Chapter 391: Forging a Shield (1/2)
It was noon by the time we got back to the workshop. After He Yi put on a new set of clothes, she abruptly discovered that her luggage was still on the airplane. She immediately contacted someone from GGS’s subsidiary company at Wuxi to deliver them over. Thankfully, both her luggage and her gaming helmet arrived safely around 3 pm or so. Losing that helmet was practically the same as losing her account forever.
After that, Murong Mingyue and Beiming Xue formed a party with Xu Yang and Gui Guzi and left to grind. The party would be even stronger if they could add a high-level mage with powerful AoE spells into the mix, but that was unfortunately one of the few weaknesses of Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls: we had super-tier warriors, archers, magic knights and priests, but no super-tier mage or assassin at all.
……
I logged back into the game and continued to grind Ice Soul Giants at the Ice Soul Cave. I was leveling much slower than I’d like, but it was a grievance I could swallow for He Yi’s sake. Moreover, level wasn’t the most important thing to me right now. With a reaction time of only 0.15 seconds or so, I could easily make up for a small level gap with my skill!
Another day passed by in the blink of an eye, and it was now 9 am of the third day.
Crack!
The Heaven-stealing Sword only had 7% durability left, but I also got the final piece of Ice Soul Steel necessary to forge He Yi’s shield after using Death Plunder on the dead mob. I took a look inside my bag and counted exactly 100 Ice Soul Steel!
It so happened that Murong Mingyue sent a message at this exact moment: ”Hey, the preliminaries will begin at 1 pm this afternoon. Whatever you’re doing, you really should come back soon.”
”No problem. In fact, I’m coming back right now. Have you gotten the 5 Rank 2 Cyanfire Gems I told you to get?”
”So long ago too. When should I pass it to you?”
”Let’s meet up at the eastern gate plaza right now!”
”Okay!”
I took out a return scroll and teleported out of Ice Soul Cave in the blink of an eye. Unfortunately, I didn’t find a boss despite scouring the entire map for one. In a sense, my failure proved how rare Spirit Rank bosses were at the current stage of the game. At the very least, there were only two or three Spirit-grade items in the entire Sky City right now.
Speaking of which, I heard that Gods of Destruction formed a thousand-man party and tried to challenge a Level 145 Spirit Rank boss that resided in Dragonbone Mountain Range. Not only were they annihilated to the last man, they didn’t even manage to remove 10% HP from the boss's health bar. I heard some people saying that Gods of Destruction pissed off the boss so much that it used a forbidden spell to annihilate all of them, and the skill was so powerful that the entire Dragonbone Mountain Range was shaking at the time.
……
Swhoosh!
Upon arriving at the eastern gate plaza, I saw the beautiful priest standing at a corner of the city wall. After she walked up to me and passed me five Cyanfire Gems, she asked with a smile, ”What’s next?”
”Nothing, not for you at least. You should log out at 11 am, eat lunch and make sure you are in the best possible physical condition. The preliminaries start at 1 pm and will probably last the entire afternoon. It would be bad if you ran out of energy halfway.”
”Got it!”
After that, I contacted our high-level miner, Xu Yang, and waited for him to show up. He gave me 10 Soulstones but insisted that I paid him for his labor, so I gave him 10 gold and watched him leave happily like I had paid him a fortune.
I checked my bag again. The shield blueprint, 100 Ice Soul Steel, 10 Soulstones and 5 Rank 2 Cyanfire Gems were all ready. It was almost time to take off to the Violet Empire!
Before I left, I repaired my equipment and stocked up on potions for a bit. Most of my equipment was about to run out of durability; in fact my wristguards and helmet had run out of durability and put me in quite the bind during the last couple of hours. The past three days in Ice Soul Cave hadn’t been easy to say the least.
I checked the time and noted that there was still half an hour to go before 11 am. Violet Empire, here I come!
I ran out of Sky City like the wind with the Sky Obsidian Greedy Wolf beside me. On the way, I brought up Sky City’s Heavenly Ranking to see how everyone was doing. As expected, countless players had been grinding like crazy before the tournament, probably skipping meals and even sleep to level up as much as they possibly could in three days—
NameLevelClassBroken Halberd Sinks Into Sand
108Undead SwordsmanWind Fantasy
107Light WandererBeiming Xue106Dark ArcherLegendary Brave106Dragon WarriorMurong Mingyue106PriestFarewell Song106AssassinPurple Marquis106WarriorLittle Piglet106Cold Wind SwordsmanFrom Water106Magic KnightOctober Rain106ArcherGui Guzi106Undead KnightLaughing At The Heavens105Magic KnightShadow Chanel105Dark Tongue MageClear Perfume105ArcherWarsky105Warrior
……
The players of Sky City were insanely dedicated. Nine players had reached Level 106, and over 20 players had reached Level 105 in just three days. Heaven knows how many experts in total there were in Sky City!
Moreover, Who Will Rise was a national-level tournament where every player of every major city would be competing in, meaning that we would be fighting the top experts of Wind City and Vanished God City as well. The mere thought of it made my blood boil with excitement. Unless Candle Dragon performed well below my expectations, there was a high chance the main party of Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls and Candle Dragon would eventually clash against one another. Of course, one should never count out the Beautiful Little Pepper. There was no party she couldn’t beat if she turned on her invincible mode and went on a rampage, not to mention that her general, Purple Marquis, wasn’t too far behind our own dragon warrior.
I also checked the Heavenly Ranking of Wind City and Vanished God City. Candlelight Shadow was the highest-leveled player in Wind City as usual, followed by Luo River God of the Capital and Indigo Collar. On the forums, the battle for supremacy was just as fierce as it was in the game. Candle Dragon, the number one guild led by the Martial God Candlelight Shadow was currently challenged by the two greatest guilds beneath it, Purple Lily led by Luo River God of the Capital and Peach Garden led by Indigo Collar. Neither challenger would stop unless a decisive victor was decided, and at least a dozen or so wars had broken out in Wind City in just half a month’s time.