Chapter 2: Such a talent ability has already reached SSS rank, so based on the talent holder's own characteristics, an adaptive transformation of this talent ability is carried out. Although it does not enhance its intensity, it makes this talent ability more suitable for Su Xiao.
Su Xiao's second talent ability, Blood Beast, urgently needs this kind of adaptive transformation.
[Talent Ability: Blood Beast]
Category: Growth Talent
Rank: SSS
Talent Effect (Active): Use your own aura to generate a Blood Beast. The Blood Beast can be instantly generated and immediately pounce on the enemy (requires the enemy to be within 10 meters).
Tip: The cooldown for this ability is 8 natural days. Since it is a talent ability, it can be forcibly used, but it will place a huge burden on the body.
...
In the mid-game, this was one of Su Xiao's best ultimate moves, but as his strength increased, the intensity of the Blood Beast began to fall behind. Logically, this should have been an ability usable into the late game. Unfortunately, the enemies Su Xiao encountered in the later stages were increasingly absurdly strong, making this ultimate-level ability seem like a minor skill.
If he could now use the [Talent Badge] to perform an adaptive transformation on the Blood Beast talent ability, there would inevitably be a substantial improvement. Given Su Xiao's current ability system, this blood-attribute talent would most likely transform into a passive bonus. Whether it enhances blood energy, improves his own physique and health pool, it would be better than the current active effect.
Even without this talent effect, Su Xiao could still manifest the Blood Beast, and the manifestation speed would be fast, the pounce intensity higher, and after completing the pounce, it could explode into blood smoke that blocks the enemy's vision and perception, completely surpassing the effect of this talent.
The reason for this situation is that Su Xiao has mastered the Blood Spear Grandmaster at Lv.80, which gives him the qualifications to improve the Blood Beast ability.
Su Xiao believed that people like the Ruthless Brother, the Puppeteer, the Priest, and the Moon Witch must also have two or three talent abilities. Their talent abilities from the early to mid-game also desperately need the [Talent Badge].
Among these people, the Ruthless Brother and Xi'er are the most troublesome competitors. Between the two, it seems the Ruthless Brother is more dangerous, but that's not the case. The Ruthless Brother is slightly stronger than Xi'er, but in terms of danger level, Xi'er is actually higher.
Xi'er usually appears as a shy, quiet bespectacled girl, sometimes with a white ponytail, giving off the vibe of someone with social anxiety. But once she sees an enemy's blood, her eyes gradually glow red. A healer among the Hunters—one can imagine how dangerous Xi'er is.
Because of this, even after cooperating for a long time, the Ruthless Brother has no other thoughts about his partner Xi'er. Or rather, at the beginning of their cooperation, he did have some. But in a Fifth Rank world, Xi'er suddenly woke up in a neighboring tent, sleepwalked into the Ruthless Brother's tent, stabbed him dozens of times, then returned to her own tent. The next morning, when she woke up, Xi'er found that her teammate had been attacked and then helped treat the Ruthless Brother.
At that time, the Ruthless Brother suspected Xi'er might have a split personality. But since healing-type contractors were hard to find in Reincarnation Paradise, let alone a healing-type among the Hunters, he had to endure it. Plus, he guessed that this kind of thing was probably just a coincidence.
But that very night, the Ruthless Brother woke up in the excruciating pain of being stabbed again. Because the injuries were too severe, he didn't have a chance to fight back before passing out. When he woke up again, the first thing he saw was Xi'er casting a healing ability on him. The Ruthless Brother almost passed out again on the spot.
From then on, even though Xi'er had a beautiful face and a quiet demeanor, she could no longer attract the Ruthless Brother. That face, full of joyful smiles, wearing round-rimmed glasses, and stained with specks of blood, was already hard to erase from his mind.
Besides the Ruthless Brother and Xi'er, the Puppeteer, the Priest, and the Moon Witch are also extremely troublesome competitors. Therefore, to secure the [Talent Badge], he would definitely need to use some trump cards.
Additionally, there was another point: Su Xiao's energy in this world would inevitably be focused on the Lightless Temple, the World Devourer, and the World-Destroying level clans. He had no spare time to compete for the top spot on the Survival Leaderboard. Therefore, to win this round, he could only rely on the series of operations that could be derived after his Void Tree Reputation reached 0 points.
Inside the Nest Chamber, Su Xiao pondered for a moment and decided to have Jila build a new Nest rather than occupy the current one. Jila's characteristic Nest was better at mass-producing troops, while the Silver Queen's characteristic Nest was better at mining resources and converting mined ore into Life Stones.
After discussion, it was decided that the Silver Queen would gradually sink the current several-hundred-meter-tall Nest underground. This would both facilitate mining and avoid the suspicious phenomenon of two Mother Nests standing within the insect clan building complex.
The Silver Queen had no objection to this and was actually quite willing to do so. The reason was that if attacked, Jila's Nest above would be destroyed first before she could be threatened.
As a result, the Silver Queen's Nest took only two hours to completely submerge underground. On the large empty plot of land left behind, Jila raised her hand, and a surge of insect-clan-specific energy emerged, forming purple biological tissue that fell to the ground.
A half-meter-tall mini Nest appeared. After absorbing a Life Stone, this dark purple mini Nest grew to three meters tall. Then, the Nest split open, and a Worker Scorpion was born.
The Worker Scorpions of the Demon Insect Clan were unique. They weren't good at mining but were exceptionally good at building insect clan structures. The Worker Scorpion's three working tails moved, and it began to catalyze part of the Nest tissue, allowing the Nest to grow through bio-energy. When the Nest reached five meters tall, it cultivated dozens of Worker Scorpions.
The more Worker Scorpions there were, the faster the Nest grew. The larger the Nest, the more Worker Scorpions it could cultivate at once. In this cycle, a few hours later, a thousand-meter-tall Nest covering a wide area appeared. This forced the various insect clan buildings belonging to the Silver Queen to move outward a bit, making enough space.
When the [Jila Spiral Tower], which was even taller than the Nest, rose up, it represented one thing: the Demon Insect Clan had fully descended into this world. The good news was that this time, summoning Jila didn't cost Su Xiao any Void Tree Reputation. This was because it was the Eternal Light World. Before Jila fully developed here, she really wasn't a big threat.
To avoid detection, thousands of Worker Scorpions belonging to the Silver Queen climbed onto the Mother Nest and the Jila Spiral Tower. In no time, they changed the exterior of these two insect clan buildings to match the style of the Silver Queen's insect clan architecture.
After the Mother Nest was established, internal organs such as the Energy Storage Organ (Ninth Rank), Egg-Laying Organ (Ninth Rank), Cultivation Sac (Ninth Rank), Energy Conversion Organ (Ninth Rank), and Evolution Chamber (Ninth Rank) were all formed. More importantly, the Nest Chamber.
A moment later, inside the Nest Chamber, Jila sat on a bed made of biological tissue. Behind her was the inner wall of the Nest Chamber, with half-meter chitinous arcs on both sides. It felt like a super-large eggshell opened from the front, which gave Jila, who was yawning while sitting on the bed, a strong sense of security.
As soon as Su Xiao entered the Nest Chamber, a prompt appeared, starting with the data on their Mother Nest. Its health value of up to 16 million points showed that the accumulation from the previous world hadn't been wasted.
Even if their Mother Nest was attacked, it wouldn't threaten Jila for a while. Plus, the defense level of the Mother Nest was certainly higher than that of individual units. After all, this was a biological structure.
Besides the exaggerated health value of the Mother Nest, the subsequent prompt asked Su Xiao to allocate the characteristics of the Creeping Carpet. The Creeping Carpet genes developed in the previous world had been cleared by Jila. The maximum level the Creeping Carpet could reach wouldn't decrease. Simply put, it was consuming bio-energy to respec.
Without any hesitation, every time it reached Lv.10, a characteristic choice appeared. He selected Bio-Energy and Soul Energy Absorption Efficiency every time. The final Creeping Carpet was:
[Creeping Carpet Lv.50: Bio-Energy and Soul Energy Absorption Efficiency +75%.]
Including the base 10% of the Creeping Carpet, the maximum recovery efficiency reached 85%. This meant that if an enemy destroyed a Demon Flame Dragon cultivated with 30 points of bio-energy, as long as the Creeping Carpet absorbed the corpse of that Demon Flame Dragon, the loss to their Nest would be around 4.5 points of bio-energy. This was the powerful sustainability gained by giving up resource mining capabilities.
Su Xiao checked the current bio-energy. The total was 124,600 points. This was a value balanced according to the rules of this world. As the value of each bio-energy point increased, the cultivation costs for various insect clans also changed. The situation was as follows:
Elite Worker Scorpion: 1 bio-energy point can cultivate 2,000.
Brutal Cannon Tower: 200 bio-energy points each.
Elite Demon Beast: 4 bio-energy points each.
Demon Flame Dragon: 30 bio-energy points each.
Titan Giant Beast: 1,000 bio-energy points each.
Their strongest insect clan unit was still the Titan. This thing was expensive to build and slow to move, but its plasma cannon barrage was truly formidable.
Su Xiao checked the level of the Demon Insect Clan. It was still Lv.95. It was 5 levels away from reaching the max level of Lv.100. It didn't seem like much, but the evolution points needed for each level kept climbing. Going from Lv.95 to Lv.96 required 300 evolution points, and from Lv.96 to Lv.97 required 350 points.
To go from Lv.95 to Lv.100, a total of 2,100 evolution points were needed. More importantly, bio-energy could be obtained by the Silver Queen mining Life Veins, but evolution points could only be obtained by killing enemies, having the Creeping Carpet absorb the enemy's soul energy, and then having the Mother Nest convert it.
In Su Xiao's view, Jila was indeed powerful now, but to reach the level where she could eliminate over 90% of the World-Destroying level creatures in this world, Jila's insect clan level had to be raised to Lv.100, awakening the strongest insect clan ultimate ability, to complete the Legendary Mission: Eternal Light Lord.
Su Xiao's train of thought gradually became clear. He now had two missions: the Awakening Mission and the Legendary Mission. They had to be completed in two different ways. For the Awakening Mission, killing the Lightless Temple's Four Giants, this could only be done by Su Xiao himself with his personal Absolute Strength combat power.
The Eternal Dark Lord, the Archbishop of the Abyss, the Ancestor, and the Star Eater all had abilities to kill anything below a certain combat power tier within a range. If combat insects entered this range, they would instantly trigger a death effect, and might even restore the enemy's health.
To complete the Legendary Mission: Eternal Light Lord, even if Su Xiao reached Absolute Strength, he couldn't do it. He had to rely on Jila to achieve this.
Looking at the current bio-energy of the Nest, Su Xiao had Jila cultivate all 120,000 bio-energy into Elite Demon Beasts. He had these 30,000 Demon Beasts hide in various parts of the Mother Nest. The reason for this was to guard against the Silver Queen suddenly turning hostile. For a long time to come, Su Xiao would be away. With 30,000 Demon Beasts inside the Nest, even if the Silver Queen suddenly turned hostile, she couldn't defeat Jila.
That's right, it was that exaggerated. The Silver Queen had a million-strong insect clan army, but once she engaged Jila in battle, all 30,000 Demon Beasts would charge out. At the same time, the Creeping Carpet would spread.
Even if all the Ninth Rank Elite Demon Beasts traded one-for-one with the enemy, the bio-energy absorbed by the Creeping Carpet would be enough to double the number of Demon Beasts in the next batch of mass production. Their Mother Nest's speed for cultivating Elite Demon Beasts was: cultivating 4,000 Demon Beasts at once, one batch every 5 minutes.
By then, the Silver Queen would find that the Demon Insect Clan's combat insects were increasing. As the battle went on, the enemy's flying dragon units would appear, followed by Titan Giant Beasts. A few rounds of plasma cannon barrages would clear the surroundings, and then Brutal Cannon Towers would be built.
The most likely scenario was that a day later, the Silver Queen would find that her combat insects were almost gone, while Jila on the other side already had hundreds of thousands of Demon Beasts, Demon Flame Dragons filling the sky, over a dozen Titan Giant Beasts near the Mother Nest, and Brutal Cannon Towers surrounding the entire area on the periphery.
After inquiring, he learned that the insect clan under the Silver Queen mined 180,000 bio-energy worth of Life Ore daily, after deducting consumption. This made Su Xiao decide to save up bio-energy for a while.
For the next 8 to 10 days, the Demon Insect Clan would keep a low profile. After saving up 1.5 to 1.8 million bio-energy, they would launch a mass production campaign to deal with the World-Destroying level clans on the Wild Overgrowth Land.
None of these World-Destroying level clans were weak. But relatively speaking, the World Devourer, which could already devour extreme natural elements, was the final big boss in this regard. Before enough bio-energy was saved, they absolutely couldn't be noticed by the World Devourer.
Inside the Nest Chamber, Su Xiao had Baha invite the Silver Queen here. After the Silver Queen arrived, Su Xiao made her aware of the 120-plus contracts she had signed. Judging from the Silver Queen's shocked expression, she needed some time alone to digest the fact that she had signed over 120 contracts.
Su Xiao did this to prevent the Silver Queen from causing trouble behind his back while he was away. With these 120-plus contracts in place, the Silver Queen would have great concerns. More importantly, as long as the Silver Queen completed this cooperation, she could not only leave the Eternal Light World, but all 120 contracts would become void. This was stated in each contract.
After doing this, Su Xiao took Bubu Wang, Baha, and the Irritable Little Spirit and left the Mother Nest, heading to Station 6. On the way, the Irritable Little Spirit left. This time, it was going to track the location of the World Devourer.
Amidst the lush green scenery, the iron-black train tracks were not obvious. Su Xiao threw a Black Iron Coin into the station platform covered in green vines. After waiting a moment, the Wild Beast Train roared in. He planned to go to the Wet Salt District.
As soon as he got on the train, Su Xiao saw two figures. One wore a fox mask, and the other was dressed in a Gothic dress. It was the Puppeteer and Gulu.
"Mother Fox, save me."
Gulu spoke. The Puppeteer suddenly became engrossed in the book in her hands. The reason was that although she was about to complete her trial and break through to Absolute Strength, before completing all of this, she was temporarily no match for Su Xiao, even though her accumulation time at the Ninth Rank peak was much longer than Su Xiao's.
As soon as Su Xiao sat down, Gulu stood up, muttering, "Have we arrived already? I almost forgot to get off."
As she spoke, Gulu was already at the train door. Seeing this, Baha said with a sly smile, "This is the Wild Overgrowth District. Are you sure you want to get off here?"
Hearing this, Gulu's steps froze. She stood there until the train door closed, then maintained a somewhat stiff smile and said, "Bai Ye, long time no see."
"..."
Su Xiao didn't speak. He just scrolled through the records on the World Contact Platform and displayed a dozen or so of Gulu's messages.
"Do you think the person who opened over a hundred thousand One-Star titles was me?"
After Su Xiao finished speaking, he gestured for Gulu to sit opposite him.
"Of course not. How could you be that unlucky."
Gulu said words that made her conscience ache. Then she began to change the subject, absolutely refusing to mention the matter on the World Contact Platform, until the train arrived at Station 4 near Sanctuary City and stopped.
Watching the masked woman take Gulu off the train, after the door closed, Su Xiao's brow furrowed slightly. He was sure that Gulu's personal consciousness wasn't problematic, but the 'scent' on her was too special. He didn't know what treasure she was carrying, but it exuded a strange fragrance with soul fluctuations.
If not for Su Xiao's strong willpower, given the characteristics of his Soul Devourer talent ability, he might not have been able to control the seductive pull of that fragrance and would have tried to seize that secret treasure from her.
This unknown treasure made Su Xiao feel that Gulu coming to the Eternal Light World might be to stir up some big trouble.
Putting that aside for now, Su Xiao began to think about his subsequent plans. For the next period, he would focus all his energy on dealing with the Lightless Temple's Four Giants, rather than opening the Monarch's Treasure first.
Opening the Monarch's Treasure now, no matter how he looked at it, was not advantageous for his side. On the contrary, temporarily not opening it and finding a way to eliminate one of the Lightless Temple's Four Giants was the top priority.
To deal with one of the Lightless Temple's Four Giants, he needed sufficient strength. The problem was that Su Xiao had almost exhausted the means to enhance himself. Since he couldn't enhance himself, he would change his approach. Weakening the enemy was also a method.
Eternal Dark Lord, Archbishop of the Abyss, Ancestor, Star Eater.
Su Xiao looked at the limited information on the Four Giants. The most troublesome issue now was that after the [Super World-Level Sealing Technique] was activated, the Four Giants had all returned to the Top City of Sanctuary City. As long as the four of them were together, Su Xiao absolutely couldn't make a move, not even revealing his own trail.
He continued to check the information Beini had sent back. The interior of the Lightless Temple was quite complex. However, below the Four Giants was the Temple High Priest, Ezler. Looking at this person's photo, although Su Xiao had never seen him before, he felt a sense of familiarity. As for what aspect of familiarity, he couldn't quite judge for the moment.
After pondering for a moment, Su Xiao gradually formed an idea. How to get the Four Giants to leave the Top City of Sanctuary City was the key at hand. He could be sure that the relationship between the Four Giants was definitely not friendly or trusting. It might even involve a certain degree of hostility. The fact that they all went to the Top City now was purely under the compulsion of the [Super World-Level Sealing Technique].
Under these circumstances, how to create conflict among the Four Giants was the key to solving this deadlock. Try to sow discord? No, that would be seen through by the Four Giants at a glance. Su Xiao looked down at his own hands. Sometimes, knowledge is power, and also wealth. For example, the Alchemy he had mastered.
What did powerful World-Destroying level beings and Abyss Spawn desire most? The answer was extremely pure Primordial Life Force. And as an Alchemist, Su Xiao could certainly concoct such a potion. No, potions were too suspicious; they were man-made artifacts. This kind of secret treasure needed to be disguised better, as if it were naturally formed.
Thinking of this, Su Xiao had Baha change the train's itinerary. They would temporarily not go to the Wet Salt District but to the Black Iron City.
Su Xiao had a plan. He planned to wait for the other three 'good teammates' in the Black Iron City. Then, the four of them would cooperate. First, they would go to the Silver Queen's place and take one day's worth of mined Life Stones. Although these Life Stones were precious, they weren't enough to attract the Lightless Temple's Four Giants.
But if this large amount of Life Stones was first catalyzed into a liquid state, then meticulously concocted by Su Xiao's superb Alchemy, and not only that, he would catalyze at least 10 kilograms of Black Maple Tree branches into a liquid state and add it to these Life Potions to enhance them.
Then, he would entrust Kaisa to use the Abyssal Jar to obtain extremely pure Abyss Power, perform a limit enhancement on these potions, and crystallize them into [Life Crystals].
After that, Zuiyasi would use his time ability to catalyze them, making the [Life Crystals] seem as if they had been precipitated and condensed for a thousand years. Targeting only inanimate objects, Zuiyasi could achieve this.
Finally, Wude would use the Devil Clan's inherited secret technique to disguise these [Life Crystals] as naturally formed. In the entire Devil Clan, only Wude was qualified to inherit this secret technique. This was the recognition from several old Devil Clan members for him having sent away the 'wild father' Abyssal Jar.
With the combined efforts of the four 'good teammates', plus the value of the 10-kilogram share of Black Maple Tree yield, these [Life Crystals] would surely arouse the desire of the Lightless Temple's Four Giants.
Especially since, over the years, the Four Giants had devoured all such Life-type secret treasures in the Eternal Light World. They hadn't seen a Life-type secret treasure for over a thousand years, let alone this [Life Crystal], which was definitely a rare and precious item among Life-type secret treasures.
Besides being precious, the [Life Crystal] would also have a characteristic: its outer shell would be naturally sealed by World Force. Once the shell was broken, the Life Force inside would quickly dissipate. This completely prevented it from being divided into four small pieces, one for each of the Lightless Temple's Four Giants.
Therefore, there would only be three large pieces of [Life Crystal]. Unfortunately, the Lightless Temple's Four Giants were obviously four individuals. How should they divide it? This was truly a difficult choice.
And the real trump card was not just to cause infighting among the Lightless Temple's Four Giants. Don't forget, who made these [Life Crystals]? The Holy Flame Alchemist was not only good at concocting potions but also excelled at hard-to-detect deadly poisons.
Thinking of this, Su Xiao sent a message in the team channel. The content was for the other three 'good teammates' to gather at the Black Iron City.
The current situation seemed to be the four 'good teammates' vs. the Lightless Temple's Four Giants. But in reality, the situation was more complicated than that, because between these two sides, there was also the Priest, disguised as the Temple High Priest, Ezler.