Chapter 15: Embryonic Form of Multiple Schools

The appearance of a Black Tide rift meant that the real world had entered the countdown to Black Tide corrosion.

Qi Sheng didn't know the specific speed of collapse; he still needed to further observe the world's changes to analyze and judge.

But one thing is certain: he still has plenty of time to perfect the Challenger Project.

At the current stage, the Monster World was using the name *Dark Land* to attract new players, but there would eventually be a day when it was completely exposed.

But he had never worried about the problem of the truth being exposed.

In the Challenger Plan he formulated, the objects of recruitment, besides humans, would also include those alien forces that fled to Earth.

But not now; the sacrificial power on him was not enough to start large-scale recruitment.

In the containment wall under Di Zong Village, the number of contained Origin Monsters had reached 9, namely the Black-Armored Snake, Eagle-Headed Demon, Gargoyle, Bone Fire, and five Artifact Spirits. The sacrificial power they produced daily was 2,160 points. Added to the output from player hunting and mining, the daily sacrificial power income was around 2,500.

Deducting the 1,000 sacrificial power consumed to maintain Di Zong Village, there were 1,500 sacrificial power points available for recruitment consumption every day.

In other words, 1.5 player slots could be produced every day.

This bit of sacrificial power was a drop in the bucket for expanding the player faction; let alone recruiting aliens, even the goal of finishing the recruitment of humans was far from enough.

To increase the number of recruits, one could only wait for the players' strength to gradually improve, creating more sacrificial power income.

Without dwelling on this problem, Qi Sheng turned to look at the guide water ball:

"Notify Uncle Yan, send me back."

【Understood.】

The guide nodded and vanished into thin air. A few seconds later, a teleportation array appeared beneath Qi Sheng's feet.

After returning to the Origin Altar under Di Zong Village.

His vision switched to the players who were exploring the Monster World.

……

Di Zong Mountain Range, Blood-Colored Plains.

Gloomy Caverns.

"Gargoyles, hold the front. Black-Armored Snakes and Eagle-Headed Demons, find opportunities to output."

Accompanied by the woman's shouting, the players once again broke out into a fierce battle with the Iron-Shelled Insects.

These days, the Gloomy Caverns had become the players' primary location for leveling up and digging for resources.

This was related to the special environment of the Monster World.

In normal games, after leaving the novice village, the strength of monsters outside was generally very low, suitable for players to level up and grow.

The Monster World was completely different. After leaving Di Zong Village, besides the Cursed Soldiers with lower hunting levels, it was easy to encounter powerful monsters with high hunting levels that could easily wipe out player teams. The process of exploration was full of uncertainty.

By contrast, the Gloomy Caverns, with clear monster strength and a large amount of mineable resources, became the players' first choice.

After these days of growth, many players had already unlocked their second Star Pulse.

There were three powerful Star Pulse schools proven by actual combat.

The strongest version was the Artifact Spirit school, embedding multiple Artifact Spirits on the Star Pulse, using the human body as the core to control various Artifact Spirit trait powers for combat.

But this school currently only had Li Tie.

Every level of Body Tempering required 10,000 sacrificial power; other players simply didn't have enough sacrificial power to build a Star Pulse combination for the Artifact Spirit school.

Next was the long-range strike school of Bone Fire + Eagle-Headed Demon. The combination of output and perception positioning made this school the first choice for initial Eagle-Headed Demon players, and its actual combat performance was excellent.

Finally, there was the Star Pulse combination of Black-Armored Snake + Savage Axe.

The Black-Armored Snake was a physical form attack, and added to the Savage Axe's strength attributes and damage boost, it had a significant improvement on combat power.

But at the current stage, players basically switched forms to fight; very few players maintained the main human form to fight for a long time for the sake of fusing and using trait powers.

As for the Gargoyle form, no suitable Star Pulse school had been developed yet. Generally, players would choose one from the five Artifact Spirits contained by Li Tie as their second form. A more popular one was the combination of Gargoyle + Soul-Severing Spear.

The Gargoyle's output was not high; its characteristic was strong defense. Combined with the Soul-Severing Spear's attack carrying mental shock, it followed the damage-effect school route.

There were also players who simply didn't choose any school and focused on the level improvement of their initial monster form.

These players believed that the more Star Pulses embedded, the more evolution points required for cultivation, so it was better to focus on cultivating one form.

For example, cultivating the Black-Armored Snake into a 100-level Heaven-Reaching Giant Python, cultivating the Eagle-Headed Demon into a Great Peng Bird, and so on.

Facts proved that the combat power improvement brought by focusing on cultivating the initial form was also very considerable. This school was also jokingly called the Monster school by players.

Every player had different ideas, and the development of the combat power system had already shown different school tendencies.

The battle lasted for half an hour.

The Liver Emperor group, Rice Drunkard Group, and Toddler Group players repelled the incoming Iron-Shelled Insect tide at the cost of losing more than half their members.

Besides harvesting a large number of evolution points, allowing many players' monster forms to be upgraded, the ground full of shells was also part of the harvest.

These shells were classified as level 1 spirit materials in the guide's analysis and could be used to sacrifice to Di Zhao to obtain additional sacrificial power rewards.

As for how to distribute them, because the chaotic battle made it impossible to count the contributions of individual players, the final decision was an equal distribution. All shells were handed over to the Rice Drunkard Group for sacrifice, and then the sacrificial power income after the sacrifice was evenly distributed to the heads of each player group, who then distributed them to the team members.

Just as the players were distributing the income, a change suddenly occurred.

Only hearing the Eagle-Headed Demon player in the team who had activated the Resentful Chant perception ability suddenly give a warning:

"Big trouble, the Cave-Dwelling Clan is here again!"

Hearing this, everyone very tacitly threw the shells into their spatial pouches and decisively ran wildly toward the cavern exit.

The hunting level of the Cave-Dwelling Clan warriors had reached level 19, plus the large number of Iron-Shelled Insects following them; with their current strength, they were simply no match.

Death was not terrible; what was terrible was that death would deduct 10 sacrificial power and enter a one-hour resurrection cooldown.

While running away, the regional voice channel was very happy:

"Brothers who chose Gargoyle, your defense is high, walk at the back and hold on for a while, let us run first."

"Are you speaking human? Why should those who chose Gargoyle have to die?"

"I'm about to be caught up, why are you running so fast, wait for me."

"Bullying us Eagle-Headed Demons for having short legs, right? Running so fast one by one. We agreed to be a team, is this how you treat your teammates?"

……

In the tense and exciting escape segment, players couldn't care about their teammates anymore, all running wildly toward the cavern entrance with all their might.

During this, several players running at the back were wrapped by silk threads spat out by the Iron-Shelled Insects and dragged backward. The shrill screams they made caused the players running in front to suddenly speed up.

After the players ran out of the cavern, they began to discuss a problem.

Whether they should unite to kill the Cave-Dwelling Clan warriors.

The existence of the Cave-Dwelling Clan warriors had already become an obstacle to their mining and monster-killing leveling in the Gloomy Caverns.

If they didn't clear them out, they would have to be prepared to run away at any time while in the Gloomy Caverns.

Rather than worrying all day, it was better to cut the weeds and dig up the roots, completely solving the hidden danger.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 20 =====