Chapter 18: Trapped Like Fish in a Jar

Through the gaps in the leaves, Su You could vaguely see that there was nothing behind the two fire demons—apparently, it was just these two, with no other companions following them.

Since such a good opportunity had presented itself, Su You had no intention of letting it slip by. In her eyes, these two fire demons were already her guinea pigs for testing out her trap setups.

After observing the path the fire demons were taking, Su You quietly moved ahead of them and pulled out her axe.

*Clang—*

With a sound that wasn’t particularly loud, but was very noticeable to the fire demons, both of them were immediately drawn to the noise. Instinctively, they looked in the direction the sound had come from—

Unfortunately for them, the plants blocked their view, so they saw nothing. Just as they were about to leave, another *clang* came from the same direction.

Whether it was out of curiosity or simply annoyance at the persistent noise, the two fire demons not only stopped in their tracks, but actually started to slowly move toward Su You’s position…

Just like that, the two hapless “lab rats” were lured by Su You into the attack range of Arrow Tower 2.

Although they were within Arrow Tower 2’s range, the tower wasn’t loaded with arrows, so the fire demons weren’t attacked.

Even so, under Su You’s deliberate guidance, they spotted Arrow Tower 2.

On the Sunset Continent, almost all monsters share a trait: they will actively attack any structure, regardless of what it is or where it’s located.

As soon as a building appears in their line of sight, their programming triggers an “attack” command, which takes top priority over everything else.

The only exceptions are monsters with higher AI (intelligence). While they also like to attack buildings, they know how to better achieve their goals, rather than just charging blindly without any strategy.

But since these fire demons are the monsters that drop the Heartfire Core materials, it’s only natural that they’re not too bright—otherwise, it would make the game way too hard.

…After all, if you can’t even kill a fire demon or establish your own territory, what’s the point of playing?

So, once the two fire demons spotted Arrow Tower 2, Su You didn’t need to do anything else—they just dumbly ambled toward the tower on their own.

They wanted to attack the tower, but its position was tricky: Arrow Tower 2 was hidden among the gaps between several large trees, so the fire demons had to struggle through the trees to get close. But just as they were about to attack, they found their way blocked by a fence.

Because of the fence, they couldn’t reach the tower, so the only thing they could do was attack the barrier in front of them.

They walked through the gate Su You had deliberately left open, and started furiously clawing at the wooden fence… Just as they were absorbed in attacking the fence, the gate behind them suddenly swung shut.

Their only way out was now closed—now the fire demons were truly trapped like fish in a jar.

Want to escape?

Impossible!

Unless they could destroy the fences!

The fire demons weren’t smart, but they understood their predicament. Their attacks grew even more frenzied. But just as they were attacking the fence, an arrow suddenly whistled through the air and struck one of the fire demons in the arm.

There was no way they’d let themselves be trapped without fighting back, and Su You wasn’t about to just sit by and let them break down her fence, either.

She’d held off before only because she didn’t want to scare them away.

Now that they were trapped, Su You had nothing left to worry about. She immediately activated Arrow Tower 1, letting it fire arrows to finish them off as quickly as possible.

The arrow towers had two attack modes: automatic and manual.

The advantage of automatic mode was that it freed up manpower, but its accuracy was mediocre—if the target moved too fast, it was easy to miss.

As for manual mode, there were actually two types: one was Su You herself, the player, directly controlling the tower.

As long as your skills were good enough, you could hit any monster, no matter how tough.

But Su You was only one person. Later on, once she established her own city, there would be thousands of monsters attacking at once. No matter how skilled she was, she couldn’t possibly control hundreds of arrow towers and turrets at the same time… But that was fine, because later she could recruit combat NPCs to operate the towers.

Everyone has their own specialty—if she could recruit NPCs with high archery skills, not only would accuracy be guaranteed, but top-tier NPCs could even boost the tower’s damage!

But that was all for the future. Right now, Su You didn’t even have her own territory, let alone the ability to recruit NPCs—she hadn’t even met any yet.

Although manual control was more accurate, thanks to Su You’s setup, the two fire demons were trapped in a tiny area just a few steps wide.

With such limited space, there was nowhere for them to dodge, so even without manual control, the arrow towers easily took care of them.

With a few agonized howls, the fire demons turned to ash and vanished. At the same time, a few items emitting a faint white glow appeared on the ground.

Su You opened the gate, picking up the loot while also retrieving the arrows she’d fired.

By her count, the tower had fired twelve arrows in total. Maybe she was just lucky, but she managed to recover all twelve arrows, with no losses.

Besides the arrows, Su You also picked up the drops from killing the fire demons.

【Obtained Copper Coins x5】

【Obtained Copper Coins x3】

【Obtained Charcoal x6】

…

Copper coins were the common currency of the continent, useful for many things: trading with merchants, buying and upgrading buildings, and so on.

Besides copper coins, there were also silver and gold coins: 10,000 copper = 100 silver = 1 gold.

As for the charcoal, it was just ordinary charcoal—nothing special, mainly used as fuel.

Other than being fuel, if she later got feathers, she could combine feathers, twigs, and charcoal to make quill pens.

Since she’d just built an arrow tower and used up a batch of wood and four ropes, Su You’s backpack still had plenty of space. She simply stowed the charcoal and coins away.

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"19. Fire Demon Leader

Once the copper coins entered her backpack, they turned into a string of numbers in the lower right corner—money could be stored in the backpack without taking up any space at all.

After collecting her loot and cleaning up the battlefield, Su You returned the arrows to Arrow Tower 1’s ammo slot and set off again to lure more Fire Demons.

……

……

“That’s the twelfth one…” She didn’t know how much time had passed, but Su You had already used the arrow tower to kill nearly every Fire Demon she could see.

The process wasn’t exactly easy, but it was at least free of any real danger.

Currently, she’d used up five of her twenty-four arrows, leaving her with nineteen.

In addition, the durability of the wooden fences and the gate had also dropped quite a bit. However, due to their placement, most of the damage they took was ineffective, so each of the three fences still had about a third of their durability left—enough to keep using them for now.

But the problem was, after killing twelve Fire Demons, she still hadn’t seen a single Flame Stone drop.

Logically, the initial drop rate for Flame Stones should be around 6%. However, if you keep killing Fire Demons for a while without getting a Flame Stone, the drop rate gradually increases until one finally drops, at which point it resets—similar to the sandstone mining mechanic from before.

“The drop rate for the tenth Fire Demon should be 23%. By the twelfth, it should be over 25%, right? With odds this high, and still nothing?” Su You couldn’t help but seriously doubt her own luck.

But since there had been plenty of players who’d killed a dozen or more Fire Demons without seeing a single Flame Stone, Su You was a bit frustrated but not overly upset.

She took a moment to adjust her mood, then began to consider her next move.

She’d previously counted thirteen Fire Demons in the area, but after searching all around—without entering the Fire Demon nest—she still couldn’t find the thirteenth one.

While monsters rarely wander off, it’s not impossible. Since she really couldn’t find that last Fire Demon, Su You decided to give up on it.

Now, she had two options: try to lure the Fire Demons out of the cave and kill them as before, or go find a new Fire Demon nest.

From a safety perspective, the second option was better. The cave was a confined space, and one wrong move could bring all the Fire Demons inside down on her.

But if she went looking for a new nest, she’d have to spend time searching, and if the new nest was far away, she’d need to gather resources and set up arrow towers all over again—not just a waste of resources, but more importantly, a waste of time.

Su You didn’t have that much time to spare.

If she tried to drag Fire Demons from far away back here to kill them, unexpected things could happen along the way, and the results might not be any better than her current situation.

……

After weighing all the factors, Su You ultimately decided to stick with the Fire Demons here and not look for a new nest.

But just as she was pondering how to lure the Fire Demons out of the cave, she suddenly heard a faint rustling sound nearby. Instinctively, she held her breath.

Any creature wandering near a Fire Demon nest—apart from Fire Demons themselves—was unlikely to be friendly. So Su You immediately hid herself and carefully tried to observe the source of the sound from a safe angle.

It wasn’t long before a creature stepped out from behind a cypress tree. It looked very similar to a Fire Demon, but it was larger and exuded a much more intimidating aura.

The moment she saw it, Su You’s pupils contracted. All her doubts about the lack of Flame Stone drops after killing twelve Fire Demons were instantly answered.

[Fire Demon Leader]

HP: 500/500

Attack: 5

Defense: 10

Description: The leader of the Fire Demons. When attacked, it will summon Fire Demons to protect itself.

The information Su You could see about the Fire Demon Leader wasn’t very detailed, but that didn’t matter—she already knew more than enough.

For example, when a Fire Demon Leader is present at a spawn point, the drop rate for Flame Stones from regular Fire Demons is reduced by two-thirds. In exchange (for balance), the Fire Demon Leader itself has a 100% chance to drop a Flame Stone.

The base drop rate for Flame Stones from Fire Demons was already low, and now it was slashed by two-thirds—basically making it almost impossible to get one.

It was clear the game wanted players to take on the Fire Demon Leader!

Come to think of it, maybe fate was at work here. The very first Flame Stone Su You ever got on her max-level account had also come from killing a Fire Demon Leader… Now, even with a different playstyle, she’d run into another one.

Seeing the Fire Demon Leader, Su You resisted the urge to curse and quietly took two steps back.

It wasn’t that she was impatient—anyone who understood the Fire Demon Leader’s spawn mechanics would feel just as frustrated.

In the early game, only three Fire Demon Leaders would spawn in the entire Sunset Continent forest. That meant only three Fire Demon nests would have a leader.

But in the forest, there were dozens—sometimes over a hundred—Fire Demon nests… The odds were so low, and yet she’d run into one, twice in a row. Who wouldn’t be annoyed?

And the Fire Demon Leader was no pushover. It was one of the toughest boss monsters to deal with in the early game.

Its attack stat looked low—even lower than a regular Fire Demon’s (which had 8 attack to its 5)—but that didn’t matter.

What mattered was: it could summon!

As the Fire Demon Leader, naturally it summoned Fire Demons.

With minions at its command, its low attack didn’t matter at all. Even if it had no attack, it would still be a threat.

According to the official lore, the Fire Demon Leader could summon an unlimited number of Fire Demons—given enough time, it could fill the entire Sunset Continent with them.

Of course, that was just the backstory. In-game, the Fire Demon Leader’s summoning skill had a limit: it could have up to ten Fire Demons summoned at once.

Even so, the Fire Demon Leader still ranked in the top ten of the “most annoying bosses” list.

Because the ten-minion limit didn’t mean it could only summon ten in total—it meant it could have ten on the field at the same time."

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