Four Split Personalities

Game Time PM20:58

In the southern territory of Misha County, northwest of the bridge in Ebi City, the docking place of the "Kirov"

Yu Chen and the entire Princess Guard successfully boarded the airship after waiting for seven minutes. At this point, including all members of the Kirov assault team, there were less than forty people on board. All that remained were explosives, more explosives, and even more explosives. Even the engines and propellers, which had been reinforced countless times, could be detonated if their safety devices were removed correctly.

Then, it took this airship, jokingly called a "Flying Bomb" by Feather Song, ten minutes to successfully take off. After briefly hovering, it ’floated’ towards the raging battlefield not far away.

Carrying an intense killing aura...

At the same time

In front of the long bridge of Sawa City

Still standing at the head of the bridge, Cordova was covered in blood and flesh, holding the Staff of the Punisher, now soaked in black and red. The heat dissipation ports behind him continuously twisted the air, with over a man’s height of corpses and severed limbs piled up in front of him. However, the remaining three quarters of the bridge behind him were as clean as if it had been licked by a dog—-spotless as new.

It was clear that Cordova, even more terrifying than the boss-like figure he presented upon first entering Misha County, had defended this position well. He hadn’t even let a single drop of blood breach the defense.

He was like a silent, never-tiring statue, quietly defending the pure land behind him, blocking all filth in front, setting himself as the boundary, cutting off all invading enemies, cloaked in blood and without retreating half a step.

And then...

"Come on! Come at me again!"

The silent statue was no longer silent. He heavily slammed his weighted staff onto the ground and bellowed...uh, taunted the enemies in front of him—coughed, unleashed a ruthless mockery, "Come and bite your daddy! Stupid fucker!!"

"Ao ao ao ao ao!!!"

A mutant leaped up, completely disregarding Cordova’s taunts, and lunged towards the twenty or so boxes behind him with the grandeur of a soaring bird.

Then its head was blown off mid-air, and it flew sideways for more than twenty meters.

"Spit, lucky I don’t have a sense of smell."

Cordova wiped the filth that had splattered onto his face, feeling incredibly relieved, then glanced at his remaining rune energy. He overloaded the Rune of Giant Strength on his arm again, delivering a ’Basic Attack Super Wind Cannon’ with brute force, creating two massive wind pressures to smash away seventeen or eighteen mutants charging at him. He then quickly disabled the overload, and roared in anguish, "Motan you son of a bitch, if you don’t bring people over soon, I swear I’ll be hung in a dog-headed humanoid by Luwei and blasted a hundred times when I get back, and it might even be a bitch dog-head humanoid ahhhh!"

A few meters behind him, the young wolf smacked its lips and nudged the half-beast aunt sitting beside it with its elbow, whispering, "Auntie Sishi, what’s Cordova shouting about over there?"

"Auntie doesn’t understand either."

The plump Auntie Sishi, with a kind face, shook her head indulgently and caressed the young wolf’s hair. Then, glancing at Cordova, who resembled a king of mutants in the distance, she smiled, "He’s probably gone mad..."

Strictly speaking, she wasn’t wrong. Cordova was indeed close to madness, but it wasn’t because of the mutants that couldn’t cross the line. It was because of a certain old goblin who liked to call himself ’unlucky.’

"There are only damn four Revelation Crystals left, and this one has less than 10% energy remaining. That leaves three—ahhh, it’s only been a few days, found one Apocalypse Light, used three Revelation Crystals, that old thing will never let me off!"

Cordova thought furiously, but his hands didn’t soften in the slightest. He immediately activated the Gravity Rune on the Staff of the Punisher and the Wind Pressure Runes on his shoulders, delivering a ’Basic Attack Giant Windmill Squeakingly Lazy Turner,’ transforming into a destructive blood-colored tornado that smashed dozens of monsters at the forefront.

The rune energy on his panel, now glowing red, dropped to 4% at the same time.

This was the advantage of Rune Creations. Compared to Xia Lian, who could rely on her Basic Attributes to overpower anything even without Divine Arts, Cordova, who had been defending the bridge for over ten hours, was in much better condition than the Elf Holy Woman. Neither the quality of his interceptions nor the efficiency of killing had decreased in the slightest, and he even improved slightly due to becoming acquainted with the process—it was devilishly tough.

The first advantage for players is the inherent resilience to mental exhaustion. As long as they don’t sacrifice their brain cells like Motan, or exhaust their Physical Strength Values like Yu Chen, most players can handle the mental load far better than NPCs. If we imagine a Middle Rank NPC Mage conjuring two Advanced Stage Magic spells, they’d be left with splitting headaches and depleted Magic Power, as weak as a dying dog. Although players would also run out of Magic Power, they would not have such severe headaches; at worst, they’d experience a range of discomfort within what a normal person could endure.

So when mental toughness was quantified, Xia Lian simply couldn’t compete with Cordova. Of course, this was under the condition that she couldn’t use Divine Arts.

Another advantage that Cordova had was irreplicable, even among players. That is, before energy was fully depleted, his strength would never be discounted by factors like Physical Strength Value or Health Points.