Calamity Messenger

Chapter 175 - 139: Asura Token

In the game "Messenger", even without considering Foundation Establishment and above, just by observing the one to three-turn Messengers, Yan Qing noticed one situation: defense outweighs offense.

The first item for most Messengers is a defensive token. A Messenger without a defensive token is equivalent to a super mortal, no matter how powerful, like a bubble easily burst; it is essential to have a defensive token for a Messenger to truly become ’non-human’, distancing himself from the majority of worldly dangers.

As the level increases, the strength of offensive tokens struggles to keep up with the enhancement of defensive tokens. For instance, the Liang Kingdom’s widely equipped Three-Turned Rare Token, the Heart-Protecting Mirror, can defend up to 2800 damage, whereas the most relied upon core token of the seasoned third-turn Helan Que, the Soul-Breaking Spear, can only deal a maximum instant output of ten times the base attack, 700 damage.

This means that even if Helan Que’s chain attacks could reach sixty-four strikes, it would still require at least four strikes to completely break through any Liang Kingdom’s third-turn defense, and this does not take into account if the Liang Kingdom’s third-turn replenishes the Heart-Protecting Mirror’s barrier.

Therefore, the majority of battles between Messengers ultimately become a contest of spiritual power. The reason Helan Que was subdued by Pharmacist’s Wish and Rabbit Heroine was certainly due to Pharmacist’s Wish’s high instant burst, but the more crucial reason was that Helan Que wielded dual weapons.

He had no time to absorb Spiritual Jade to restore spiritual power, having to carefully calculate spiritual power consumption, and if he inadvertently conserved too much, he would be injured and blown away by Pharmacist’s Wish.

The reason behind the phenomenon of defense outweighing offense is simple: for the fun of the game.

To make bosses challenging and entertaining, bosses’ offense, defense, and health values must not be low. Boss stats are generally much higher than players’, and if players were to be easily slain by bosses, they might give up before experiencing the boss’s allure, given this is an MMORPG and not a high-difficulty soul-like game, it must cater to the majority of ordinary players’ experience.

But ensuring a smooth dungeon experience inevitably sacrifices PVP experience.

In any fighting game or PVP game, the damage model is always offense over defense, even when turtling in a corner you can cause heavy injury with throws. In the defense outweighing offense model, battles between Messengers almost feel like mutual torture with dull knives, becoming almost impossible to determine victory or defeat before spiritual power is exhausted, lacking any ’life or death in an instant’ thrill, resembling more a tedious asset comparison game.

So, does "Messenger" not have PVP?

Yes, it does, brother, yes it does.

When Yan Qing created an alternate character, there was an option ’Asura mode’ that remains locked to this day. Choosing Asura mode means the dungeon gains are only 10% of other modes, but battlefield gains are 200% of other modes. However, this mode is not the focus—after all, in this world, everyone is in real mode—the focus is that players who choose to play on the battlefield can possess the Asura token that penetrates defenses!

Asura Messengers take as little as thirty seconds to determine the outcome, with some strong ones quickly defeating players of the same level, comparable to the ’ten-part combo’ in fighting games!

"Only realizing now, it’s too late!"

Ye Kai grinned maliciously: "Caught in my Purple Luo Smoke, little girl, are you dizzy, struggling to breathe? Don’t force it, just fall, just fall, and grandpa will treat you well."

Yan Qing glanced over; the Rabbit Heroine’s status bar didn’t show any debuffs reducing combat power, but after consuming the Blood Replenishing Pill, the combat log indicated the pill’s effect was weakened by 70%, completely unable to make up for the blood lost to the poison.

He was not surprised in his heart; if taking medicine could stabilize health, wouldn’t it return to mutual torture? It would even be more bloody.

The current plan is only to fight offense with offense!

Seeing the little girl give up dodging to actively approach and attack, Ye Kai instead retreated, attacking while withdrawing. However, if Rabbit Heroine dared to take the opportunity to flee, he would stick to her immediately, much like a persistent poisonous toad.

"This little girl has got some guts, a Demon Dao seedling. Why not call me grandpa, hand over your token and kneel and kowtow, and grandpa will not only spare you but teach you an unrivaled secret art of crafting, how about it?"

Despite his words, his hands didn’t stop spewing toxic smoke, and in just this moment, Rabbit Heroine’s poison had already stacked to four layers, her health flowing away like a faucet was turned on.

However, Yan Qing raised an eyebrow, feeling it was nothing much.

He had already noticed that each layer of poison lasted about seven seconds, and multiple poisonings wouldn’t reset the duration. Rabbit Heroine was hit with nearly eight palms just now but only had four layers stacked, indicating that the earlier layers of poison had timed out with the passage of time. Also, Ye Kai’s poison palm had a maximum range of only three steps, barely extending farther than bladed weapon attacks.

The attack duration is long, the base damage is low, and the attack range is short. From the data alone, it seems completely unimpressive, leading Yan Qing to guess that the poison palm must require very little spiritual power to execute. After all, unlike reality, games still have to make some logical sense; they won’t let you encounter only disadvantages.

If Ye Kai knew his Hundred Poison Silk Hand, of which he was so proud in Jianghu, was regarded so dismissively in Yan Qing’s eyes, he would probably explode with anger.

But even without hearing Yan Qing’s mocking through the screen, the unease in his heart kept growing—Rabbit Heroine was just too calm.

Although lacking fame outside the mountain, that was because Ye Kai was ruthless in his actions, never leaving survivors, giving no chance for the government office to issue a bounty on him outside.

He had killed many Messengers, even slain third-turn Messengers, but whether they were high officials of the Court or elders of noble families, upon discovering their defensive tokens had failed, they invariably panicked, losing all will to fight once poisoned... The so-called ’strength’ of righteous individuals was merely a performance shielded by defensive tokens. Ye Kai loved most to tear off their invincible masks and watch them struggle hideously in despair.