Fighting Monsters

Since these people had no goal, Lin Li gave them one. The existence of the Sky-Piercing Tower was meant to give these idle people a distant dream, just like a lottery in the real world. There was nothing to lose, after all. What if they really could return to reality? What if they really could become billionaires?

The groups that had ground to a halt due to a lack of profit immediately regained their vitality. Several people with sharp minds and enough prestige became the leaders of these groups, launching a meeting that included nearly all the residents.

The theme of the meeting was how to break through the giant creatures' blockade and enter the Sky-Piercing Tower. These people did not want to remain in this virtual world for the rest of their lives. Their ambitions went far beyond that.

After witnessing Manohar Corporation's unimaginable technology, they saw the Sky-Piercing Tower as more of a trial meant to select elites. Perhaps the true reward was not money, but becoming part of this powerful company's upper management.

Several leaders stood in a circle atop a stage built from massive trees in the forest. In the virtual world, they did not feel physical fatigue, and their superpowers allowed them to assemble those giant trees into whatever shape they wanted without lifting a hand.

Each of these leaders had their own distinguishing traits. Even their clothes were completely different from everyone else's. The four wore gold, silver, dark green, and blue respectively, while many people beneath the stage wore clothes in matching colors. Those were their supporters.

However, although they had become the meeting's organizers, most residents had only come to watch the excitement. In their eyes, those monsters were too terrifying. There was no way they could defeat them with their own strength. They might as well loaf around here comfortably and enjoy life. Wouldn't they be able to leave after five years anyway?

The man in gold wore a dignified expression, but inwardly, he felt somewhat helpless. In reality, he had been a gang leader in the slums with over a hundred brothers under his command, making him the strongest force here.

But the Safe House protected ordinary people, and they could no longer coerce them with violence. In fact, even within his own organization, his prestige was far lower than before.

Energy points were the only universal currency here. The lower-ranking members appeared to obey his orders, but if he dared announce the seizure of large amounts of points as membership fees, those members would leave the organization in an instant.

The price of strength and telekinesis increased with each level. Every level cost 10 times the level number. One hundred points of strength and level 100 telekinesis required more than a hundred thousand energy points.

An individual needed a total level of at least 200 before they could possibly harm those enormous monsters. If their telekinesis did not reach far enough, a single leap from those monsters could cover more than a thousand meters and crush someone into White Light, sending them back to respawn. Ordinary residents were nothing more than cannon fodder before them.

In fact, if the points earned by five hundred thousand people in a month could be concentrated on one person, then both that person's strength and telekinesis could exceed level 1000, for a total level above 2000. Strength more than a thousand times that of an ordinary person and a telekinesis range of ten kilometers would be enough to fight those monsters one-on-one.

Unfortunately, no one was willing to make a wedding dress for someone else. Who would happily give up the delicious food and all kinds of entertainment in the shop, scrimp and save, and support the creation of a powerful individual?

The four leaders looked at the residents casually chatting and making noise in the distance and could not help feeling exhausted. Lacking any means of direct control, they could only appeal to everyone's emotions and promise benefits in the real world. The final reward would belong to every participant.

In the end, the four leaders reached an agreement with the residents. Ten percent of everyone's energy points would be collected every month to strengthen the four of them and purchase weapons from the shop, while the eventual victor would share the stock dividends with them in reality.

The result was not bad. That stock reward was indeed tempting. It meant billions of yuan every year in the real world, rather than an illusion in a virtual world.

These millions of points would allow the four of them to reach total levels above 400, and they would also have some powerful weapons from the shop. That would be enough to fight those monsters with everything they had.

At noon the next day, at the border between the primeval forest and the residential area, the four leaders still stood in a row in their differently colored outfits. Their underlings operated all kinds of weapons, including missile launchers, tanks, and artillery.

No one operated any aircraft. First, none of them knew how to fly a supersonic fighter jet. Second, several giant birds with wingspans exceeding a thousand meters circled in the sky. Someone had tried to awkwardly fly a helicopter over that morning, only for it to be swatted into scrap by a single claw from a monster moving at least Mach 5.

Missiles faster than sound were expensive in the shop, while hypersonic weapons cost dozens of times more. Besides, these weapons were consumables. Every missile meant a massive amount of energy points. With the tactical skill level of these people, they might as well honestly invest in their stats and fight the monsters themselves.

Although the formation looked rather disorderly, those weapons were the real deal. They possessed exactly the same power as their real-world counterparts.

The man in gold looked at the troops behind him and could not help feeling high-spirited. In reality, only truly important figures possessed armies like this, yet now he had one too.

"Move out! Our target is the Sky-Piercing Tower!"

The four powerhouses with total levels above 400 used telekinesis to fly into the air. Their tremendous power forced the forest apart, creating a flat path dozens of meters wide through its center, and the force of more than a thousand people followed them forward.

The tremendous commotion disturbed the babies still asleep. A white mouse twenty meters long groggily raised its head and headed toward the distance. It nimbly slipped through gaps between the trees and quickly arrived near the army.

The four powerhouses in the air spotted the giant animal from more than ten kilometers away. Controlling telekinesis was not as easy as they had imagined. It was like having several invisible, controllable tentacles. Only after their eyes saw something and their brains issued an order could they perform specific actions. The four had spent the entire morning learning how to keep themselves afloat while carrying out other operations.

In fact, they had no choice but to let their followers operate the weapons. They simply could not control their own strength. The slightest exertion would damage the delicate equipment. They could not even walk normally on the ground now; one step would send them several meters away. This true virtual reality was far more difficult than using a mouse and keyboard.

Fortunately, their opponents were these enormous creatures. Otherwise, they could not have aimed at targets from several kilometers away. Their strength could only smash entire areas at once, and their brains could not precisely control power hundreds of times greater than their own.

A roar erupted. The fire-control radars of those tanks and artillery pieces were far more accurate than these powerhouses who possessed strength but nothing else. Foolproof controls allowed even civilians who had never been on a battlefield to understand how to use them. All they had to do was lock onto the enormous monsters and press the launch button, leaving the rest to the automated system.

Continuous thunderous blasts rang out. The four powerhouses who had just gained tremendous strength turned pale at the sight before them. Having never played a true virtual game, they finally understood the power of real-world armies. Even in their current state, they might not survive. Their control was simply too poor.

More than a hundred artillery pieces and tanks fired in unison. These 155-millimeter laser-guided shells tore apart the forest across an area hundreds of meters wide. Flames and smoke shot into the sky, while the massive explosions carried dozens of kilometers, awakening some distant giant beasts.

Two enormous bloodshot eyes emerged from the smoke. The white mouse's fur had been scorched into a pitted mess by the shells, while the high-temperature metal jets from armor-piercing rounds had left several charred holes in its body. The flesh inside had been completely carbonized by the heat.

However, that was all.

The pain inflicted by the artillery was far greater than the actual damage. A powerful body capable of supporting more than a hundred tons while moving at high speed on land had, in theory, long surpassed ordinary steel in toughness. Even those armor-piercing rounds had failed to penetrate its muscles and injure its internal organs.

The white mouse was already one of the weakest creatures in this forest. The bodies of creatures weighing tens of millions of tons were far tougher than its own.

It raised its head and let out a piercing cry before charging forward with all its strength. Within a second, its speed exceeded three hundred kilometers per hour. Trees along its path were utterly crushed by its terrifying power, and its massive body rammed forward at high speed, stirring the shattered branches and leaves into a chaotic whirlwind.

What shocked the leaders floating in the air even more was that the monster's flesh was regenerating rapidly. In just a few more seconds, those charred pits would disappear completely.

The man in gold snapped out of his shock. Having lived with a knife at his throat, his nerves were far stronger than the others'. He roared, "Everyone, keep attacking! We'll hold that thing back!"

The thunderous blasts rang out again as hundreds of shells streaked toward the monster. However, the hit rate of those shells dropped sharply against targets moving faster than fifty kilometers per hour. Although this creature was incomparably massive, it was simply too fast. A slight twist of its agile body allowed it to evade most of the shells, while its twenty-meter-long tail whipped up huge clouds of dust, making the automatic targeting system even less effective.

The white mouse, charging forward with unstoppable momentum, suddenly slammed into an invisible wall. It had entered the five-kilometer range, and the telekinesis of the four powerhouses formed a thick barrier that blocked the monster, bringing it to an abrupt halt.

"Now! Fire the most expensive missile!"

The man in gold shouted. Seeing the monster's recovery speed, he understood that conventional shells could only injure it, not kill it. They could only use nuclear weapons. Since this was a virtual world, nuclear radiation did not matter.

At the rear of the convoy, a missile launcher raised its support frame. This several-meter-long giant missile was the cheapest nuclear weapon in the shop: a 100-ton yield, an effective lethal radius of 700 meters against ordinary humans, a range of only several dozen kilometers, and a maximum speed of one thousand kilometers per hour. Fired directly at creatures with such rapid regeneration, it would be nearly impossible to kill them.

But with four powerhouses wielding powerful telekinesis restraining it from afar, the monster's speed was severely disrupted. Invisible force, like gigantic iron hammers weighing more than ten tons, repeatedly smashed down upon the white mouse.

Of course, they could only disrupt it.

Attacks powerful enough to split mountains and shatter rocks merely made its movements somewhat difficult. Its twenty-meter-long tail swept through the air with repeated sonic booms, and the dust clouds formed visible shockwaves that devastated the surrounding forest. The invisible iron hammers formed by telekinesis were smashed apart by that overwhelming force.