The battle between Knightmare continued on. This time however, the party stayed strong, while the boss was close to death!
10%!
"SHI MA LE SHI TU!" The boss suddenly cried out in a loud screech. Its body suddenly expanded out like a balloon.
‘Ding! Knightmare has entered Berserk state. All damage increased by 50%!’
"The boss has gone berserk! Kill it quick!"
Upon entering the Berserk state, Knightmare had gained immeasurable strength. With a single punch, Knightmare could deal more than 12,000 damage on Zhang Yang. Not even Han Ying Xue, the super healer could balance out the damage! As a resort, Zhang Yang had to unleash all his ultimate skills. {Shield Wall}, {Berserker’s Heal}, {Rearm}, Clear Lotus’s {Substitute}, and the set-equipment set effect were all used and only then, Zhang Yang was able to survive and kill Knightmare. By then, Captain Kang Na and his soldier had just finished with the portal. It looked like, the quest’s secret completion requirement was to kill the boss!
CRACK!
With a thundering crack, the magic circle on the ground shattered into millions of particles and dispersed into the air.
"Well done adventurers! You have performed splendidly!" said Captain Kang Na as he clapped his hands to congratulate the party.
‘Ding! You have completed the quest: Sortie. Obtained 500,000 Experience Points!’
‘Ding! You have obtained the reward: Summoned Soldier!’
"Adventurers! Though the magic circle may have been destroyed, this place still remains dangerous! I urge you all to leave this place immediately!" said Captain Kang Na. He then turned around and left Zhang Yang all by themselves.
"Hmph! What a useless NPC! Look at how he left us here after completing the quest!" said Zhang Yang with a laugh.
"Let’s take a look at the loots! Loots!" said Wei Yan Er as she went on to pick up the battle loots.
[Poison Flame Chest Plate] (Yellow-Gold, Leather Armor)
Defense: +24
Vitality: +235
Strength: +94
Dexterity: +217
{Unidentified}
Level Requirement: 70
"Hey Ice Cube, you want this? It doesn’t have any set-equipment effect, at least it’s better than the one you’re wearing now!" said Zhang Yang.
"No!" said Sun Xin Yu coldly without glancing at him.
"Noob tank! What are you planning to buy for me as a birthday present?" said Wei Yan Er out of the blue.
"Hmm?" Zhang Yang pointedly turned away.
"Present! Birthday! Present!" said Wei Yan Er.
"Ah…that. Well, it’s a present after all. If I tell you what it is, it would not be a present anymore! It should always be a mystery until you receive it!"
Wei Yan Er clicked her tongue disgruntledly. "Tch. Well then, what sort of mystery would it be?"
Zhang Yang kept quiet and sighed heavily.
[Energy Crystal] (Yellow-Gold, Necklace)
Vitality: +59
Strength: +24
{Unidentified}
Equip-Effect: Absorbs 46 damage on attack.
Equip-Effect: Creates a 1% chance to cast an {Energy Shield} when an attack is received. {Energy Shield} will disappear after 30 seconds, or after absorbing 5,000 damage.
Level Requirement: 70
"This sh*t is good. Finally, I can change my hundred-year-old necklace!" Zhang Yang helped himself and kept the necklace for himself.
[Boots of the Crimson Gem] (Yellow-Gold, Cloth Armor)
Defense: +8
Vitality: +118
Intelligence: +108
Spirit: +47
{Unidentified}
Level Requirement: 70
Both Han Ying Xue and Daffodil Daydream insisted on maintaining their set-effects, so the boots would be placed for sale in the Little Merchandize Shop. So far, the shop had been supplying 60% of all Yellow-Gold equipment in the market. In other words, almost 60% of every player’s Yellow-Gold equipment had come from Zhang Yang and his guild members! In a way, it was an extremely efficient way of building a good reputation in the market and obtaining a good, long term profit.
After clearing all three Yellow-Gold equipment, the rest of the remaining equipment were Gray-Silver, which were all ignored by the party and went in straight into Zhang Yang’s inventory. What remained were two other items that were not equipment. They were two solid, black, glowing stones. The complete [Demonic Stones]!
In total, they had two completed [Demonic Stones] and 1,892 [Demonic Stone Fragments]. With that amount, they could only purchase three skill books.
With no intention of purchasing the skill books just yet, Zhang Yang said, "We should now head out of this place and grind at the camp area. No matter what, we should farm at least 3,000 [Demonic Stone Fragment] to allow everyone here to get themselves a skill book!"
"Ok!"
The five of them then went their separate ways and took 3 hours to farm a total of 3,000 [Demonic Stone Fragment]. After trading them for 3 completed [Demonic Stone], they went back to the Ravine of Coyote to purchase five skill books for everyone.
[Heroic Leap]: Leap far and high into the air, across all obstacles and towards the distant enemy! With great force, you can land on the ground and stun the target, and everyone 5 meters around it for 3 seconds.
Attack Range: 20 meters.
Cost: 50 Rage.
Cool Down Time: 2 minutes.
Compared to {Charge}, {Heroic Leap} could not only stun the target for a longer duration, but was an AoE skill! The only disadvantage was that the skill would cost a large amount of Rage instead of generating it!
Wei Yan Er had also selected {Heroic Leap} as well. Everyone was extremely pleased after purchasing their respective class skills.
Just when Zhang Yang wanted to asked the ladies to farm for more [Demonic Stone] to purchase a few more recipes, he received a distress call from Hundred Shots.
"Zhan Yu! That guy, "iLuvHanYingXue" brought his own people to raid the Mining Cave!"
At first, Zhang Yang was stunned. But then, he started laughing. Did he really think that it would be a great idea to raise his sword against Lone Desert Smoke? He shook his head and said, "Kill them all. Leave no survivors!"
"Will do!"
"Hey dummy, what’s going on?" asked Han Ying Xue.
Zhang Yang thought about it, and decided to inform Han Ying Xue about the situation in the Mining Cave. "Your precious Luo Yang Ming wants a share of our Mining Cave!"
This time, Wei Yan Er frowned. Annoyed and disgruntled, she broke out into a rant. "What a greedy bastard! Just when I thought he was already taking up too much of the company, he also wanted to sully his hands in ‘God’s Miracle’! I cannot let him continue any longer! I will personally go back and give him a piece of my mind!"
Without waiting for any response, Wei Yan Er tore a piece of [Teleportation Scroll] and went away. With her gone, the party had no interest to continue grinding and followed her back to Thunderstorm Castle.
The Mining Cave was located at the west of Tanilla Forest. It would take roughly 30 minutes by mount. By the time Zhang Yang had arrived to the location, the area outside the Mining Cave was filled with dead bodies of random players. Hundred Shots and a few more Lone Desert Smoke players’ name tag were dyed in red. So red1, that they would already be winning the lottery!
"Ah! You had finally came, my beloved cousin sister!" Just when Wei Yan Er showed herself in the Mining Cave, Luo Yang Ming had appeared out of nowhere and approached Wei Yan Er with an enraged, infuriated expression on his face. He pointed at Hundred Shots angrily and yelled, "Yan Er! Expel that wanker out of the guild! Just who does he thinks he is?! Doesn’t he knows that I’m your cousin brother? How dare he raise his voice at me! He even stopped me from going into the Mining Cave to mine some minerals! Pui! (sound of spitting), just which dog pound did he crawl out from!? How dared he did not recognize a man from the same house!?"
Instead of explaining, Wei Yan Er puffed her cheeks angrily and screamed at Luo Yang Ming from the top of her lungs. "You’re the one who crawled out from the dog pound! I have told you a gazillion times! Zhan Yu is the guild master of Lone Desert Smoke now! Not me! Don’t ever use my name to justify your nefarious actions!"
"Hmm? Cousin sister?" Luo Yang Ming was genuinely surprised, though only for a second. He then smiled, or rather grinned evilly and said, "Don’t coy with me! I know that Lone Desert Smoke is being sponsored by us, the Silky Soft Holdings, and you were the guild master before that anyway, no? I know that you’re only using Zhan Yu as a puppet! Honestly, you’re just using him! The real master mind behind all of this is you! You control everything from behind the scenes! Am I right?!"
Even a pig would be smarter than this idiotic swine! No, calling him one would be a disgrace to all swine in the world! It does not take a rocket scientist to correctly figure out how lucrative the profits from a Territory were! In truth, Zhang Yang was holding to a mother hen that would only lay golden, no! Platinum-Golden eggs! However, how much was it worth, exactly? No one had clearly calculated. It was one of the uncertainties that a Territory had. Other factors like an attack from other guild, a raid from a wave of monsters, or perhaps the shutting down of ‘God’s Miracle itself, could affect it! However, as long as Zhang Yang possessed a Territory in his hands, the profit will be on par, or higher than a multi-million dollar company!
Unable to hold down his anger, Zhang Yang rode his white bear and went forward. "To the man named Luo, your mother is summoning you back for dinner!"
"Oh please, my mother—" Luo Yang Ming turned around and bit his tongue. He wanted to return the insult until he saw it was Zhang Yang. He opened his eyes wide and glare at Zhang Yang. "You rotting, stinking barbarian! This is not a place for you to talk! Know you place, peasant! F*ck off!"
He then turned to Wei Yan Er and switched to a politer tone to talk to her. "Yan Er, we are cousins! Relatives! That guy? He’s nothing but a stranger! How could you let a stranger manage something important like a Territory!? This brother does not fear hardship! Just let Zhan Yu transfer all the ownership of all the Territories to me! I’ll personally handle all the management! Only blood-relatives can be trusted!"
Other than Zhang Yang, almost everyone present at the scene were frowning furiously. This man’s face was so thick that no digger in the world could get to his epidermis layer in a lifetime! His narcissistic, self-praising, arrogant, shameless, and egoistical behavior was off the charts! It was already beyond human comprehension and could be framed as a work of art! A talent worthy to be recorded in the Guinness World Book of Records!
"I ain’t got time for you! Hmph!" With such level of greed and egoism, Wei Yan Er had nothing to say to him and turned to Hundred Shots. "Uncle Hundred! Next time you see this douche bag! Feel free to kill him! Do not mind me! You do not have to worried about me!" With that, she turned away and got some distance between the two of them.
"Wait! W-Wait!" cried Luo Yang Ming. He then turned to Han Ying Xue and beg for her help. "Please, little snow, help me get some sense into little Yan Er’s head!"
Without even responding to his plea, Han Ying Xue dragged Zhang Yang and said, "Let’s go! Let’s go grind some levels!"
Zhang Yang nodded and the whole party went away. Luo Yang Ming started to give chase, but Hundred Shots shot a volley of arrows and killed the man. By the time he revived and came back, Wei Yan Er, Han Ying Xue and the rest of them were already long gone.
His expression gradually turned sour. He knew that Wei Yan Er’s 18th birthday was just around the corner. This little brat was always threatening that she would reset the main company’s accountings after inheriting the company at her coming of age. No doubt, she would wipe these parasites off the board! Luo Yang Ming was not as stupid as played out to be. At the very least, he knew that when judgement day comes, his own family’s little factory will be forced to close down!
After so long, Luo Ming Yang had already gotten used to the high life. It would cost him his entire integrity to go back to where he crawled from. He had always mingled along with his foxy minx and bastardic b*tches, and each and every one of them had been addressing him as the boss. Without the factory backing him, how could he continue living the same lifestyle?
He would never allow such things to happen to him! NEVER!
TL Note:
1Red – According to Chinese culture. The color red signifies prosperity and good luck.