Chapter 70 : Chapter 70
Chapter 70: One Against Thirty-Five!
After Panda ate another seven pieces of equipment, a flash of golden light burst out before it, as though a gift box had been opened.
What appeared was a dark crimson bracer covered in golden patterns, radiating a palpable sense of power.
There were two kinds of bracers. One purely increased defensive attributes and suited tanks and Shield Guards.
The other provided energy amplification and strength amplification during attacks, making it the first choice for damage-dealing Warriors.
And from its appearance alone, this bracer unquestionably belonged to the latter category:
【Fierce as Fire】
Level: 15
Quality: Legendary☆☆☆☆
Attributes: Strength +60, Agility +40, Critical Damage +300%, Critical Hits Ignore 50% of Defense
Special Effect: When attacking an enemy whose health is above 50%, the attack is guaranteed to crit!
Set (1/6)
————
“What absurd offensive power!”
The damage increase this bracer provided was almost comparable to the bonus from two Epic weapons combined!
A critical hit meant triple damage!
With Panda’s current attributes... every punch would crit, and every punch could drop an enemy!
And on top of that, it belonged to the same set as the earlier 【Immovable as a Mountain】.
“If I can complete this Legendary set, just how monstrous will the attributes be?”
Of course, collecting all six pieces would be far too difficult, especially when every piece was a four-star Legendary item...
“No idea when I’ll ever finish it.”
As he thought that, Ye Ze equipped ‘Fierce as Fire’ on Panda, replacing the Rare-grade ‘Crimson Spirit Bracers’ it had worn long ago.
That made two pieces of the Legendary set!
There was a small price to pay, though. At this point, when Panda ate Epic-grade equipment, the attribute bonuses it gained had already dropped to the single digits...
At the same time, Ye Ze noticed something.
After the third layer of the Ancient Battlefield opened, aside from the five people from Zhu Xiao’s team whom he had killed, not a single other person had been eliminated!
He activated Hunter’s Vision and swept the surroundings. Only then did he realize...
The remaining thirty-five students had all gathered together!
All of them had assembled inside Vanguard City, the neutral structure on the third layer of the Ancient Battlefield. It was obvious they had formed an alliance.
The longer Ye Ze looked, the more the corners of his mouth lifted.
“They’ve joined forces this quickly? So they’re planning to launch a counterattack on me?”
“Perfect. That saves me the trouble of hunting them down one by one.”
Ye Ze used ‘Copy’ to replace Hunter’s Vision with Martial Dao Mastery, gaining an 80% reduction in skill cooldowns.
Now that he already knew their location, there was no need to keep the X-Ray Vision effect anymore. With shorter cooldowns, he could use Skill Enhancement a few more times instead.
“Come on.”
“Let me test this year’s super prodigies for myself!”
Across the jagged wasteland, Ye Ze advanced step by step toward Vanguard City in his black robe.
...
On the third layer of the Ancient Battlefield, a ruined little city stood upon the wasteland.
Originally, whichever team occupied that city could continuously gain points, while also receiving a slight defensive buff for holding the city.
But now, all thirty-five students had gathered there instead.
“I really never thought there would come a day when our teams fought side by side!”
The speaker was Fu Wanjun, the captain of South China’s First Team. After he and Bai Wei encountered Liu Anran’s group, he had decisively chosen to join them.
Others might not understand Ye Ze’s true strength, but he had seen it with his own eyes!
Besides that, the reason the teams had managed to coordinate their cooperation so smoothly was also thanks to Zhu Xiao getting instantly killed.
From Liu Anran’s point of view, at least his death had served a purpose.
“Everyone understands my tactical arrangements, right?”
“In the battle against the instructor, I will serve as primary tactical commander. If an emergency occurs and I get taken out instantly, Su Qing will assume secondary command...”
As Liu Anran spoke, her expression was severe. Her cool beauty carried a quiet authority.
She stood before the crowd and drew Su Qing, the tall red-haired beauty from Central China’s First Team, to her side.
There were six tacticians present, but if they wanted the geniuses from all the major regions to truly accept the command structure, then Liu Anran, whose strength stood at the top, was naturally the first choice to lead.
At this moment of team combat, even the squads led by top experts like Duan Tianchen and Chu He had temporarily handed over command authority.
...
Inside the Monitoring Division, several of the high-ranking officials from headquarters could not help sighing in admiration.
“This batch of students really has a strong sense of the bigger picture!”
“It’s mainly because Zhu Xiao, who was projected to rank first, got killed instantly. That put far too much pressure on them.”
“I think Liu Anran has performed extremely well. With her spatial class and her role as a tactician, calling her the top freshman wouldn’t be excessive at all!”
But Wei Zheng, standing nearby, said, “Hard to say.”
“The moment the instructor is killed, the teams will go back to fighting separately. At that point, Liu Anran’s team only has two people left. Even making the top three will be difficult.”
That said, Wei Zheng was still extremely satisfied with Liu Anran’s performance.
He was even already starting to plan the formation of a special squad in the future.
Meanwhile, Wan Feipeng had already given up entirely and sprawled across the sofa. In his own words:
“Thirty-five against one—there’s no honor in that. Even if they win, it still doesn’t count!”
Still, no one refuted him. After all, even if it was first rank against second rank, thirty-five people against one really was a bit excessive...
...
Up atop Vanguard City, one of the students handling reconnaissance stiffened.
“He’s here!”
“It doesn’t look like he’s trying to hide at all...”
The moment those words were spoken, everyone looked down beneath the city walls.
Ye Ze, dressed in black robes, was walking toward them!
Martial Saint Panda stood in front of him, with the fox on one side and the squirrel on the other. As for the mantis, it was nowhere to be seen.
He was simply walking over like that, calm and unhurried, all by himself to attack a city defended by thirty-five people!
“Isn’t that way too arrogant?”
Someone on the wall spoke in indignation.
If he had launched a surprise attack, everyone could have accepted that. But to just walk over through the main gate like this—was he really not taking them seriously at all?
Clearly, the only people who thought that were those who had never faced Ye Ze head-on.
Fu Wanjun, for example, looked especially resolute. “So it really is him!”
Song Qiaoqiao beside him recognized Ye Ze as well and nodded. “That’s the man from the Contaminated Land!”
As the tactical commander, Liu Anran did not have those extra emotions.
The fact that Ye Ze was approaching from the front instead gave her a major opportunity!
“First group, probe him.”
As Liu Anran spoke, a boy whose class was 【Earthcore Guardian】 stepped forward.
“Earth Tremor!”
“Skyfire!”
The Earthcore Guardian boy stamped one foot down, and huge masses of earth and rock split upward from the ground around Ye Ze, forming a prison of stone pillars that trapped him inside.
Immediately after that, the tall red-haired beauty, Su Qing, shaped a wisp of flame between her hands into a flaming bird. The bird flew straight toward Ye Ze inside the stone pillars.
If it hit, the flaming bird would transform into a towering pillar of fire, dealing massive damage within the cramped space enclosed by the rock columns.
Liu Anran did not expect it to seriously injure Ye Ze.
But since he had stepped straight into the Earth Tremor prison from the front, he would definitely be forced to use either a defensive skill or a mobility skill!
For a Summoner, that was equivalent to losing one trump card!
And yet, the moment the stone-pillar prison had just taken shape...
A thunderous boom rang out as Panda shattered it with a single punch.
Liu Anran’s delicate brows knitted tightly. Turning her head, she asked, “Didn’t you say the defensive strength of this prison was twice your own?”
The boy of the Earthcore Guardian class swallowed hard. “That’s right.”
“Which means that even if my defense were doubled, he’d still kill me with one punch...”