Sword Among Us

“Discovered tomb robbers!”

The system sent Happy the notification the moment the tomb robbers arrived. It asked him whether he wanted to immediately fire the signal and request reinforcements from the Murong Clan so he could temporarily resolve the crisis of the sword tombs being dug out or whether he wanted to personally go over and take a look at what was going on before requesting backup.

The quest was indeed not simple: He could make choices.

The system notification also gave him clear directions. If he immediately fired the signal flare, he would definitely alarm the tomb robbers in the sword tomb and make them flee.

If he did that, he would at most complete a low level quest, and the rewards would be very small. With that being the case, it would be better to observe the situation first to see if he could discover something.

Once he made his decision, Happy quietly went behind the sword tomb and drew closer to the robbers…

Due to the huge metal sword and chains surrounding the area, the tomb robbers had a lot of trouble entering the tomb. Their progress was very slow.

Happy quietly turned his body sideways while hiding in the shadows of a sword tomb. He then realized that the tools the tomb robbers used were not very professional. They were all farm tools, like hoes, shovels, hand planes, and others.

The two scouts sent to watch the foot of the mountain for any signs of activity did it with great nervousness. They would also occasionally turn their heads around to observe the progress of the digging crew up in the tomb.

“Hurry up!” one of them urged anxiously with a hiss.

The Murong Clan was not a force that could be underestimated. If anyone noticed them, they could forget about having an easy life in Gusu City and even the entire Jiangnan!

“Could you stop urging us to be faster? The bricks in this tomb are too strange, alright? YOU can do it yourself if you want.”

The man working hard on digging the tomb grumbled and put down his tools. He spat on his palms and rubbed his hands together before he grabbed the shovel and continued working.

“The stranger they are, the better. I heard that the harder it is to dig the tomb, the more treasures there are in it. The Murong Clan is the most reputable family in Jiangnan. Think about it, there will definitely be a lot of grave goods in their tombs.”

“That’s right. Everyone, let’s hurry up. Once we’re done with this, we’ll never have to be poor again.”

“Let’s hurry!”

The group was motivated once more, and the digging sounds rose and fell from the sword tomb again.

Happy listened in the dark and understood what was happening. It instantly made him depressed.

‘Oh, come on…’

He had thought that there was a very skilled and organized group of tomb robbers, but based on the conversation he heard, it seemed like those people were first timers. They knew nothing and seemed like a group of normal villagers.

Yet if that were the truth, the quest would not be very attractive. With his current abilities, Happy would have no problem in defeating a few normal people.

When he was about to come out of the shadow behind them though, he suddenly heard a very faint sound of cloth flapping in the wind. It came from the south, and there was one… two…

If Happy were a normal newbie, he would have definitely been slightly puzzled.

But since he wasn’t one, a different thought came to his mind, and he instantly lay down in the shadows behind the tomb. He then saw a group of martial artists come into the Murong Clan tomb.

“Who is it?”

“Run! It’s the people from the Murong Clan!”

The two villagers in charge of scouting discovered the black figures approaching them, and their faces instantly turned stark pale. They cried out in surprise and abandoned their tools to flee from the upcoming danger.

“Haha, boss, we ran into our peers!” said a person drawing closer from the south of the sword tomb. He laughed as he walked closer and spoke in a loud voice.

Before he even finished speaking, a cold and serious snort came from even further away. “You bunch of reckless fools, how dare you use our name to rob this tomb? Beard, make sure all of them stay. Once we’re done, throw them into the tomb. It’ll save us some trouble.”

As the man spoke, his murderous intent was revealed, and it further added to the villagers’ panic.

They had thought that they had ran into the Murong Clan, so they hadn’t expected that the newcomers would be the tomb robbers who had repeatedly robbed the royal tombs! And by the sound of it, they were even people who killed without batting an eye.

“Boss, please spare us.”

“Don’t kill me!”

The villagers fled everywhere with ash pale faces.

However, after a few cold barks of laughter and the sound of wind roaring rose into the air, the villagers who dreamed about becoming rich were pinned to the ground. One of them fell beside Happy, but he was not dead yet. His eyes were wide open, and he pointed at the boy in the shadow while saying laboriously, “Catch… Catch them…”

Then, he breathed his last.

Even though Happy knew that everything before him was just fabricated by Artificial Intelligence (AI), the display of humanity in the NPCs and the feeling he had when he saw it made him sense the indignation, regret, and the sentimental attachment toward life the villagers had before they died.

His expression turned gloomy.

“Boss, they’re all dealt with.”

“Hmph.”

“At least these people didn’t die in vain. They did help us do some work.”

“Alright, enough talk. Get to work!”

The dialogue between the tomb robbers made Happy snap out of his dejected mood. His gaze cleared, and he held his breath. His thoughts raced as he lay hidden behind the tomb.

There was no doubt that the people before him were the tomb robbers who had been very active lately, and they were his real targets.

‘If I hadn’t chosen to observe the situation, I might have missed this group of real villains…’ Happy felt that the situation was very grave. In truth, he was in a rather difficult position.

The tomb raider group was not large, since there were only three people in it.

But all of them were people who could kill others without batting an eye.

They were also much more powerful than Villain Li Shan. Happy might be able to stop them from digging up the tomb if he fired the signal, but that would also reveal himself.

To three villains who killed without batting an eye, especially tomb robbers who possessed hidden weapons, it was very easy to kill a normal player who was new to the game and had yet to even reach Gate Realm!

Happy agonized over whether he should fire the signal flare or continue hiding until the tomb raiders left on their own after they dug out the grave goods in the tomb.

He was troubled.

If he chose the former, he would be able to complete the quest, but the possibility of him being killed would be more than 90%. If he chose the latter, he would fail his first clan quest given by the Murong Clan, and his reputation and status in the Murong Clan would be greatly reduced.

Yet the system gave him no new prompts!

In the silent night, the sounds of digging could be heard again.

‘If I die, then so be it!’

A hint of resolution and decisiveness flashed in Happy’s eyes. He quietly took a few steps back until he was a few tombs away from the tomb robbers and dug out the signal flare.

Hiss!

A frightening spark and a faint sound suddenly rose in the quiet shadows of the night.

“Someone’s here!”

“Third!”

The three tomb robbers jumped out of the tomb at the same time. They were just in time to witness a fire-red light shoot into the sky and the figure of a boy be completely revealed at the spot where the light had arisen. He was at the gate of the cemetery, and he was heading down the mountain. This both shocked and enraged the tomb robbers.

“It’s the signal flare from the Murong Clan!”

“We’ve been discovered…”

“What should we do?”

Two of the tomb robbers went to chase after Happy while waiting for their leader’s decision.

Their leader was a middle-aged man with a ruthless face. He was pale, and his expression was cold and harsh.

“He should be a disciple recently taken in by the Murong Clan, so he is not very skilled. It’s a pity, but he saw our faces. Third, chase him down and kill him. Then, we’ll immediately leave. Meet up with us at our old place.” Once he said that, he turned around and walked away.

“Got it!” Third said.

The other tomb robber who had been involved in the chase turned around without hesitation and left the area as well.