MMORPG: Crowd Control

While the women on the surface waited patiently for the result, Lei Zhen had already descended into a dark room.

PLOP!

He fell flat on his bottom and he could feel the pain erupting as he slowly stood up.

'If I knew I would fall down to hard concrete, then I wouldn't have jumped so heroically.' Lei Zhen cursed silently, rubbing his aching bottom part.

Sometime later, once the pain subsided for a bit, Lei Zhen began glancing around his surroundings.

And sure enough, Jessica's suggestion was pretty accurate that there is indeed a new layer of mystery beneath the quicksand trap. Normally, no one in their right mind would jump directly into the quicksand trap.

This was the mindset that Magnolia managed to grasp on the players and created such a tricky situation that trapped players who don't use their brains to think critically.

Though, the place that Lei Zhen dropped on doesn't seem to be quite big as he was surrounded by four walls and nothing else. There wasn't even another passage available for him to explore, meaning that the clue must be laid in this room.

Walking around, Lei Zhen noticed some graffiti painted on the walls, each with their own distinctive art that he couldn't comprehend.

'Is this some puzzle where I have to play the matching game?' Lei Zhen pondered silently, seemingly confused as to what to do. In a game, most often or not, there would be instructions telling the players what to do to advance forward.

However, Magnolia doesn't even care about that and made sure to test the player's brain capacity to think of a solution for themselves without any external help.

Realizing that the only clues in this room were the graffiti art, Lei Zhen decided to inspect each artwork closely, even if he was not an artistic guy.

"It would have been so much better if this was about human anatomy or disease artwork. How am I supposed to know this artwork?" He muttered in a defeated tone.

Scratching his head, Lei Zhen kept walking back and forth, seemingly trying to find a connection between all the artworks on the wall. And finally, Lei Zhen spotted one particular piece of art that appeared in each and every one of the graffiti.

It was the red-colored magic mantle that was drawn above the sky in the drawing.

"Could this magic mantle be the clue?" Lei Zhen rubbed his chin slightly and extended his hand forward. Touching the magic mantle art, he couldn't detect what was so special about it besides the coloring is slightly different from the rest.

Seeing how there was no reaction whatsoever, Lei Zhen did the other clever thing he could think of: injecting mana in it.

For some reason, every time there is a puzzle, injecting mana would resolve it. Thus, he prayed that this time was no exception either.

And sure enough, the moment he injected mana into the magic mantle, it started blinking. Though it was only for a few seconds before the glowing stopped.

"Hmm, seems like I need to inject the mana in its proper order. Otherwise, it would just reset and return to normal." Lei Zhen muttered. He was feeling quite proud of himself to be able to start thinking like a gamer would do, something he had never imagined in the past.

Sometime later, Lei Zhen began experimenting by injecting mana in a timely order. A puzzle becomes quite easy to solve once you know the method of solving it.

Hence, even though it took Lei Zhen some time to get the correct order, he still managed to complete it in less than 20 minutes.

After making all the Magic Mantle glow at the same time, Lei Zhen felt the ground beneath him tremble slightly. Soon, the room began collapsing and before Lei Zhen could worry about his situation, the magic mantle art started to come out of the graffiti.

The numerous magic mantle combined together into one, floating in the air like a certain doctor used to have in a fantasy movie.

It hovered around Lei Zhen, seemingly telling him to hop on top of it.

'Ah, it's either do or die.' Lei Zhen exclaimed inwardly, scratching his head in annoyance. The room was collapsing and if he idle any longer, then he might truly be buried alive here and might have to reset from scratch.

Without hesitating further, Lei Zhen jumped at the top of the magic mantle, and it seemed to have activated some sort of mechanism. With supersonic speed, the magic mantle burst through the ceiling and soared to the sky.

At the top of the sky, Lei Zhen subsequently glanced below, only to see Candice and the other two relaxing nearby the sand while drinking their water. It was almost as if his life and death didn't worry them a bit.

"Are they really this heartless?" Lei Zhen twitched his mouth in disbelief. Unable to figure out the reason, he now surprisingly obtained the knowledge of controlling the Magic Mantle and had it hovered toward their group.

The moment Lei Zhen was in sight of them, Candice clasped her hand joyfully and said, "Ah, Master, you have finally returned."

"Wow, Candice's foresight is indeed correct. Not only is he unharmed, he really found a solution for us." Jessica exclaimed in shock, looking at Lei Zhen flying in the sky with the magic mantle.

She couldn't help but think of the movie that included a man flying with a magic carpet, except this was a mantle instead of a carpet.

Meanwhile, Lei Zhen got the crux of the matter when he saw how unconcerned the women were.

"Let me take a guess. The wind told you I'll be safe, so you all simply relaxed here while I spent the whole time wracking up my brain?" He questioned them with a deadpan expression.

"Oh, that's not true, Zhen. We just have a lot of confidence in you, and I'm forever grateful for you taking my place." Jessica giggled silly and tried to avoid eye contact.

It was clear that Lei Zhen's deduction was spot on without missing anything.