Chapter 28 The Final Challenge
Fortunately, there are no ranged troops, otherwise the chain mail on these second-level veteran infantrymen would not be able to block the sharp bone arrows.
Chain mail is held together by iron rings, which can block slashing attacks, but arrows will pass directly through the middle of the iron rings.
Although there is a layer of leather armor under the chain mail, the inner leather armor is not like the outer leather armor, and it cannot withstand a few arrows. Any arrow with a stronger force can easily penetrate it.
After returning to the divine realm, Li Qing immediately asked the laborers who were digging the ground to boil water and cook, helped his men to take off the heavy armor for repair, and fed the war horses.
Li Qing took a sip of water and took a break, then opened the attribute panels of his subordinates.
After a great battle, although all the skeletons were below level one, there were too many of them and the accumulated experience was still considerable.
However, on average, no soldier has accumulated enough combat experience to be promoted. On the contrary, Long Shou has killed countless people along the way and has risen several levels. Now his level is as high as 18 and he has 94% of the experience. He will soon be able to reach level 19.
If there could be another battle like this, and his level could be raised to level 20, he would be promoted to a second-tier hero, and his strength would be greatly enhanced.
Increasing the rank itself will greatly improve his physical fitness. The dragon bloodline will be strengthened as the rank increases, and it will be developed once for each rank increase. In addition to the hero skills and the enhancement of the hero's expertise, the higher the hero's star level, the stronger the strength will be with each rank increase.
But unfortunately, the difficulty of the next wave is expected to be extremely high.
Li Qing may not dare to continue to the next round, but he has not shown any reluctance yet.
The fifth round will start later to see the difficulty. If it is too outrageous, he will give up decisively.
After several battles, Li Qing's combat level did not improve. After all, he did nothing. However, he commanded several battles and his strategic experience increased significantly, but it has not yet reached the point of upgrading to the second-level strategic level.
While his men were resting and repairing their equipment, Li Qing returned to the maze from the divine realm .
Looking at the broken bones all over the ground, Li Qing scratched his head, opened the space in his palm, and sucked all the large pieces of broken bones nearby into the space.
Then……
"It's no use!"
When bones are decomposed, the breath of death contained in them is stripped away, and then they are synthesized again, only a large piece of extremely dense bone can be synthesized. What's the use of this?
"I'm not following the path of a necromancer, so what's the problem... wait!"
Li Qing suddenly pinched his chin and thought for a while.
Although he himself will not follow the path of a necromancer, it is possible that others will. This bone is useless to him, but it is quite useful to some necromancers.
If all these brittle bones were broken down, then reassembled into dense, solid and heavy bones, and then these bones were used to make solid skeletons, what rank would the skeletons that were reawakened by necromancy be?
Thinking of this, Li Qing immediately became interested and began to use the space in his palm to absorb the broken bones scattered around.
Fortunately, the space in the palm of my hand has a strong attraction, and the broken bones are not heavy, so they can be sucked up.
Most of the broken bones are concentrated near the platform, so you only need to collect most of the broken bones nearby.
But just as he was busy, he suddenly heard the voice of his mentor:
"This space-related relic of yours is quite magical. Can it hold living things?"
Li Qing paused, then immediately raised his head and answered respectfully:
"It cannot hold living things."
"Well, that's a pity."
"I've never seen a hero like you before. Did your parents prepare this for you?"
Li Qing nodded and said:
"Yes, my parents prepared them for me."
"Very powerful. There is only one four-star hero under the name of the instructor. You must train him well and don't let your parents down."
Li Qing nodded seriously:
"I will."
Nie Yang nodded and asked:
"Do you have any ideas for the next level?"
Li Qing tells the truth:
"It will probably be difficult . I want to give it a try first. If it is possible, I would like to try it, but if it is too difficult, I will have to give up."
"The fifth level..."
Nie Yang said in a deep voice:
"The fifth level will also feature a large army of skeletons. The ranks of the skeletons that appear are all below level one, just like the previous level, but there will be four thousand of them, and about 20% of them will be skeleton archers. There will also be an Undead Knight hero leading them. Do you have confidence?"
"hiss!"
Li Qing couldn't help but gasp.
“This is too difficult!”
Let’s not talk about the number. The key point is that 20% of them, or 800 skeleton archers, how can we fight them?
The skeleton archers used bone bows and shot bone arrows. The bone arrows were very brittle and would break directly when hitting hard objects. However, no matter how weak the skeleton archers were, they were still long-range and the bone arrows were still arrows no matter how brittle they were. There was no need for accuracy. A round of eight hundred bone arrows would directly overwhelm them.
They will definitely not be able to shoot in a duel because there are too few of them. Even if all the archers are promoted to fourth-level sharpshooters, they still won’t be able to shoot.
He raised his head and looked around. There were three high platforms in this small canyon basin, but none of them were very high, and there was no place to hide from the rain of arrows. There was no way it could withstand the siege and consumption of the four thousand skeleton army.
Shaking his head in his heart, he said:
"Teacher, this is too difficult. I'm afraid I can't stop it."
Nie Yang smiled and said:
"It is indeed difficult, but with the capital you have now, it is not impossible to build a suitable defensive stronghold. Your hero is very powerful, so you may want to give it a try."
“The capital I have now???”
At this time, the mentor's voice rang in his ears again:
"If you can complete the fifth level, you can get a God's Domain building core from me. This is a very rare opportunity. It is only available in the first class. The next opportunity will be in half a year."
"That is to say, you only have two chances this year to directly obtain the rewards of the Divine Domain Building. I hope you can seize this opportunity, even if it costs you a great deal."
"Soldiers can be retrained, but such opportunities are very rare."
"but……"
"I can't succeed just because I want to try. It's too difficult."
"You can use the means at your disposal."
"All the means available?"
Li Qing thought carefully and had a vague inspiration in his mind, but he couldn't figure it out for a while.
Suddenly, he had an idea and asked immediately:
"Teacher, can I use the items stored in this space relic during the test?"
But after waiting for a long time, there was no response.
Li Qing rubbed his forehead, grinned, and knew what he should do.
Returning to the gate of the divine realm, Li Qing came to the easternmost part of the divine realm. He swept his eyes over the wall that had been built with great effort, shook his head, opened the space in his palm and collected them one by one.
It's speechless to spend so much effort to build a city wall, only to find out that it was built wrongly.
But there is no way. No one taught me before, so how could I know there would be such hidden dangers.
But then again, there is no big problem in doing this in the early stage. Just like the instructor said, those enemies who do not follow the usual path are unlikely to be encountered in the early stage, so there is no big problem in doing this in the early stage.
At least in the first two years under the mentor's name, you won't encounter enemies who don't follow the beaten path. After two years, you will have more resources and can slowly make changes or adjust on the existing basis.
All in all it's not a waste of effort.
In addition to putting away the city walls, Li Qing also took out pieces of stone and transformed them into thorny stone balls for storage.
Then he took some wooden blocks and began to process them into various special defensive weapons.
After doing all this, he reappeared in the challenge space.
Instead of continuing to collect broken bones, he walked deeper into the Challenge Canyon along the canyon.
The current position is not suitable, so he plans to find a suitable place to set up a defense line.
Anyway, there is still more than an hour, so I can search slowly.
Go down the canyon, turning left and right.
At the same time, other apprentices also completed the challenge one after another.
Most of them failed, and only a few at the top of the rankings successfully completed the fourth level challenge. However, there were only two who were able to complete the challenge without any damage, namely Li Qing and Zhang Jishan.
Although Cao Wenyuan, Gongsun Jin, Mo Wenxi and Chu Zhongzhong completed the fourth level, they each suffered losses.
For example, Cao Wenyuan only lost one soldier, but it was also a loss.
The one who suffered the greatest loss was Gongsun Jin, who ultimately completed the challenge at the cost of the deaths of thirteen infantrymen.
After completing the challenge and opening the divine domain to allow the troops to return to rest, Gongsun Jin looked up and shouted:
"Teacher, I wonder how much Li Qing has completed in his challenge?"
The light screen only shows which apprentices have completed the task, and does not show any losses.
After a while, Nie Yang's voice rang in his ears:
"I know what you want to ask. He has already completed the fourth level challenge without any loss. You have already lost the bet between you two."
"In addition, he is already preparing to start the fifth challenge. I can allow you to return to your own divine domain to replenish troops, up to the population limit of 50. However, the difficulty of the fifth challenge is very high. You have no chance. The instructor suggests that you give up the fifth challenge."
"Damn, how can he be so strong?"
Gongsun Jin bit his lower lip, feeling somewhat unwilling.
"I wonder if the instructor can tell me the specific difficulty of the fifth level challenge so that I can completely give up."
Nie Yang pondered for a moment. Although Gongsun Jin's mental talent was not as good as Li Qing's, it was also a four-star talent. In previous years, it was considered the best among his talents and was worth training.
"The fifth level challenge is 4,000 skeleton undead below level 1, 800 skeleton archers, and a level 3 undead knight hero."
Gongsun Jin...
He stood there for a long while, his expression changing back and forth, but in the end he sighed weakly.
After completing the fourth level challenge, he already knew how terrifying the Skeleton Sea was.
The two thousand or so skeletons in the previous level were already so difficult to fight, and now there are another four thousand, including eight hundred skeleton archers, and led by an undead hero. This is completely beyond the limit of his ability to cope.
Mentor Nie Yang walked back and forth in the challenge space, answering the apprentices' questions from time to time and instructing them on how to use their own advantages.
He didn't mind the apprentices using some cheats during the assessment. As long as the apprentices had the skills, they could use them.
His job is to train apprentices and help them grow.
Props like relics are capital that the apprentice already owns, and it is only natural to use this capital to gain more benefits.
If possible, he would rather everyone complete the fifth level challenge and get a huge reward.
After all, a large part of all the efforts will be reimbursed by the War College in the future.
If these apprentices can become successful in the future, all the efforts will be rewarded many times over.
If the apprentice cannot succeed, his efforts will be in vain.
But this kind of thing is inherently uncertain. No one can guarantee that their apprentice will succeed. They can only do their best.
Under his guidance, two apprentices, Gongsun Jin and Chu Zhongzhong, felt that they were not strong enough and withdrew from the challenge of the fifth level.
The remaining Zhang Jishan, Cao Wenyuan and Mo Wenxi all continued to challenge the fifth level and were making final preparations for the fifth round of challenges.
At this time, Li Qing had already turned left and right in the canyon of the challenge space for nearly two kilometers. After rejecting two places that felt good, he found another corner of the canyon.
In fact, there are corners everywhere in the canyon, but the corner we found this time is different from the other corners.
First of all, the width of this corner is quite wide, about fifteen or sixteen meters, which is just enough to put down two sections of the city wall, and there will not be much space left after placing an arrow tower.
In addition, both sides of the corner canyon are very steep, and it is impossible for the skeletons to climb up the canyon from the left and right and attack the archers on the city wall from a high position.
Two sections of the city wall are placed at the corner. In this way, the skeleton army facing the city wall is only concentrated at the corner. The skeleton army behind it cannot attack the defenders on the other side of the 90-degree corner. This can minimize the skeleton army's troop advantage.
Li Qing simulated in his mind the battle form after establishing defense here, and his eyes suddenly lit up.
“Absolutely!”
Make a decision now and build a defense right here.
First, he walked to the corner, then opened the space in his palm. The vortex quickly expanded to more than five meters, and a five-meter-long section of the city wall smashed down heavily, just sticking to the left side of the canyon.
Then they repeated the same process and lowered the second section of the city wall so that it was aligned with the first section.
Although the ground was not very flat and the two sections of the city wall were crooked and could not be completely aligned, it was not a big problem. It was just a temporary city wall and would be put away after the battle.
Then place the last arrow tower on the far right, and the gap will basically be filled.
Then open the gate to the divine realm and call out the troops that have already rested, placing the archers on the arrow towers and the infantry on the city walls.
But that’s not enough.
Li Qing thought for a while, and then found two suitable flat areas about 60 meters and 100 meters behind this section of the city wall, and put down the second and third sections of the city wall.
In this way, if the front section of the city wall is breached, we can immediately retreat to the second section of the city wall to continue defending.
He was not afraid of the city wall being breached, as such hard stone could not be broken by skeletons that were not even at level one. What he was mainly afraid of was the tactics of the undead heroes.
Although there were many skeletons in the last round, without a hero to command them, they all rushed forward without any tactics.
Now there is an undead hero in command in this round, and various tactics will definitely be used.
The Skeleton Sea has a unique siege tactic that is very terrifying. That is to pile up a large number of skeletons into a mountain under the city wall until the bones are piled up to the same level as the city wall.
By then, the undead army could rush to the top of the city directly by stepping on the bones.
Therefore, it is necessary to build two more rounds of city walls as buffers, just in case.
After doing all this, Li Qing took a deep breath and shouted to the sky:
"Teacher, I'm ready. Let's start the fifth round of challenge!"
