Players of Hero Mode

Xiao Yu went into the gaming cube and entered the game. He instantly changed from a nerd to a 30-meter-tall Demonic Blaze Overlord Lagrios at the Flaming Temple.

"Boss! Someone is at the gate of the Flaming Temple. They are trying to destroy the Blaze Altar."

A Flaming Runner appeared in front of Xiao Yu from lava and said in a trembling voice.

This Flaming Runner was a player too. He had joined Xiao Yu a few days ago. He was just a rare Elite Mode player and was too weak to be a boss. Thus, he was made a runner.

"Hm, seems like there will be more food today!" Xiao Yu said, then he opened the security camera and watched a group of Adventurers entering the Blaze Canyon from a dark tunnel.

A huge group of Fire Elements, Lava Monsters, and Lava Hounds attacked them as they approached, but they were frozen by a Blizzard and shattered into pieces or changed into dark ashes. It was a group of 40 adventures. There were two players with Plate Armor at the front of the group. One of them was a male Warrior with bright red armor and the other one was a female Paladin with golden armor. The Warrior looked super cool with his equipment, and there was a dragon decoration on top of his armor that looked as though it was alive. Xiao Yu's heart skipped a beat when he saw it.

He recognized the armor. It was Flame Dragon Scale Plate Armor that was worth tens of thousands of dollars, provided there were players selling them. The entire set would cost about three hundred to five hundred thousand dollars! It was amazing that this Warrior had managed to get the entire set! The set had a stat increase of 280 Fire Resistance and was extremely good.

Xiao Yu remembered clearly that all the teams he had wiped out recently had one or two pieces on their main tank at most, and some did not even have it at all, like the group he had wiped out just now. Looking at this guy's weapon, it was a Dark Avenger's Blade, which could deal 300 damage per second! Not only that, he had a Titan Wall Shield that increased all elemental resistances by 120. The equipment was just too good.

Looking at the other players, they had even better equipment. Every one of them had a red light glowing on their character—that was the effect of a Fire Resistance Potion. The fact that they had drunk the potion the minute they entered the dungeon meant that either they were idiots that did not know that Fire Resistance Potions had a time limit, or they were rich enough that they had plenty of Fire Resistance Potions in stock. It was obviously the latter in this situation. Each one of them had a blue sun symbol in front of their name, showing that they were an organized party.

"Light of Dawn Guild? That sounds familiar…" Xiao Yu thought to himself. He had a very bad feeling about what was going to happen.

He hesitated for a moment before opening the control panel. The icons of the other bosses appeared in front of him.

"Three-Headed Lava Hound Garix, go and guard the gate of the Flaming Temple. Do not let these intruders bypass you.

"Magma Giant Fielda, my brave fighter. Come to the Obsidian Bridge. If they try to attack the Shrine, you need to stop them there.

"My fellow follower, Flame Controller Alex. I need you to take command of my Fire Element Army. If they manage to reach the inside of the Shrine, let my Fire Elements burn them to ashes.

"I will guard the Blaze Altar personally, and those Adventurers can continue dreaming about closing the Elemental Crack."

Xiao Yu finished giving his commands. The Three-Headed Lava Hound, the Flame Controller, and the Magma Giant were all bosses that worked under him. Normally, he would not let them fight the Adventurers, as a huge sum of money would be needed to resurrect them if they lost the battle. However, he felt that it was essential for them to fight now. Even if they could not win the fight, it would be useful for them to wear the Adventurers out. This would make it easier for him to wipe them out later.

The three bosses took their positions quickly and the Adventurers came across their first boss at the gate of the Flaming Temple.

The Three-Headed Lava Hound yelled, "What fresh meat! Meat!" It then roared and jumped towards the Adventurers.

Xiao Yu knew that the group of Adventurers was in trouble the moment he saw how they fought with Garix. The Warrior pulled the aggro of all three heads and withstood the attacks. He was still surviving in the hot lava that was pouring on him.

The damage from this lava could be stacked, and normally there would be three tanks, one for each head. How was it possible for him to tank all the damage alone!?

"This doesn't seem right!" Xiao Yu noticed that something was off. A level 60 Adventurer had 8,000 HP at most, and no matter how high his Fire Resistance was, there was no way he could last for so long! The female Paladin had an abnormally high amount of healing too. Each heal recovered 6,000 HP! What the hell? Xiao Yu zoomed in the picture and looked at their names.

Dragon Epitome (Dark Avenger) had a profile picture frame with two stars behind a golden dragon.

Phoenix (Holy Light Envoy) had a golden profile picture frame with one star too.

Damn! They were Hero Mode players!

Xiao Yu was stunned to see them. It was the first time Xiao Yu had seen a Hero Mode player appear in a dungeon. Not because Hero Mode players were that rare, but they would just not appear in dungeons of the same level. "It is rare indeed—only about 0.1% of the players play in Hero Mode. However, given that there are a few hundred million players in Firmament, there are thousands of these players."

It was like an unspoken rule in Firmament. Hero Mode players would rarely fight with Boss Mode players.

The reason was that when the boss was killed by Adventurer Mode players, they could revive again. However, if they were killed by a Monster Mode or NPC Mode player, they would be dead for good. It all started in the storyline of the game.

The game's storyline was recorded on something called the Firmament Archive, which held all the events that would occur in the game.

If the boss was killed by an Adventurer player, the background story would merely indicate defeat, or it would not be recorded at all. This meant that it would not be written in the Firmament Archive because technically, Adventurers did not exist in the first place.

The reason for that was very simple: there were just too many Adventurers and they could revive as many times as they wanted. However, the number of bosses was fixed. It would eventually lead to some random Adventurers with no practical significance killing all the bosses. No one could accept that setting in the game.

Thus, no matter how many times Adventurer players killed the bosses, the bosses would revive when the dungeon was available again. There were no Adventurer players in the story plot, only Heroes could kill boss, period.

Thus, in Firmament, when a boss was killed by a monster or NPC with a proper name, this event would be recorded in the Firmament Archive and would become a record that could not be reverted. Thus, the boss could not revive again. This was also known as "killed by the plot."

The problem was that in Firmament, such Heroes could be played by players too.

For example, if Xiao Yu killed this Dragon Epitome (Hero), the Firmament Archive would record it down as "On xxxx date, Hero of Storm City Dragon Epitome led a team of Adventurers and attacked the Flaming Temple. They were killed by the boss Demonic Blaze Overlord Lagrios."

The Hero would remain in history. That applied to Xiao Yu too.