Chapter 110-2: The Great Battle Ends, Wealth Soars (2) |
The great battle within the city continued.
The player race, the Black Tide Evil Entities, the Battle Swarm… while the three forces brawled, they advanced from three directions toward the Skyfire hierophant king’s position.
During this time, the players’ voice channel was abuzz:
“Hahaha, snatching last hits from the Swarm and Evil Entities directly gives rewards, this is too awesome. I declare, the assassin build has risen.”
“The assassin in our team has already left the team and turned into a kill-stealer. The prompts show he has stolen three kills already. This efficiency is insane.”
“The train is coming. Brothers in front, make way. Press 1 to get on board.”
“Attention, attention, I’m going to cast Taunt. If you don’t want to watch the scene of your wife cheating, evacuate quickly. Preset radius three meters. The big one is coming.”
“Suicide dogs, stay away from me. What the heck is with these technical players? Can you check whether there are friendlies nearby before you blow up?”
—
After many days of brutal fighting, they knew they were about to receive the mission settlement rewards.
It was like a long project finally getting paid; the joy was already written on their faces.
Especially for the warbands organized by the major guilds, their harvest from this battle was considerable. The post-battle settlement rewards would bring a significant boost to their overall strength.
In the melee, what troubled the players most were the Swarm and the Black Tide.
Although psychologically they did not have as strong a rejection of the player race as the Swarm hive mind and the Earthmind Evil Spirit did, the players still did not much want to deal with these two forces.
They had long since labeled them ‘dirt-poor monsters,’ disdaining them in all kinds of ways.
By contrast, the Skyfire warriors were rich monsters, practically a breath of fresh air in the starter village, soothing the players’ psychological wounds regarding profits.
But as long as the Swarm tide and the Evil Entities dared to draw near, the players would still strike without hesitation, cursing up a storm in the voice channel.
The three fronts advanced to the city center and encountered the priestly order.
The great battle began anew.
The physically frail members of the priestly order, under the encirclement of the three forces, already had their mental power exhausted and were simply unable to counterattack effectively. Upon being killed, the sacrificial power produced made the players exclaim that these were even richer monsters than the Skyfire warriors.
The key point was that they were easier to kill than the Skyfire warriors.
When the priestly order perished, there before them were 108 energy crystals.
The Challenger Notification then rang out in the players’ minds, with content indicating that merely touching the energy crystals would grant a huge contribution reward.
At that moment, the player race, the Swarm, and the Black Tide all went especially mad.
Under the players’ touch, the crystals continuously transformed into pure sacrificial power that flowed into the Sacrificial Power Pool beneath Emperor’s Mound Village.
On the Black Tide’s side, the energy crystals shrouded by black mist dissolved at a speed visible to the naked eye, transforming into nutrients for the Black Tide’s growth and continuously swelling it.
On the Swarm’s side, compared with the other two forces, their resource collection speed was the slowest.
The Swarm warriors who had devoured the energy crystals withdrew toward the hive mind under the escort of other combat units.
In this respect, the Swarm’s shortcoming was extremely obvious.
Although the Swarm’s late-war performance was the best among the three forces, the Swarm that had obtained resistance to Skyfire were also, in the eyes of the Skyfire race, the most troublesome force. But in terms of resource acquisition efficiency, being unable to convert through ultra-long-distance teleportation destined that the Swarm’s gains in resource plundering would be the lowest among the three forces.
Amid the frenzied snatching, the Skyfire hierophant king appeared again.
Transforming into a fire demon tens of meters tall, he did not heed the elder within the race who had tried to dissuade him; in his heart he had already resolved to die.
In his own eyes, he was a sinner of the Skyfire race.
It was his wrong choice that led the Skyfire race toward destruction, and he should bear responsibility for this mistake.
But none of the forces cared about the Skyfire hierophant king’s barrage of fire fueled by grief and anger.
In the eyes of the Earthmind Evil Spirit, he had witnessed a race’s destruction more than once, and had many times personally driven many races to their end.
Such tragic grandeur was worthless in his eyes.
All the more so in the eyes of the Swarm hive mind.
As a member of a calamity-level force spanning multiple worlds, it was a purer war machine than the Earthmind Evil Spirit, with only war, devouring, and evolution in its eyes. Nothing else mattered. What did the Skyfire hierophant king’s tragic grandeur have to do with it.
In the eyes of the player race, this was simply a scenario boss’s death throes before the end.
There were indeed players who, after reading parsed information, learned some of the Skyfire hierophant king’s background and felt a twinge of emotion, but what they cared about more were the 108 energy crystals. These were the key items to complete the mission and could not be allowed to be seized by the Swarm and the Black Tide.
In under one hour, all 108 energy crystals were carved up.
Qi Sheng obtained 34 of them, with most being devoured by the Black Tide.
But in Qi Sheng’s eyes, this was not a bad thing.
After all, the Black Tide under the control of the Earthmind Evil Spirit was, in his view, nourishment for the players.
If the Black Tide swallowed them, sooner or later they would fall into the players’ hands anyway.
The lowest gains belonged to the Swarm. Part of the resources were intercepted in transit by the players and the Black Tide Evil Entities. According to Guide’s statistical calculations, the Swarm tide’s total gains were 28 energy crystals.
From this war, energy crystals alone brought Qi Sheng over seventeen million in sacrificial power gains.
He had already begun to consider establishing districts in Emperor’s Mound Village and recruiting alien players.
He would put the plan into action as soon as this war ended.
By then he would use the teleport point at the Colorful Mist Coast as the center, partition the area of Emperor’s Mound Village to completely shroud it, and establish districts.
At that time the Gill-Fish race and the Abyssal Mermen recruited would develop with the Colorful Mist Coast as the starter village.
The goals would be divided into three directions: construction of combat power in the sea region, containment of sea-region Primordial Monsters, and containment of sea-region Territory Nodes.
With water-proficient alien races joining, development of the sea region would inevitably become smoother.
Without dwelling on this further, Qi Sheng’s gaze turned again toward Skyfire City.
The great battle was about to end, yet the three forces did not withdraw.
They all locked their sights on the remaining Skyfire warriors and the Skyfire hierophant king.
In their eyes, this was the remaining nourishment and naturally could not be let go.
Although he had a hunt level of 76, with combat power crushing the field, the Skyfire hierophant king was by now utterly spent.
With every sweep of the flame greatsword in his hand, a wave of fire would surge up and swallow swathes of life.
But individual strength could not salvage a lost battle.
The city originally condensed from flames also gradually dissipated after the energy crystals were devoured, until it completely vanished, revealing scorched earth where not a blade of grass grew.
The war entered its final stage.
The remaining Skyfire warriors fought with all their might, but they could not withstand the encirclement of the three forces.
As he watched his people die one after another, the Skyfire hierophant king’s heart died with them, like a walking corpse, continuing to fight on instinct.
His injuries grew ever more severe, yet he felt not the slightest pain and still did not cease the killing.
The flames splashing from his body fell to the ground and turned into blood. The Skyfire hierophant king grew ever weaker, until only feeble breaths remained, and even the flame greatsword in his hand was hard to lift.
The Black Tide besieging the Skyfire hierophant king grew even more ferocious at this moment, vowing to cover and devour him.
Just as the Skyfire hierophant king’s life was about to reach its end, a roar sounded in the regional voice channel.
“Everyone stop right now, do not move, focus fire on my command.”
Most players were very familiar with this voice. It was God King, the overall commander of multiple campaigns.
Players who knew him stopped one after another, while only some players simply ignored him and continued to output damage.
At this time, God King’s gaze was fixed on the Skyfire hierophant king, who had collapsed to his knees and was incomparably weak, as if waiting for something.
Just then, the fire demon body on the Skyfire hierophant king dispersed, revealing his true form.
Seeing this, God King roared in the voice channel.
“Focus fire, output, steal the last hit.”
The players who had been poised to strike unleashed their attacks at once, cranking their output to the maximum.
The surging Black Tide also pounced on the Skyfire hierophant king at this moment, wanting to gnaw his flesh and blood.
But the players’ concentrated fire broke through the black mist, pouring entirely onto the Skyfire hierophant king in his near-death state.
[Challenger Notification: Congratulations to player party: Playing Games Is About Having Fun… (45) for killing the Skyfire hierophant king, receiving 13,723 sacrificial power rewards (shared among party members).]
The voice channel instantly erupted with countless cheers, even if the reward had nothing to do with themselves.
Seeing this, Qi Sheng could not help but burst into hearty laughter as well.
As for the Earthmind Evil Spirit manipulating the Black Tide from behind the scenes, upon discovering that his nourishment had been stolen yet again, his eyes turned scarlet with rage, and he wished he could personally charge onto the battlefield and slaughter all the players there.
But this idea was once again stopped by the Evil Eye, stating that as the Black Tide’s commander, he should not be so impulsive.
In response, he was met with a furious torrent of curses from the Earthmind Evil Spirit.
The Evil Eye was already used to this.
Information obtained from other nodes indicated that as a subordinate auxiliary eye of the commander, it ought to bear the venting of emotions when the commander was angry and actively provide assistance for emotional guidance.
But this commander’s temper was evidently more irritable than those at other nodes.
It had to endure an excessively high frequency of emotional outbursts.
Yet thinking of its own role, the Evil Eye spoke to soothe him once more:
“Earthmind, you need to calm down. In this campaign we are the biggest winners. You should feel happy about it.”
“Happy your mom.”
“My mother is the Thirteenth God Eye. Please do not insult it. It bore countless auxiliary eyes for our race and rendered illustrious military service in expanding our territories.”
“Happy your dad.”
“I have no father. You may insult him.” the Evil Eye replied very calmly in agreement.
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