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When Fu Shi brought the camera to the park, it was already packed with people. Don't even mention squeezing in, there wasn't even a place to stand.
"There are way too many people!"
Fu Shi raised the camera high so that the viewers in the livestream could also see the packed crowd.
At the same time, Fu Shi pulled aside a guy who had just come out of the park to ask.
"Excuse me, what's going on inside the park? Why are there so many people?"
"What else could be happening?"
"We're fighting the world boss!"
The guy looked fired up, and before Fu Shi could ask further, he began explaining in a rush.
"Honkai: Star Rail just released the new game mode, Aetherium Wars, right?"
"And every day, different areas refresh in different places. Our area just spawned the very first World Boss Zone since the server opened."
Fu Shi nodded, showing she was listening.
"At first, the entire City was refreshing those kinds of high-level monsters!"
"But who would've thought! This park spawned Phantylia!"
"Damn! That's a humanoid entity-type pet!"
"And it's Phantylia! Holy crap!"
The guy got more and more excited as he spoke, pointing at the park behind him:
"But Phantylia is way too strong. The first people who found it tried to fight it secretly to see if they could capture it!"
"In the end, it took them more than half an hour to chip off just a sliver of Phantylia's HP. No choice, they had to call for reinforcements!"
"After all, no one knows when the next Phantylia will spawn after this one!"
"And who could've guessed that Phantylia's HP is dynamic, it increases as more people enter the battlefield!"
"Now it's chaos! The entire City is rushing here! The World Boss Zone is like a boiling pot!"
"All just to take down Phantylia~~!"
"As for who'll be lucky enough to capture her in the end, well, that's up to fate!"
The guy said all of that in one breath.
...
: Holy crap! Phantylia! You can make her into a capturable pet?
: Damn! If I rush there now, can I still make it in time?
: Phantylia's beautiful and a top-tier boss! Whoever captures her is set for life!
: A purple elite monster already sells for six figures, I can't even imagine the price of Phantylia!
: I'm so jealous! Damn it! My area only spawned a normal Rifthound! I want Phantylia too!
...
The livestream chat was going wild.
Fu Shi immediately took out her phone and quickly entered the battlefield.
On the Aetherium Wars interface, her character was currently in a beautiful area full of lotus flowers and signs of decay.
At the very center of the area was the massive boss, Phantylia.
At the same time, she could see other players with all sorts of outfits nearby.
Depending on phone performance, the rendering quality varied.
But without exception, the players appearing around Fu Shi all had "[In Battle]" above their head, except for one dazed player just looking at her.
That was the guy she had just pulled aside.
"Huh? Why aren't you fighting?" Fu Shi asked curiously.
"Ah, I've run out of resources. All the pets I caught today are dead."
"Oh right, Phantylia's already in phase two, every time a pet dies now, there's a high chance it's gone forever..."
The guy shook his head.
"I'm making a strategic retreat for now. I agreed with a buddy to get some normal pets from him first, then I'll come back to fight."
With that, he waved and went off to fetch monsters.
...
: Fight! Fight!
: Join the battle, Fu Shi!
: If you don't have pets, we'll give you some! Add us as a friend! I've got a mini elite!
: You just get in there, we viewers will handle the rest!
...
The massive battle scene and the feeling of fighting a boss in the real world had the livestream audience pumped.
Everyone was hyped, showering her with gifts and barrage messages urging her to join.
With this much traffic, of course she wouldn't waste the chance.
But right now, it wasn't about whether to join, it was that she had to get into the park zone to enter the fight.
And the park was already overflowing, people were even standing on tree branches.
After searching for a while, she finally found an entrance to the park.
Amid the deafening noise around her, she tapped "Enter Battle"...
The next moment, the towering Phantylia in the center of the screen moved.
"'Even tiny insects dare gaze upon the sun?'"
[Battle Engaged!]
[Prepare for combat!]
Because of device limitations, once she entered battle, the screen only showed four or five people plus the boss.
The entire Phantylia boss area had been split into multiple instances based on player count, each able to hold a certain number of people.
This prevented phone or network crashes, basically the same as channel instances in online games.
But no matter the instance, the boss being fought was the same.
In the top right corner, the real-time player count was displayed: "31,023!"
Over thirty-one thousand people in the theme park were attacking Phantylia at that very moment.
"Thirty-one thousand people? All at once?"
Fu Shi's eyes widened, she finally felt a surge of excitement she hadn't had before.
"What's happening? I'm suddenly fired up!"
That's just how people are, once the numbers get that big, the excitement becomes contagious, creating a kind of frenzy.
At this point, there was no real strategy anymore.
Everyone's pets could only deal tiny bits of damage.
The only thing to do was just attack!
Mini robots, antimatter legion troopers, under Fu Shi's command, they all charged Phantylia.
The damage numbers barely moved.
But with over thirty thousand people chipping away, Phantylia's HP bar was still slowly going down.
The Emanator of Destruction? In the face of the Fourth Calamity [Players], she must be struck down!
This reminded Fu Shi of a line from a game she had once played: "Player's will try to take down even a god if they see a HP bar above their head."