A Bet Between Teachers

His Kobold army was quite effective against similarly low-level races, capable of fighting two or even more enemies at once. But when facing large numbers of powerful enemies, its immense racial disadvantage began to show.

He had tested them against individually powerful opponents before, using monster cards to summon trials within his Divine Domain, and the results had been fairly good.

But he had never tried using large numbers of intermediate-level or stronger creatures to test his Kinfolk. Aside from lacking the resources, he had not dared to do so. After all, this was inside his Divine Domain—if things went out of control, it would be over.

Now he knew how effective the Kobold army he had trained was against powerful enemies—total defeat! They had barely held on at first, but as more and more Kobolds were killed, their morale began to fall. Meanwhile, the demons' morale rose higher with every kill, until the entire army finally collapsed.

The tall, burly Berserk Demons killed Kobolds with one slash each. If they grabbed one, they simply tore it apart with their bare hands. The brutal sight caused the remaining Kobolds' morale to plummet even faster.

By now, he had suffered a complete rout. Five or six hundred Kobolds remained, but they were being hunted across the entire demiplane by the remaining one hundred seventy or eighty Berserk Demons. It was only a matter of time before they were all wiped out.

Meng Hui, eliminated! In Yuan Hong's demiplane, he had also entered a wave of Berserk Demons. Compared with Meng Hui's total collapse, his situation was much better.

Unlike Meng Hui's single melee force, Yuan Hong had incorporated an Archer Class Card into his Divine Domain, allowing nearly half of his Lizardmen Kinfolk to become Lizardman Archers.

The reason he had not converted them all was that a ranged class like archers needed melee forces to create suitable combat conditions. A pure ranged force was certainly powerful, but once the enemy closed in, they would be helplessly slaughtered.

Beyond changing classes, the greatest benefit of a Class Card was that converted Lizardmen could not only raise their troop level through normal combat, but also raise their class level through training. Among the thousand-plus Lizardman Archers, several hundred were already Level 1 Archers, and there were even dozens of Level 2 Archers. This was his most crucial trump card.

Relying on this elite archer force, and after suffering enormous casualties, he finally whittled the Berserk Demons down one by one. The battle was now nearing its end.

Yet he was not particularly happy, because more than half—over two-thirds—of his melee Lizardmen had died while holding back the Berserk Demons.

Under Endless Mode's rule that each wave was stronger than the last, the remaining Lizardmen absolutely could not withstand the next wave's assault. In other words, it would be difficult for him to hold back the next wave.

Fortunately, if even he was struggling to endure, the other students would have it even harder. The next wave would likely be when the rankings were decided.

Class One's Class Teacher, Qiao Liang, was standing with his arms folded before a demiplane. The smile on his face made it obvious that he was in an excellent mood. Suddenly, he looked up in a certain direction, seeming to converse with someone.

"You're overthinking it. If Yan Renjie from your class can clear it, how could Wan Ying from mine possibly fail?"

Inside the demiplane before him, over a thousand winged Harpies hovered in the air, continuously firing arrows. On the ground, the few dozen remaining Berserk Demons roared toward the sky, their faces twisted with incomparable rage.

However, they could not fly and did not even have throwing weapons in hand. Facing enemies in the sky, they had no way to fight back and could only be slaughtered.

With the outcome decided, Qiao Liang withdrew his gaze and said with a smile, "The first and second places in this bonus stage will definitely be Wan Ying and Yan Renjie. As for third place, that's harder to say."

In another demiplane some distance away, Class Two's Class Teacher, Zheng Yifan, nodded and replied, "How about a bet? Not on first or second, just on who takes third. Whoever loses gives three Five-Star Cards to Wan Ying or Yan Renjie."

"Sure. I'm betting on Li Qing from my class. What about you? Tian Wei or Yao Shuangxi from yours?"

Zheng Yifan had clearly expected that and smiled. "This time, you guessed wrong. I'm betting on Yuan Hong from Class Three."

"Yuan Hong?"

"Yes!"

Zheng Yifan looked at the demiplane before him and murmured, "After all, they're both archer classes. As long as the next wave isn't another heavily armored type like Berserk Demons, his chances of making it to the next stage are high."

Inside the demiplane, a large group of Lizardman Archers rested amid the corpses. They looked exactly like Yuan Hong's Lizardman Kinfolk, though they were far fewer in number. Unlike Yuan Hong's Lizardmen, however, their skin was a fiery red—not blood-red, but red like molten lava and flame.

If Lin Xiao had been there, he would certainly have named this race in shock—Lava Lizardmen.

This was a mutated Lizardman race that lived on the edges of volcanoes or lava fields. They were an intermediate mutated race. After Yan Renjie obtained this race, he added an archer class template, creating a powerful class known as Lava Archers.

Unlike Lizardman Archers, Lava Archers' attacks carried additional fire damage as well as the Lava Armor Break effect.

During the previous wave of Berserk Demons, they had relied on Lava Armor Break to pierce through armor, combined with the extra fire damage, to shoot them to death.

In Lin Xiao's demiplane, this wave of battle was also nearing its end. Following Lin Xiao's instructions, the Naga used the remaining Murlocs as cannon fodder to draw the Berserk Demons' attention and stalled until Salted Fish Thrust came off cooldown. Then they decisively unleashed a burst of attacks, killing nearly half the Berserk Demons on the spot. The rest were all severely wounded and were no longer a match for the Naga.

Players could not personally intervene during the test. After all, a Divine Creature was powerful enough to clear three stages alone. However, they could cast divine spells to assist from the sidelines, which naturally included giving instructions from outside the field.

Once all the Berserk Demons had been killed and the battle ended, the next wave of monsters had yet to appear.

Although it was Endless Mode, it still followed certain patterns. After each wave, the interval would gradually grow longer.

The first wave had only a one-minute cooldown. The previous wave's cooldown had lasted five minutes, while this Berserk Demon wave had a six-minute cooldown. It was effectively one additional minute of rest and preparation time for every stage cleared.

While there was still time, Lin Xiao conveyed the strategy for the next wave to several Naga Leaders in the form of a Divine Revelation.

No matter how urgent the situation was, one could not lose their composure. Some players in such circumstances would itch to intervene personally, and in their panic, do something as foolish as directly commanding their Kinfolk. That was extremely unwise.

A Deity's command ability was not necessarily all that outstanding. The proper approach was simply to communicate with the leaders among the Kinfolk. As the actual commanders, the leaders were on the battlefield and understood the situation extremely well. Combined with the Deity's godlike view of areas the leaders could not see, the two together would naturally greatly increase the odds of victory.

Lin Xiao knew very well that his talent for command was quite ordinary, so he did not directly instruct his Kinfolk on how to fight. Instead, he had them make use of their greatest advantage.

As long as they made good use of their greatest advantage, getting through one more wave would not be difficult.