Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
Under each huge stone tablet was a shallow palm silhouette. As long as one pressed on it, they would be able to open the challenge inheritance.
In the beginning, the stone tablet was only activated when a curious brother laid his hand on it.
At this point, the onlookers were all hesitant to move forward, so it was up to Su Hao to step forward bravely.
When the extras… cough, when the students from Dragon City University saw this, they asked, “Why don’t you wait a little longer and collect more information? Maybe then you’d be able to pass two more stages?”
“We’re explorers, we can’t be so inflexible and stubborn.” Su Hao said casually. “The ancient city is really big, you know, if I fail here, I’ll just go somewhere else to look for opportunities.”
“You’re right!”
Ignoring the enlightened look of a senior, Su Hao turned to Butterfly as it looked at him with a “???” gaze, “Butterfly, we are explorers, which means we must have a spirit for exploration and research, so… why don’t you go ahead and try pressing it?”
In its normal form, Butterfly had a palm was the same size as a minor’s.
Its body was different from humans, but there really wasn’t much difference when it came to palm prints.
But it did have a big head… butterfly wanted to ignore the stupid Sprite Trainer, but after pondering for a while, it couldn’t control its curiosity!
With a bang, it returned to its original state. Its soft body flew to the bottom of the stone tablet, where it was like a black wall. It stretched out its palm, slowly and slowly, and finally pressed on the outline of that palm.
“Beep…”
That was Su Hao’s own voice-over.
The huge stone tablet didn’t move at all. As expected, the challenge was meant for human Sprite Trainers.
Su Hao reached out and pressed it.
“Buzz…” A few streams of light spread out from the center of the palm print. In the next moment, a force that he couldn’t feel enveloped him. When he regained his senses, he had already appeared inside the square.
It was 200 meters away from where he was just now.
If not for the fact that he was mentally prepared, he would have broken out in a cold sweat on such a hot day.
“Was spatial teleportation always this awesome?”
He then thought of the Sprite Trainer’s protective barrier. It could block attacks, but it just so happened that it couldn’t deal with this kind of teleportation?
Senior Wu’s Psychic power… Trading Puppet’s Psychic Grab or the rolling waves couldn’t trigger the barrier either.
This barrier would be much more useful than unique skills when dealing with Sprite Trainers.
Cough, he was thinking too far ahead again.
He stretched out his hands and spread his fingers. In an instant, Butterfly and Dazed Crow were the first to make an appearance.
After two seconds, he silently chanted “Sprite Commandeering: Summon”. The white, fat, and big fat bear, as well as the domineering-looking Dumb Unicorn, also appeared.
Last was the cheerleader, Bright Nights.
“Fufu ~!”
At the same time, the contents of the first assessment had already appeared.
It was the challenge “Push the Blackstone Mountain”, which was also the one with the highest frequency among the contents of the first stage.
Butterfly had already flown forward.
After going around the black stone mountain twice, it enveloped its perception with the spirit of research. Then, it stretched out its hand and knocked on it and even wanted to take a piece of it home. The palm formed by its psychic power pushed on it, but it didn’t move.
It could only sigh in disappointment. With its hand supporting its chin, legs crossed, and its knees slightly bent, it hung in mid-air like it was sitting on a soft sofa and continued to observe the black stone mountain.
At this point, the countdown on the stone tablet had already begun.
The big fat bear, whose paw was pressed against the black stone mountain, started exerting force.
“Howl—”
The bear clan’s power erupted abruptly. For a moment, boom, boom, the whole stone mountain slowly moved.
The Dumb Unicorn also tilted its head sideways and used its strength to push forward.
“Fufu ~ Fufu ~!”
Little Bright Night’s cheers made the Big Fatty Bear work even harder.
…
At this point, there were a few more Sprite Trainers outside the square.
Whether it was the older audience or the new audience, they all stared unblinkingly at Su Hao and the sprites inside.
They were afraid of missing out on any details.
“Currently, only three different types assessments have been used for the first stage.”`
“The second stage of the assessment isn’t difficult either, but be careful, one of the possible assessment requires sprites to know how to fly… Even if you don’t have a flying sprite, if you have one that can get into the air for a short period of time with enough speed, you can also pass.”
“But if you have a flying sprite, that’s basically a free stage with no effort required. Our Dragon Nation’s Sprite Trainers are pretty lucky.”
The one who spoke was a young man in white who held a fan in his hand.
When the young man saw that many Dragon Nation Sprite Trainers were looking at him, he opened his fan and looked into the square.
“I, Bai Xiaoming, have already analyzed the 15 types of assessment content that have appeared so far and concluded some patterns.”
“The challenges of the ancient city are actually assessing the comprehensive ability of our team’s sprite. It has to have strength, be able to fly, be able to extinguish fire, be as immovable as a mountain, be resistant to hammering, isolate detection, cut through everything, and so on. But if the sprite is inferior in some aspects, we can also make up for it through unique skills and secret techniques.”
“For example, one can use unique skills instead of strength alone to push the stone mountain… In most of the stages, I’ve found the easiest method to pass. Except for the stage Old Brother Yan Chuan encountered just now. He was really unlucky.
Bai Xiaoming looked at the symbols on the stone tablet, and his eyes gradually widened.
[Third stage: Defense Counterattack]
[Defeat all enemies in 30 seconds with just defensive moves.]
“It’s the same stage that Big Boss Yan Chuan encountered just now!” A Dragon Nation Sprite Trainer cursed secretly. “Why do we have such bad luck!”
Bai Xiaoming frowned. “The key to this stage is to use defensive unique skills to defeat the enemy. Currently, defensive unique skills with killing power include ‘Ring of Fire Resistance’ and ‘Armor of Thorns’, but the destructive power of those unique skills are too weak!”
Just now, the quasi-Heavenly King Sprite Trainer Yan Chuan had a sprite use the “Ring of Fire Resistance”, but it was clearly far from enough to defeat all the enemies.
In the 20th second, Yan Chuan changed his strategy and made his sprite spray out a sea of fire. He wanted to see if it would work since it wasn’t a unique skill, but… he was directly eliminated.
Bai Xiaoming looked at the person inside. “What will he do? Will he also stop at the third stage?”
At this moment, in the square.
Like before, it created illusions. In just a moment, five illusionary figures appeared around him.
They looked a little like Nightmare Terrors, but they were dazed.
As soon as they appeared, pitch-black Energy Balls condensed in front of them—they were Shadow Energy Balls. They looked somewhat similar to dark-element Energy Balls, but their characteristics were completely different.
It was fast and ghostly.
Energy balls flew over and exploded in mid-air.
It hit the Psychic Shield set up by Butterfly.
“Gurgle~!”
“The attack strength seems to be roughly at early-stage elite-level, it’s not that strong.”
But the difficult part right now wasn’t the strength of their attack, but… how to get rid of the five illusionary figures without attacking.
Su Hao had a plan. “Your turn.” He looked at the big fat bear.
The bear howled and spread its arms.
Thunder God Battle Armor Fusion!
In less than a second, a bluish-purple battle armor appeared on its body, and the speed of its release became even faster.
After putting on the battle armor, the Big Fat Bear made another “Ao Ao” sound, and its voice became domineering. The whole bear was so confident that it stepped out of the range of the Psychic Shield without any fear and faced the incoming Shadow Energy Ball.
Bang~!
The exploded Energy Ball turned into wisps of black smoke, as if it wanted to wrap around the big fat bear, but in the next moment, it was wiped out by the lightning energy on the armor.
The big fat bear looked even more confident. It stretched out its bear paw and made a provocative gesture. “Howl ~! (Who else!)”
However, no one paid any attention to it. They could only urge it to “hurry up, if you can’t do it, the game time might even be halved”.
The confident Tyrannical Bear’s face fell. It didn’t dare to waste any more time. It took a few steps forward and arrived in front of a fake ghost. With its big belly, it immediately exploded the Energy Ball that it had just condensed.
The exploding shadow energy came from the same source as the shadow. It didn’t cause any damage to the opponent, but it triggered the thunder arc of the battle armor.
That was a passive ability—as long as it was attacked, it would crackle.
Blue-purple thunder arcs shot out. The shadow, which wasn’t weak and could last more than ten seconds under the grilling of the Ring of Fire, was directly pierced through like a bubble.
Bam—!
That sound shocked some of the audience as it proved their initial thoughts wrong.
Some foreign Sprite Trainers who were just laughing and thinking, “As expected, Dragon Nation is going to fail again” suddenly froze.
“It, it only dealt with one illusion, there are still four left, and now there’s only… 22 seconds left!”
One took up eight seconds, five would need 40 seconds!
Some foreign Sprite Trainers started laughing again. The Dragon Nation’s Sprite Trainers stared unblinkingly, and some clenched their fists nervously.
In the square.
The big fat bear started to dawdle for a long while. It glanced at the time and got scared.
If it couldn’t complete the mission…
Then its bear life will only be gloomy ~!
For the game, for the tribe, for Boss Butterfly, this bear will work hard ~!
It didn’t dare to use the secret manual of “Meatball Thunder Ball”, and only ran out in large strides, came in front of another shadow, and suddenly stopped.
At this moment, the big fat bear didn’t wait for the shadow to cast the Energy Ball. Instead, it raised its head and stuck out its chest, sticking right onto it.
There was no collision, only light contact.
But in an instant, when the armor seemed to be passing through the illusory figure…
Sizzle—
The MVP Thunder Arc appeared again, swimming around the armor and directly extinguishing the shadow.
When the countdown stopped at 5 seconds, the symbols “Pass” appeared.
The bear had completed its mission, ooh!
The Big Fat Bear, which had heaved a sigh of relief, sat on the ground. Its armor and stone slab collided, producing “Kuang Kuang” sounds.
At the same time…
A stone platform rose in the center of the square, on which were two small black bottles.
Su Hao walked forward.
[Ding! Intelligence Points +1]
[Ding! Intelligence Points +1]
He paused for a moment before picking up the two small black bottles and looking at the interface.
“It’s not a rare ingredient, but it’s actually labeled as a certain type of medicine that can moderately increase the quality of various aspects.”
“The increase shouldn’t be as great as treasures like the Heart of the Thousand-Year Tree. There didn’t seem to be any side effects, and the manufacturing cost isn’t very high. However, it wouldn’t be worth it for him to use it.”
Su Hao could hand it over to Dragon Nation and it would be considered as a great contribution. However, he also had an immature idea, which was to try and research it himself.
After all, he was a high-level Sprite Cultivator with a personal laboratory.
He passed the next few stages very smoothly.
[Fourth Stage: The sprite will be beaten a hundred times]
“This assessment is very difficult. Someone in the previous stage couldn’t even withstand 100 strikes in the third stage, let alone 150 now. I bet that the Dragon Nation’s Sprite Trainer will definitely kneel in this stage.”
Not long later.
Bang~!
Sizzle—!
At the 50th hit, a certain sledgehammer that had turned into reality was annihilated by the lightning force reflected by the armor.
The big fat bear had an innocent look on its face.
A question mark appeared above one of the Sprite Trainer’s head.
But the rules didn’t forbid it.
Su Hao took away the prize and heard it again. “Ding! Intelligence Points+1.”
[Fifth Stage: Breaking through the barrier]
A black gate appeared, bound by countless chains. It was tightly closed without any gaps.
A Sprite Trainer said,
“The person who held the record from before was also defeated here. Mr. Kang Jie’s Gargoyle Dragon has an extraordinary high level, but it couldn’t break the black gate within the stipulated time… I bet this young Dragon Nation Sprite Trainer definitely can’t do it either!”
So, the next second.
Bang!!!
Lightning erupted, illuminating the dark square in a bluish-purple color. It also blasted a large gap in the tightly closed black gate wrapped in chains.
Dragon Nation’s Sprite Trainer: “Damn!”
The foreign Sprite Trainer: “Impossible! Absolutely impossible!”
No one noticed that a lightning mark suddenly appeared on the Thunder Bear’s forehead, then quickly faded and disappeared.
The prize appeared, and a beam of light enveloped the big fat bear.
At the same time, Su Hao heard, “Ding! Intelligence Points+2.”
[Sixth Stage: Stone Slicing Ball]
[Within 30 seconds, cut off all the stone balls falling from the sky without using spiritual force.]
Stone balls appeared in the air and fell rapidly.
The number gradually increased, and some stone balls also turned from physical to illusionary.
A Sprite Trainer spoke again.
“Without using spiritual force, it’s impossible to cut off those illusionary rocks…”
The spiritual pearls flew out, and stone balls shattered one after another.
Su Hao picked up the item, and a familiar prompt sounded in his ears again. “Ding! Intelligence Points+3.”
[7th Stage: Hide-and-seek]
[Find the 100 ghost-element sprites hiding in the square within 30 seconds.]
The countdown started. The whole square was silent, without any changes.
A certain Sprite Trainer said again,
“If it were just regular ghost-element sprites hiding, they might leave traces, but right now, the 100 illusionary ghost-element sprites are directly produced in the square, it’s impossible to find them. I bet… What are you guys doing! Woo…”
Butterfly used its unique skill, ‘Spiritual Perception’. Its eyes closed for four to five seconds before suddenly opening.
It sprayed out many light dots, turning into illusionary butterflies in the air. It flapped its wings and plunged into the ground.
In just ten seconds, ghost-element sprites with dazed eyes were chased out.
A sheepskin scroll appeared, and a familiar voice continued to ring in his ears. “Ding! Intelligence Points+5.”
[Eighth stage…]
A certain Sprite Trainer: “Woo woo woo… Let go of me!”
Su Hao heard it again. “Ding! Intelligence Points+3.”
Su Hao had already broken the record and far exceeded it.
At this point, even the envious and jealous foreign Sprite Trainers couldn’t say anything.
He just grabbed the key points of the guide and covered a certain Sprite Trainer’s mouth.
Time ticked, and new symbols appeared on the stone tablet again.
[9th Stage: Battle Assessment]
[Defeat the five sprites in front of you]
In an instant, light beams shot out of the stone tablet, turning illusion into reality, interweaving into five Nightmare Terrors covered in thick black mist with terrifying auras.
“Jie jie jie jie” echoed.
The extraordinary aura pressure exerted waves of cold wind and kept howling in the sky above the square.
A Sprite Trainer broke free from the others.
“Hahahaha, the Dragon Nation Sprite Trainer will definitely lose this time!”
“His sprites aren’t strong, they just have comprehensive skills and happened to encounter the right questions. But right now, the ninth stage is a test of hard ability, there’s no way to take advantage of it! The Nightmare Terrors that those few transformed into are also not ordinary extraordinary!”
“It’s the ghost-element again.. When stacked together, the threat level increased by several times… I bet that he’ll definitely kneel at this level!”