The Era of Gods

The fourth level can yield a thousand experience points, ten points, ten thousand gold coins, a hundred lumber and minerals, as well as ten Riflemen Cards, five Archer Cards, twenty griffins, two Archers Barracks Fragments, and one point of Holy Hall Prestige.

Lin Xiao finished all six copies of the fourth level in one go, obtaining a total of six thousand experience points, sixty points, sixty thousand gold coins, six hundred lumber and minerals, along with sixty Riflemen Cards, thirty Archer Cards, a hundred and twenty griffins, twelve Archers Barracks Fragments, and six points of Holy Hall Prestige.

Setting aside the rest for now, he first synthesized ten Archers Barracks Fragments into an Archer Camp Card and equipped it in a Nest Slot.

The synthesized First Level Archer Camp Card could produce a hundred Archers weekly, exactly equivalent to one Archer Card, and four hundred in a month over four weeks.

The output wasn’t much, but the barracks could be upgraded to increase production.

Then, he synthesized sixty Riflemen Cards, using four cards to make one Elite Rifleman Card, resulting in fifteen Elite Rifleman Cards added to the eight he already had, totaling twenty-three Elite Rifleman Cards, along with one Veteran and one New Soldier Gunman Card.

He combined thirty Archer Cards into seven Elite Archers plus one Veteran Archer, and with the previously leftover one Elite and one New Archer Card, he now had a total of eight Elite Archers and one New Archer Card.

He stored the one hundred and twenty griffins for the time being, as possessing four individuals seemed superfluous for a hero who was only at First Level.

Next, he spent twenty thousand gold coins and fifty units of lumber and minerals, and then fifty thousand gold coins and two hundred units of lumber and minerals to upgrade the First Level Archer Camp to Level 2 and Level 3 Archer Camps respectively.

The Level 2 Archer Camp’s weekly output was two hundred, while Level 3′ s was three hundred, with a total of twelve hundred over four weeks.

“Notbadatall!”

Putting other things aside, it was a continuous source of Archers for recruitment, accumulation makes a heap.

Returning to that initial crossroads, Lin Xiao headed right without looking back, along the path towards Barbaric City.

Of course, he wasn’t going to battle; he was just heading over to exchange some stuff.

He didn’t dare venture towards Sacred Gate now, but he needed to transform his surplus resources into something else, and at present, only a city belonging to the City of Glory over there had a large congregation of heroes. Those two players who had performed True-Body Descends were still grinding copies near Sacred Gate and had not arrived, so it was relatively safe.

About ten-plus kilometers along the main road led to a mountain range of unknown length at a pass. Going through that pass to the other side, one entered a contested territory. The City of Strength, a hub for heroes, was not far beyond the pass.

Inside the castle, he sawYi Lei and others present as well, presumably because they also did not dare to stay there and had all run here.

Upon his entry into the city, Yi Lei and the others gathered together to watch him stealthily, whispering among themselves.

Here, Lin Xiao went to the castle’s trading area and sold all the extra New Soldier Gunmen and Archers for gold coins. Then he traded ten Elite Rifleman Cards for five Griffin Cards in a barter exchange.

Normally, it would take ten Riflemen Cards to exchange for one Griffin Card, but Elite Rifleman Cards were different—their value was quite high.

He then used the Creation Rubik’s Cube to fuse four Griffin Cards into one Elite Griffin Card.

An Elite Griffin’s combat power was in no way inferior to any Fifth-Level creature, which was as far as a First-Level hero could command. Elite creatures were just too hard to come by.

Based on the fact that he had had so many Elite creatures for so long and hadn’t managed to train a single more advanced creature, he knew how rare they were.

A griffin was a lion-like beast with wings, typically three meters long, but an Elite Griffin grew to about four meters, greatly enhancing its combat power.

The combat power of a hundred Elite Griffins was enough to make Lin Xiao willing to allocate four hundred population slots to them, as a hundred Elite Griffins were much stronger than four hundred Riflemen.

But as he was about to equip them, Lin Xiao paused for a moment, struck by a sudden idea—could he fuse two different kinds of Soldier Cards?

Having deeply experienced the miraculous abilities of the Creation Magic Cube, having tried all sorts of difficult fusions, it seemed unreasonable that this couldn’t be done.

No sooner said than done, he took out one Elite Archer Card and the newly synthesized Elite Griffin Card, put them into the Magic Cube Space and chose to fuse them. The Magic Cube Space immediately provided feedback—a need for Creation Energy.

emmm

Lin Xiao hesitated.

He now had only one unit of Creation Energy left. Would it be worth it to use it this way?

But the Creation Rubik’s Cube quickly provided feedback that this fusion would require only a very small amount of Creation Energy, and he immediately made his decision to proceed.

With a thought, the two cards merged into a ball of white light, then a trace… roughly one-tenth of one unit of Creation Energy flew out of the Magic Cube and into the white light. The white light rapidly revealed a layer of faint silver light, growing brighter and brighter.

After a minute, the white light turned into a ball of silver light, and the fusion was successful.

Special Troop Card: Griffin Archer, a Level 3 Rare creature.

A simple introduction: the troop class was still rated as Level 3, but with a rare prefix, which suggested there might be something desirable about it.

However, this didn’t necessarily mean it would be stronger than griffins. Rarity represented scarcity, not necessarily greater strength.

Of course, generally, those with this prefix were a bit stronger than the common ones.

Now was not a good time to try them out, so after making sure he was prepared, Lin Xiao left the City of Strength directly.

As soon as he left, a figure stealthily appeared at the city gate. After a while, several figures appeared there as well, and they quickly followed him as his figure nearly disappeared from sight.

After leaving the City of Strength, he paused at an intersection not far from the city and took a turn down a different path.

To go upwards meant entering the disputed territories and clashing with heroes from the Barbaric City, while going downwards also led to contested territories, but not to battlefields, rather other wilderness areas.

After much consideration, he decided to explore the wilderness instead of trying his luck on the battlefield.

With the elite warriors he had accrued, Lin Xiao could perform quite well on the battlefield, but constantly winning would make him an easy target for all, too noticeable, and likely to draw unwanted attention, such as from those players who had achieved True-Body Descend. It was better to explore the wild.

He was not the only hero with this thought in mind. Passing a grassland frequently trampled bare by large troops, several heroes seemed to be looking at something at the edge of the forest. Lin Xiao, without leaving any trace, deviated from the main road to keep his distance from them and entered the jungle.

Luckily, he had worried unnecessarily. Those heroes merely stopped there without any other intent, showing no movement even as he entered deeper into the jungle.

Not long after he left, Yi Lei, along with three companions, caught up. The heroes looked at them with strange glances as if sensing something, and after Yi Lei was gone, the leading hero signaled his companions and also stealthily followed.

This jungle wasn’t far from the Power Castle, and nearby areas had been scoured by the comings and goings of heroes countless times, leaving not even a moderately large creature other than poisonous insects.

Upon reaching the depths of the jungle, where the City of Strength was no longer visible, Lin Xiao stopped and recalled the two hundred Elite Archers. Following the recruitment price of fifty gold coins for a Griffin Archer, he spent a total of five thousand gold coins to summon all the Elite Griffin Archers on the card.

Each griffin was three meters long with a wingspan of about six meters, possessing a lion’s head, and a pair of eagle-like talons, both thick and sharp. A scratch from these talons could cause serious pain.

Normal griffins were melee troops that relied on their sharp talons and fierce bites, being quite powerful in combat and ranking high among Level 3 troops.

However, on the back of his griffins sat Archers donned in fine Leather Armour, who could rain arrows down from high above. The actual combat effect was considerably powerful.

In this world, where rules were gamified, combat rules stayed true to reality. Attacking aerial units with ranged units was not as straightforward as in games, where hits easily connected. Instead, factors such as wind direction and gravity had to be considered, making the hit rate quite low unless there was large-scale concentrated fire from ranged units.

From the air, shooting arrows downwards brought immense advantages, making it incomparable to ground forces.

After merely one glance, Lin Xiao decided to combine a Gryphon Barracks Card with the Archer Camp Card in his hand to create a Gryphon Archer Barracks.

Always fusing slowly was too bothersome; getting a Griffin Archer Card directly in one step was the best approach.

Besides, in the future, he could attempt to create new, stronger troops by fusing different troop types.

To stand out in the Ruins of Myriad, to defeat those True-Body Descend powerhouses and seize treasures, mere growth was not satisfying; he had to find another path.

Letting these hundred Elite Griffin Archers, whose combat power was comparable to Level 4 troops, circle in the sky, Lin Xiao led his troops deeper into the jungle.

Several hours later, they arrived by a river within the forest. By now they were deep in the jungle. Following the river, which was thirty to forty meters wide, upstream for a few kilometers, he saw a circle of trees, each five to six meters tall and exceptionally thick.

With a gesture, he commanded his troops to halt.

These were not real trees, but rather a dozen Fifth Level tree spirits from the forest faction, known as tree spirits or treants in other worlds.

These creatures were among the lankiest and hardest to kill of the Fifth Level troops.

Instructed by his subordinates, Lin Xiao noticed a treasure chest in the middle of the tree spirits.

But when he climbed up a surrounding tree and saw only an empty chest in the center, he slid down, disappointed, and prepared to leave.

According to the rules of this world, powerful monsters that spawned in the wilderness had a chance to generate treasure chests nearby, and the stronger the guardians, the better the contents of the chests. Obviously, these tree spirits once guarded a chest, but it had already been taken.

However, it was puzzling that the treasure chest had been removed without the tree spirit guardians being killed.

Without giving it much thought, as there was no chest, he decided to move on and continue his exploration.

His troops bypassed the tree spirits and continued onward, yet the further they went, the wider the river became. Though the waters became calmer, the number of monsters within the river noticeably increased.