Chapter 42
Keith held the necklace and cast Inspect.
(Divine, Equipment) War Array Receiver – Level 600
Description: The wearer will gain a portion of stats from each person using a War Array linked to this item.
Note 1: The maximum distance between the Receiver and Broadcast War Arrays is 1 mile before the connection breaks.
After Keith read the item’s details, Hadjar handed him a small metal briefcase, explaining, “You’ll get a supply package every day you’re a War Array guardian. Inside are some divine grade potions. Use them wisely.”
Keith opened the briefcase, discovering three vials filled with shimmering liquid.
(Divine, Potion) Serenity – Level 600
Description: Consume to gain a buff that reduces the mana cost of all actions by 40% for two minutes.
(Divine, Potion) Ascent – Level 650
Description: Consume to raise the grade of a single skill by one for five minutes.
Note 1: Cannot raise a skill to transcendant grade.
(Divine, Potion) Barkskin – Level 600
Description: Consume to gain a buff that reduces all damage taken by 30% for five minutes.
“Wow,” Keith gasped, amazed by the potion’s effects.
At the side, Hadjar glanced at his watch and frowned. “We don’t have much time left. Follow me, I’ll show you the area you’re responsible for.”
***
A short period later, Keith hovered above the Blockade, waiting for the monster horde to arrive.
He looked across the battlefield, feeling tense.
Just then, he remembered the War Array Reciever and withdrew it from his inventory.
The moment he equipped it, his mana sense found thousands of lines connecting him to the troops below. From the connection came a portion of their stats. Alone, it was nothing much, but combined, it transformed Keith, elevating his combat power to a whole new level.
After overcoming a potent wave of sensory overload, Keith opened his status panel and cursed, “Slimeballs!”
If his eyes weren’t deceiving him, his health now sat at 5.4 million and his mana at 16 million. That was around a tenfold increase. More importantly, his stats skyrocketed by the same amount. The first thing he thought of was how strong his spells were now.
“This changes things,” Keith muttered to himself.
With the tremendous increase in power, he had to rethink how he would engage the monster horde. Spells he had phased out of his combat style like Fireball might be potent enough to use again. After all, his damage scaled off of his intelligence stat.
With time to spare, Keith scrutinized all his skills.
One of them soon caught his attention.
(Legendary, Skill) Cluster Bomb – Level 351
Description: Cast a Fireball that explodes upon contact, releasing a dozen smaller Fireballs around the target. The follow-up Fireballs deal 25% damage.
Since Cluster Bomb was legendary grade, it didn’t deal that much damage. However, Keith now had so much intelligence that it effectively boosted a legendary grade skill to a mythic or even ancient grade in terms of damage output.
Of course, while the same could be said for Keith’s Arsenal of the Desert, right now, what mattered to him was mana consumption.
Facing the monster horde for days, weeks, or months on end was a test of his endurance.
In group combat, a Cluster Bomb that cost 500 mana was more useful to him than Arsenal of the Desert which cost tens of thousands.
Thinking it through, Keith decided to use low-grade skills when targeting groups of monsters and Arsenal of the Desert plus Combustion to deal with high-priority targets.
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Shortly after Keith sorted through his skills, the monster horde appeared on the horizon, rampaging across the Grandsky Plains.
The strategy of using mortars, artillery, Repulsive arrays, and poison gas went unchanged. For a brief period, Keith remained motionless in the air, scanning the monster horde for his target.
There! Keith narrowed his eyes.
(Divine) Tyrannical Earth Lion – Level 850
Health: 130,000,000/130,000,000
The Tyrannical Earth Lion was over twenty feet tall, possessing thick muscles that put bodybuilders to shame. Its skin was earthy brown and shined with a metallic luster.
When Keith saw it come ever closer to the Blockade, he clenched his teeth and flew out to meet it. On the way, he conjured fifteen weapons from Arsenal of the Desert.
“Go,” Keith waved his hand, sending them ahead.
WHOOSH!
They fanned out and attacked the Tyrannical Earth Lion from all directions.
The moment they made contact, the sound of metal colliding with metal rang out as the weapons bounced off the Tyrannical Earth Lion’s hardened skin. Enraged, rock spikes grew off its body and shot outward, smashing Keith’s conjured weapons to bits.
Keith’s expression darkened at the sight.
The Tyrannical Earth Lion was of the earth element, the same element as Arsenal of the Desert. That was why the skill was so ineffective.
Keith knew there was no point in trying again.
To prevent any accidents from occurring, he summoned a dozen Laegur Beam arrays.
This time, the Tyrannical Earth Lion’s sturdy defense proved less effective. The beams burrowed deep into its body, wounding it, though not as much as Keith expected.
Slimeballs, the Laegur Beam array isn’t a skill and my intelligence stat doesn’t affect it, Keith thought anxiously.
Thankfully, flames burst forth from the monster’s wounds and dealt additional damage, showing that Combustion still worked.
Keith dodged the Tyrannical Earth Lion’s counterattack and glanced at its details.
(Divine) Tyrannical Earth Lion – Level 850
Health: 119,300,000/130,000,000
He lowered the monster’s health by less than 10% in exchange for consuming 1.5 million mana. A simple calculation informed him that to kill it with the Laegur Beam arrays, he’d need to spend over 15 million mana.
That won’t do, Keith thought as he teleported to the side, avoiding another attack.
Looking around, Keith spotted a high level monster in the distance – a level 860 Troll Berserker. It would arrive within two minutes.
Deciding on a plan, Keith fought back and forth with the Tyrannical Earth Lion, doing his best to avoid taking damage. When the Troll Berserker came near, Keith withdrew a potion from his inventory and drank its contents.
Serenity!
For two minutes, all his actions would consume 40% less mana.
Without worrying about mana costs, Keith summoned a dozen Laegur Beam arrays back to back. In moments, the Tyrannical Earth Lion collapsed in flames, shortly followed by the Troll Berserker.
Ignoring the level up notifications, Keith saw he still had time before Serenity wore off, so he looked down at the endless monster horde and multicast Cluster Bomb among other skills repeatedly. With how low the mana costs were, Keith could cast thousands of low-grade skills like Cluster Bomb without any issue.
Immediately, the monster horde took heavy damage.
Keith’s boosted intelligence stat combined with his Mana Body made a legendary grade skill perform almost three grades higher, and under the endless barrage, the monster horde couldn’t take it.
From afar, the defenders atop the Blockade looked out, mouth agape, as Keith hovered in the air, thousands of skills raining down from his position. He alone fired more projectiles than all the mortars and artillery added together.
The sight was mesmerizing.
Under Keith’s firepower, entire groups of monsters perished, and their formations collapsed. The defenders engaged in melee combat felt the pressure lessen considerably.
Finally, Serenity wore off, and Keith toned down his output.
When an hour passed, he checked his mana consumption and saw he spent over twenty million with his Mana Erosion gauge at 16%.
Right when Keith was nearing the limit he set for himself, three roars rang out over the battlefield.
Keith glanced around and saw three high level monsters converging on his location. They were a Primal Anaconda, an Undead Tyrant, and a Golden Ape.
Sighing, he drank the potion called Ascent, upset that he had to use it.
Keith felt no fear at their approach.
Rather, the moment he read the details of Ascent, he knew he had a trump card that could guarantee his life. Normally, Ascent upgraded a skill by one grade, excluding transcendent grade. While powerful, it was still within the means of a divine grade potion.
But what about Keith’s Mana Body?
If Ascent upgraded Arsenal of the Desert to celestial grade, would Keith’s Mana Body raise it to transcendent?
After drinking Ascent, Keith soon found the answer by reading Arsenal of the Desert’s details.
It did.
Wearing a wide smile, Keith raised his head to the sky and laughed.
According to Yara, transcendent grade skills were so rare that less than twenty had ever dropped from monsters after all these years. And now, thanks to Keith’s transcendent grade Mana Body, he was the temporary owner of one.
How powerful was a transcendent grade skill?
Keith wanted to find out!
Looking at the three level 850+ monsters charging toward him, Keith considered them as target practice. Waving his hand, he conjured fifteen greatswords. Compared to before, their appearance changed greatly. The sand, previously dull, shined golden with glory. There was even a faint aura around each weapon.
“Go,” Keith whispered, sending five greatswords toward each monster.
Shockingly, the moment they moved, they sliced through space, leaving black cracks in their wake.
The greatswords traveled faster than Keith could react, and before he realized it, they had already plunged into each monster. From front to back, they faced no resistance and forcibly carved a bloody trail through the monster’s bodies.
Keith’s eyes widened in disbelief.
In one moment, the monsters were charging forward full of vigor, and in the next, they collapsed, their health drained to zero.
A series of level up notifications entered the corner of Keith’s field of view, but he ignored it, struggling to process what just happened.
Right then, Keith felt a familiar hollow sensation.
Opening his status panel, he was alarmed to discover his Mana Erosion value shot up to 49%. Using a transcendent grade skill had a much higher mana cost than he expected.
Taking a breath, Keith didn’t dare to conjure any more weapons.
Fortunately, once Arsenal of the Desert’s weapons were summoned, they didn’t consume any more mana. And so, Keith used the last four minutes of Ascent to kill the highest-level monsters in the vicinity.
An hour later, the last monster died, and the battle was over.
Hovering in the sky, Keith checked his status panel and discovered he was level 699.
So close! Keith thought.
Starting at level 700, a person gained 10 allocatable stat points per level, up from 5.
It was also the first major threshold to level 1,000.
Based on what Yara told him, Keith knew his leveling speed would drop drastically after tomorrow, as the experience required to level up past level 700 grew increasingly absurd.
Regardless, it was still something to look forward to.
Closing his status panel, Keith opened the Blockade Event ranking list and searched for his position.
#101!
Even when he missed four days, his rank rose instead of dropping.
It was all thanks to the combination of his Mana Body and Ascent.
Without a transcendent grade skill backing him up, he would’ve had a hard time facing three high-level monsters at once.