Conquering OtherWorld Starts With a Game-Chapter 202: Exorcism Efficiency

Conquering OtherWorld Starts With a Game-Chapter 202: Exorcism Efficiency

The Samman House incident had a bounty of 3,600 undead coins. The reward, slightly low compared to the danger involved in the incident, reflected that all possible investigative work had already been meticulously completed by the Night's Watch.
Although they didn't resolve the case, the Night's Watch at least identified a direction for the solution: the adverse situation at the Samman House was related to a curse from a mysterious cult.
The reason it wasn't categorized with a red cover was because, after years of thorough investigation, the Night's Watch eliminated the possibility of any association between the Samman family and cultists. It was more likely that a family member inadvertently came into contact with a curse rune spread by a fake idol's cult through books, old furniture, antiques, jewelry, or even hidden within clothing and activated it.
Such incidents… were common.
Disguising curse runes or sacrificial circles as harmless symbols of prayers for love, luck, or health and secretly spreading them to the unknowing public were a tactic all cults seeking cheap sacrificial offerings tried. That was why churches were vigilant against publications, antiques, old jewelry, and fancy clothes in their districts, often offering free purifications to prevent such incidents.
In this world, older items with many previous owners were usually brought to the local church for cleansing. The clergy, typically stingy with holy water, would often provide a free baptism to prevent such occurrences.
Of course, only the nobility could afford real antiques, so the church's generosity in this matter made sense…
Thomas Samman was just an upper-middle-class individual with an annual income of around 180-200 gold coins, sufficient for a comfortable life in Indahl City but not close to real nobility or capable of affording genuine antiques. A true antique over three hundred years old, even the least valuable old wooden furniture, would be worth upward of a hundred gold coins.
However, counterfeit antiques, like the historical vases, pipes, and books beloved by most middle-class citizens were mostly safe.
In other words… the misfortune of the Samman family wasn't accidental. It likely resulted from someone deliberately giving a malicious gift containing strong ill will to a member of the Samman family, leading to their tragedy.
All these investigative conclusions and suspicious clues gathered by the Night's Watch were meticulously compiled in the "Samman House" file, which was very comprehensive.
But the problem was… the players that took the case file, particularly the more brazen ones, didn't bother with these lengthy texts, which they deemed useless.
Except for a few new players or those particularly interested in the storyline and still treated the game with reverence, roughly 90 percent of players don't read quest texts when doing quests. They usually headed straight to the location and brute-force their way through.
Game developers knew this player habit well, so most quests were designed to be incredibly user-friendly. Auto-pathing and auto-monster hunting were also standard features. Intentionally setting traps to make players fail would only invite more complaints.
Even with the [Misty Woods] quest, if it hadn't been for Qin Guan's group searching the forest inside out without finding the boss and then having Unceasing Entropy come online, they probably would have just charged ahead blindly…
Brother Lahong's luck was a tad better than Qin Guan's. He picked the quest with the highest reward, led a large group to the location, and as soon as they entered the Samman House, their Identify spell revealed a bunch of red-named ghost monsters.
Any ordinary person in this other world would immediately turn tail and leave when coming across such a scenario—a seemingly ordinary house in the city teeming with ghosts obviously wasn't normal.
Players, however, reacted differently. Brother Lahong excitedly shouted, "Whoa, so many monsters!" and then boldly led his team into the fray.
Within 10 minutes, this group of players were wiped.
And then… the wiped-out group wasn't the least bit discouraged. They eagerly discussed strategies for conquering this monster-infested location, denser than the ghosts in World of Warcraft's Scholomance, in their chat group
Brother Lahong's side had Phantom and Study Obsessed, who had participated in ghost-clearing activities in Indahl's sewers before. They knew how to deal with these "special monsters" that physical attacks couldn't hit: get more mages to curse these untouchable ghosts with Dark Blessing, sending them dark energy until they became semi-corporeal, and then started the brawl.
Brother Lahong humbly accepted his friends' suggestions and immediately made a flurry of calls to summon all the mages in their blood alliance…
Half an hour later, once their death timers were over, numerous mage players were already waiting for them near Indahl City Hall's teleportation point.
The expanded group of 40 players confidently headed back to the Samman House.
Learning from their previous lesson of getting overwhelmed by super agile ghosts with AOE attacks in the cramped house, the players didn't enter the building this time. They set up formation in the yard, sending only well-equipped knights inside to lure the ghosts out.
Once the knight players drew the ghosts out, the mage players would swiftly apply Dark Blessing to "heal" them.
Once the ghosts became corporeal, the players swarmed in, hacking them to death.
"Damn, 80 territory prestige for one ghost?!"
"Holy, we can still farm prestige via exorcism quests??"
"Awesome!"
The common material, Magic Residue, which was a guaranteed drop from ghost-type monsters, was no longer the focus. Territory prestige points became the exhilarating source of dopamine.
Brother Lahong and his team eventually pushed the quest to the back of their minds, treating the Samman House as their blood alliance's exclusive monster farming spot, organizing relentless grinding sessions. When someone had to log out for meals, hang out with friends, or go to work or school, they'd arrange for other members to take over.
Players waiting to unlock the second job advancement (which requires Potential of 100 and Honored territory prestige) were finding ways to network for a spot, or even paying for it—most players already had an average Potential of 120~140, but their reputation was stuck at Friendly, preventing them from taking on second job advancement quests.
During their "monster farming" session, occasionally, citizens would pass by, witnessing the undead joyously slaughtering horrific ghosts, far scarier than the undead themselves, in the long-abandoned Sammon House yard and would run away screaming…
Players regarded these "NPCs'" reactions as just part of the game's design and ignored them.
Yes, the monsters "spawned" in the mansion were quite dreadful, the kind that would make one lose their appetite at the mere sight. But compared to the instructor's inner demons in the weekend event instances or the nightly peak-hour monster battlefields, these were nothing!
The group ground from 10 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. (Earth time), with over a hundred players interchanging and more than 60 guild members gathering enough reputation for the second job advancement. Brother Lahong's cheeks were hurting from smiling so much…
When the monsters stopped "spawning," players felt a slight regret as they wrapped up and searched inside the house.
In the wine cellar of the Samman House, players found that the wall behind the wine cabinet had cracked open, revealing a bizarre, ghostly symbol. Under normal circumstances, players might think it was just random graffiti, but at the moment they discovered it, the symbol was still emitting smoke.
Not only was it emitting smoke, but there were also signs of scorching on the symbol, resembling overloaded burnt wires; the dark lines were gradually flaking off, turning into dust in the smoke.
At this point, Brother Lahong wasn't too concerned about the quest reward; they had already gained enough benefits to offset the reward. He casually wrote a few hundred words for the case and sketched the not-yet-fully-flaked-off symbol onto it.
Captain Clarke, in the exceedingly brief case , saw the incomplete symbol sketched by the undead.
And once more, he fell silent.
Even though it wasn't complete, he could tell it was definitely a curse or sacrificial symbol from a sinister, secretive cult.
This dreadful thing, not an external artifact but hidden behind the wall plaster of the wine cellar in the Samman House, clearly indicated a trap left by the previous homeowner. The Night's Watch had been investigating in the wrong direction for years, focusing on the Samman family's associates.
Captain Clarke felt a lump in his throat that wouldn't go down, nor could he spit out.
Therefore, they should have hired a couple of black magicians and brought a full force to the Samman House to continually exorcize it, destroying the curse symbol that sacrificed the Samman family, and that would have been the end of it…
"Captain?" The portly official noticed something was off with Clarke and cautiously called out to him.
"…It's nothing." Clarke struggled to suppress his frustration and annoyance, forcefully swallowing the metaphorical lump in his throat. "The undead did indeed resolve the Samman House incident. We were the ones who were wrong in our investigation direction; the curse was left by the previous homeowner."
The official blinked several times, taking a while before he sluggishly realized and expressed his shock.
Unlike the city hall, officials in the Night's Watch needed to have some capability and dedication to their work to maintain their positions. The official tried hard to recall, and he could remember some information about the previous owner of the Samman House—if he didn't even know about unresolved cases in his own department, he would have been kicked out of the organization long ago.
At first glance, the previous owner of the Samman House seemed like someone from a typical middle-class family with nothing suspicious. However, once it was discovered that they left a curse before transferring the house, everything about them started to look problematic!
The parents, wife, and two children of the previous owner, even their butler and maid, all died from various accidents within a decade!
When the last owner sold the house to Thomas Samman, he was already a lonely individual with no family left!
"I'll go find the information on this family." The official stood up abruptly and rushed toward the city hall, sweating profusely.
The Samman family lived there for several years before the incident occurred, and the Night's Watch never considered that it could be related to the previous owner, so they didn't even keep the files.
Clarke looked at Morton, who had brought the black dossier, and gave a complicated order, "I'll arrange for someone to verify the situation, and then we'll send the undead their payment… You head back to the New Wind district for now."
Truth be told, Clarke hadn't expected the "branch" in the New Wind district, catering only to the undead, to be very effective. If it could keep those Taranthan undead occupied and stop them from causing trouble in the city, it would be good enough for him.
He lived in the Central Quarter and had personally witnessed how those undead gradually vandalized the inner city walls to the point of disrepair—especially those realistic imagery they created (actually 3D paintings)!
Four days ago, when he entered the Central Quarter at dusk, he was almost infuriated by a surreal painting—a giant, menacing mutated rat with glowing red eyes was painted on the snow-white wall behind the city's Board of Trade building!
The mutated rat was painted so lifelike it seemed as if it was about to leap off the wall and demolish the building. Not just ordinary people; even he, the Night's Watch captain, was startled by the sight.
Yet, those undead were proud of their "artwork"; a bunch of skeletons smeared with paint were cheering on the rooftops and streets.
And that wasn't all; those undead continued their "creative expansion" on the inner city wall, featuring bizarrely dressed suspicious characters (actually Ultraman), inexplicably shaped mechanical lifeforms (actually Transformers), and a variety of messy, humorous graffiti (actually various emoticons)!
Ordinarily, anyone daring to deface the inner city wall symbolizing Central Quarter's dignity would definitely be dragged to the outer city walls by the city police.
But now, the city police were all prisoners, being driven around by Rex's men with whips to clean the sewers these days, and the National Guard, which had sworn allegiance to Rex, turned a blind eye to the undead's behavior… So, this matter was bound to be overlooked.
Morton, well aware of his standing, said nothing, respectfully bowed, and left.
With dozens of night watchmen under him, Clarke didn't have the energy to cater to every individual's feelings and mustered his spirits to arrange for personnel to inspect the undead's exorcism results.
Just after dispatching two groups to conduct separate inspections, before he could even grab a morning bite, Morton returned.
This time, the reclusive night watchman silently handed Clarke another black dossier.
Captain Lynch Clarke inhaled sharply…
It wasn't only Qin Guan and Brother Lahong who could organize large player groups. Unceasing Entropy and her friends, who had a sizable following among unaffiliated players, had been absorbed by Qin Guan's blood alliance.
Naturally, there were casual individuals, who didn't like to join groups, uniting to play when new party leaders called for players to do quests…
While Captain Clarke's worldview was shaken due to the astonishing exorcism efficiency of the undead, a new batch of businesses, after days of intense training and preparation, was ready to open in the quiet Saint Joseph Street bar district, which had been largely sealed off.
In the middle of the bar area, doors of several large bars that had been closed for days were gradually opened. Several robust women, wearing aprons and arm covers, moved tables and chairs out of the bars to clean and air them.
These women, composed of family members of Weisshem staff, were busy working when Ms. Shirley arrived with a large group of women dressed in uniform sportswear (actually school uniforms) from the temporary settlement at New Wind District.
These women settled in New Wind District were the women rescued from various establishments during the massive anti-vice operation. Those who still had families locally and were willing to go home were sent back by Ji Tang and Zhao Zhenzhen. Those without families or unwilling to return were all taken in for centralized resettlement.
Unlike the victims in Weisshem who had been forcibly fed fattening drugs, these women at least hadn't had their bodies completely ruined and were capable of ordinary labor.
The family members of Weisshem staff, having worked with the re-educated clerks from Weisshem for many days, didn't discriminate against these women who had once engaged in disreputable professions. They warmly greeted the somewhat timid women and worked together with them.
Mrs. Hank noticed that the women who had once worked on this street were uncomfortable with the street filled with nightmares in their memories. She smiled at them and said, "This street will become lively again in the future, a clean and bustling scene!"

Chapter 202: Exorcism Efficiency