Chapter 858 - 371: Recruitment Full
A surge of vitality burst out from the Aberrant’s body, as if to prove that the guy in front of them who almost self-destructed was actually a living thing, not a dead object.
Wu Chang True Self swallowed the vitality, and a line of notification popped up before his eyes:
Power +40.
After being passively amplified by the Sea Giant, his Strength Attribute had reached 311. The extra 40 points of Power got added to his panel; after the Dungeon Plane barrier took its handling fee, his Power Value reached 339.
Being able to give him 40 points of Power at this stage was enough to show how strong the Aberrant had been.
In a near-out-of-control A-Level dungeon, this guy would be enough to act as a mini-boss; in most Full-level Players’ dungeons, he’d already be at the level of a final boss.
Wu Chang didn’t believe that the native Transcendents of the Steam Phantom Plane could reach this level. Obviously, the Aberrant’s strength came from the modifications of the Franken-level Extraordinary Machine Tools mentioned in his information Note.
Don’t be fooled by how easily he took the Aberrant down; in truth, the actual feel in his hands wasn’t nearly as relaxed as it looked.
When his Space Magic advanced to Grandmaster Level, he’d glimpsed the root of Space Magic. Although at this stage it couldn’t yet be considered a Root Power Level Ability, the Destructive Power it unleashed was no weaker than Power of Root.
After all, his Energy Attribute now, even without the Talent bonus of the Abyssal Python, could reach 309 points—radiating the charm of pure Values.
Yet even so, when he pushed Space Distortion to the limit to attack the Aberrant, it still felt extremely strenuous; he was just a step away from failing to break through the steam the Aberrant spewed out.
His Space Distortion was enough to pierce through the bodies of Realm of Reason Players, but after being blocked by the steam, it still failed to penetrate the Aberrant’s body.
The Aberrant’s trickiness was partly due to the Dungeon Plane being affected by Power of Root, but more importantly, the force that modified the Aberrant clearly had a very thorough understanding of Power of Root.
He didn’t even need to think about it to know that the ones who created this self-destructing freak had to be that Steam Council—those guys who dreamed of mastering the Extraordinary completely through self-modification.
Raventon’s guess hadn’t been wrong; his intel was simply outdated. After all these years of lying low, the Steam Council’s methods of bodily modification had already made a qualitative leap.
Right now they were already almost able to withstand his Space Distortion. Give them a bit more time, let the Plane get influenced a little more, and they’d probably be able to ascend to the heavens.
Wu Chang’s expression was a bit ugly; in terms of "noobs countering pros," these guys without any Divinity might actually be more troublesome to him than an Evil God’s projection.
He had to find them and take them out as soon as possible.
As the Aberrant died, the steam hanging in the air gradually dispersed. The Players scrambling over the invitations saw a face in the arena that they couldn’t possibly fail to recognize even if they wanted to.
Peace.
The Players in the arena all reacted differently. Those who had already snatched invitations tensed up, their gazes dodging away.
They were debating whether to proactively surrender their invitations, or end up flying out like those unlucky bastards from Phantom’s group earlier.
Booker and Veronica, on the other hand, had eyes full of excitement. If there weren’t so many people around, the two of them would probably already be power-sliding on their knees toward him.
With the strength the two of them had, without hugging a nice thick thigh, they’d find it very hard to walk out of a near-out-of-control S-Level dungeon alive.
As for the rest of the onlooking Players, their faces mostly showed curiosity and Eight Trigrams gossip, sizing up this so-called legendary super rookie Player.
Everyone present was a top dog ranked within the top five hundred on the combat power rankings. Many of them had harbored doubts about Peace’s true level even before entering the Steam Phantom Dungeon.
Because if all the intel on Peace was accurate—if he really did Breakthrough a B-Level near-out-of-control dungeon during his Trial Dungeon—then at most, he had been in the Abyssal Game for less than a hundred days.
They knew very well what one could or couldn’t do in a hundred days.
Judging others by themselves, quite a few Players felt that Peace’s dominance was just hype. He had most likely secretly joined one of the Four Major Organizations already, and everything he showed now was just some big organization’s "make-a-god" project.
But the scene that had just unfolded shattered their understanding.
Setting aside the fact that being able to queue into an S-Level dungeon already signified he’d reached a certain tier of strength—
At the moment when the Aberrant was about to self-destruct, they had all sensed that their death was imminent. Players with high Inspiration were already seeing their life flashing before their eyes.
Yet such a brutal monster hadn’t lasted even a single second under Peace’s hands; it was casually insta-killed.
That level of performance was something even Phantom, who had been showing off quite brilliantly before, couldn’t achieve.
Given Phantom’s "for the sake of showing off his strength, he didn’t mind stomping noobs" kind of operation, if he could have done this, he’d definitely have done it long ago.
There was no doubt that Peace’s strength was at least at the level of a ranked Player.
No one was doubting Peace’s strength anymore; instead, they were wondering just how far he’d cranked his cheats.
At this progress level, "small-time cheating" couldn’t possibly explain it anymore.
Wu Chang noticed the Players’ gazes around him. He grabbed the Aberrant’s head, hauled the Aberrant up from the ground, and then said to everyone around:
"Keep fighting, don’t mind me. I’m the referee."
He took out a business card from his personal space—no idea which noble had shoved it to him last night—stuck it into the Aberrant’s chest so it got soaked in blood, then showed it to the surrounding Players.
"He committed a foul. Red card, sent off."
The next second, he disappeared from the square with the Aberrant, reappeared behind his main body, put the Aberrant in his hand onto the ground, then used teleportation once again to leave.
Julie and the others looked at the Aberrant’s corpse on the ground. There was a hideous gaping hole in the corpse’s chest. The edges of the wound weren’t smooth; jagged spikes and burrs were visible, as if someone had shoved a hand into the dead man’s chest and forcibly twisted and ripped away a large chunk of flesh and blood.