Aethelgard: The Survival Game (Chloe) novel Chapter 103

Acthelgard: The Survival Game

Chapter 103 Death Toll

The notification popped up: [Beginner’s Protection: Day 12

[Weather: Deep Fog (Environmental damage reduced). Temperature: 70 F

[Tip: Patrol your territory, secure your buildings, and stay alert for Corruption lurking in the mist

[Current Talent Points: 6

[New Weather Forecast: Tomorrow’s looking great-clear skies, 70 F. and plenty of sunshine. Make sure to gather resour

[Several new features have been unlocked. Players are encouraged to explore them.]

When Chloe woke up, she massaged her brow, feeling a sharp pain in her head.

It was like she’d pulled an all-nighter cramming for a physics exam and her brain still hadn’t caught up, leaving her with a

killer headache.

She pressed her temples and checked her status panel, which showed “Mentally Exhausted”, “Endurance Reduced”, “Overworked”, and “Potion Resistance”.

Her body felt fine, but her brain was killing her.

Maybe it was from all that enchanting practice yesterday, constantly manipulating Slime Ooze and pushing herself to the limit, chugging Premium Dew to force her Energy to full. No wonder her head was still pounding.

These debuffs meant her Energy was capped at around 400 today, with no way to recover it.

That totally threw a wrench in her plans to build the Magic Rune Refrigerator.

Chloe rubbed her temples and opened the global chat.

She was immediately shocked by the bloody death toll.

Over 20,000 people died overnight.

The global chat was packed with survivors discussing the monsters they faced last night.

SpringBreeze: [Damn. There were some insanely scary monsters-mutant ones. They target Lords. They move without a sound and are ridiculously hard to kill. I barely made it out alive.]

Noob: [Once these mutant monsters enter your territory, their movement slows down. The longer they stay, the weaker they get.

[Only players who’ve upgraded to Lord Level I can barely survive by playing defensively and whittling them down with weapons.]

Playboy: [All the deaths yesterday were players who failed to upgrade their territory to Level 1 within the first eleven days.

(Still, it shouldn’t have been that many people.]

MintyGrass: [Oh my god. Is LilNimbus gone too? Why? LilNimbus was always ahead, always gathering all kinds of supplies.)

When a player dies, their chat window goes gray and their name turns into a bunch of numbers.

10:44 Sat, Aug 8

Aethelgard: The Survival Game

Chloe opened her DMs. Yesterday, she’d listed streetlights on her homepage, and some players had traded with her. The system auto-approved the deals.

She checked her trade history. The system logged the time, who she traded with, and the amount of each resource exchanged.

There was a long list of names in the 24 streetlight trades.

Many of those names had already turned into system-assigned numbers.

Anyone who could afford to trade for her pricey streetlights definitely wasn’t some average player struggling at the baselin

The chat was still going strong.

TrashFisher: [Maybe the ones who died were the hardcore crafters? The ones with no way to protect themselves?

[I have a really good friend who’s a top-tier crafter. She never needed to fish or hunt monsters. She crafted all sorts of iter in her little cabin and traded them for whatever she needed, amassing a fortune.

[So I’m starting to think, maybe that’s what happened?

[The first ten days were all about natural disasters and survival crises, where the survival players really shone. Maybe the la five days of the beginner phase are going to be a real test of survival skills?]

The global chat was blowing up, messages flying by so fast it was hard to keep up.

The premium group chat was getting absolutely flooded with messages too.

Today, Chloe went by ‘Rose’.

Daffodil: [LilNimbus is dead? I had clothes lined up from her for the next three days. What about the stuff I already paid her? The system didn’t even give me any compensation.]

PlumBlossom: [LilNimbus was loaded with supplies, but I know she had some health issues. She had a leg injury when she joined, so last night’s monsters were probably too much for her.]

Vanilla: [Only 50,000 players left. That number really freaks me out. Beginner protection? More like beginner massacre- half of us are gone already.]

Bellflower: [How about we trade territory intel?]

Rose: [Anyone got details on last night’s monsters? The ones I ran into were Corruption Mutants.]

Chloe skimmed through the mess of messages, her head throbbing so badly it felt like it might just burst. ‘Mental fatigue hits way harder than any muscle pain,’ she thought, barely able to focus.

The system gave players zero protection, and the ‘Weakened’ debuff in her status bar left Chloe feeling drained and uncomfortable.

She shut down the chat, massaged her brow, and let herself recover for a couple minutes before starting to take inventory of her supplies.

The brutal death toll hit Chloe hard. It was a serious warning.

No way was she going to die here.

She’d make sure to survive, and turn her territory into her own personal paradise, no matter what

Chloe glanced over the haul she’d gotten from yesterday’s streetlight trades.

10:44 Sat, Aug 8

Aethelgard: The Survival Game

She’d scored 42 Cubic Yard Soil Plots, 5 Epic materials, and almost a hundred Rare Slime Ooze.

There were also 7 Epic materials, 2 Wood Essence Crystals, I Fire Essence Crystal, 1 Aqua Essence Crystal, and a Li

Essence Core.

Lightro:

Of the 24 streetlights she traded, about half the Epic materials came from RichDragonWolf.

Rich DragonWolf alone snapped up 8 streetlights.

There were still way too many top players around.

Even decorative buildings like streetlights could fetch such a high price.

But Chloe quickly figured out why.

Today, the system introduced two new features: [Environment Score] and [Territory Prosperity Scope).

Chloe checked her streetlights. Each one provided 30 Environment Score and 10 Territory Prosperity Score for her territory.

She never expected an ordinary decoration like a streetlight to have this kind of effect.

But yesterday, several top players suddenly approached her to buy streetlights. They must’ve gotten the news from source Chloe wasn’t aware of.

That made sense.

As long as she got the materials she wanted. Chloe didn’t care how the news got out. Selling ordinary streetlights for that kind of price was an unexpected win.

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