Chapter 27: The Power of the Serpent Venom Bead

"In the name of Midgard, Poison Mist." Lu Yang said, "This is the incantation for the Poison Snake Orb. Use it quickly and see what happens."

Xiao Liang let out an "mm," raised his arm to point the Poison Snake Orb forward, and repeated Lu Yang's words.

"In the name of Midgard, Poison Mist."

The black-green orb suddenly erupted with a dazzling green light. A massive amount of pale green toxic mist drifted from the orb, automatically parting when it hit the rocks and continuing to flow forward from the gaps above and below.

The three or four orcs blocking the rock crevice were the first to be hit by the toxin. The orcs, already dark green in color, were dyed a vibrant pale green. However, they showed no reaction; they simply focused all their hatred on Xiao Liang, desperately continuing to jab their clubs into the rock crevice toward Lu Yang and Xiao Liang.

System Prompt: The orc is poisoned.
The orc is poisoned.
The orc is poisoned.
...

Although Xiao Liang could not see the full range of the mist behind him, he saw countless system prompts appearing on his display panel. A quick count revealed there were over a hundred orcs.

"Boss, the range of this poison mist is huge!" Xiao Liang said excitedly.

Lu Yang replied, "Of course, it covers a 10x10 area, and the damage is high—10 health points per second for 5 minutes."

Xiao Liang did the math: "An orc has 2,000 health. A minute is 60 seconds, so I can kill about 100 orcs in 4 minutes."

Each orc was worth over 260 experience points; 100 orcs would mean 26,000 experience—enough to boost Xiao Liang to level 3.

"It won't take that long. Watch this." Lu Yang jumped to the top of the rock, raised his Incinerator Staff, chanted an incantation, and unleashed the staff's innate spell: Fire Wall.

A 2x2 area of fire erupted from the ground in front of the rocks. The flames reached half a meter high, and the orcs standing within the wall immediately began to take damage.

Xiao Liang jumped up beside him and, seeing the Fire Wall spell, exclaimed in surprise, "Boss, you actually have an area-of-effect spell!"

Area-of-effect spells had been revealed by the media before the game launched. To limit player leveling, "Second World" had specifically restricted such spells to players level 10 and above. He hadn't expected Lu Yang to have learned one at level 5.

"I didn't actually learn this spell myself; it's the power of this weapon. This Incinerator Staff comes with a level 1 Fire Wall spell," Lu Yang explained.

As they spoke, Lu Yang continued to cast Fire Wall, and before long, the entire ground became a sea of flames.

Fire Wall dealt 36 damage per second. With Lu Yang’s spell damage bonus of 110, it actually dealt 146 damage per second to the monsters.

The orcs standing in the sea of fire didn't scatter; they just paced back and forth in anger. Unfortunately, blocked by the other players in front, they couldn't reach Lu Yang. Furthermore, Fire Wall had a unique property.

According to game rules, Fire Wall dealt damage to players in two ways: one was simply by touching the fire, and the other was by remaining inside it, which triggered damage once per second.

There was also a way where multiple overlaps were calculated separately. If a target moved from one fire wall into another, the damage was calculated individually. Because the orcs couldn't reach Lu Yang, many of them paced back and forth between the edges of the two overlapping fire walls, triggering damage with every step—and each step took only 0.5 seconds.

Ultimately, in less than 20 seconds, before the fire even dissipated, the nearly one hundred orcs were all dead on the ground, killed by Lu Yang's flames and Xiao Liang's poison.

System Prompt: You have gained 282 experience points.
You have gained 282 experience points.
...

A long string of experience notifications appeared. Lu Yang's experience bar jumped forward significantly, while Xiao Liang saw two consecutive golden lights shine, taking him from level 1 to level 3.

"Boss, this is so much experience!" Xiao Liang said, pleasantly surprised.

Compared to players struggling to level up in the level 1 monster zones outside, Xiao Liang couldn't imagine his leveling speed being this fast.

"Boss, at this rate, will I make it into the top ten of the level rankings?" Xiao Liang asked excitedly. He was already ranked within the top ten thousand.

"It's actually possible," Lu Yang said. "Let's see if we have a chance to overtake those big guild leaders and masters at the top."

"Yeah!" Xiao Liang was full of motivation.

Lu Yang laughed. "Then hurry up, the next wave of monsters is charging over."

There were several hundred orcs in the hall. After the first batch died, the next group immediately rushed to fill the gap.

Watching the new batch of orcs blindly jabbing their bone clubs into the rock crevices, Xiao Liang, now experienced, was no longer afraid. Once the cooldown for the Poison Snake Orb finished, he began chanting the incantation again.

Lu Yang also raised his staff to lay down a sea of fire with Fire Wall. Just as Lu Yang was waiting for the experience, a ping sounded from the bottom-right corner of his interface. Checking it, he saw it was from Little Lan Yu. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, and he pressed the accept button.

"Little Lan Yu, what can I do for you?" Lu Yang asked.

Faced with Lu Yang's tone—which always sounded like that of an older brother—the young girl felt helpless, yet she also felt an inexplicable sense of happiness.

"Who's 'little'? I'm already in university!" Lan Yu said, pouting.

Lu Yang could easily imagine her expression. "Still a little girl. What's up?"

Lan Yu rolled her eyes. "Expert, did you offend Black Blood from the Eternal Guild? That guy is acting like a madman, putting a bounty on you across the whole world."

Lu Yang chuckled. "Tell me, how is he putting a bounty on me?"

"The news from the Eternal Guild says it's because you killed five of their elite players and looted their bronze equipment, which delayed their dungeon run. Black Blood issued a bounty on the world channel: whoever kills you and provides a video will get 100 credit points," Lan Yu said.

Lu Yang was speechless. He hadn't expected Black Blood to be so childish. "Did he mention anything about a green orb?"

"What green orb?" Lan Yu asked.

Lu Yang was confused for a moment, but he quickly realized: it was only the second day since the servers opened. It was likely that Black Blood and his cronies hadn't known how to use the Poison Snake Orb in his previous life either; they must have found the method through other channels later.

In this timeline, he had snatched the orb from Black Blood before they even knew what it did. Therefore, Black Blood didn't realize the magnitude of his loss; he was merely angry over the equipment lost by his subordinates, Golden Eagle and Wind Patrol.

"It's nothing," Lu Yang said. "Don't worry, Black Blood can't beat me. No matter how many people he has, it's useless."

He was leveling in a level 15 map; even if Black Blood turned the entire Flower Language Plain upside down, he wouldn't find him.