Calamity Messenger

Chapter 372 - 305: Free-Fall Tower Without Safety Restraints

No wonder the Three Central Plains Kingdoms have almost no differences in the script they use, apart from the accent. With a cultural anchor like the Secret Realm providing stable textual canons, any language reform would be pulled back.

Yan Qing tried the coffee machine at the counter; it clearly wasn’t plugged in, but still worked. Yan Qing made himself a latte, the long-lost bitter coffee aroma made him feel quite emotional; indeed, Coca-Cola suits him better.

With several cans of drinks in hand, Yan Qing set off again.

Arriving at a street named ’Winding Path,’ Yan Qing noticed that the demons appearing on the street were no longer alone but in groups of twos or threes. According to the intel provided by Xi Zifeng, the further inside one goes, not only do the demons become stronger, but they also move in packs. Up to seven demons can form a team. Once one is attacked, the others will chain their hatred and swarm over, and even a Third-Turn Messenger can only flee under such an onslaught, with no chance of fighting back!

Suddenly, Yan Qing’s eyes lit up as he spotted from afar a team consisting of a Dragon Attendant and a Bronze Dragon!

He raised his wristband and used the [Resurrection Mutation] on his Dragon Attendant before rushing over and striking the wild Dragon Attendant!

In the instant the battle ensued, Yan Qing’s Dragon Attendant died, but due to the resurrection trait added by [Yellow Springs Old Guard], a newly resurrected Dragon Attendant was immediately summoned.

Meanwhile, since [Resurrection Mutation] itself summons a puppet identical to the original, another Dragon Attendant capable of revival was summoned.

With two summons realized, the Dragon Attendant’s attributes increased by 600/400, its attack power reaching a thousand points!

It can indeed be done!

The resurrection trait, the return from death trait, and the resurrection mutation, these three combined create a combo that quickly stacks the Dragon Attendant’s attributes!

Two Dragon Attendants with a thousand attack power already match up quite closely to a Third-Turn Demon Fiend, clinching the battle in just one round.

After the battle concluded, the wild Dragon Attendant and wild Bronze Dragon sent two streams of light flying into Yan Qing’s wristband. He lifted it up and saw the Dragon Attendant’s ascent progress increase by 1.

Collecting the same puppet cards indeed directly counts towards the ascent progress rather than becoming hand cards, Yan Qing thought. He had anticipated this; if identical puppet cards wouldn’t merge, he could simply gather enough Dragon Attendant puppets and continuously replace them, stacking the Dragon Attendant’s attributes to a terrifying height within a day.

Even if the Demon Gathering Land is a limited-time dungeon, such an obvious flaw couldn’t possibly exist.

Unexpectedly, Yan Qing didn’t obtain the Bronze Dragon puppet card but a transformation card:

「Charge into Battle: Puppets gain 300 points of health and a taunt trait.」

Besides puppet cards, are transformation cards also possible drops? Yan Qing casually applied it to the Dragon Attendant, and suddenly the sound of armor assembling echoed behind him. Turning around, Yan Qing found a phantom shield appearing on the Original Dragon Attendant, indicating it became the primary target for other demons to attack.

However, Yan Qing noticed that one of the Original Dragon Attendant’s skeletal dragon claws was broken, a result of the wild Bronze Dragon’s dying strike. Even after the battle, the damage inflicted on the puppets wouldn’t recover; if all puppets were wiped out, Yan Qing would either have to fight the demons himself, replace the deceased puppet with a new puppet card, or wait until the next day to resummon the puppets.

The Demon Gathering Land lacks restrictions like ’Gold Coins’ and ’Fatigue Value’; if players are willing and able, they can fight their way from the entrance to downtown, replacing puppets as they fall.

However, due to the level cap restrictions, no matter how skilled, a Level 39 player is unlikely to solo teams of Third-Turn Demon Fiends. How to choose and cultivate one’s puppets is the core gameplay of this dungeon, Demon Gathering Land.

Yan Qing decided to focus on the Dragon Attendant for the first two days; once its attributes stacked up, he would challenge Third-Turn Puppets and even Fourth-Turn Puppets. Hence, he couldn’t afford to replace the Dragon Attendant puppet card. He must carefully consider his next battle targets since the Dragon Attendant has limited health and can’t fight many battles before all are wiped out.

As Yan Qing walked, he found quite a number of shops here: milk tea shops, snack shops, tobacco shops—what the heck, why is the tobacco shop empty?

Yan Qing recalled seeing many officers and generals smoke pipes during his six-day journey through Qi Kingdom, wondering if they might have learned smoking from the Secret Realm?

As he walked, a towering building appeared beside the road, piercing the sky, resembling the pillar that supports heaven and earth. Its topmost part even aligned with the sky-high Demon Dragon. Standing at the bottom, Yan Qing looked up, unable to see the top of the column.

"Ascension Pillar," Yan Qing recited the plaque’s introduction: "Trial Takers accept the ascension test, which increases ascent progress for all puppets. The longer the Trial Taker rides, the greater the rewarded ascent progress."

Yan Qing looked at the unbelievably tall column, then at the stone chair at its base. He hesitated for a moment, sat on the stone chair, and the Dragon Attendant puppets following behind him automatically waited outside the column.

"Where’s the safety bar?"

The features were so distinct that Yan Qing naturally recognized the prototype of this column as a drop tower. He liked playing drop towers at Chimelong Paradise and wasn’t unfamiliar with them.

But surely drop towers have safety bars or belts. Yan Qing looked around, seeing that this stone chair was too much a stone chair; he couldn’t find any mechanism.

The only peculiar thing was the two semicircular protrusions on the stone chair’s armrests, seemingly perfectly fit for hands. Yan Qing found nothing, and when he sat down, he instinctively placed his hands on them. Suddenly, the ground clicked, and the circular floor tiles around the column began to rotate. As the tiles lined up in a straight line, a giant hole slowly opened in the ground, revealing... what looked like boiling shit swamp!

The smell was so strong that one sniff instantly refreshed Yan Qing’s spirit. No, as far as he remembered before crossing over, screens outside hadn’t been developed to convey smells; why on earth did the designers make this swamp so stinky?

The stone chair rumbled upwards, revealing light blue patterns along the column as Yan Qing watched the Demon Gathering Land slowly sink beneath his feet. The buildings small like toys, he felt like the emperor here, overlooking the world, unmatched!

This is the allure of the drop tower, reaching the peak of the earthly world, raising hands to touch the sky, blotting out the sun!

But damn it, where’s my safety bar?

Where’s my safety belt?

I’d be fine even if you strapped me to the stone chair!

Initially, Yan Qing wasn’t that scared, but as the height increased, his spine tensed up, his calves cramped tight, wanting to curl himself into the stone chair. The wind grew stronger, and the stone chair swayed more; Yan Qing had to grip the spherical knobs tightly on the armrests, or he’d likely be blown away!

A super drop tower with no safety measures, whichever planner thought up this wicked idea, weren’t they afraid of tearing their toilet paper every time they wiped?

Yan Qing felt his acrophobia was kicking in, but the cool thing about acrophobia is that even though you know you’re scared, you can’t help but sneak a peek downward, like a moth drawn to a flame. Yan Qing glanced, instantly his legs went weak, yet this very fear piqued his urge to look more.

Hmm?

Yan Qing squinted, looking at the people below who appeared like trash. They... seemed to be running towards him?