Chapter 812 Part 1

ShangriLa Frontier Chapter 442: Dragon, Oh Dragon! PART 19 Part 1

In the end, the item known as the Blood Crown is nothing more but a gimmick item that forces the player to having to deal with various forms of handicaps and disadvantages. And the fact that your behavior is getting judged and reviewed every thirty seconds or so is as much of a disadvantage as it is a whip for all those player who would wish to procrastinate in the middle of the battle for whatever reason.

Now, as for the side effects of the Blood Crown itself. You get a new gauge called “Hunger Meter”, a gauge which can bestow upon you great power if you are keeping it nice and filled, but if it drops below a certain level you can even lose your dignity as a person because of it. So it’s basically a double-edged sword.

Then there is a status called “Erebus Blood Roots”…… To make a long story short in here, it is something that will turn the player into a miniature version of Great Red Devourer, for better or for worse. Now, I am sure that this form is bound to have some sort of advantages, because it would have been totally weird if it did not, but at the same it needs to be something that is not all roses and sunshine, especially since it is considered a negative status. In other words, it can be quite a hassle.

「Ogggggggggooooooooohhhhhhhhh……」

At the current moment I can feel my whole body starting to twitch and cramp all over. Soon enough the mode would be changed from manual to auto, so I guess that you could even call this thing an out of body experience? That should be the best way to describe it, I think.

The “Red” that was until now covering my whole body starts to wriggle and crawls, sinking deeper into my skin as if trying to completely take over my body here.

But still, that’s right. There is a one big however to be said here.

There is one big question that actually comes to mind here. And this might actually be a really basic and stupid question, but still, it’s a question nonetheless……

The kill judgment is going to be performed every thirty seconds. If the user does not manage to score at least three kills during that time ten times in a row, the user is going to be then put into a “Starvation” state. As a result of that, the user’s stats become slightly raised and the user’s race becomes “Left Primordial Erebus Blood Root”, and the user’s avatar is going to be operated by the AI.

After another five minutes have passed, the user is going to be forced into a “Starvation” state. And after entering that state, after going on a continuous rampage for about one minute, the user’s HP will fall to zero.

That is the exact flavor text of the Blood Crown. But the biggest problem here is the wording of that “Starvation” state. Especially that part about the user’s race becoming something else than it already is. I mean…… That is something…… I don’t even know what to say about that……

「Ogah!?」

TWITCH! With that, my body cramps and spasm extremely violently. It was as if the natural flow of my body was being interrupted by something all of a sudden, or as if something that was located deep inside of me was now trying to break free into the outside world……!

「Gefuh!?」

My organic red exterior then pops off like a balloon. And since before my transformation I was wearing R.I.P on me, it was there alright for me to see. However, it was not right below the layer or red organic paste. It was one layer below that.

I can sense Luukan’s Carved Wounds getting hotter and hotter by the second. It felt as though the Wolf’s spirit was getting angry that some other being was trying to invade the territory he marked as his own, and it was trying to expel the unwanted guest from there, not wanting to give it any more ground.

「Uh, ugeh……」

In conclusion, everything was happening exactly as I managed to confirm it on that day at the top of the Crystal Crown Nest.

In a nutshell, what the Blood Crown’s “Starvation” effect is doing to the user can be essentially called a “forced conversion”. In other words, it was something that depending in the situation would go into a direct conflict with Luukan’s Carved Wounds. However, even if it was something that would take full effect here, it is certainly not something that is entirely risk-free. It would have been too easy that way.

「T-This is the part where I should be mobilizing everything I have…… Uguh.」

My body was feeling strangely sluggish right about now, and even though I was trying to force it to act the way I wanted, it was not listening to me or doing what I wanted it to. It felt somewhat like the time where the player is starving for food and their stats are lowered because of that, but here it was much worse than usual.

And apparently “Starvation” is not a cause of the forced conversion, but rather a demerit of the previous power up. To put it in a simple terms, it sets your hunger meter and stamina extremely low and makes you pretty much unable to recover from it, which would surely result in the user dying from hunger after a few minutes.

I’m not exactly sure how is that supposed to work here, since back at the Crystal Crown Nest I was essentially killed right off the bat when this status took into effect, but I am pretty sure the effects of forced conversion and the HP being reduced to zero a minute later are not exactly one and the same.

「YOU!!! YOUUUUUU! YOU ABSOLUTE BASTAAARRRDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!」

I mean well, in the first place, there is the White Dragon here who seems to be not too happy about the fact that someone would try to pulverize its belly into a bloody soup using crystal pylons. So it seems that this time around I won’t be able to live past that one minute mark to see what happens as well.

「Oho, what’s that? Could it be that some of that excess meat on your belly is now gone for good? Congrats, you stupid lizard. I guess that your diet is a resounding success, huh?」

「I’M GOING TO KILL YOUUUUUUUUU!!!」

Hmph, again with a swarm of enemies running me over? I mean, death is still death, so I don’t really care, but I have been killed in such a way so many times before that I was actually starting to get a little bit tired of it. Couldn’t you at least mix things up a little bit? In Cosmo Buster, for example, even a space potato was something dangerous enough to kill you in a whole lot of creative ways.

But apparently it was as if the gods of this game were telling me that it was not yet the time for me to die.

「Come on now!」

「Pugeh!?」

Someone jumped in front of me from the side, grabbed me by the neck and started to run. Right after we left my initial position I could see that there was a mountain load of small white dragons forming there, but before the White Dragon herself could give chase to us, she was attacked by the rest of the players who sensed that it was now the perfect moment to lay waste to her.