-star card and get out of there.

After dodging another swing of the elephant’s trunk, Perry Yates spotted a shady figure creeping toward the three-star card.

Seeing this, Perry Yates immediately used Instant Teleportation to appear beside the card, snatching it up just before the other person could.

"You! Give me back that card!"

Perry Yates looked at the furtive man before her.

He was about five-foot-five, scrawny, with a pointy chin, hollow cheeks, and buck teeth. At first glance, he looked like a rat that had somehow become human.

"This card is mine. Why would I give it to you?"

After stowing the card away, Perry Yates used Instant Teleportation once more and vanished from the spot.

The man’s eyes blazed with anger as he stared at the spot where Perry Yates had vanished. Then, he turned to the rampaging elephant and ordered, "Go. Kill those two."

Upon hearing the man’s command, the berserk elephant immediately began attacking Perry Yates and Amber Sheridan.

Its massive trunk swung like a meteor hammer, whistling through the air with each lash.

There was no doubt that if the trunk connected, their bodies would be smashed to pieces.

A smug smile spread across the man’s face as he watched the pair scramble to dodge the elephant’s attacks.

He shouted to them, "I know you two are Dealer Players! I’m a Croupier myself, so we’re all on the same team. I don’t want to make this hard for you. Just give me that card you took, and have each of you give me three two-star Wood Attribute cards. If you do that, I’ll consider letting you go. What do you say?

"Six two-star cards and one three-star card to buy your lives... that’s a bargain."

As far as the man was concerned, he held the absolute advantage in this fight, which was why he dared to make such an outrageous demand.

However, the smile didn’t stay on his face for long.

Because Perry Yates once again used Instant Teleportation to appear right beside him, manipulating the vines of her Thorny Rose to bind him tightly.

"Is this your Talent?" Perry Yates asked. "It’s a shame. I rather liked it."

The next second, Perry Yates clenched her fist, and the Thorny Rose vines binding the man’s limbs constricted in unison.

Venomous thorns dug deep into the man’s body. The poison struck his heart, and he soon stopped breathing.

Freed from the man’s control, the elephant quickly calmed down and ceased its attack.

After the elephant had departed, Perry Yates examined the man’s corpse. No cards had appeared around it.

It was common knowledge that when Croupiers and regular players died, their cards would reappear—a phenomenon known as "dropping loot." This, however, did not happen with Dealer Hunters.

The man had claimed to be a Croupier, but not a single card appeared after his death. This meant he had lied to them. He wasn’t a Croupier; he was a Dealer Hunter.

「Day 22 of the Game.」

Perry Yates discovered that gathering the moss from the ground and setting it on fire had a high probability of yielding an Abyssal Roots card.

For players who had integrated both Wood and Earth Attribute cards, Abyssal Roots was an incredible card. As long as you were on the ground, it essentially made you invincible.

’I should take a few more Abyssal Roots cards back,’ Perry Yates thought. ’After all, there’s moss everywhere.’

Seeing her plan, Amber Sheridan began gathering moss alongside her.

Amber Sheridan agreed to give Perry Yates all the Abyssal Roots cards they found, on the condition that she help him upgrade one to a three-star version.

’Considering the value of a three-star card, this is definitely a losing deal for me,’ Perry Yates mused. But she wasn’t completely heartless. Seeing as they had supported each other through this round of the game, she agreed.

With Perry Yates’s promise secured, Amber Sheridan threw himself into gathering moss. With a single scrape of his shovel, he could lift a huge patch.

Perhaps because the smoke from the burning moss was so conspicuous, quite a few people were drawn to their location over the course of the morning.

They were a mix of players and local inhabitants, all of whom wanted to invite Perry Yates and Amber Sheridan to join their groups.

After all, one look at the pair’s condition was enough to tell they were powerful and well-supplied. With them on their side, everyone else’s chances of survival would be much higher.

The pair rejected every single one of these invitations without exception.

「Day 23 of the Game.」

Early in the morning, Perry Yates and Amber Sheridan were back to their usual routine of gathering and burning moss.

They had already collected most of the moss in the immediate vicinity. Although new moss grew back quickly, they had discovered through experimentation that its card drop rate was lower than that of the older growth. As a result, the two had to venture farther out to continue their collection.

Just then, a frantic and desperate cry for help rang out.

"Help! Somebody, help me!"

They looked in the direction of the voice and saw a middle-aged man running toward them, his face a mask of terror.

Although Perry Yates and Amber Sheridan had refused the invitations, the other groups hadn’t left, choosing instead to set up camp nearby. This man was from one of those groups.

The man stumbled before them, his eyes wide with terror. "Please," he babbled, "save me! Save me! I don’t want to die."

Perry Yates’s gaze fell upon the man’s eyes and nostrils. One of his nostrils was noticeably larger than the other and was even twitching rhythmically, as if something were alive inside. It was clear that something had burrowed into it.

The situation with his eye, however, was far more disturbing.

A worm-like creature was halfway burrowed into the socket of his eyeball, a truly grotesque sight.

At the sight, Perry Yates instinctively took a few steps back.

The creatures burrowing into the man’s body were white, which immediately brought a certain other organism to her mind.