The Era of Gods

Chapter 506: Chapter 506: Preparing to Build a Fortress

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An hour later, Lin Xiao bid farewell to a human player named Lonely City after they had added each other as friends.

The information he obtained from him was similar to what he had learned from Biggs, but much more detailed, as Lonely City had not yet established a stronghold and was still looking for a suitable location, which meant he had traveled more and knew more.

According to Lonely City, this part of the Void lay between the territories occupied by humans and the Children of Nightmare in the Outland, with the Hellfire Plains occupied by humans on one end and the Bone Wasteland occupied by the Children of Nightmare on the other, with the Void Storm situated in the central region.

One could foresee that as players’ levels and gear improved and they grew stronger, they would gradually make their way here, and this area would become a battleground for two major forces, resulting in intense warfare.

As per Lonely City, establishing a stable stronghold here in advance would definitely yield great profits in the future.

Lin Xiao spent ten thousand gold to buy a map from Lonely City, which included all the places he had explored over the past year or two, including some he had scouted for establishing a stronghold but eventually abandoned for various reasons.

He planned to take a look at these places to see if any were suitable for himself.

What was not suitable for Lonely City was not necessarily unsuitable for him, as many locations were unclaimed due to Lonely City’s lack of strength, but Lin Xiao was powerful enough that what Lonely City considered too dangerous could be good places for him.

The map purchased from Lonely City was extremely detailed, marking not only the types of monsters that spawned nearby but also their levels and characteristics.

After a careful search, Lin Xiao found two spots that looked quite promising.

One was on the edge of a floating land, where there was a mountain range with a canyon through it. The entrance to the Void at the canyon’s mouth had an outpost of the Void Group, and the other end led to the interior of the Broken Floating Land, with only a narrow canyon passageway about twenty to thirty kilometers long. The location marked by Lonely City was right at the exit; taking control of it was tantamount to controlling the entrance to this Void floating land, making it a key strategic point.

However, this location had a major flaw—that area was home to a flying creature called the Void Ray, a large elite flying beast with levels between 72 and 73 that could move through the Void, making them the favorite mounts of the Void looters. Every so often, Void looters or even members of the Star Domain Consortium would come to capture these Void Rays for mounts.

The Void looters were a powerful force able to oppose the Star Domain Consortium, one of the strongest forces in this area of the Void, and they were avid marauders. Establishing a stronghold here meant facing the occasional stealth attacks by Void looters and getting caught in the crossfire between the Star Domain Consortium and the Void looters.

Being sandwiched between two great forces…

Would be no picnic, and it was very easy for one’s efforts to be destroyed by the larger powers.

The second promising location was at the centre of an enormous Broken Floating Land deep within the Void, an ancient ruin and a massive gathering place for demons.

According to information Lonely City obtained from the Star Domain Consortium, this had been one of the headquarters for the demons’ invasion of this world. The Void Demon commander, comparable to a True God, had stayed there for a while. Even though the main demonic forces had long retreated and the commander had left, a large number of demons, including a Top-level Devil who had been exiled for a transgression, remained.

The exact level of that demon was not known to Lonely City, who had never seen it—only that it had been leaked from information obtained by the Star Domain Consortium that the Top-level Devil had once been a legion commander of the Void Demons.

A legion commander from the regular armies of the demons, who value strength above all, would definitely possess great power, and would certainly not be an ordinary Lord Template.

It wasn’t the abundance of nearby demons that made Lonely City specifically note this place, but rather the discovery of two major group raids and five five-person dungeons there.

All five-person dungeons were Level 70+, with both normal and heroic modes, and the hardest one even featured Epic difficulty.

Level 70+ five-person dungeons could yield Epic gear of T4 and above, with Epic difficulty dropping gear of T5 level, providing an important source of gear for players in the later stages of the game.

Not to mention the two large group raids: one was a Level 70+ forty-person raid that could produce T6 level Epic gear, and the other was a Level 75+ one hundred-person mega-raid that could yield T7 level top-tier sets, with a chance of Orange legendary equipment dropping.

Orange legendary gear!

Just thinking about the effects of the sole Orange accessory ‘Will of the Undead’ available for exchange at the Shattrath Ruins gave an idea of how powerful other Orange gears could be.

Not to mention anything else, these dungeons alone were worth taking any risk.

But Lonely City didn’t dare to try; in the end, it was a matter of insufficient strength.

Without other players’ help, a lone wolf like him, isolated here without any support, could hardly defend anything successfully.

One must understand that when a player places down the core of a stronghold and officially establishes it, the power of the game’s rules will change the regulations within the range of the stronghold; monsters will no longer spawn in the stronghold’s territory. This triggers a series of changes, thereby alerting the surrounding monsters to destroy the stronghold.

This action has a well-known term—monster siege.

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Anytime a Fortress core is placed, it triggers a siege of monsters corresponding to the levels and types of monsters that respawn around it.

Considering the strength of the monsters around this Fortress, Lonely City didn’t stand a chance.

Lin Xiao couldn’t hold them off either, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to go and take a look himself. After all, the value of those five five-man dungeon runs and the two large group dungeon runs was too great for him to give up without seeing them with his own eyes.

Two months later, he and his girlfriend arrived, travel-worn, at the nearest shard to this massive fragment of floating land known as Purgatory. The Star Domain Consortium had an outpost there, and they needed to take a large Void ship from there to cross the Void into the Purgatory Float Land.

The reason for not using a Teleportation Array was that there were too many Demons remaining on Purgatory Float Land. The Void was filled with rich Fel energy and violent Void Energy, making it not only necessary to have a large number of Mages to stabilize a stable teleportation reception Array but also a strong army to guard it.

For the Star Domain Consortium, establishing a Teleportation Array was not worth the effort. It made more sense to transport by large Void airships, which made a trip every three months.

To be honest, even using airships wasn’t cost-effective. The fares accumulated over three months were just enough to break even on a return trip. If it weren’t for maintaining the business routes of the Star Domain Consortium, this route would have been abandoned long ago.

When Lin Xiao arrived, the next flight was more than a month away. He spent time accumulating some Star Realm Group Coins by accepting tasks from the Star Domain Consortium to cover the travel expenses.

One and a half months later, a Void ship over a hundred meters long appeared at a hidden outpost nestled in a depression at the edge of the Broken Floating Land. After about ten minutes, the ship left in a hurry, leaving behind hundreds of people.

Lin Xiao and his subordinates climbed out of the pit, only to see that less than a hundred meters away from the pit, a group of Level 70 Demonized Centaurs led by a Level 73 Enhanced Elite Template Centaur Leader was battling fiercely with a group of Demons.

Upon seeing them appear, the Demonized Centaurs and Demons stopped fighting each other and excitedly charged toward them.

A few minutes later, the remaining dozen or so Demonized Centaurs and Demons fled, and Lin Xiao quickly gathered the spoils of battle and left.

Three days later, they hunkered down in a small mountain range, with Lin Xiao setting off alone on a Red Ridge Bipedal Flying Dragon he had purchased from Biggs, soaring into the sky and heading in a certain direction.

There were too many ground monsters, making this floating shard land practically the home of Demons. Ever since landing, they had to fight every few steps against scattered Demons or magic creatures.

The average strength of Demons here was a whole tier higher than those on the Hellfire Plains. The regular Demon warriors there were Level 60, Elite Demon Warriors were Level 70 elites, Demon Leaders or Demon Braves were Level 72 or 73 Enhanced Elites, Demon Centurions were Level 75 Enhanced Elites, and Demon Overlords were Leader Template creatures with levels exceeding 75.

Here, the regular Demon warriors were Level 65, Elite Demon Warriors were Level 75 elites.

Demon Leaders or Demon Braves were Level 75 Enhanced Elites.

Demon Centurions were Level 75 and above Enhanced Elites.

Demon Overlords were top-tier Leader creatures with levels reaching 78 or 79, just one level shy from the critical Level 80, extremely powerful.

Following the route on the map given by Lonely City, he quickly saw the destination mentioned by Lonely City, a colossal ruin far surpassing what he had seen at Shattrath Ruins and Alcoron Ruins. At the center of that ruin, a huge green Fel energy hemisphere glowed like an upside-down bowl, teeming with Demons coming and going.

Even from several thousand meters away, the colossal green Fel energy barrier transmitted waves of terrifying aura.

According to information from the Star Domain Consortium, those dungeons were located inside.

He tried to make the Red Ridge Bipedal Flying Dragon fly around the huge ruins, then took another circle at an even higher altitude farther away to carefully observe the situation of the Demon clusters below.

A little later, he went to see a spot that Lonely City had mentioned as being suitable for establishing a Fortress. It was a mountain range about twenty kilometers away from the gigantic Fel energy shield with a diameter of several tens of kilometers. The spot was a basin within the mountains, which had become the lair of a group of formidable Demonized Bear Monsters.

Circling above the Bear Monster gathering spot, he saw a Level 80 Leader Bear Monster shooting a massive Lightning Ball, much larger than a person’s, that with a long trail of lightning, shot into the sky a thousand meters high.

Then Lin Xiao, whose level had been ground down to 72 and who had just over 8500 health points, died on the spot along with his mount as he caught a glimpse of a damage number soaring to 50,000.

Considering his Star Spirit Talent could reduce spell damage by 50%, that meant the actual damage of this super long-range Lightning Ball from over a thousand meters away was as high as 100,000.

“That damage is absurd!”

Resurrecting in front of his girlfriend, Lin Xiao couldn’t help but complain.