Chapter 97: You Still Don’t Know What You’re About to Face, Do You?
Inside a Secret Realm, trials and challenge stages were usually the main focus, but for the moment, Ye Ze had not discovered any yet.
He activated Eye of Insight and saw that there was not a single other Class User nearby.
“Hm? Has no one else entered yet?”
“Or is the Secret Realm just so large that everyone’s been scattered too far apart?”
At the very least, from what he could tell so far, this Secret Realm was like the Ancient Battlefield in that it randomly placed Class Users in different locations.
And whether his luck was good or bad, Ye Ze immediately encountered a monster right in front of him!
It was a humanoid giant several meters tall, made entirely of stone.
Or rather, it was a stone giant.
【Greater Stone Man (lv.50)】
Type: Outstanding-grade Secret Realm Monster
————
As an Outstanding-grade Secret Realm monster, its attributes were not actually that high.
But it had two special innate abilities: one increased its Defense by 500%...
and the other caused the Greater Stone Man to split into several “Stone Men” upon death, and when those Stone Men died, they would split again into several “Little Stone Men”!
A double layer of nesting dolls!
If someone really fought it all the way to the end, there was no telling how many Little Stone Men would appear!
If another exploration team had run into this, it would probably have been a massive headache. After struggling all the way through the fight, only to see “Little Stone Men” appear at the end, they would probably have had a mental breakdown.
Fortunately, the mantis almost perfectly countered this monster.
With Arm Blades enhanced to +5, it ignored 100% of Defense. And with the effect of Death Verdict, it also ignored splitting, revival, and similar abilities...
So the mantis slashed out with a single strike of Annihilation.
The level-50 Greater Stone Man was instantly swallowed by the void...
At the same time, the Reaper effect activated, restoring mana and resetting Annihilation’s cooldown.
【Killed Greater Stone Man, EXP +5000 (+100%)!】
Compared to the Demon Ant Nest Dungeon, the EXP here was incredibly generous!
At the same time, after the Greater Stone Man died, it left behind a small pale pink petal on the spot...
The squirrel Shadow Clone ran over immediately and picked it up for Ye Ze.
This was no ordinary flower petal.
It was... a lotus petal.
【Lotus Petal: An important item within the Secret Realm...】
This tiny lotus petal had an item description over a dozen lines long!
Only then did Ye Ze understand...
So this was the key item for progressing through the Secret Realm and exchanging for treasure rewards!
To put it simply—Function one: Lotus Petals worked like points. If your number of petals placed you among the top ten in the Secret Realm, you could enter the deeper layer of the Secret Realm!
Function two: The Secret Realm had three layers in total, and each layer had corresponding treasures and rewards that could be exchanged for Lotus Petals.
The only thing that required caution was this: if you exchanged too many things and spent too many petals...to the point that your petal count dropped out of the top ten, then you would lose the right to enter the next layer of the Secret Realm.
There had to be a careful balance between exchanging for items and maintaining your ranking so you could proceed deeper.
But at that moment, as Ye Ze looked at the pale pink lotus petal in his hand, he grew thoughtful...
“Secret Realm... lotus...”
After thinking for a moment, he shook his head.
“For now, I just need to gather as many Lotus Petals as possible!”
As long as he had enough Lotus Petals, he would not need to worry about whether to spend them on items or save them to keep his ranking for the next layer...
He wanted both!
But at that very moment, Ye Ze suddenly sensed a person nearby!
A Class User—someone who had just been randomly teleported into the Secret Realm!
“So I’m the first one to run into someone from China? Heh!”
Following the voice, Ye Ze looked over and saw that the man had spotted him as well, and even looked rather excited.
“So it’s you!?”
The man in front of him had one eye covered by an eyepatch.
It was none other than a member of the Freedom Empire whom Ye Ze had seen before entering the Secret Realm!
When he saw Ye Ze, he chuckled and said, “You should really be glad you entered the Secret Realm so early!”
“You probably still have no idea what happened to your China, do you?”
The one-eyed man’s tone was full of gloating, almost mocking.
Hearing that, Ye Ze was briefly startled, but in the next instant, his smile returned.
“You probably also have no idea what you’re about to face right now, do you?”
The one-eyed man froze.
In the next moment, a black-and-white figure appeared, and the very instant it was summoned, it moved with a speed almost like teleportation and flashed to his side.
The one-eyed man’s heart nearly stopped. Every nerve in his body screamed a warning of danger!
He was a fourth-rank rare class, Sea King. Even though he was on a mountain at the moment, his danger-sensing ability remained extremely sharp.
But even so, by the time the warning struck, that panda had already reached him!
Its speed was absurdly fast!
The one-eyed man instinctively withdrew at once, trying to pull aside his eyepatch and reveal his other eye, so he could finally display his full strength.
But it was already too late.
Martial Saint Domain, open!
Martial Saint Aura! Martial Dao Mastery!
Fierce as Fire! Move Like Thunder!
To ensure he crippled the opponent in a single strike, Panda opened with his domain the moment they met...making the one-eyed man’s movements sluggish.
Then a heavy panda paw blasted out like a thunderclap and smashed into the top of the one-eyed man’s fragile skull...Blood and brain matter flew, and part of his skull caved in.
The eye the one-eyed man had always kept hidden in order to conceal his true strength was completely destroyed by that blow.
Though for him, there was no need to worry too much about that eye anymore.
After all, he would not be alive much longer either.
The one-eyed man collapsed to the ground, knocked unconscious and left on the verge of death.
Ye Ze was not surprised in the slightest.
Up until now, he had always felt that fourth-rank opponents were somewhat difficult to deal with...but that was partly due to the lingering influence of the Ancient Battlefield.
He had subconsciously been picturing his enemies as fourth-rank teams of five or more.
If he were facing a coordinated team, things really would be a bit troublesome.
But now you came over here alone...Wasn’t that just asking to die?
Martial Saint Domain closed. Under Panda’s strike, the one-eyed man had only a single breath left.
As Martial Saint Panda had excellent control over his strength, there was no mistake of accidentally killing him outright...
【Absolute Dominance】!
A powerful surge of spiritual force erupted from Ye Ze and directly took control of the one-eyed man.
In his current state, the man had absolutely no ability to resist.
“What happened outside after I entered the Secret Realm?”
What the one-eyed man had said earlier had genuinely surprised Ye Ze a little.
Though his body was gravely injured, the one-eyed man still used the very last of his strength to explain everything that had happened outside, in broken fragments...
Then his mind could no longer hold on, and he passed out.
“So the Lionheart Kingdom and the Freedom Empire joined forces?”
“China only got six people in, while the other two nations got thirty-four?”
For some reason, hearing that news actually made Ye Ze a little excited...
“Just how much equipment can I rob from them?”
Would it be enough to outfit all five summoned beasts with a full Legendary set each?
The corners of Ye Ze’s lips rose involuntarily.
Looking at the unconscious one-eyed man, he had no intention of letting him off lightly.
“Super Enhancement — Treasure Seizure...”