```
This hasty appearance clearly indicates a failed mission.
Who would choose the Silver Hero difficulty for their Level 1 mission?
Each year, only about five prodigies can complete such difficult missions.
Clearly, Zi Liyuan is not among them, but as long as he doesn't die prematurely, he is very likely to become a power in the future.
Thinking of this, Fan Yuer felt a tangle of emotions, and even Zi Liyuan's detailed information that he had filled out came to mind, including his address.
"Sigh, with mediocre talent and an awakened life-type secondary profession, in a few years, he's bound to be married off by his family."
With a sigh, Fan Yuer remained indecisive.
The hurriedly departing Zi Liyuan had already arrived at the imperial official auction house and, without hesitation, spent 100 million Dragon Coins to instantly purchase a low-level instance dungeon seal draw.
He also searched out several one-time-use life-saving items and teleportation scroll draws, spending more than ten million Dragon Coins before hastily heading to White Crane Academy's altar square.
He finally arrived at the altar square before half-past ten in the evening, and without saying another word, plunged into the instance dungeon space.
After successfully completing his Level 1 upgrade, the number of times he could run low-level instance dungeons increased by one, resetting at midnight each day.
Today, he could still run a low-level instance dungeon and naturally did not want to waste the opportunity, after all, it could mean a vast amount of experience!
On his way there, he calculated the experience points in his experience pool and found that he needed a total of 2 million experience points to reach Level 25!
With only 1.57 million in his experience pool, he still needed 430,000 experience points to reach Level 25!
Thinking about the tremendous amount of experience needed to upgrade his skills, he nearly felt his forehead burst from stress.
"[A Level 1 player detected, please choose the type of instance dungeon to open. You may now open (1) Newbie Instance Dungeon, (2) Level 1 Instance Dungeon, please choose the type.]"
"Choose (2) Level 1 Instance Dungeon!"
"[Player has opened a Level 1 Instance Dungeon, available instance dungeons Level 21-40: Ogre Forest (Level 40), Shadow Valley (Level 35)...]"
Looking at over a hundred available instance dungeons, Zi Liyuan felt a headache coming on.
High school had only taught him about some low-level instance dungeons, but he had no knowledge of Level 1 instance dungeons, and he had only limited information on Level 1 monsters, with no understanding of the dungeons themselves.
Considering his current strength, especially after strategizing a Level 30 wild hero instance dungeon, he immediately filtered out the dungeons between Level 30 and 40.
"[Ogre Forest (Level 40), Shadow Valley (Level 35), Gnoll Wasteland (Level 35), Nymph's Lake (Level 30)]"
Looking at the mere four dungeons left to choose from, Zi Liyuan unconsciously furrowed his brows.
He did not expect there to be only a few choices for dungeons higher than Level 30.
There must be many Level 1 instance dungeons at White Crane Academy, but there were definitely restrictions for them, high school students about to graduate, otherwise, there wouldn't be only four dungeons available above Level 30.
"Do they assume students taking the college entrance exam cannot manage to strategize a Level 30 or above Level 1 instance dungeon in seven days?"
Shaking his head to dismiss the messy thoughts, Zi Liyuan immediately ruled out "Ogre Forest" and "Nymph's Lake."
The former, being Level 40, was too high, and rushing in might lead to accidents.
The latter was a lake-type instance dungeon, which often involves water battles, and such special environments are very disadvantageous for professionals.
His gaze moved between "Shadow Valley" and "Gnoll Wasteland."
Both were Level 35 instance dungeons, but wasteland terrain would definitely be easier to deploy a Skeleton Army than a valley would.
"[Do you wish to enter the Level 35 Level 1 instance dungeon 'Gnoll Wasteland'? Yes/No?]"
```
After clicking "Yes," Zi Liyuan noticed that the color of the portal for the first-turn dungeon had changed.
The novice dungeon featured a ghastly green portal, but now it was light blue.
[Please choose the dungeon difficulty: Normal, Elite, Rare, Heroic. Once the difficulty is set, teleportation will commence immediately.]
Novice dungeons below Level 20 had only three levels of difficulty, but the first-turn dungeons from Level 21 to 40 added the Heroic difficulty.
Without any hesitation, Zi Liyuan selected the "Heroic" difficulty, and immediately the portal transformed into a vortex that sucked him in.
After a dizzying spin, Zi Liyuan found himself in a barren wasteland of yellow earth.
He picked up his magic wand at once and began summoning the Skeleton Army and the Clay Stone Demon.
A two-meter tall mud golem slowly formed by absorbing the soil and sand from the ground.
Eight Vulture Skeletons spread their wings and flew off in eight different directions.
Two Shield Combat Skeletons stood at attention to the left and right of Zi Liyuan.
Three Crossbow Skeletons, wielding bone crossbows, stood silently behind Zi Liyuan.
Three Skeleton Behemoths lay nearby; Zi Liyuan planned to use these creatures as mounts, although they were a bit uncomfortable to sit on.
Lastly, a multitude of Skeleton Knights formed neat ranks and assembled in front of him.
After unlocking the level seal and accumulating 1.57 million experience points, Zi Liyuan directly raised his level to 23.
Zi Liyuan (Level 23: 300K/500K), Physique 127, Spirit 176, Spiritual Power 151.
[Comprehensive Attributes]: Health 12700, Spiritual Energy 15100, Physical Damage +167, Magic Damage +256, Physical Defense +187, Magical Resistance +296
That was not all; he then enhanced the skills "Skeleton Domination," "Clay Stone Demon," and "Stone Demon Domination" in the Summoning branch of his skill tree to Level 5, strengthening all Skeletons and Stone Demons.
Skeleton Domination (Level 5): Enhances the combat power of all summoned Skeletons, Damage +10, Physical Defense +10, Health +100.
Stone Demon Domination (Level 5): Enhances the combat power of the summoned Stone Demon, Damage +5, Physical Defense +15, Health +1000.
[Clay Stone Demon]: Level 5, Physical Damage 11 (+50), Physical Defense 31, Health 1500, Skill "Delayed Deceleration."
The two Domination skills more than doubled the strength of the two kinds of summons.
Particularly the added damage attribute; since there was no distinction between Physical Damage and Magic Damage, the Magic Damage of the magical Skeletons also received an enhancement.
As for the Clay Stone Demons, their original attacks were a weak point, but under Zi Liyuan's "Attack Aura," this shortcoming was somewhat compensated for.
One could say that apart from lacking taunting abilities to pull aggro, Clay Stone Demons were extremely premium meat shield tanks.
By the time the Skeleton Summoning was complete, the scouting Vulture Skeletons had already drawn in several groups of gnolls.
There was nothing much to say, the Skeleton Cavalry Corps began their group charge.
With the coverage of the "Attack Aura," the impact of the Skeleton Cavalry Corps could only be described as terrifying.
These Level 30 elite gnolls were shattered to pieces in their first encounter with the Skeleton Knights and trampled into a mushy mess by the Undead horses, dead beyond any doubt.
At the same time, Zi Liyuan also noticed the difference between the "Gnoll Wasteland" dungeon and the wild dungeons.
In wild dungeons, even the minor monsters were of rare quality and appeared in squads.
But in these Human Race-controlled dungeons, under Heroic difficulty, the minor monsters were only Elite and appeared scattered, not in squad formation.
The 160-strong Skeleton Cavalry Corps, during their group charge, truly resembled a grey tidal wave, indestructible, crushing all obstacles in their path.