Reign of the Hunters

Ol’ Three had obviously detected danger as well. It arched its hind legs and stretched out its forelegs, raising its backside slightly. Ol’ Three eyes stared widely at the threat, a low growl emanating from its throat. It was apparent that Ol’ Three would attack the moment Ye Ci gave the order.

The assailant stood still, hidden behind the layers of leaves, only exposing one half of its golden eyes that were staring Ye Ci. That’s right, it was exactly one and a half, with the other half obstructed by something.

Its eyes were not small at all. Even from the distance that Ye Ci was viewing them, each of them was about the size of a basketball. With a rough estimation, one could guess the actual size of the monster. A thought occurred to Ye Ci to cast an Identify spell on her assailant to gauge its level.

But because her assailant was hidden too well, she could not even select it as a target. Both parties remained still, facing each other.

Although Ye Ci was superior compared to the other players as a reincarnator, she was still a lvl 29 Huntress. The world in a web game is very different from the world of xianxia or cultivation. A player’s strength came from a combination of his or her mechanical skills, abilities and equipment. It was impossible to suddenly gain strength all of a sudden out of sheer force of will.

The rules in a web game were something inflexible. If you’re lvl 29, you would still have the performance of only lvl 29, no matter how well you play your character. If one wishes to play a lvl 29 character like a lvl 30 one, sorry, it was impossible.

In Fate, the max level penalty was set at 20 levels. In other words, a lvl 29 player could defeat an opponent of up to lvl 49 with all their means and BUFFs available to the player, but as soon as the player faced a lvl 50 opponent, everything the player had would be disregarded. No matter how hard you tried, you would not be able to defeat that opponent. You would not even be able to break its defence.

In situations like this, a player should not expect a sudden surge of strength to defeat his or her opponent like what one would expect in a fantasy or cultivation novel. The only choice a player had was to run away as fast as you could, or suffer the consequences of losing experience points and dropping equipment.

Ye Ci was slightly panicked when she was unable to even target her opponent. Under such circumstances when her opponent was untargetable, there was another reason other than the geographical factor... Her target was too large. Ye Ci roughly calculated the distance between herself and her assailant. She concluded that it was not the time to fight it head on. It was best for her to retreat when their distances were still far apart.

Ye Ci move slightly backwards, appearing as if she had not moved at all, but her body had already shifted for at least 2 yards.

The pupils on the pair of cold golden eyes contracted visibly.

Fate was a virtual reality game claimed to be unprecedented. The game’s attention to detail was superb. With the Beast type monsters as example, you could see with your eyes the glossiness of their fur, feel the softness with your very own touch and their pupils will change according to the surroundings.

If Ye Ci remembered correctly, when a Beast type monster’s pupils contracted, it was either angry or it was a sign that the monster was going to attack.

Ye Ci did not dare to move. Her enemy was hidden while she was in the open. Acting rashly was not a wise choice.

A shiver-inducing roar emanated from behind the trees. The leaves shuddered and Ye Ci could finally see the face of her enemy.

It was a huge face with pitch-black skin that had a surface as rough as rock and one half lidded eye on both sides of its face. What was more terrifying was the monster’s gigantic mouth, and the white teeth that were as sharp as daggers. The face was familiar, as it was quite similar to the few monsters that she had slain. But compared to this fellow, they were tiny.

That’s right. It was the face of a T-rex. It was the face of a gigantic T-rex.

What is a Tyrannosaurus Rex? In an introduction of the animal kingdom, it was a ferocious carnivore, and the natural predator of all dinosaurs. Of course, in the game, it could not just walk up to another dinosaur, chomp down on it, and then open its mouth wide and tell you that the meat was delicious. But it could definitely kill Ye Ci with one hit.

Ye Ci took in a deep breath as her enemy appeared. She could finally select and target the enemy. She cast Identify, which succeeded. It meant that the dinosaur was not 20 levels ahead of Ye Ci. She immediately felt relieved. It seemed to Ye Ci could defeat it once she found a suitable spot to kite it.

But, that thought only lasted up to the moment before Ye Ci took a look at its stats. After reading through the stats of the T-rex, Ye Ci immediately made the decision to retreat.

Half-eyed Garrison

Race: Dinosaur

Level: 48

Category: Epic Monster

Abilities: Tearing Bite, Tail Whip, Stampede, Tremor

Epic Monsters were on an entire level than a normal monster. An Epic Monster’s strength would usually be 3-4 times its level, meaning that Half-eyed Garrison had the strength of a lvl 150 or even lvl 200 monster. All the players from the entire Eastern Continent might not be able to defeat it at this stage of the game, not to mention Ye Ci attempting to do it alone.

Only a fool would try to show off and be a hero in the face of such opponent.

Ye Ci felt odd. She didn’t remember ever coming across any Epic Monster in this particular map. Most of them appeared in the Middle Continent, which was still a forbidden area for players. As for the other continents, Ye Ci as a reincarnator had not even heard of more than 3 occasions regarding any Epic Monsters. And even then, it was when players were already at lvl 80.

Why would she run into one right now?

Ye Ci did not ponder much on this question, as she began to run the moment she saw Garrison’s stats. Half-eyed Garrison let out a loud roar in the forest behind her and began its pursuit. Ye Ci directed Ol’ Three to attempt to slow Garrison down. Although futile, in that situation, every second she bought for herself added up to her chance of survival.

Pitching Ol’ Three against the Garrison was no different from striking a stone with an egg. Garrison merely lowered its head and roared at Ol’ Three, and its HP dropped rapidly. Ol’ Three laid dead on the ground, and before long its carcass disappeared.

A player could not revive their pets while on the move, and it was impossible for Ye Ci to stop and revive Ol’ Three and then once again direct it to slow Garrison down. The only thing she could do was to run. Abilities, Speed Potion, Speed Scroll, all the items that could boost Ye Ci’s speed were used. She no longer had the luxury to care about the price.

Garrison was still in pursuit. Just as it was about to catch up with Ye Ci, her Charge ability’s cooldown was ready, and she immediately activated the ability, dashing an additional 20m forward. Eluded by its prey once more, an angry Garrison stopped.

It raised its head, let out an angry roar, and stomped on the ground with its thick and strong right leg. The Epic-tier skill Tremor rocked the ground. Multiple cracks spread out in all direction with Garrison as its center, with a radius of 30 yards.

Ye Ci was fortunately not within the range of Tremor, and had avoided receiving damage. However, Tremor’s effect was not only to damage its opponent, the ground would tremble as an effect. Ye Ci could not escape that particular effect and was hit by a DEBUFF called “Fall Down,” and she fell onto the ground.

As expected of an Epic-tier ability. It had a strong destructive power, massive range, and could even affect its surroundings. All of them were perfect tools to destroy the enemy.

Noticing that its prey had fell onto the ground, Garrison immediately charged at Ye Ci, who after a struggle to stand up, planted a Frost Trap.

It took Ye Ci 1.5 second to recover from her fall, 5 seconds to plant the trap, which added up to a total of 6.5 seconds. Garrison that had released an Epic-tier skill was immobile for 2.5 seconds, and from its position, it would need 4.5 seconds to reach Ye Ci, which would take it 7 seconds in total.

Ye Ci did a brief calculation. All of her abilities, potions and scrolls were on cooldown. She had also fallen down. If she continued running away, she would never be able to escape. That was why Ye Ci had decided to take the risk and plant a Frost Trap. The level difference between Ye Ci and Garrison was 18. Despite being an Epic Monster, it could not ignore the rules of the game no matter how strong it was. With an 18 level difference, the success rate of the Frost Trap was 5%.

Since she would die even if she ran, and would die anyways if the Frost Trap failed to freeze her opponent, Ye Ci decided to gamble. What if her luck was good and Garrison was frozen?

0.5 seconds was a short amount of time. It was the time an individual would take to blink his or her eye. It was so short that it could be neglected and overlooked. What can you do in 0.5 seconds? You might not even have enough time to sneeze before the time is up.

But that short amount of time left a tiny space between Ye Ci and Garrison. With that, she was able to tumble to the side.

Before she could even turn around, a huge block of ice formed behind Ye Ci.

It... Succeeded.

The effect of Frost Trap was to freeze an enemy without dealing damage to the owner. Ye Ci’s tumble did not put much distance between herself and Garrison. She was still right under Garrison’s foot. That was why the big block of ice appeared to be weird.

There was a small space beneath the ice block. And in that small space was Ye Ci who was not frozen by the trap.

Without thinking, Ye Ci crawled out of the space, and ran towards the edge of the map. She had been thinking of a safe place, and she had finally come up with one. She was headed for the Burning Crevice.

There was a deep ravine at the edge of the Damp Tropical Rain Forest. It was so deep that one could not even see the bottom of it. It was a safe zone, or at least it was safe in the current stage of the game. It was Ye Ci’s destination.

Yay! Chapter 95! One more step closer to Chapter 100!!! I really can’t wait to get to Chapter 100, it means a lot to me. When I started translating Reign of the Hunters, I was like “shit, will people like it?” “will I give up translating the story at some point?” BUT LOOK AT WHERE WE ARE NOW? 95!!! Wooohh!!! Thank you all for staying with Jimmi and ROTH, and thank you all for your support! Can’t wait to reach 100, and will probably do some weird thing as celebration who knows.

A special thanks to:

Ben.P and Elizabeth.V for their donations!

I’d like to clarify that we’re currently not doing any sponsored chapters, but we’ll always welcome donations from readers who wish to support our efforts in translating this novel.

Hope you guys enjoy this chapter, and the first in the comment type.... FIRST BLOOD!!!