Half-cleared

There were roughly the same amount of creatures, so that was really not what was different.

'They don't feel as dumb in their movements as before'

Allen could safely take on 2 to 3 lvl 4s at a time, even though he himself was close to reaching lvl 8 in here. Others were facing some level of difficulty too. Probably, there was some in a game mode that could control the in-game difficulty. The researchers were probably tempering with the setting slowly to explore all the features of the game, that could better support the data needed for them. They had prime requirements of the authenticity of the data, as far as he could tell, looking at the current situation.

There were approximately 80 creatures that they beat down here, which was almost the same number as before. The system did not say they cleared the base at the end, though. This confused them a bit, and while they were also standing together, some kind of underground monster suddenly attacked them. It was a new one, probably looked like a boss type, looked a little intelligent, not like the ones that were controlling the horde. The team had already downed them when they were clearing the base here. Some mechanism triggered and the location that they were standing on suddenly sank in and they fell almost 5 meters.

'A dangerous fall for anyone that was baited by the creatures on their bases. Good thing we can gather more things about these dangerous pits. Allen tried to figure out the location and how it was made. 'Someone freshly made it' The soil looked like it may have been dug only a few tens of minutes ago, could be from when they attacked….

'That is a good nugget of information that the military was able to gather.' Allen got a brief message while he was playing in the game. Since he was currently fighting, he did not have the time to give time to it. So, he just sent a quick reply and got back into the scene. The peculiar thing was that the creature could give them more trouble even though it was just a level 4.

"How did they even kill it in real life?"

"How do you know they killed it?" Maybe they had retreated after seeing it"

"No. The variety of moves that it can display shows the military probably had a long fight with this creature. It could not be because they had met it multiple times as the researchers would have sent this information here at the first moment otherwise, and the movements would not be so real for so little data"

"That's….good to know"

There was another thing he did not say. The creature was looking too dangerous in terms of its abilities and temper.

There was some amount of ganging upon it, and they swiftly put the monstrous creature down. The problem was that when they were trying to down it, they could not notice that at some instant some creatures were encircling them from all around. Allen and others had reached the middle of the area and could not prevent themselves from being attacked by all sides. The new creatures even had levels of 4, some even 5.

The power levels they did not see before were suddenly appearing, which made Allen think that maybe the data they were sending back was uniquely helpful that now the bases of enemies had to send their highest skill warriors, defenders whatever they could call to push back the army.

The enemies that had come this time did not appear as ready to die on their blades. They formed proper teams of 3,3 and even 4 to single out each of them and take them down. They were a little unbalanced by the fact but too bad for the creatures. Most of them were already lvl 7, even Tim. Even though he recently got to lvl 7.

Now the fight had gotten pretty intensive, so he focused more on lazying the enemies to win by himself. The enemies that had come toward him were 4 'possibly because he was the highest level one among them…' Either that is just the game mechanism or they can gauge out the power of the enemy'

There was a bit of beating that he got still trying to match up with them. The key thing that was cornering him was that 2 out of the four were long-range attackers. One was using some kind of corrosive type ability and the other was using some type of arrow type weapon. The penetration of that arrow was enough to down him in one blow if it was lucky.

One of them was using some kind of sharp weapon, and the other was using blades while moving at super-fast speeds.

'Fast. It is difficult to even see him, let alone take him down.' What Allen could do was at just the right moment he made himself align such that the sharp weapon was just in line with him. Allen got struck by those knives, but so was the sharp weapon one because of the friendly fire. In the moments that he could go nowhere, Allen beat him down with some combos. After doing that, he instantly shot towards arrow one. It was only some time since this happened, but the arrow one was already trying to create some more distance. But after moving a certain distance, he seemed very careful to not go any further than that. Allen could make use of that to knock the daylights out of him. With some speed, the corrosive attack one was on his heels all this time.

Then, the sharp weapon one and corrosive attack one tried to work together with each other, but it was no good. Allen swiftly beat them with the minimum loss of health. Allen still had around 62% of his health remaining. He could help others along with some others that had taken care of their enemies. 3 of them helped 2 who were in severe situations and the other 5 could take care of themselves. It just took time, a little more than them.

When the situation cleared up, the system gave a message that "Base cleared(Half)"

He failed to look at the complete message and started looking at the work they had to do now, to take the crystals out of the creatures. He was a little impatient to do it quickly.

"Everyone, let's take care of this and go back for today"

Allen looked at the random team that was getting quite a beat down from creatures half their level a few moments ago and thought

'That is fine. All that matters is- "And there was a sudden punch in his face. Allen saw over 50% of his remaining hp go down in the blink of an eye, the same amount that the four creatures could not reduce combined. 'That was not even a long-ranged attack for it to be so powerful against me'

He sent a quick reply. "Everyone, enemy-"

Someone attacked simultaneously some others by a blast attack and some low hp ones were also going to get the game over. There could not log in for 24 hours if this was the case.

"Log out immediately" Most of them could, with some exceptions who only did after receiving one more attack. The game had exploded in its level of difficulty.

'Probably the researchers could tell what they did'

When he tried to get up from the console, he felt a little weakness and some weird taste in his mouth. He slowly got out and walked to the nearest washing tap. The moment he tried to wash and spit from his youth, he saw a good amount of blood that went along with his spit. He saw that and his first thought after some fear and shock was:

'Can anyone tell me what happened here?'