Chapter 1381: Pillaging The Transport Carts

The scent of wet soil mixed with grass permeated the air as the rain weakened. It was mixed with a faint but absolutely revolting stench as well. After the rain came to a stop, and our vision range increased for the first time since we entered this god-forsaken place, we saw a thick column of minotaur warriors wielding war axes that looked to be at least 3 meters long marching toward us. Some of them were pushing terrifying-looking, black-colored catapults with skulls hanging on the edges forward, and the sound of war gongs occasionally resounded through the air. It was at this moment we received another system announcement—

Ding!

System Announcement: Attention all players, the Purgatory Legion’s first batch of supplies has officially entered the Ancient Chaotic Secret Realm map. Players may kill the monsters guarding the supplies, seize their goods and deliver them to the Silver Moon Alliance Quartermaster at coordinates (19292, 6772) where a temporary camp has been set up. The more goods you deliver, the better the reward you will receive!

……

I said while staring at the sky, "This is a public quest everyone can participate in, right? In that case, let’s kill as many mobs and seize as many goods as possible to earn more contribution points!"

Beiming Xue nodded. "Yes, let’s do our best!"

I shifted my gaze back down on the enemy and ordered, "Heaven’s Rain, Moonlight Stone, Tiger Leopard Knight, take command and spread out our troops into formations. The Dragonlight Cavalry will be blocking the minotaurs at the front, and the mages will push them with God Devil Breaks and Galaxy Storms. The mob density is pretty high, so make sure you heal as best you can, priests. Don’t let our frontliners die for nothing. Now, go!"

I activated Fusion Armor while Pure Love was refreshing my buffs. After she was done, I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Heaven’s Rain, Tiger Leopard Cavalry and the rest of our cavalrymen to form a shield formation that was at least 5 layers thick. The minotaurs were all Level 300 and terrifyingly powerful, so we must rely on our superior numbers to stop them.

The closest transport cart was about 800 meters from me. We could only seize them after all of the minotaur warriors had been slaughtered.

Buzz!

The Chill of the Nine Provinces made a noise that sounded like excited ringing as four minotaurs charged toward me. They swung their ugly-looking axes straight at my head.

You took additional damage if you took a direct hit to the head, and I wasn’t stupid enough to tank it head-on. I bent my body a little and blocked all four hits with the Cyan Dragon Shield—

31099!

28397!

27176!

……

There was basically no chance this level of damage was ever going to kill me. The four minotaur warriors were hardly the only ones who were attacking, however. Behind them, an entire swarm of mobs let out furious roars, wreathed their axes in flames and swung them mightily against the Dragonlight Cavalrymen’s armor and shields. In response, our Holy Mages and Dragonlight Archers showered them with ranged attacks.

Thud thud thud...

My Burning Blade Slash sliced through an incredible amount of mobs and, thanks to the 70% splash effect of the Chill of the Nine Provinces, dealt at least 1.5 million damage to each enemy. Then, I dropped Myriad Swords Obliteration + Summon the Storm combo on the mobs and killed dozens instantly. Since I was using Martial God to buff my Attack by 200%, my attack of course dealt an incredible amount of damage. At the very least, the Dragonlight Cavalrymen close to me were having a much easier time than they would’ve otherwise.

Just tens of meters away from me, two Dragonlight Cavalrymen who rushed a bit too deep into the enemy lines had already fallen to the minotaurs’ axes. The minotaur warriors had insane Strength and could hit even me for around 30k damage. The same basic attack could hit a Dragonlight Cavalryman for close to 200k damage, let alone the skills. Therefore, if a Dragonlight Cavalryman happened to be attacked by 2 or 3 minotaur warriors at once, and priests weren’t able to heal them in time, there was every chance they could perish in battle.

If even our party couldn’t defeat this monster attack without any casualties, then the other guilds could only fare worse. The contribution points these mobs offered were very tempting, but the price to pay was equally severe.

"Hold your ground and don’t move out of our priests’ healing range! All priests, use AoE heals only if someone drops below 50%!" I ordered loudly while cutting down the minotaur warrior in front of me. Suddenly, a blood-red card hit the ground. This was probably the first loot I had seen a mob drop since the battle began.

I picked it up and shared its stats in the party channel—

Minotaur Card: Increases user’s Strength by 30%. Duration: 120 minutes. Level Requirement: 220.

……

"30% Strength buff?" Heaven’s Rain blinked. "That doesn’t sound very useful. It doesn’t even buff any HP…"

However, my grin was wide and happy. "Oh, you cannot be any more wrong, girl. In large-scale PvP battles, this card may be better than even a 100% HP buff card…"

"How does that work?" Tiger Leopard Knight asked in puzzlement.

I answered, "The card adds 30% Strength, not 30% Attack. It’s an increment to your base attributes, so it actually gives a lot more Attack than 30%. Also, a 30% increase to Strength makes your Ultimate Strength Break a lot deadlier than before. If during a charge you manage to get close to an enemy mage party or something, you can use the Minotaur Card to guarantee a one-shot. Even in cavalry-versus-cavalry battles, the card is still usable because the Dragonlight Cavalry is the strongest cavalry in the world. With a 30% Strength buff, our players can hit even the Frostscale Cavalry and Gold Cavalry for 150k damage or higher! This card transforms your situational melee AoE skills into absolute AoE meatgrinders!"

Tiger Leopard Knight’s mouth fell open. "Damn, that is amazing. Now that you explained it, this card really is pretty incredible…"

I laughed. "How much Strength do you currently have, Tiger Leopard Knight?"

"Around 14k. Why?"

I chuckled. "Your old rival and one of Candle Dragon’s corps commanders, Wind Listener, has more or less 14k Strength as well. You may not be able to beat him as you are, but with this card your Ultimate Strength Break will deal almost 170k damage to him. Ultimate Strength Break is an AoE skill, which makes it a lot harder to dodge than single-target skills. And if he cannot dodge your damage, then your win rate will be much higher. Of course, the card is still best-used in a large-scale battle. Just imagine the expression on the enemies’ faces when our Dragonlight Cavalry bash their faces in with Ultimate Strength Break. It will be amazing!"

Tiger Leopard Knight clenched his fists tightly. "Yeah. Speaking of Wind Listener, that motherfucker…"

"The past is in the past. Don’t let it trouble you especially since you still have plenty of chances to take revenge. Ancient Sword and Candle Dragon are nowhere close ending their blood feud once and for all."

Tiger Leopard Knight nodded affirmatively. "Yeah. By the way, how much Strength do you have, Lu Chen? It’s not a secret, right?"

Startled, I answered, "A-around 27k. Why?"

"Holy fuck!"

Tiger Leopard Knight rolled his eyes at me.

Heaven’s Rain giggled. "You should’ve known better than to ask Lu Chen about his stats, man. He’s fully clad in Sacred Armaments and Ancient Divine Armaments. You’ll only fall into depression if you ask him about his stats. Learn from my example. I never ask him about this because I know I’ll be wanting to hit him if I do…"

Me: "..."

……

The gang started collecting the Minotaur Cards after I explained how good they were. Half an hour later, I had collected a total of 17 Minotaur Cards. However, I had given them all to Heaven’s Rain and Tiger Leopard Knight because the power of my Myriad Swords Obliteration wasn’t affected by Strength difference. Also, it was probably a good thing for everyone that I didn’t have Ultimate Strength Break anyway. Otherwise, if say I fired an Ultimate Strength Break on a normal mage that was at least 20000 Strength weaker than me, the resulting 800k damage one-shot would most certainly make them quit the game outright.

Very soon, three transport carts closed in on us. After I took out the minotaurs guarding one of them, I ran along its black chains until I was right on top of it. One swing of the blade was all it took to shatter the coffin-shaped transport cart into pieces. As the goods spilled all over the place, they transformed into countless rays of starry light and entered everyone’s bodies. At the same time, we received a system notice—

Beep!

Combat Log: Player DPS, damage received, healing and other factors are taken into consideration when deciding the ownership of the goods. Your total contribution in destroying the transport cart escort team amounts to 11.74%, so you have obtained 1174 out of 10000 goods!

……

I was amused. I had no idea that the goods distribution was decided this way. On the other hand, I supposed that this was the fairer way of doing things. Otherwise, the mages, priests, bards and other classes at the backline would’ve been toiling away for nothing.

I moved on to destroy the next transport cart. However, I didn’t manage to kill the escort guards like last time, so I only obtained 319 goods in total. It was still a very good outcome though. Also, I was glad that the goods only took up one bagspace, no matter how many we collected. The system wasn’t always a bitch after all.

"How many goods have you collected, big bro?" Beiming Xue asked me.

I replied, "Almost 2000. You?"

"I only have 400…" Beiming Xue pouted.

Heaven’s Rain waved her fists at the both of us. "Stop taunting the rest of us already, you two! Two transport carts amount to 20k goods in total, and at least ten percent of that went to just the two of you! Unbelievable..."

𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

I guffawed. With Beiming Xue and my DPS, it would be harder not to hoard the most goods in the party. I had insanely powerful AoE skills like Myriad Swords Obliteration and Summon the Storm, while Beiming Xue had the Xuanming Bow of the Twelve Divine Armaments. Naturally, there was no chance anyone was ever going to outperform us. In fact, Tiger Leopard Knight, Heaven’s Rain and more left Beiming Xue and my battle areas outright because to stay with us was to have their contribution points stolen by us...

As time progressed, the amount of transport carts I smashed grew to a dozen or so, and the amount of goods in my bag exceeded 10000. I’m so happy!

In the party channel, Moonlight Stone declared, "I’m almost certain there is a Sovereign Rank boss at the back of this seemingly endless wave of minotaurs. Otherwise, we should be finished by now."

Beiming Xue agreed. "I think so too. The question is, where will this Sovereign Rank boss appear from?"

I ordered, "Beiming, send out 100 Dragonlight Archers to patrol the area and keep an eye out for potential bosses. We shan’t be too passive when the Northern Alliance, Cyan Earth City Purple Grape City, Candle Dragon, Warsky, and even the outer lands’ Dark Mercenaries may try to ambush us. Let’s spread our eyes and ears as far out as possible before they come to us."

Beiming Xue nodded smilingly. "No problem, big bro. You just leave the scouting to me."

"Good!"

We continued. Minotaurs had high Attack, low attack speed, and yielded an incredible amount of experience. The fact that they also dropped Minotaur Cards made them the Dragonlight Cavalry’s favorite mob to date.

……

Two hours passed by in the blink of an eye. Finally, the seemingly endless stream of undead creatures and transport carts began to thin.

Thud!

I planted my sword on the ground and took a moment to wipe my sweat. "Finally. I will have to repair my sword soon. The edges are a couple of hits away from folding up completely…"

Suddenly, Beiming Xue shuddered once before reporting, "The boss has appeared, big bro!"