Chapter 60 So You Are Also Here to Slay Demons and Exorcise Evils

Lin Bo’s self-made whale-oil mental potion had undergone formula adjustments, slightly reducing its side effects, though he felt it might just be that his tolerance for alcohol had improved. After all, alcohol was used as the base when making the potion.

If the alcohol base were removed, the side effects would inevitably be reduced to some extent, but at the same time, the potion’s efficacy would drop due to insufficient dissolution of the whale oil.

For the time being, he couldn't quite drink mental potions like water, but since it was homemade and cost nothing, it left him—a poor man—quite satisfied.

After regaining his composure and vigor, he hurried toward the village temple. At this moment, the stone doors were wide open, and the flames in the braziers inside burned fiercely, casting a bright glow over the surroundings.

Under normal difficulty, there was only one elite monster in the temple. According to the guidebooks, it was an insidious herbalist who liked throwing poison vials and could summon minor mobs.

Stepping into the hall now, he saw the hunched back of the herbalist deep inside the grand chamber.

On the empty temple altar of the simple difficulty, it was now piled high with mutilated corpses. The bright red blood had already congealed and turned black, while flies buzzed incessantly. Under the compassionate and gentle gaze of the high mermaid statue, the herbalist was using a serrated cleaver to vigorously hack at the corpses. Bone dust and bloody sludge splattered everywhere, and the air was filled with a chilling stench.

In the silent hall, apart from the thudding sound of meat being chopped, there was only the herbalist's mumbling.

Thanks to the "Listener of All Things" trait, Lin Bo could understand it.

However, he couldn't be bothered to listen to a lengthy monologue. The dungeon's background story had long been compiled by veteran players and placed in the public files of the chat channel; if anyone was interested, they could check it at any time.

Lin Bo felt he didn't have that kind of leisure to spare.

Taking advantage of the elite monster's preoccupation with its current work, he directly aimed at the back of its neck and flicked an iron pellet.

In a split second, a bloody hole burst open on the back of the herbalist's neck, piercing clean through from front to back to let the light show. Its entire body seemed to be yanked backward by a jerk, lunging forward onto the corpse-piled altar, unmoving.

Lin Bo knew this fellow was not dead.

Because he had seen the combat log on his information panel.

[Nether Network Prompt: You performed a weak-point attack, the check succeeds! The enemy (Blasphemous Herbalist) enters the disabled state.]

The reason he didn't aim at the back of the head but instead targeted the neck had a specific rationale. The Blasphemous Herbalist belonged to the category of mechanics bosses with a second phase.

The guide suggested digging out this elite monster's stomach and viscera first. If the vital points of the heart and brain were destroyed first, the herbalist's internal organs would animate, turning into a mass of highly toxic gelatinous slime with great strength, high physical resistance, and no obvious flaws, requiring destruction through fiery incineration or low-temperature freezing.

One could say that after it died, it became harder to kill and more troublesome than when it was alive.

Lin Bo raised a finger, and the iron pellet that had just pierced the herbalist's neck transformed into a ring, clamping around its left and right ankles, dragging it upside down and pulling it right before him.

This trick was one he often used to deal with the mechanical factory's sword guards; he was far too familiar with it.

The herbalist wore a cloak and a bird-beak mask on its face. Its upper-body linen shirt was tattered into a navel-baring crop top, while its exposed abdomen lacked skin and flesh, entirely consisting of a huge open wound. Within the exposed abdominal cavity, bluish intestines, stomach, and liver were writhing sluggishly.

The monster modeling in this dungeon was truly too ghastly to look at.

Lin Bo fished out another iron pellet from his ammunition pouch, locked his eyes on the herbalist's excessively bloated big stomach, and watched as the pellet turned into a sharp blade, drilling into the abdominal cavity like a living snake. It precisely severed the surrounding ligaments, the end of the esophagus, and the intestinal opening, cleanly slicing away the stomach sac.

Plop. As a puddle of transparent earthworm-like flesh spilled out after the stomach sac landed, this second-phase triggering mechanism was considered neutralized.

This was discovered by veteran players after daring attempts: directly shattering the stomach sac would trigger the second phase, whereas removing it entirely would cause no issues. To be honest, Lin Bo deeply admired the first player who had done this.

Nether Network players excelled at daring to think and act.

Just as Lin Bo finished performing surgery on the elite monster, the creature's tenacious vitality had already preliminarily healed the wound on its neck, and it began to struggle restlessly. A pair of not-so-clean little hands groped toward the waist potion pouch, preparing to smash a toxic potion vial directly into his face.

The next second, the blade that had finished cutting the stomach sac flew out, whirled around the herbalist's neck with a crisp snap, and its head dropped to the ground. A fountain of foul-smelling blood spurted from the inverted neck. Lin Bo calmly stepped back two steps to avoid getting any on his boots.

[Nether Network Prompt: You performed a fatal attack, the check succeeds! The enemy (Blasphemous Herbalist) has fallen.]

[Dungeon clearance conditions have been met, settling rewards.]

[Your rewards for this dungeon run are: Nether Cataclysm Coins *90, Universal Experience *500, Purified Flesh (Gray) *3, Ocean Healing Bandage (White).]

Today's challenge attempts for the Sea Spirit Altar were used up, yet Lin Bo still felt unsatisfied. It had been a long time since he had raked in so many Cataclysm Coins and experience points; he hadn't farmed to his heart's content yet.

Returning to the lighthouse, he still had two dungeons left unmapped: the Mechanical Factory and the Alchemical Circus. Although level penalties meant they couldn't provide Cataclysm Coins or universal experience, the equipment dropped could still be sold for some money.

His current Cataclysm Coin balance was 559, and that was factoring in the results of just finishing the Sea Spirit Altar twice.

Taking the neuronal activation tincture every day was a fixed expense, and he also frequently needed to purchase scholarly materials, which was no small outlay, causing solo runs of the Mechanical Factory to yield very little savings.

Now that there were three dungeons he could farm, his finances would be much more comfortable in the future.

With a few hours still remaining until the midnight reset of challenge attempts, Lin Bo was in no rush to enter a dungeon; he first checked the drops yielded by the run.

Purified Flesh (Gray)

Type: Material/Food

Weight: 0.1kg

Item Effect: After consumption, dispels minor poisoning status and significantly increases wound healing speed for a relatively short time.

Description: Chunks of meat sliced from holy creatures favored by the ocean, lingering with evil Qi due to desecration of the gods. After being purified on the altar, they have transformed into a rare delicacy for healing, and can also be used as a material for crafting other items.

Lin Bo retrieved a portion of the purified flesh from his backpack. The blue-black chunk of meat wrapped in oiled paper was about the size of a common frozen beef meatball from the supermarket. Its color was rich, and it looked very fresh and springy.

He was wondering whether this stuff could be used to improve his whale-oil mental potion recipe.

One simple difficulty run and one normal difficulty run yielded a total of four portions of "Purified Flesh." The drop rate was simply too high, meaning it definitely wouldn't fetch a high price; if he didn't find a way to make use of it, it would just gather dust in his backpack.

Ocean Healing Bandage (White)

Type: Pharmaceutical Product

Weight: 0.2kg

Item Effect: Applied over wounds to dispel non-magical poisoning effects and significantly increase wound healing speed over a relatively long period.

Description: The inner side of the bandage is coated with an ointment made from certain flesh-essence components. Remember not to apply it backward when using, otherwise the effect will be negligible.

It was quite a useful healing item. He estimated that on the player trading platform, it could easily sell for at least 3 Cataclysm Coins?

Lin Bo sent a message to [Agilent] to inquire about the buyback price.

[Multi-Link Network - Merchant Agilent]: Buying them. Groups of 10 for 21 Cataclysm Coins; if it's a single one, then 2 Cataclysm Coins.

With the buyback price being this low, Lin Bo guessed that the drop quantity of this item on higher difficulties definitely wouldn't be small either.

The hard difficulty of the Sea Spirit Altar had already been unlocked.

Clearance rewards: Nether Cataclysm Coins *150, Universal Experience *900, Gray-quality drop, White-quality drop (High probability), Blue-quality drop (Low probability), Universal Skill Book (Low probability), Knowledge Fragment (Extremely low probability).

Under hard difficulty, besides the elite monster, twenty crazed villagers would spawn in the temple, raising the level of trouble considerably.

Even so, he was still confident about soloing it.

The ultimate difficulty of the Sea Spirit Altar dungeon featured a boss monster, and Lin Bo wasn't sure if he could solo it. If he felt he couldn't beat it when the time came, he would just look for teammates to form a group.

Pondering this, he decided to go to the dungeon chat channel to mingle and make himself familiar to other players.

As soon as he opened the interface and scrolled through the players' chat logs, Lin Bo spotted a familiar nickname—the Paladin [Bulwark] bro whom he had encountered in the Mechanical Factory channel. This guy took newbies through maps every single day.

Players could customize their nicknames upon entering each channel, so Lin Bo couldn't be entirely sure if these two [Bulwark]s were the same person.

[Lighthouse Guest]: Hello everyone.

[Holy Light Be Upon You]: A new brave soul has arrived in this channel! Hiss, the power of righteousness grows daily! Come and vanquish the evil entities together with us! You can add me for Purgatory map runs.

[Wants To Eat Meat]: Welcome, welcome~

[Bulwark]: Huh, aren't you that Mage bro from the Mechanical Factory channel?

[Lighthouse Guest]: Indeed, Paladin bro, what a coincidence, you're here to slay demons and eliminate fiends too?

[Bulwark]: (Smile) (Smile) What a coincidence, want to run a dungeon together?