Is Zane Really Hated?

Gong Qiying could understand why the Holy Light Dungeon hated him.

Back when I was still in the Arnor Kingdom, I had many conflicts with the Holy Light Church. Although none of the conflicts were major, they seemed to have a significant impact.

If the lord of the Holy Light Dungeon is truly a devout believer, then it's understandable that he would dislike him after hearing about the deeds of the Zane Dungeon.

Gong Qiying could understand why the Explosive Flame Dungeon hated him.

That underground city contains some information about the God of Fire. If we infer from this, perhaps its city lord is also Fire God Follower.

The original god of fire was called Flame, and no interesting stories about him have been passed down. Even his own church has fallen into ruin.

Later, an old man came to the Zane Dungeon — Flame Monk who took Gwyn's deeds out and then directly kicked Flame off the title of God of Fire and replaced him with Gwyn.

Since then, the Sparkfire Church has taken advantage of the rise of the Zane Dungeon and developed all the way up, growing from an unknown small church on the verge of dissolution to what it is today. Although it is not as good as the Holy Light Church, it is still a big player among the many ordinary churches.

This perfectly illustrates what it means to take off while riding the wave of opportunity.

However, the Sparkfire Church itself also had some problems. Some people in the church were dissatisfied with the decision of the Flame Monk to change the god of fire, so the entire church split into two factions: those who believed in Gwyn and those who believed in Flame.

However, the Traditionalists believed in Flame has been completely forgotten and silent ever since, and it is unknown whether he is still alive.

If the lord of the Explosive Flame Dungeon is truly Traditionalists, then his dislike for the Zane Dungeon is understandable.

Although replacing the Vulcan was not Gong Qiying's own idea and was entirely carried out by the adventurers below, it was still related to him, so he accepted it.

But

What's the deal with the White Blood Dungeon?

"I've never had any contact with it," Gong Qiying looked at Chiya with a puzzled expression. "Why does its city lord hate me?"

For a moment, he felt like he had become the Water Pillar of the Demon Slayer Corps in the Dungeon Lord. Why do so many people hate me?

Then he thought of Hai Nisi You Lei Sha, and Rainbow Horn, and couldn't help but comfort himself with the thought, "I'm not disliked."

"Have no idea."

Chiya shook his head.

"That girl is very stubborn, and you can't get her to say anything no matter what you do. She used to communicate quite a lot with others, often exchanging ideas about dungeon design, but now she's become taciturn."

"If we don't know the reason, there's nothing we can do."

Gong Qiying shook his head and sighed, "I was so sad to find out that I was disliked."

"I'll give you five thousand units of Spirit Power as a gift." Chi Ya waved his hand.

"I'm a little happy."

"I gave you five thousand and you only have a little bit?" Chi Ya couldn't help but complain.

Gong Qiying smiled and said, "Stop joking around. Who do you think is the most suspicious among the three?"

"The three of them." Chiya thought for a moment, then shook his head and said, "I can't choose. The other underground cities are more suspicious than them. I asked you to investigate them because your presence is most likely to elicit a reaction from them. By the way, if you're talking to them, don't bring up the topic of the demon race."

Only a small group of city lords knew about the search for demons among the city lords; these were mostly city lords from the extreme Astar Alliance. They hadn't told anyone else.

"That's all for now. Be careful."

The red dragon's figure gradually became transparent and disappeared. Before leaving completely, he left behind a sentence.

"The demons may know more about the dungeons than humans do, so be prepared when you make contact."

With Chi Ya gone, the city lord's room returned to its quiet state.

Do the demons understand the dungeons better?

Gong Qiying recalled a distant memory.

When he went to save the Val Dungeon, the demon leader he encountered used unknown methods to find the entrance to the then-dormant Val Dungeon and made it his base.

Later, a similar situation occurred in the Verdant Dungeon, where the Frog Head demons used those transformed demons without Spirit Power to threaten the Verdant Dungeon in an attempt to force it to cooperate.

Based on this, perhaps some members of the demon race know that the dungeon possesses self-awareness?

However, one of the rules of the dungeon is that the dungeon lord must not reveal his existence to the outside world.

If the city lord didn't leak it himself, how else could the demons have found out?

What methods do they have available?

Gong Qiying was unaware of these matters. He had captured and interrogated several of Doslai Bo's men, but those demons, who were clearly just common soldiers, were completely clueless.

Once, a city lord from the Astar Alliance attacked a dungeon located in demon territory and interrogated the demon city lord, but the latter answered blankly that he didn't know.

The city lord of the Astar Alliance was not giving up. He took the demon's dungeon and planned to disguise himself and run it to search for information about the demons. Therefore, he left everything in the demon's dungeon as it was and did not make any changes.

However, for some unknown reason, the number of demons going to that underground city suddenly decreased after a certain period of time, eventually becoming so deserted that they could not earn any Spirit Power and were even losing a lot of money every day. The people of the Astar Alliance had no choice but to abandon the place.

Because of his experience and lessons learned, the city lords would not choose to take over the dungeons in duels with the demons.

Does anyone among the demon city lords know the reason? Surely some do, but it's like finding a needle in a haystack; no one knows when they'll encounter them, and the other party might not honestly tell them.

If only we could catch a demon king and interrogate him.

However, it seems that there have been rumors all along that the Demon King is about to be resurrected, but he has never come back to life. On the contrary, the Brave has started to increase.

Besides Elsa, there were other Brave in various places, but since the Demon King didn't appear, the Brave didn't have the opportunity to become famous. The most well-known Brave now is Elsa, who delivered the final blow to the Black Eagle Rebellion.

Considering all this seems pointless, so Gong Qiying turned to look at the Shrine beside him.

There, Red Fang had already sent over information about the Sealed Object in the dungeon of Scamellon.

"It just so happens that the adventurers in the Warrior Country have also hit a bottleneck in their exploration. Let's change our perspective and take a look."

As Gong Qiying said.

The adventurers of the Warrior Country seem to have hit a roadblock in their exploration of the Zane Dungeon.

The adventurers have roughly explored the initial Limgrave and Weeping Peninsula. There may still be places they haven't discovered, but the detailed work is left to the professional map-finding Strategy Team.

Caelid's exploration progress is not as good as Limgrave's, but the general areas have been explored. All that's left is to search more carefully. Besides, no one can defeat the Starscourge General there. What if Caelid changes after we actually defeat Radahn?

Although Lake Liurnia is slightly different from the version in the Arnor Kingdom, it has a higher exploration level among adventurers than Caelid, and they still can't defeat the final boss there, the Full Moon Queen.

The Full Moon Queen here Mimic Tear from the Arnor Kingdom, are far more powerful.

There have even been cases of adventurers fainting from the eerie atmosphere of their first encounter with the Full Moon Queen.

These three areas are where adventurers most frequently visit now; as for the rest...

The underground map has not yet been discovered, and surprisingly, no one has found the underground entrance, which makes Gong Qiying very frustrated.

The Memory of the Elden Lord have opened up the challenge of Rykard, but people have not yet found a way to get to the Volcanic Mansion, let alone meet Rykard.

As for the Altus Plateau and the Leyndell Royal Capital, no one has found them either because they haven't found the large elevator, haven't collected all the tokens, or simply haven't found a shortcut.

The Blood Dynasty was indeed discovered by Lu Lu Wo and some powerful Strategy Team, but the rapid increase in the strength of the monsters there resulted in fewer people exploring it. Although the runes it gave were plentiful, the two could not compensate for each other.

Moreover, that Blood Monarch is really hard to beat. A team of ten people can't possibly defeat him unless a team with all members being Gold-rank or even Brave has any hope, like replicating the team that fought Eldridge back then.

Based on the above, it is not difficult to see.

Although the Zane Dungeon continues to attract new players, adventurers are stuck in frontier exploration, with their progress increasing at a snail's pace, truly entering a bottleneck period.

You're asking where all the newbies who just started playing have gone?

Once Forest Area, it's like entering a deep sea; from then on, Limgrave is just a passerby.

The re-explorability of a forest area far exceeds that of other areas. Newcomers are drawn in by the numerous guides and become so engrossed that they won't leave the mountain until they've honed themselves into the Ten Mile Slope Sword God, capable of perfectly countering the Golden Lion King's Eight Fists.

Perhaps the bottleneck will only be broken when this large group of newcomers, who are so engrossed in hunting in the Forest Area, finally decide to venture into other areas.

But that will probably take several months. Although Sion can inflate their stats, they still need to hone their real combat skills themselves.

To break through the current bottleneck, we probably need a strong external force to make a breakthrough, or something major to happen.

But if we're talking about doing something big...

"Tachi squad assembled!" "Greatsword squad assembled!" "Charged Axe squad assembled!"

"Your Highness, your troops have assembled. Please give instructions!"

"Very good, very energetic!"

Looking down at the fourteen Legion composed of users of fourteen Forest Area weapons, Lan Le felt a surge of pride and raised his arms, shouting:

"We will definitely win the Battle Festival this time!"