Chapter 385 - 170: Speedrunning the Game World and Getting Unparalleled Rewards
Shen Fei was extremely satisfied with the rewards he had just been awarded. Before entering this Game World, he had managed to open the trading space for the Ninth World. To make the trading space flourish, it was crucial to have special, powerful items for sale.
Right now, every ring of this Heaven-Opening Gate quest rewarded a special item. Moreover, each person received one, which meant a total of six incredibly powerful items per ring. Although they would be obliterated in a few dozen hours if they failed the quest, Shen Fei felt that, given all these powerful rewards, he was starting to like this Heaven-Opening Gate quest.
When his father had returned items like the Array Flag, Hundredfold Amplification, and Disguise Technique, he had also given Shen Fei four other special items. These were the rewards Father Shen had obtained in the previous four rings.
Shen Fei mused, If I complete the Heaven-Opening Gate quest, I’ll get fourteen special items. Father will also get another fourteen. Even without counting the ones from Huang Yi and Zhao Li, the thirty-odd items from just the two of us will be enough to make the Ninth World explode in popularity...
This is reasonable! After mentally calculating the potential rewards, Shen Fei looked up, very satisfied.
Just as he did, he saw Zhao Li nodding at him excitedly.
"Find anything?" Shen Fei immediately asked.
"Found it!" Zhao Li answered with a quick nod.
"Have you confirmed the game’s name?" Shen Fei pressed.
"No, but it doesn’t matter. I found a large city and a castle. It’s probably some kind of casual mobile game!" Zhao Li replied immediately.
Although the name of the Game World for this seventh ring hadn’t been identified—because there were just too many different kinds of games—Zhao Li’s quick Divine Sense scan had located the city at its very center.
"Here we go!"
The mission objective was found in less than five minutes. Without another word, Shen Fei opened the Teleportation Gate Tower and teleported everyone to the location Zhao Li had discovered.
"Who goes there?!"
They had just materialized in front of a magnificent, vibrantly colored, almost "kawaii" city. On the high ramparts, a buxom, crown-wearing queen stepped forward and shouted.
An Intelligent NPC? Too bad I’m in a hurry!
Hearing the immediate challenge, Shen Fei understood that this NPC had also gained sentience. Unfortunately, in his rush to complete the quest, he had no time to chat with her.
BOOM!
At the same moment the queen issued her challenge, Shen Fei’s 100 Defense Towers unleashed unparalleled beams of light. Then, a large amount of text scrolled past his vision.
After Shen Fei saw the queen get insta-killed, a cylindrical health bar appeared where she had stood. Ignoring the guards, who were frozen in stunned disbelief at their queen’s instant demise, he aimed another volley of light beams at the cylinder.
CRACK!
As the health bar emptied, the sky of this world fractured once more.
WHOOSH...
Shen Fei didn’t know what would ultimately become of a Game World whose strongest entity had just been insta-killed by him and was now connected to another world. All he could do was complete the quest as quickly as possible.
.
.
WHOOSH...
WHOOSH...
WHOOSH...
After completing the seventh ring, the team’s efficiency soared. They cooperated seamlessly, moving rapidly from one Game World to the next and quickly one-shotting the strongest entity in each. Three weeks ago, following an apocalyptic reward, creatures from the games had invaded reality. Now, because of a mandatory quest, Shen Fei and the others from reality were counter-invading the games. Furthermore, their first task upon entering each world was to insta-kill its strongest entity before immediately heading to the next.
The six-person squad traveled through one Game World after another, rapidly completing the quests. At the same time, special item rewards rapidly accumulated in everyone’s inventory. As the only player with an unlocked Experience Bar, Shen Fei also received a whopping one billion experience points after taking out each world’s strongest entity.
And so, the team advanced quickly.
Although the monster strength doubled with each ring, it was no issue at all. Under the focused Cluster Attack of Shen Fei’s 100 Defense Towers, no target could withstand a single hit. Everything was a one-shot. In that case, even if the Game World’s difficulty doubled with every ring, it didn’t matter.
It was all one-shots anyway.
Just like that, the team rapidly cleared the tenth ring, the Twelfth Ring, the fourteenth ring, the sixteenth ring...
「Five or six hours later,」
To the shock of Succubus’s Tear and Young Master Void, the quest team entered the game space of the seventeenth ring.
The game’s difficulty increased with each ring, and every four rings, there was a hidden rule for an additional increase. This pattern had been verified over the course of the previous sixteen rings. Now, entering the seventeenth ring—a new enhancement threshold—everyone knew to expect something different.
This was also the second-to-last ring. By this point, the monster strength of the Game World had already increased by more than a hundred thousand times compared to the first ring.
Because of this massive increase in monster strength, Shen Fei had started using his Array Flag and Hundredfold Amplification items back on the Twelfth Ring. After using these two items, the overall power of his Defense Towers increased by more than ten thousand times. That was why he could continue one-shotting enemies even in the sixteenth ring.
The Array Flag item allowed Shen Fei to Command 500 Defense Towers. The sheer power of a 500-tower Cluster Attack had already left his teammates numb.
Aside from the Array Flag, he had also used the Hundredfold Amplification item. After careful consideration, he chose to apply it to one of his skills. This item had several powerful uses. If used on a single Defense Tower, it could increase its Comprehensive Combat Power a hundredfold. If used on the Array Flag, it could increase the power of the 500-tower Cluster Attack by another 100 times.
But Shen Fei ultimately chose to apply the Hundredfold Amplification to one of his own skills. Setting aside the fact that items like the Array Flag are external objects, just from a pure Combat Power perspective, the overall boost to the Defense Towers after applying this to my skill will be unparalleled.
Ten Thousand Linked Bonds!
Shen Fei ultimately applied Hundredfold Amplification to this special skill. After receiving the enhancement, the "Ten Thousand Linked Bonds" skill predictably transformed, becoming "Billion Linked Bonds"! Defense Towers that originally couldn’t form Bonds now interacted in various ways, forming all sorts of new Bonds thanks to the enhanced skill. In the end, with the power of this new skill, Shen Fei was still one-shotting the Game World’s bosses.
"Holy shit!"
"Holy shit!"
"Holy shit!"
As everyone was processing these thoughts, they landed in the Game World of the seventeenth ring. Then, they all cried out in alarm. It wasn’t just that they all instantly recognized which Game World they had landed in. More importantly, they discovered that upon entering this world, they had all become two-dimensional—as flat as paper!
*Soul Fighter*!
Their seventeenth ring had brought them into an ancient, two-dimensional Game World.
WHOOSH...
Seeing that their teammates and themselves had all turned into paper people, everyone was utterly stunned.