With the Dullahan Cavalry Crossbow crafted, Nie Yan proceeded to his personal storage to retrieve the Level 20 Thief set, the Eternal Night of Silence, that he'd gotten in his trade with Withered Leaf. He sent a message to Tang Yao.「Come to Calore. I'll take you to level.」
「Finally! I've been losing my mind over here grinding Scaled Frogs!」Tang Yao grew excited after hearing that Nie Yan wanted to take him somewhere else to level. He activated a Return Scroll and arrived back in Calore.
A short while later, Nie Yan met up with Tang Yao at the transfer area.
"Where's Yao Yao and Sun? Didn't they come with you?" Nie Yan asked after seeing that Tang Yao was alone.
"No, they said they didn't want to drag us down. The two of them can hunt Scaled Frogs by themselves now anyway," Tang Yao answered.
Nie Yan pondered for a moment. If Yao Yao and Sun did tag along, the experience shared between four players would be pretty meagre. They really were better off hunting by themselves. At their current levels, the experience from Scaled Frogs was still pretty good. Although the drain on supplies was high, with them constantly having to spend money to restock on Smoke Powder, the value of the loot they'd pick up would more than make up for the costs. Besides, if they sold the surplus equipment to the guild, Guo Huai would surely compensate them fairly.
"That's fine too. It's not like levelling on Scaled Frogs is slow either."
"Yao Yao wants to bring Yu Lan (Blue Feather) and them along with her. She wants to help them get their levels up as well."
Nie Yan nodded. After the matter with Victorious Return outside Blackflame Forest, Yu Lan's team became loyal members of Asskickers United. Bringing their overall level up was the same as increasing the strength of the guild.
"Go prepare. We'll set off soon," Nie Yan said. The leaderboards showed that Heaven Breaker was already Level 26. He wasn't sure how far behind Heaven Breaker was in experience, but he definitely couldn't be allowed to surpass Tang Yao.
"Right! I'll be all good in just a moment!" Tang Yao deposited all of the loot he picked up into the guild treasury. He made a trip to the Starry Night Potion Shop to restock on consumables, and then to the general shop to buy a few Return Scrolls.
Once Tang Yao was back, the two of them stepped into the Calore transfer point. They each spent 15 silver to teleport to Kemento Town.
The town was almost completely empty when they arrived, save for a handful of NPCs walking on the main street. All of the maps in the vicinity of the town were too high of a level for the current playerbase. So very few, if any, players had a reason to come here at present.
In the previous timeline, Kemento was the most prosperous place for gem trade. There were several high-level maps nearby that were rich with gems, particularly Everlasting City. It produced the greatest quantity of high-quality gems. Almost every day, Jewelcrafters would arrive here in hordes to purchase those gems.
Both of them left Kemento, heading south where they entered a region of plains. After travelling for ten minutes, a magnificent golden castle came into view.
Tang Yao gasped in astonishment. This golden castle was even more striking than the central district of Calore! It took up an enormous area, while at the center was a tall, majestic dome that reflected a dazzling splendor.
The Everlasting City was a remnant of the Dark Era. The atrocities committed by the dragons forced many races to find ways to defend themselves. They constructed unassailable fortresses and powerful automatons to protect their people. Even at the peak of the dragon race's dominance, the main forces of the dragons failed to take this castle. As a result, it became known as the Everlasting City.
With the passing of the Dark Era, humans gained control of this land. The goblins, the original inhabitants, suffered banishment because of their ugly appearances. Although the Everlasting City had never fallen, the ingenuity of the human mind was boundless. They took to the skies on griffons, from where they released a poisonous fog, soaking the land and exterminating every last goblin.
When one race conquered another, there was only the cruel loss of lives. Savage acts weren't limited to only the dragons.
Such was the history of the Everlasting City.
To the players, however, it was simply a Level 40 map. What spawned there were Mechanical Golems, machine-type monsters.
Nie Yan and Tang Yao arrived just outside the entrance of the Everlasting City. The six-meter high iron gates which were tightly shut emanated a heavy, stifling pressure.
Nie Yan exerted all his force to push open the gates. Inside the city were open streets that were about ten meters wide. He occasionally spotted one or two skeletons, roughly the size of a child, sprawled out across the ground. They were the remains of the goblins that once inhabited this place. In their eternal rest, they cursed the humans who murdered them.
"You stay here. I'll do all the aggroing and mobbing," Nie Yan instructed. He could only rely on the Magic Bombs to take down the Mechanical Golems. Tang Yao's slow speed made him unsuited for the task, and his spells wouldn't leave so much as a scratch on them. Simply put, his only purpose here was to leech experience.
"How do we get that Energized Crystal Core you talked about?" Tang Yao asked.
"It doesn't drop from the regular Mechanical Golems. Every now and then, a blue one will appear among them. They're Level 50 instead of Level 40. They drop Energized Crystal Fragments. We need to collect a hundred of them to make an Energized Crystal Core."
"Isn't that a bit too simple?"
Nie Yan shook his head. "There's a total of one hundred and thirty blue Mechanical Golems in the outer ring of the Everlasting City. They won't respawn after being killed. Finding a hundred will be difficult. We also have to take into account that blue Mechanical Golems have three times more health than ordinary Mechanical Golems. We can only get so many Energized Crystal Fragments in a given day. As for whether we can find a hundred, that'll depend on our luck."
The other option was to kill a Legendary Mechanical Golem, but that was equivalent to a Lord-class existence. He put aside that thought for now.
Nie Yan activated Stealth before setting out. He spotted six groups of Mechanical Golems in the distance, each roughly twenty to thirty members in size.
Almost all of them were made out of a grayish metal. Built in a shape that somewhat resembled a drum, they were the automatons of a far-gone age. They were tall, clumsy, and walked fairly slowly. Mixed among them were a few blue coloured ones.
He inspected them with Transcendent Insight.
Gray Iron Mechanical Golem: Level 40Health: 3,000/3,000
Blue Armoured Mechanical Golem: Level 50Health: 8,000/8,000
Blue Armoured Mechanical Golems could only be encountered if you were one of the first to set foot into the Everlasting City. The loot they dropped was fairly good. However, they would disappear after the map was explored. The Legendary Mechanical Golem would drop an intact Energized Crystal Core after being killed for the first time. It would no longer do so in successive spawns. There were only two Energized Crystal Cores altogether in the entire map.
All of them were machine-type monsters. Furthermore, Elite Mechanical Golems would only appear in the central district. So the outer district was the best place to train by using Magic Bombs.
Nie Yan cautiously approached the group of Mechanical Golems until he was within shooting range. He took out his crossbow and fired at one of them.「Ding! Ding! Ding!」Three bolts struck the same target.
−1
−1
−1
Nie Yan's sudden assault alerted all twenty plus Mechanical Golems in the group. They charged at the offender, looking to pummel him into meat paste. They were still Level 40 monsters after all. Although they were considered slow and clumsy relative to other similarly levelled monsters, they were only somewhat slower than him.
Nie Yan hastily fled. As he passed by a different group of Mechanical Golems, he shot another round of bolts, aggroing them as well. In this fashion, he continuously aggroed them. Eventually, he had almost three to four hundred Mechanical Golems in a densely packed mob chasing after him.
"Mother of God!" Tang Yao shouted, as he stared at the enormous mass of metal barreling towards Nie Yan.
Nie Yan led these Mechanical Golems through the open streets. He turned around and threw an object from his hand which resembled a black metal ball. It flew high up, creating a parabola, then fell from the air into the crowd.
「Boom!」The Magic Bomb exploded, wreaking havoc as an enormous tongue of flame engulfed the nearest hundred Mechanical Golems. As soon as it appeared, it departed just the same, leaving behind a cloud of black smoke. The scene was quite spectacular.
−600, −600, −600...
A dense swath of damage values blanketed the sky. The Mechanical Golems caught in the blast radius were scorched black, as if they had been covered in soot.
The aggro of these Mechanical Golems grew more concentrated. They furiously pursued their target. Nie Yan noticed the Magic Bombs had come off cooldown. He turned around and threw another one.
The Magic Bomb fell from the sky.「Boom」Yet another explosion swept through the crowd of Mechanical Golems.
Every time the Magic Bombs went off cooldown, Nie Yan threw the next. The third, the fourth, and finally the fifth found its way into the crowd of monsters.「Boom!」The explosion blasted the Mechanical Golems into piles of scrap metal, littering the ground.
Roughly seventy or so Mechanical Golems died. Nie Yan gained a surge of experience. Two bursts of bright light enveloped him, accompanied by the ringing of two crisp system sounds. He looked at his character information. He had levelled up twice to Level 21!
"Holy crap! So much experience!" Tang Yao exclaimed in excitement. He directly went from Level 26 to Level 27 with 37% of his experience bar filled.
Mechanical Golems had very high health and defense, and they were already high-experience monsters to begin with. Now, with Nie Yan and Tang Yao killing them at such low levels, the experience they received was even more ludicrously high. On top of that, they were killing them in large groups. A person could hardly imagine the explosive pace they were levelling at!
Bomb after bomb was thrown into the sky, only to fall back to the earth.「Boom! Boom! Boom!」Explosions shook the outer district of the Everlasting City. As if the autumn gale had swept up the fallen leaves, what remained of the mob of Mechanical Golems was only bits of broken scrap metal.
Nie Yan had risen to Level 23. Tang Yao had hit Level 28.
"Let's go pick up the loot," Nie Yan said to the dumbstruck Tang Yao. He checked his bag. He had only gone through thirty-nine Magic Bombs. He still had plenty more left. That was merely the appetizer!
Tang Yao blankly stared at his level. Since he found out Nie Yan also played Conviction, he had seen him do one crazy move after the other. To a certain extent he had grown numb to it, but even so, he still found the situation hard to believe. He had grinded Scaled Frogs for two days straight without levelling up even once. Yet in a short span of time, he had directly gone from Level 26 to Level 28? What a fierce levelling speed! He could almost imagine the reaction on Heaven Breaker's face. That unlucky fellow desperately tried to level up, and right as he was about to reach his goal, the opponent suddenly shot up by two levels, widening the gap again. Just how demoralizing of a blow would that be?