Chapter 593
Chapter 593 - 573: Competition
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7 min read
The killing began the moment they reached the lower levels.
A heavily armored Lu Ping’an took the lead (mainly because he found his teammates too incompetent) and plunged into the horde of monsters.
Once the low-cost Triple Flaming Strike was unleashed, it meant the end for all enemies on a battlefield of this level.
At this point, Lu Ping’an had no intention of holding back.
Flames swirled around him, turning nearby Magic Monsters into charred corpses and easily bursting through the beast swarm that blocked their path.
But this did not mean that the "invaders" had the upper hand... After the passages between the upper and lower levels were cut off, outside reinforcements couldn’t enter. The adventurers trapped in the underground palace had become fish in a barrel.
No matter how strong you are, once you lose your supplies and backup, all the enemy needs to do is to wear you down until you collapse.
"...Are there no Wisdom Demons?"
This round of the encounter battle on the 21st floor ended unusually quickly.
The rookie soldiers could only cheer from the back, not being able to contribute much in battle.
This outcome was rather disappointing.
Beast swarms are endless, but the number of Wisdom Demons, as the masters here, is limited.
Lu Ping’an needed information from the Wisdom Demons to understand what was happening locally and to find other passages.
Looking up, the rock wall was tall, and embedded in the surrounding stone walls were gemstones and strange original ores. After the 20th floor of the underground palace, it had become a valuable Magic Mining Area.
In the past, there must have been many "miners" here, but now, nothing could be seen.
"Does this kind of thing happen frequently?"
"....It may be an active period, it’s not very common."
"We encountered it once before, but when we were on the fifth floor, we just followed the large team back. We heard the lower levels suffered a lot of losses."
"In such a situation, shouldn’t we wait for reinforcements?"
"No, no, no, who knows when the reinforcements will arrive. They still have to find a path down. I heard that at this time, we should try to find a relatively safe area ourselves."
The students didn’t have much practical experience, but they had heard a lot of chaotic information. When Lu Ping’an asked, they all expressed their opinions, creating a lively discussion.
Although many of the information was unreliable, because it involved their survival, they had collected a lot of useful information. After a little sorting, the current situation became increasingly clear.
In a sense, autonomous disturbances in the underground Palace due to various reasons are not uncommon.
After all, this is not an orderly Secret Realm controlled by a Proper God, but a completely out-of-control wild Secret Realm.
However, because the reasons for the occurrence are different, the scale and consequences are also different. The most troublesome situation is when the enemy receives "reinforcements" from the outside world.
A strongman arrives from the surrounding Exotic Realm or Kingdom, leading the local residents to massacre low-level adventurers and destroy their living forces... Such incidents often result in tit-for-tat retaliation, but many such incidents have actually taken place.
This is the most troublesome situation because no one can determine the level of the "big shot" that comes over. The several times of total annihilation of the locals were because the foreign invaders were too strong and cleared the area before reinforcements arrived.
Next, there might be a local creature that has achieved Advancement, resulting in a new king... The chieftains of the tribes have a competitive yet cooperative relationship, each controlling their own territory.
But if one chieftain makes a rapid progress in strength and shows overwhelming advantages, just like when Genghis Khan appears on the grassland, after integrating the forces of various tribes, naturally, they will target a rich prey.
Another possibility is that a chieftain or boss suddenly goes mad... It is not uncommon, happening twice every couple of months. But from the results...
"...It should be the first two possibilities. If it was just one chieftain going mad, they wouldn’t directly blow up the passages of all levels. Such a large-scale beast swarm disturbance could only be the result of multiple tribal activities."
Lu Ping’an suddenly realized, so that said, the simplest way to handle this...
"Either wait for rescue..." This is the way ninety-nine percent of survivors handle it. Just find a safe area to huddle together, or fight a guerrilla war, and wait for support.
"...Or, kill the source of the disturbance."
For the Gray Axe Tribe, this was a long-awaited feast and celebration.
In the past, the mid-sized tribe, which could only linger in the shallow layers, has now become the king of the underground palace.
This was their world, and today was their day of counterattack.
"Kill them, kill these outsiders."
"We’re finally going to leave this cage, this damned underground world..."
"Is the outside world as beautiful as our ancestors said it was..."
This was a derivative world of the super-hazardous Zero World. In the largest hole of this region, there was an entire Kingdom, a troublesome "nation" that required the garrisoning of the ancient city.
As its radiation world, it was tightly suppressed by humans. Regular clean-ups were inevitable, and treating it as a mining area was normal.
But what would happen if they didn’t do this?
The beast swarm here would gush out. Those small worlds too close to the Zero World could not be transformed into orderly worlds by the power of Proper Gods.
It was not far from the city of the ancient city, and a breach was unacceptable.
It’s hard to say who is the invader. This world belongs to humans. Both the guests from the Foreign Domain and the local people are outsiders, but this small world within the world has given birth to intellectual species. Often, they are not more than ten years old and regard this place as their own.
And if they were just wild beasts, even extremely cunning ones, they would be relatively easy to deal with. But there was still that "Kingdom" of Zero World that intermittently sent out manpower, spreading wisdom, knowledge, and culture, turning individual intellectual magical beasts into herds of wild beasts.
Their...their dream might be to break through the human checkpoint and head for the land of their ancestors in their dreams, the legendary Zero World, the limitless underground Palace Kingdom.
This has become a kind of tradition and spiritual inheritance, and even major clean-ups cannot eradicate it.
Occasionally, they indeed succeed, and then the soldiers guarding the checkpoint face a cruel fate.
But most of the time, these creatures with limited power just followed the commands of their "source" and became cannon fodder meant to draw the arsenal of the defenders.
This is also the root reason why the Official allows the Civilian to exploit these derivative caves. Clearing them out is also a help to the main battlefield.
Peaceful coexistence? These areas continuously spawn endless Magic Monsters, most of which are destined to be mindless beasts. Even after gaining wisdom, their bloodthirsty and cannibalistic nature will not change. The two factions are destined to be mortal enemies from the start.
Unlike newbies, old stagers have already become accustomed to these periodic "activity periods".
In this deepest hole on the twenty-seventh floor, there are countless Safe Houses, which will only be activated in the most critical moments.
Some of them collaborate and hold their positions waiting for reinforcements, some hide in nearby safe zones, and some even know the terrain here better than the local demons. Some...have already organized a counterattack.
While newcomers like Lu Ping’an were still collecting information in confusion, both sides had already fully engaged in a fierce battle.
The seventh floor, eleventh floor, fifteenth floor, seventeenth floor, twentieth floor, twenty-fourth floor, twenty-sixth floor... With the broken passages between levels as rallying points, a cruel and straightforward survival competition was taking place.
— End of Chapter 593 —