Chapter 149: Cat and Mouse Game — Map Exploration

Chapter 149: Chapter 149: Cat and Mouse Game — Map Exploration

Island Number Seven has a total of seven major areas.

① Labyrinth of Hidden Shadows — Fog that never disperses, scenery changing unpredictably. A slight misstep leads to unknown paths.

② Endless Sea — Boundaries are hard to distinguish, very easy to get trapped and die in the shoreless waters.

③ City of Thorned Bones — Strict rules, mandatory adherence to the order of the "City Keeper". Violators will be swallowed by bone thorns.

④ Forest of Eternal Night — Light vanishes, darkness rules. Countless spirits wander, extremely heavy yin energy. Failing to guard one’s mind easily leads to possession.

⑤ Valley of Illusory Sounds — The music in the valley never ceases, amplifying all emotions. Failing to maintain balance leads to bewitchment.

⑥ Lake of Cleansing Spirits — Attacked by Cleansing Spirits, one’s power and memories will be drained dry.

⑦ Star City — The place managing the balance of order.

Cats and mice wanting to report Star-Reversers must come here. Therefore, the starting points for the two factions will not fall in Star City, but only within the remaining six areas.

To enter Star City, one must leave their starting point and figure out the route leading there on their own.

Furthermore, for the sake of so-called interestingness.

This time, different magical beasts will randomly appear in each area, while also being guarded by the strongest Magical Beast King.

Hunting a Magical Beast King rewards two hundred points, plus two random skill draws.

The realms of the seven Great Magical Beast Kings range from tier three one-star to nine-star.

(Note: Some Magical Beast Kings entering a berserk state have a probability of touching tier four. Please consider carefully before challenging.)

As for the small mobs in the areas, they range from Basic Stage to Intermediate Stage.

Basic Stage magical beasts are worth one point. Intermediate Stage, two points.

Compared to Magical Beast Kings, they are truly pitifully cheap.

Jeremy’s starting point: Labyrinth of Hidden Shadows.

Phoenix’s starting point: Forest of Eternal Night.

Like those two unlucky ones, Leon was no luckier, stuffed straight into the faction he absolutely didn’t want — Order Mouse.

Nickname: Mouse No. 13.

Starting point: Endless Sea.

Leon was extremely dissatisfied.

Perhaps negative emotions truly disrupt a person’s magnetic field.

Around his starting area, there were at least five Chaos Cats.

After several desperate struggles narrowly avoiding being caught by the nearby cats, he had no mind left for dissatisfaction.

His entire brain was forced to focus on two things: hiding and running.

Evelyn was the only one in the team who drew a role she was satisfied with.

Chaos Cat faction.

Starting point: Valley of Illusory Sounds.

Nickname: Cat No. 17.

Starting weapon: Cyan Jade Bamboo. (C-rank weapon, accompanying effect: None. Traits: Can act as a magic medium, hard to damage, wear-resistant, high impact resistance.)

Evelyn looked at the bamboo appearing in front of her, falling into a silence.

Weapons and skills were graded the same way.

A total of five tiers: C-rank, B-rank, A-rank, S-rank, and SSS-rank.

From low to high, the higher it goes, the stronger it gets.

The starting weapon is the lowest tier. A random mechanism, so discrepancies are normal.

But this thing looking exactly like a bamboo tube randomly chopped from some fence being called a weapon...

Forget it. Better than nothing.

Evelyn pushed aside distracting thoughts, grasping the hovering green bamboo — roughly the length of a regular thin flute — skimmed the group messages, and casually selected a task.

She decided to grind points to exchange for skills first, then go looking for people.

As for someone who didn’t care which faction he was in like Lucius, this time he drew Chaos Cat.

Nickname: Cat No. 9.

Starting weapon: Green Feather Fan. (C-rank weapon, accompanying effect: Sharp feathers condensed from the fan can cause three seconds of paralysis.)

Starting point: City of Thorned Bones.

Completely unlike the arduous situation of the others, Lucius’s luck was absurdly good.

Just ten minutes after the half-hour ban was lifted, he bumped into a lone Order Mouse.

The opponent’s realm was lower, coupled with Lucius’s personal speed inherently far exceeding the norm. He handled it cleanly, obtained the Mouse’s fragment, and completed the mandatory elimination task for the three days right away.

Finished, he was too lazy to do random tasks, found a clean and quiet spot, curled up, and lay down.

On the first day, everyone was groping around in an unfamiliar state, mostly choosing to familiarize themselves with the map first before considering gathering points.

Two hours passed, the number of eliminated mice was a mere one.

During those two hours, Jeremy originally intended to explore the map while casually completing tasks. Now he had confirmed he was in the first of the seven areas listed in the rules — Labyrinth of Hidden Shadows.

After a quick scout, he instantly discovered the routes here could change at any time.

In other words, even walking on the exact same path, the destination ten minutes ago and ten minutes later had a probability of being different.

Right now he... had fallen into a dead loop.

All four directions were ancient trees blocking out the sky and flowering grass taller than a person.

This wretched place lived up to its name. The fog in the forest hung thick, lingering forever without dispersing.

The paths were already winding, and after a short distance, they branched into countless intersections.

Repeating this over and over, after two hours of pathfinding, Jeremy returned exactly to his starting point.

"..."

Jeremy didn’t think his patience was poor. But being tortured like this, he was also starting to get heated.

He took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down, then observed his surroundings once more.

It was still early. Light filtered through the leaf gaps, so despite the fog, he could reluctantly see the full view.

Front, back, left, right were all forests and bushes. Each direction had at least three intersections.

In the past two hours, he had walked through all of them.

A total of fifteen paths. But after a distance, there was a fork, continuing like this, and ultimately still looping back to the starting point.

Right now, let alone the collection task he just accepted, he couldn’t even get out of this place.

Jeremy’s gaze paused on the tree trunk in front of him — smooth, not a single carved mark.

Every time he set off, he left a mark. But it was useless. All traces automatically vanished, as if enchanted by some kind of spell.

The spreading fog was also extremely foul-smelling, exactly like the stench of piled-up rotting meat.

It almost completely swallowed the scent of grass and trees, assaulting the nose to the point of nausea.

From the very beginning, he had used magic to check and confirmed this fog contained no poison.

It only had a mild hallucinogenic effect, with negligible impact on humans.

Holding his breath or erecting a magical barrier to isolate it was useless; everything still repeated exactly the same. This proved the fog and the maze’s terrain transformation weren’t much related.

Jeremy looked up.

The branches and leaves above were densely intertwined, and countless magical beasts were stationed right up there.

Flying up to check carried too high a risk. It was very likely that before being found by a Chaos Cat, he would be eliminated by magical beasts first.

But being trapped here forever was no solution either.

The daily survival point was twenty. If today passed and he was still stuck here, he would have to gamble.

The current situation could only prioritize getting the survival points after the first day to exchange for skills, to find a way out of this place.

On the second day, he would start doing collection tasks, then use those points to exchange for elemental fragment clues.

But all these calculations were based on one premise: he had to survive today first.

A rustling sound suddenly rang out behind him.

Jeremy’s eyes darkened. He slipped quickly behind a tree trunk, hiding his figure.

The rules clearly stated that within the areas, magical beasts would appear to attack cats and mice at any time.

Was the newcomer a cat... or a beast?