Chapter 1377: Sound Out

Tiger Leopard Knight seemed puzzled. "According to what I saw on the forums, Little Piglet hasn’t betrayed our country completely. To be more accurate, he and the Northern Alliance are just using each other to achieve their own ends. So why did Little Piglet just let Amber Pupil, who obviously has a grudge against us, to attack us with his army? Some people might believe that he couldn’t control Amber Pupil, but I don’t…"

I nodded approvingly while staring at the equipment and potions on the ground. "You are correct. Little Piglet is the lord and master of Dark Mercenaries right now. There is no way Amber Pupil’s influence could rival his."

"If that’s the case, then why is he doing this?" Moonlight Stone sounded even more confused than her brother.

𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

I stared at the withdrawing Iron Cutter Cavalry and Little Piglet, who looked back warily from time to time and answered, "It’s simple. Little Piglet is training his players, and he’s sounding out the strength of our most elite forces."

"Sounding us out?" Beiming Xue pursed her lips. "But what’s the point, big bro? Purgatory Mad Dragon’s his main target, not us…"

I smiled. "You need to look farther, Beiming. Little Piglet is leading the Dark Mercenaries in the outer lands and fighting against us right now, but he can’t possibly do this forever. After he gets his revenge, it’s only a matter of time before he and Dark Mercenaries return to the Center. When that happens, he will have to fight Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls for supremacy. That is why it does not harm him to fight us now, figure out our level and prepare accordingly. Clearly, Little Piglet has become more mature after the matter with Shangguan Wan’er. No longer will he be blinded by a couple hundred million gold. He has learned to set his sights on the entire world..."

Beiming Xue looked stunned by my analysis.

Tiger Leopard Knight replied, "Yes, that makes a lot more sense. Yesterday, I saw Little Piglet leaving a message on the forums saying that he finally realized that only the man with the greatest power and authority can protect their loved ones…"

I fell silent for a moment. "He is right in a sense, I suppose. A man who lacks the strength to protect their loved ones shouldn’t even fall in love from the start."

Moonlight Stone giggled. "Exactly! Don’t complain that your man is neglecting you. He can’t hold you if he’s feeding you, and he can’t feed you if he’s holding you…"

Me: "..."

……

We looted the battlefield. As it turned out, the Iron Cutter Cavalry’s equipment was in no way inferior to the Dragonlight Cavalry’s at all. He had extorted them from the Northern Alliance after all. Though, he had paid a huge price to sound us out.

It was at this moment Dominating Heaven Blade, Dominating Knight God, Dominating Warrior God and his usual lackeys walked up to me and thanked me gratefully, "Thank you so much for saving us, Ancient Sword. There was no way we could’ve stopped Little Piglet, that madman…"

I smiled back. "It’s no problem…"

However, Dominating Warrior God interrupted with a provocative tone, "I was going to test out my strength against the Iron Cutter Cavalry, but someone stole that chance away from me…"

Since the very beginning of the game, Dominating Warrior God had been in love with Lin Yixin. Of course, everyone knew at this point that she was my official girlfriend, but the man still wasn’t able to let go. He was way too narrow-minded for his own good.

Dominating Heaven Blade looked back and rebuked him, "Speak human, Warrior God!"

I simply shot Dominating Warrior God a lazy smile and pointed at the mountains. "There are still 5000 Iron Cutter Cavalrymen left including Little Piglet, Amber Pupil and Now and Forever. If you think you’re that strong, feel free to ride up that mountain and duke it out against them. I promise I won’t lift a single finger to help you. Well, what are you waiting for? Fly, youngster! You must fly to achieve your dreams!"

Dominating Heaven Blade: "..."

Dominating Warrior God: "You think I wouldn’t do it!?"

This time, even Dominating Knight God couldn’t stand it any longer and rebuked his comrade, "Bro, you’re being stupid again! If you wanna die, go die yourself!"

……

In the end, Dominating Warrior God didn’t have the courage to challenge Little Piglet. He wasn’t that stupid. He knew that his chance of beating Little Piglet was less than 1%.

Our party of 8000+ continued into the canyon while the Dragonlight Cavalry who respawned in Vanished God City made their way toward us. They had a high movement speed, so they should be able to catch up with us in 1 or 2 hours at most.

It was dark and gloomy inside the canyon. The sky was filled with Black Crows as well. I communicated with Pure Love and told her to meet up with us with 5000 bards and priests. The best way to deal with powerful enemies was to fully buff our most elite Dragonlight Cavalrymen. Also, it was impossible to fight Ancient Immortal Rank bosses without priests. Too much firepower and no healing makes any party sad.

"Big bro, look. There’s a ton of dead bodies over there…"

Suddenly, Beiming Xue stopped in her tracks and pointed at the narrow pass ahead of us. At the center of the pass was a sea of bodies. Most of them were Warsky Alliance players, and I even spotted a couple hundred Gold Cavalrymen among them. What on earth had taken them out?

"They haven’t been dead for more than an hour," Moonlight Stone declared with complete certainty.

I nodded and sent a message to Eyes Like Water: "Eyes, did you guys encounter anything while you were passing though the canyon? Or did you battle against Warsky Alliance?"

Eyes Like Water replied, "No? Nothing happened to us at all. What’s wrong?"

"It’s nothing. Sorry to trouble you…"

"Kay!"

I scanned the surroundings with Dark Pupils and found a ton of red dots on both sides of the narrow pass on the map screen. They were mobs. However, I couldn’t see many mobs at all with my naked eyes. What was going on here?

I stepped closer to one of the bodies and examined it carefully. The guy was covered in poisoned arrows, and it was neither player nor NPC’s work. Now I knew for certain that these players had been killed by the mobs.

I rose back to my feet and yelled, "Stay alert, everyone! There are probably mobs lying in ambush on both sides of the pass!"

Moonlight Stone stuck out her tongue. "Mobs can lie in ambush?"

"Of course!"

While saying this, I summoned the Ancient Divine Dragon and climbed onto its back. I’m going to test the waters for a bit. Stay where you are and don’t act recklessly. All Dragonlight Cavalry are to bring out their shields and protect the Holy Mages and Dragonlight Archers."

My dragon let out a roar as it charged toward the pass. Before we even got close, I immediately heard the twang of countless bowstrings and saw just as many arrows flying in my direction. I looked left and right as quickly as I could and confirmed that they were Level 295 Mad Devil Archers.

I activated the Cyan Dragon Shield’s Cyan Dragon Scale to block most of the arrows. While doing so, I said in the party channel, "Does anyone feel like going through the pass and experience what it feels like to be a porcupine? No? Okay. We’re going to split up into two parties, move up the mountains, and clear out all the mobs. They’re Level 295 Mad Devil Archers, and their Attack is very high, so make sure that both parties have a sufficient number of Dragonlight Cavalrymen to tank them."

The gang responded affirmatively before splitting up. We hadn’t forgotten that our main objective was to earn as many contribution points as possible from this March of Chaos event, and killing mobs was the most direct way to earn them.

I activated Fusion Armor and returned to the ground. Then, relying mostly on the Cyan Dragon Shield to protect me I charged straight toward a group of a dozen Mad Devil Archers. The reason I was soloing the mobs was because I still wasn’t a Top 10 ranker after all this time. If I didn’t start trying hard now, the MVP would truly be out of my grasp.

Ding ding ding...

Most of the Mad Devil Archers’ arrows bounced off my shield and dealt between 3000 to 5000 damage only. On the other hand, I dealt at least a couple hundred thousand damage per swing. The Chill of the Nine Provinces’ 20% lifesteal was all I needed to be able to solo this particular map. Sure, the experience gained was shared between 10000 people, but just like bosses, the person who scored the last hit gained 50% of the experience. That was good enough.

An hour or so later, Pure Love arrived with 5000 bards and priests. Including the returned Dragonlight Cavalry, we were now a massive party of 15k players. After Pure Love dropped all her buffs on me, she pulled on my wristguard smilingly and said, "Let’s go deeper, Lu Chen. I can heal you, so you don’t need to worry about being overwhelmed..."

I curled my lips. "You mean you want to leech some experience."

"Heehee, it’s the same either way. Come on!"

"Well, climb up…"

I pulled Pure Love up the Ancient Divine Dragon. She carefully sat down behind my back, kept a firm grip on the lantern vine with one hand, and healed me with the other. Her HPS was about 20k per second or 20% of Murong Mingyue’s HPS, but all things considered, it was pretty good already. According to the system, if a bard dropped all their buffs on an ally, and that ally killed a mob, 20% of the experience would be transferred to the bard. I was fine with it though. As our guild’s number one bard, she had to be elite.

……

If before I was worried about being overwhelmed, that worry was non-existent now that I had a bard who could both heal and buff me. I weaved in and out of the hills on the Ancient Divine Dragon and rained my Myriad Swords Obliteration, Thousand Ice Slash, Summon the Storm and more skills atop the mobs. The Mad Devil Archers yielded so much experience that my experience bar was blinking even though the majority of the kill experience went to my party. Of course, Pure Love was growing in levels even faster than me.

Half an hour later, when we were about 3 kilometers away from the main force, I arrived at another necropolis [ref]T/N: this is probably the first raw text I had no idea what it’s about. Google search doesn’t yield anything either. I’m putting it as necropolis for now, but feel free to correct me if you know what it is.]/ref] that was positively covered in tombstones, Mad Devil Archers, and scarce patches of herbs here and there. At first glance, I believed that they were Rank 12 herbs. Lin Yixin would be overjoyed if she was here, but then again, who was to say that there were no herbs to gather where she was grinding right now?

We grinded at the necropolis for 2 hours. My experience jumped by 17%, and Pure Love leveled up once. Also, my contribution points were finally high enough to put me in the Top 10, the 7th place to be exact. This was what I wanted to see. As long as I kept soloing, with my stats and crazy repertoire of skills, there was still a high chance that I would become the MVP of this event. Actually, scratch that, I must become the MVP of this event. No way I was giving up one of the Twelve Divine Armaments to a foreign server!