Forced Battle Scroll
The seventh hour after leaving the city.
The sun had risen directly overhead, and the gray-green weeds gleamed in the midday light. The stench of decay in the air had grown so thick it would not disperse, and the faint outline of low, gray-white hills could be seen in the distance.
The Land of Buried Bones.
According to the markings on the map, he was less than a kilometer from the lair entrance.
Su Mu stopped and checked his level.
Level 9, 83% experience.
Just a little more.
He did not rush inside. Level 10 was a threshold. For monster cards, going from level 5 to level 10 was a major leap, and their attributes would grow nearly thirty percent faster after level 10 than before. The same was true of monsters in the wild: their attributes and combat index would jump noticeably once they passed level 10.
Entering the instance at level 10 would be a step above entering at level 9, both in efficiency and safety.
Su Mu turned and surveyed his surroundings.
This area was already close to the outskirts of the Land of Buried Bones, and the roaming monsters were much denser than before. Within sight, he spotted at least seven or eight swaying gray-white figures, some skeleton soldiers and a few scattered rotting corpses.
"Let's get to level 10 first."
He led Little Drill Wind on a detour away from the lair.
Perhaps Little Drill Wind had killed too many monsters in a short time, or perhaps the monsters in this area simply respawned quickly, but Su Mu found a new target every few steps.
Little Drill Wind charged back and forth tirelessly, his blue-black figure flickering in and out of sight among the gray-white hills. Blades flashed, skeletons collapsed in heaps, and rotting corpses were burned to ashes after their limbs were severed.
One, two, three, five, ten.
The experience bar climbed slowly but steadily.
Su Mu made a full circuit of the area, then traveled several more kilometers outward. Only when the stony, hard ground beneath his feet gave way to vast stretches of gray-white bone dust, and the stench of decay in the air turned sickeningly sweet and bloody, did he finally hear a crisp notification from his Soul Space.
[Level increased: level 9 → level 10]
Su Mu let out a stale breath.
Level 10.
He immediately checked Little Drill Wind's panel.
Summoned state:
[Name: Little Drill Wind (summoned form)] [Rank: SSS → A (suppressed by three ranks)] [Level: 10] [Health: 237000/237000 → 32000/32000] [Attack: 19900 → 2680] [Defense: 11700 → 1580] [Agility: 17900 → 2400] [Combat index: 291000 → 20200]
Su Mu stared at the string of numbers in silence for a long time.
Two hundred ninety-one thousand.
The base combat index of a level 10 SSS card.
And what reference value did the textbooks give for a normal level 10 S-rank core card's combat index?
Roughly thirty-five to forty-five thousand.
A level 10 SS-rank card: roughly eighty to one hundred thousand.
A level 10 SSS-rank core card: roughly two hundred to two hundred fifty thousand.
Little Drill Wind, a minor demon in the world of Journey to the West whose name barely registered, already had attributes exceeding the upper limit of a normal level 10 SSS core card.
And this was only the beginning.
Little Drill Wind's growth curve was already steeper than that of an ordinary SSS card.
With every level he gained, the gap between him and those ordinary SSS cards would widen a little more.
By the time they reached level 20 or 30, that gap would become an impassable chasm.
Su Mu could not help wondering, What did Little Drill Wind amount to in Journey to the West?
A minor demon who patrolled the mountains of Lion Camel Ridge, the most inconspicuous little nobody under the Azure Lion.
In the original story, he did not even have a decent line of dialogue. He appeared only so Sun Wukong could pump him for information, and once Sun Wukong was done, he killed him with a single blow of his staff.
A mere bit player like that.
In this world, he was already an existence that surpassed an SSS-rank core card.
What if Su Mu brought out the real demon kings?
Green Lion, White Elephant, and Golden-Winged Great Peng, the three demon chiefs of Lion Camel Ridge-every one of them was a formidable character who gave Sun Wukong headaches.
Higher still, there were Bull Demon King, Red Boy, Great King Yellow Wind, the Gold and Silver Horn Kings... What rank would these renowned demon kings of the Journey to the West world be if they were placed in the instance system?
And then there was Sun Wukong.
Great Sage Equal to Heaven, Victorious Fighting Buddha.
Just thinking about it made Su Mu's scalp tingle. But he quickly suppressed those thoughts.
The road had to be walked one step at a time.
Now that he was level 10, he could learn a new soul skill. He had glanced at the prices of soul skill books in the shop before; even the cheapest E-rank soul skill book started at two hundred thousand. Of the hundred thousand his aunt had given him, he had already spent more than twenty thousand on the Mountain Patrol Command Flag and wilderness supplies. What remained would not buy even half an E-rank soul skill book.
Unless...
Su Mu remembered that quest.
[Rare collection: Burial Corpse King · Core Soul Flame] [Reward: 1,000,000 Alliance coins + official quest points ×500]
One million.
If he could complete that quest, not only would the problem of the soul skill book be solved, he could also give his aunt some money so she would not have to work so hard anymore.
Su Mu took a deep breath, turned, and headed toward the Land of Buried Bones.
He quickened his pace. Little Drill Wind began darting back from afar, though he was still farming monsters.
Su Mu calculated that at this pace, by the time he was about two kilometers from the instance,
Little Drill Wind would be one kilometer away from him.
Su Mu's steps suddenly slowed.
Little Drill Wind's ears pricked up, and his narrow eyes narrowed slightly as he looked ahead and to the left.
Through their soul link, Su Mu shared Little Drill Wind's hearing.
There were sounds in the distance, roughly two or three hundred meters away.
Human voices.
And the sounds of fighting.
"Quick! Kill his core card first! Don't let him get away!"
"Damn it, this guy runs too fast. He's slippery as a loach!"
"Quit the bullshit and kill the core card first! Once the core card is dead, he won't be able to run. Then we can kill him however we want!"
Su Mu stopped.
He stood behind a gray-white rock half as tall as a person.
Little Drill Wind also lowered himself, his blue-black skin pressed against the bone-dust-covered ground, almost blending into his surroundings.
Su Mu frowned.
Murder and robbery in the wild.
He had seen this sort of plot far too many times when reading novels in his previous life.
But being caught up in it for real felt completely different.
In this world, although Alliance law expressly forbade humans from killing one another, and every major city had patrols and surveillance systems, the wild had always been a lawless place.
You never knew whether you would encounter a monster or a person in the next second, and people were sometimes more dangerous than monsters.
At least you could see a monster, identify it, and judge its strength. But when a person took a shot at you from hiding, you never knew which direction it would come from.
Su Mu did not hesitate.
He hurried toward the instance.
Meanwhile, Little Drill Wind moved slowly away from the voices.
The voices in the distance continued. And they were getting closer.
"We can't let him run anymore! If he keeps going, there's a lair area up ahead. There are too many people there, and we'll fail this time!"
"I know! I'm about to catch up with him!"
And after those words,
Su Mu saw a scene unfold ahead through Little Drill Wind's shared perspective.
A gray-white vortex appeared out of thin air, spinning and expanding, instantly unleashing a powerful suction force.
From what he saw and the killers' objective, Su Mu immediately figured out what it was.
A Forced Battle Scroll.