They were merely collaborators, each taking what they needed. They weren't friends, nor did they share any real bond.
Whether the Dark Crow could withstand the accumulating monsters wasn't something he needed to worry about. After all, he'd only charged a small price to help the Dark Crow survive the hardest initial stretch. And for a major Magic Crystal producer like the Dark Crow, it would be a waste not to take advantage.
White River City's teleportation hall was desperately short on Magic Crystals. As long as there were enough Magic Crystals, he could convert them into gold coins in no time, which would secure Zero Wing's first city.
Once the contract was signed, with the Main God System's guarantee, both parties were at ease.
Shi Feng had originally planned to use a Return Scroll to leave, but Blood Fang stopped him.
"Hold on," Blood Fang suddenly said. "I have one more piece of information that I think should prove useful to your Zero Wing guild."
As he spoke, Blood Fang produced a black sealed envelope and handed it directly to Shi Feng.
Shi Feng's eyebrows rose the moment he saw the black envelope.
The envelope looked ordinary, but it contained specially encrypted information. Only the designated player could view it; no other player could see the contents. And once read, it would automatically self-destruct — there was no way for anyone to record it, either.
"A video message?" After Shi Feng opened the envelope, the information displayed was a video file. He clicked to open it immediately.
He had no idea what to expect, but what he saw sent a chill through him.
The video showed numerous players besieging a black-robed, horned humanoid creature that stood over three meters tall. Crimson runes covered its body like living flames, and thick black mist billowed from its frame. Its scarlet eyes alone were enough to make anyone's blood run cold.
Aside from the creature's level and HP, everything else about it was unknown — deeply unsettling.
Though its level wasn't high — only level 40, with just over a million HP, roughly a Leader-class monster at best — it had single-handedly wiped out several hundred Elite players.
Several hundred level 35-plus Elite players being killed wasn't what was truly alarming. What set their defeat apart was the manner of it.
The horned humanoid monster fought like a real player.
Moreover, every time it killed a player, not only did its HP recover, but its attributes also grew incrementally stronger. Most incredibly, Shi Feng spotted something familiar.
The Immortal Soul Absorption Rune.
When Shi Feng had been completing a quest, Xia Lian had inscribed the Immortal Soul Absorption Rune on the back of his hand. This rune only emitted a faint silvery-gray glow when absorbing immortal souls.
And this very rune was now branded on the chest of the horned humanoid creature. Every time a player was killed, the rune would pulse with faint silvery-gray light, throbbing like the creature's very heartbeat.
The player who had recorded the video was a passing expert assassin. Because he had stayed far away and remained in stealth the entire time, he was nearly impossible to detect — so the recording captured the battle from start to finish.
After the horned humanoid creature finished off all the players, something incredible happened.
The weapons and equipment dropped by the players were useless to monsters — unless they were specific quest items. Yet this horned humanoid creature collected every single dropped item.
As the creature departed, several more figures appeared in the video. Some were tall and horned, just like the creature itself. But among them was unmistakably a player — identifiable by a green diamond-shaped mark, the unique indicator that only players possessed. The player wore a black cloak and a mask, making it impossible to tell even their gender from the distance.
The assassin who had recorded the video initially tried to follow, but was discovered midway through. Despite being a level 38 assassin who fled with everything he had, he ultimately couldn't escape the horned humanoid creature's pursuit.
"How can there be such a monster?" Shi Feng watched the assassin fall to the horned humanoid creature, and a chill ran through him.
From pure combat technique alone, the assassin had reached the level of the sixth floor of the Trial Tower — a respectable expert even among first-tier guilds. After all, clearing the fourth floor was already enough to earn the title of "expert" in the eyes of the general player base, let alone reaching the sixth.
But the horned creature that killed him displayed even greater combat proficiency. From what Shi Feng could see in the footage, it was at least at the level of the seventh floor of the Trial Tower.
Because the combat footage was brief and captured as a flat video rather than a holographic simulation, the details were difficult to discern. Even Shi Feng couldn't precisely gauge the creatures' true capabilities, but by his estimation, they were at minimum at the half-step Perfected combat level.
For NPCs in the Divine Realm to reach this level, Shi Feng wouldn't have been surprised — he had encountered beings with combat techniques dozens of times more powerful. But for a monster in the Divine Realm to reach this level meant its intelligence had to be extraordinarily high, far beyond what even a Great Lord-class monster could achieve.
"The assassin who recorded the video was a red-named player with some notoriety. It's been two days since he was killed, and he still can't log into the Divine Realm," Blood Fang said slowly. "Not many people know about this yet. According to him, these monsters are extremely powerful. Before they targeted the elite party, they had been hunting outdoor bosses. The party just happened to cross paths with them, and in the end, they were all slaughtered. These monsters grow stronger by killing other monsters and players, and their intelligence is exceptionally high."
"The assassin said facing the horned monster didn't feel like facing a monster at all — it felt like facing an expert player. Its intelligence was high enough to easily read his every move and launch preemptive attacks accordingly."
"What does any of this have to do with our Zero Wing?" Shi Feng asked curiously.
Though he sensed these monsters were no ordinary threat, the Divine Realm had no shortage of strange occurrences. They could be some kind of Divine Realm event. He was too busy making money to worry about other people's problems.
"If you say it's related, there's a small connection. If you say it isn't, then there isn't one," Blood Fang said with a smile. "This video was recorded in the Star Moon Kingdom, not far from Stone Forest Town. These monsters' levels aren't a concern for Stone Forest Town while it has NPC guards protecting it. But once those guards are gone, I imagine the town's safety will become a serious problem. After all, no one can guarantee how far these monsters might grow.