Dead Knot

A Grade Material: "I see a lot of people in front of our path."

Sage: "Stop! Tanks on front! Attackers behind them! Supports protect attackers!"

Then all the players in the team moved as Sage directed. Because all of them are inside a group voice chat, so Sage can easily command the player army. There are only a few scouts unmuted for Sage to act as the eye of the army.

Sage: "Ready! Set! Charge!"

All the players started moving towards the bandits.

-On the other side

The Most Evil Man: "We hold off the enemy army for 12 minutes. Then our reinforcement will surround our enemies! Soon, victory will be ours!"

Player bandits: "WOOO!"

The Most Evil Man: "Now, delay their movements before we have to do close combats."

The Most Evil Man: "Archers! Gunners! Wizards! Use all your arrows, ammo, mana to bombard the enemies!"

Then arrows, bullets, fireballs, rock balls, wind slices, water arrows, enchanted arrows, enchanted bullets… All sorts of projectiles flying towards Sage's player army.

Sage: "Shield up!"

No need for reminding, the tanks on front already raised their shield against incoming projectiles. There were projectiles hitting the attackers behind the tanks as well, but the attackers were protected by the supports from even further back. Some unlucky damaged players were healed by supports too.

Overall, not much damage had been done to Sage's player army. But it did slow them down.

As Sage's player army was pushing, The Most Evil Man's bandit army was retreating. The player bandits were spamming arrows, bullets and magics like they are free towards the pushing army. If you are on Sage's team. You can see a screen full of colourful projectiles coming towards your direction. It is very dramatic and appalling.

As time went by, Sage felt a bit off. Why did they keep doing useless actions? Sage thought. Because they should realize that all these projectiles didn't do much to the enemy army anymore. Wait, are they waiting for something? Sage thought of players can access Internet and access Internet means players can contact with each other in game no matter distances… They are waiting for other players for reinforcement!

When this thought filled Sage's mind, he immediately took action.

Sage: "Push forward even if you have to take some damage! They are waiting for reinforcement! Avoid being surrounded!"

Player A: "I just thought why are they keep slowing us down and avoid having close contact. Now, I understand everything."

Player B: "Gosh, if not for Sage's reminder, I would not think about this possibility. Having a brain in the team is a great choice after all."

Player C: "You just don't want to think of anything only."

Then all the players moved forward and tended to ignore the projectiles more often. But this action made the supports very tiring.

The Most Evil Man: "Well… Looks like the enemy has found out our goal, but it doesn't matter. Look at the time! Our reinforcements came!"

A Grade Material: "Hey Sage… There are two groups of players appeared on North and South respectively."

Sage: "I knew it! Damn it! I realized it too late! Charge towards East at full speed!"

At this point, there is no turning back now. It's either break out of the cage or die here.

Snowflake: "HAHAHA! Experience points! Here I come!"

MrL: "…"

MrL: "I'll perform as usual."

In this RPG game, a single player can't do much. As status effects exist in this game, just a single poison effect will drain player's durability quickly. Most status effects affect players by percentage. So even for a level 1000 player can get poisoned to death by a level 1 player.

Fighting in a gang can quickly dispatch enemies. Adding the fact that will not easily defeated by wild monsters. That's why most player plunderers are ambushing others in a group. Because of many players who are teamed up to fight monsters outside spawn, so the team of player bandits are often larger than most monster hunting team.

As looting required the bandit team to be large like this, the bandits have to trust on each other. Or else they will cancel working together. For example, if bandit A died while fighting, bandit B then took his stuff. Then bandit A would not trust bandit B anymore. Or there are some bandits secretly grabbing more loots. If someone found out, they would not be trusted anymore. Since it is like that, the teamwork and the mood of bandit teams are as good as monster hunting teams.

Although Sage's player army was surrounded quickly. Sage's commanding skills were good enough to not let the formation quickly be destroyed. Sage's team now became a circle where the tanks were outside, the attackers and the supports were inside.

The people on both sides had similar people. The bandit team actually had less people than Sage's team. But because Sage's team was surrounded, they were in a bad position instead.

Sage: "If we kill enough of them, we can break out of this situation! Their spawn will be at player base. It will take a long time to reach here!"

Sage said a possible solution to get out of this situation. But the information is based on before the bandits got the mission. So, he actually made a bad decision.

MrL's post only showed the mission objective and reward, as well as taunting words. Not a single word mentioning their spawn will be reset to another location. So, nobody other than the player bandits know about this information.

Nevertheless, Sage's word gave the players hope. And they were willingly fought harder.

As the fight went on, some players in Sage's team died. Some players in Snowflake's guild died as well. At first, the player at spawn thought it is normal that they don't see any players from The Fourth Disaster since they thought that maybe they haven't died yet. I will stop them from joining the battlefield even if I died. They thought. But as time went by, they realized not a single bandit player was seen here, which they thought was strange. So, they decided to check out how the players who were still on the battlefield were doing. Yet, they saw some of those player bandits died to their team. But somehow, no player bandits respawned at the player base. At this point, they already got a bad feeling. They kept watching and saw those player bandits who were killed respawned not far away from the battlefield. At that distance, they can walk towards the battlefield in 5 minutes.

Sage found it out already when he noticed there are seemingly more reinforcement. At first, he felt strange seeing a single or two player bandits joining the battlefield. Then he noticed the killed player bandits were respawned not too far from the battlefield. He immediately changed the defending strategy to attacking strategy. No matter what, get out of being surrounded.

Yet the player bandits surrounded them again and again even if they tried to burst all their power at once just to get out from being surrounded. Because Sage's team couldn't really get rid of any bandits, their numbers kept decreasing and decreasing. Finally, they lost and all of them died.

…

Sage: "Damn it, they spawned outside now. Going outside means fighting them in their base as we are the attackers, they are the defenders."

Kade: "That was unexpected. But I couldn't complain."

yynes0w0: "My material supply source! Nooooo!~"

Abigail: "…"

Abigail: "If they keep blocking us from earning experience, then we can never play."

TwentyCharactersLong: "Then what are we gonna do!? Every time we lose, they get stronger. And even if we don't do anything, they can still get stronger!"

Everyone knew that, but they couldn't think of a way to solve this situation, so they went silent.

Chicken Puzzle Piece: "We can wait for more players to come. Aren't most players from Hot Blood Iron Will not here?"

Sage: "I don't think we have enough time to wait for reinforcement."

Kade: "If we can't face them head on, then why not sneak out?"

OWO: "No, it doesn't work. I tried."

Everyone looked at the player who named OWO.

OWO: "When you guys are heading East and fighting them for distraction. I headed towards West and made sure no one saw me."

OWO: "They have patrolling guards everywhere! I dodged from trees to trees. But the patrolling is too frequent. I accidentally made a small sound by stepping on tall grass and I was found out very quickly."

OWO: "Then you possibly know what happen next. I got surrounded and killed."

A Grade Material: "It seems like a dead knot to me."

Everyone: "…"

yynes0w0: "Maybe we can sign an agreement…"

Kade immediately interrupt yynes0w0 to continue talking.

Kade: "No, it won't work. Did you expect players following rules? Even countries in reality ignore what agreement says."

Kade swung his hand left and right to show disagree on yynes0w0.

Then after a moment of silence, someone spoke.

Bun Bun: "I think I know a way. uwu~"