Chapter 7 – Ingenious Kill

“Quake Trap”: Hunter skill book. Can be learnt at Level 1. After learning, the hunter will be able to set “Quake Trap”.

The Ordinary Crossbow had basic physical attack of 3~4. It was a bit better than the one given to him by the system. As for the skill book… its description was so plain that Chen Mo could glean no details. He promptly learnt the skill.

System prompt: You have learnt the skill “Quake Trap”!

Quake Trap (Novice level): A trap made in a special way. When the trap explodes, it will simultaneously damage the enemy and cause a quake. The quake waves will not distinguish between friend and foe. Quake waves will push all monsters and players within range 2m away. Cooldown 30 seconds. Each trap lasts for 60 seconds. Maximum number of traps that can exist simultaneously – 2.

“A support-type trap.” After reading the trap’s description, Chen Mo reached a conclusion.

Hunters’ traps are classified into two categories – Attack and Support. The Quake Trap obviously belonged to the Support category. The skill description did not mention the damage the trap would deal, indicating that its power was nothing great. However, the Quake Trap is a very useful skill for a hunter.

Hunters do not usually fight close-range. Once an enemy gets close, his skills are no use but if he sets a Quake Trap and sets it in a good location, he can immediately put a distance of 4m between himself and the enemy.

This is just the effect of a novice-level trap. Once it levels up, the effect will be greater.

Setting the Quake Trap was relatively easy. It only had a few simple movements more than the Basic Trap and was not that much different from it. Chen Mo was already quite familiar with the Basic Trap so with a little practice and time, he was able to set it with Free-skill with a completion degree of over 60%.

“The most difficult part about leaving this valley is actually the White Goblins at the beginning. It shouldn’t be a problem to kill the surrounding Black Goblins with Quake Trap.” Chen Mo thought to himself.

He could set two Quake Traps at the same time. If placed well, he could greatly hinder the Black Goblins’ pursuit of himself.

Or maybe not – the Black Goblins are much faster than White Goblins and have greater attack power to boot. Even though Chen Mo had 120HP and the Basic Heal to heal himself 50HP, he could only take two attacks. If he’s unlucky or the Black Goblins a little smarter, he would be in danger even if he brought them to the huge rocks to run around.

The Quake Trap afforded him the possibility of attack but to kill the Black Goblins, he would still have to see how his luck went.

Looking over at the tens of Black Goblins in the valley, Chen Mo could not help shaking his head. He would have to kill at least half the Black Goblins to leave the valley. Considering the number of them, he would have to die several times in the process of escaping.

Hey, wait a minute!

Chen Mo suddenly smacked himself on the head.

Why did he have to play tag with the Black Goblins? He’d learnt to set traps with Free-skill and could set traps on stones to make them into grenades – he didn’t have to use the same method as before to fight Black Goblins!

There was a boulder that’s almost 2m high not far off too. He could attract the Black Goblins to the base of the boulder and throw traps down on them from above, killing them with little to no effort!

This is a great idea!

Chen Mo immediately ran to the base of the boulder and practiced climbing up and down a few times, otherwise he’d be a laughingstock if he pulled the monsters over to only die because he failed to climb the boulder.

After practicing his climbing, Chen Mo perched on top of the boulder and practiced his trap-setting.

He could set traps on stones as he’d expected but he discovered with surprise that if he used the system to set a trap on the stone, his movements would sway about non-stop and largely end in failure to use the skill. If he used Free-skill, it was much simpler to set the trap as it was not affected by the terrain. Looks like unlocking the Free-skill system first gave him quite an advantage over others.

Quite a few people would, like him, be able to find a way to attack monsters from afar but not many would be able to kill in complete safety.

Chen Mo surveyed the distribution of Black Goblins surrounding him and did some calculations in his head, then begun setting traps.

The nearest goblin was under 40m away and he could pull a monster with his crossbow from 11m away. He only needed to set 5 traps in a straight line of 30m. Additionally, he could also set two Basic traps and a Quake Trap while moving.

With a total of 8 traps, the Black Goblins could only dream of catching up to him, even if they were much faster than White Goblins. Just 3 Quake traps made it difficult for Black Goblins to get close to Chen Mo. If just one of the Basic traps’ disabling effect activated, Chen Mo would be 100% safe.

Chen Mo set his traps and walked close to two Black Goblins. When their positions were about the same, he seized his chance and attacked with his crossbow.

Chi!

The two Black Goblins got enraged and started chasing him. Not long after the chase begun, they stepped on a Basic trap. It exploded but the disabling effect did not activate. Two steps later, they were suddenly pushed 2m backwards. They had stepped on a Quake trap.

The result of the Quake Trap was better than Chen Mo had expected. It not only pushed monsters back 2m, it also cut their speed to zero while the player is free to continue running. In this time, the monster is delayed from chasing more than just the distance of 2m.

With the support of the Quake traps, Chen Mo easily lured the 2 Black goblins to the base of the boulder. When the goblins arrived, he was already sitting on top of the boulder, unhurriedly setting traps on stones and throwing them in the middle of the blindly circling goblins.

Chen Mo did not use his crossbow to attack. It needed bolts and he only had the hundred the system had given him. If he used them all up he’d have no more. Furthermore, he had no crossbow skills and was unable to deal high damage with the crossbow.

Boom! Boom! Boom! …

Traps exploded one after another. Though each trap dealt under 40 damage to the Black Goblins and each goblin had over 500HP, Chen Mo was very precise when throwing the traps. Every time a trap landed on the ground, it landed between the two goblins and damaged both simultaneously.

He could set a trap every 9 seconds. In just a minute and a half, the two goblins’ health were dangerously low.

The low-HP goblins glared menacingly up at Chen Mo and their actions became more and more violent. Chen Mo had a faint feeling that their defense had increased as well.

However, before he could get any useful information, the goblins’ HP hit rock bottom and they fell to the ground, dead.

Each goblin dropped 3 or 4 coins and Chen Mo picked them up unceremoniously.

“It takes 2 minutes to kill a pair. I’d need about half an hour to kill a path out of here.”

Chen Mo did some quick calculations and perked up. Half an hour was not a long period of time.

However, this would only be possible if the Black Goblins in the valley did not respawn – if not, leaving would be arduous.

Half an hour passed quickly and, like Chen Mo had guessed, the Black Goblins did not respawn but he still was unable to leave the valley because the Black Goblins who were still alive constantly changed positions, making it impossible for him to leave undetected.

In this half hour, Chen Mo had reached Level 3. The system added the 10 fixed points and he added the free 5 points as he had before. His Strength increased to 18, and, adding the attack power of his Ordinary Crossbow, Chen Mo’s attack was now 21~22. A basic trap could damage a Black Goblin for close to 70HP.

The time taken to skill Black Goblins had halved. Chen Mo decided that he might as well spend a little bit more time to just kill them all in one go. The experience from Black Goblins wasn’t low and he had the boulder. Killing them was a breeze.

His HP had also increased by 40 so his HP was 160. Even if the Black Goblins got a little close, he was not worried that he’d get killed by them.

The remaining goblins swiftly died pair by pair as Chen Mo’s experience increased rapidly.

Very soon, there was just one pair of Black Goblins left in the valley.

Chen Mo checked his experience bar and found that the experience he needed to level up was more than he had thought. Killing these two goblins would make his experience increase to just 70% – short of his expectation of reaching Level 4.

His damage output had increased quite a bit. He only had to throw a trap down from the boulder and the two goblins would die.

But just then, Chen Mo remembered the information from the data he had hacked.

It mentioned that when facing monsters that will not respawn, there is a method to make the last monster enter a state of mutation!