Chapter 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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