The Era of Gods

174 The shattered shell of the Crystal Wall System’s Core

Translator: 549690339

After finalizing the deck, Lin Xiao selected the ready option on the screen interface and began the matching process. The scene before him shifted, becoming a constantly twisting Chaos Vortex.

Within two seconds, a golden light shot out from the distorted Chaos Vortex, and Lin Xiao felt his consciousness blur momentarily as he appeared in a boundless Void, spotting another golden light falling rapidly far ahead towards a virtual plane.

“Please deploy your predetermined card group within one minute!”

“That was fast.”

First, he glanced at the terrain of the plane – it was different from the Summer Camp with no terrain selection, only a random option.

It seemed that neither he nor his opponent could choose, only random.

“Wow, talk about leaving it all up to luck!”

He set the activation sequence for the three cards he had prepared in advance, confirmed, and after a dozen seconds, the opponent also confirmed. Lin Xiao felt his consciousness quickly submerging into the plane.

It was a very ordinary hilly terrain. Three kilometers in length and width, one could see a sky full of white light pouring down across from the plane, manifesting into countless figures that overspread the ground.

From a distance, Lin Xiao observed that the other side had three thousand Level 1 Frog People and about three hundred Level 3 Bear Goblin Knights. This setup was quite impressive.

The Frog People might be lower level, but there were so many of them; even ants can bite an elephant to death.

Without using any cheats, Lin Xiao found it might be a bit challenging to defeat the opponent…

Well, okay, it’s actually quite easy since five hundred Archers are quite powerful.

Initially, Lin Xiao only activated five hundred Archers along with a hundred Heavy Infantry. The Super Large Fire Elemental wasn’t summoned right away, but it was in the Combat Card Group ready to be called at any moment. Cards outside of the Combat Card Group couldn’t be used in this battle.

His opponent was an ordinary Caucasian man who, after summoning his forces, immediately looked up to check his opponent. Seeing only about five or six hundred enemies on the other side, he grew overly confident, thinking he had the win in the bag, and laughed loudly from afar:

“Looks like your luck is terrible, so I won’t hold back.”

Lin Xiao glanced at his opponent and said with his arms crossed:

“I have five hundred Archers and a hundred Heavy Infantry, your forces may be numerous but most are cannon fodder. I can’t think of any reason you would believe you’ll win. Is it because of those three hundred wild boar knights?”

“Of course!”

The confidence of the Caucasian man made Lin Xiao raise his eyebrows. He scrutinized the enemy once again, indeed they were Level 3 wild boar knights, with no other hidden troops in sight. Why does he think he can beat me?

He thought about probing further, but the time was up, the three-second countdown ended, and the battle began.

The Caucasian man immediately waved his hand, and three thousand Frog People charged shouting, with three hundred Bear Goblin Knights following at a steady pace behind; his combat intentions were puzzling to Lin Xiao.

But regardless of the opponent’s plan, his own strategy was simple—line up a hundred Heavy Infantry in a row at the front, position the five hundred Archers in three lines behind the infantry, and wait for the enemy to draw closer.

When the enemy was about five hundred meters away, the three lines of Archers fired a volley into the air simultaneously. A rain of arrows soared into the sky, tracing long parabolas before falling, hitting a few Frog People to the ground.

The volley was somewhat imprecise, and the accuracy was off in the first round.

However, after the second volley rained down five seconds later, not only was the angle readjusted, but the distance had closed further, inflicting significant damage.

Yet the other side showed no reaction and kept charging.

After six volleys, nearly one-tenth of the Frog People were killed, but the distance had now shrunk to below a hundred meters. Lin Xiao quickly ordered the Archers to change their firing method. The three lines worked in a cycle: the first line would shoot and then immediately step back to re-string their bows. Meanwhile, the second line stepped up to shoot and then retreated for the third line to take its place. By the time the third line finished, the first was ready again, creating a seamless rotation of fire.

This was a common linear queue tactic for eliminating enemies, allowing single-shot hand crossbows to achieve continuous fire in turns.

At least for now, it seemed extremely effective, with a large number of Frog People falling. The short gap of a hundred meters saw a much higher casualty rate than the previous six volleys.

But what puzzled Lin Xiao was that his opponent seemed undisturbed by his forces’ falling numbers. The three hundred Bear Goblin Knights hadn’t even caught up yet. This was…

Just then, a sly smile appeared on the face of the Caucasian man, who drew out a crystal wand that looked extremely lavish, resembling a clenched fist. He slammed it into the ground, and a gemstone embedded in one of the five fingers at the end of the wand burst open. Above the three hundred Bear Goblin Knights, the Void twisted and distorted, and they disappeared into thin air.

“Damn it, a Teleportation Wand!”

Lin Xiao didn’t need to see the teleport point to know what the opponent had in mind.

Just as expected, a large patch of invisible distortion directly appeared among the Archers. The three hundred Bear Goblin Knights had been teleported into the crowd. With sword in hand, nearly half of the Archers were overturned before they could react.

Although the Archers were ranked higher than the Bear Goblin Knights, they were all about long-range shooting. Their close combat capabilities were virtually non-existent, no match for the Bear Goblins’ slashing and the wild boars’ gnawing. The Archers’ formation was quickly thrown into utter disarray.

The Caucasian man laughed heartily upon seeing this:

“Looks like you’re going to lose.”

“That may not be the case!”

Lin Xiao directly activated the scroll wrapped in red light, and the sky twisted and opened. A fireball as big as a house plunged from the sky into the battlefield and exploded into a sea of flames spanning dozens of meters. Accompanied by a soul-piercing roar, flames slowly rose, condensing into a Super Large Fire Elemental over fifteen meters tall.

The summoned Fire Elemental roared up to the heavens, and a faint halo of flame rapidly expanded. The grass on the ground quickly turned yellow, withered, blackened, and burned, transforming the area into a Land of Flames exceeding one hundred meters in diameter.

“This is impossible!”

The white man stared at the massive Fire Elemental as if he had seen a ghost.

“Kill them.”

With a point of Lin Xiao’s hand, the towering arms of the Super Large Fire Elemental rose high, the sky turned a rapid red, and countless fist-sized fireballs rained down from the sky into the Frog People.

The Rain of Fire technique, a powerful spell mastered by a Rank 6 Super Large Fire Elemental, can summon a large torrent of fire rain to scorch enemies from above.

With waves of Rain of Fire igniting the bodies of the Frog People, the magic flames’ power far exceeded ordinary fire, and many Frog People were burned to death, their morale skyrocketing and collapsing as they fled.

Even though it was a summoned troop, it was real, and who could resist under such terrible magic and battle damage.

As the Frog People fled, Lin Xiao immediately ordered the remaining eighty to ninety heavy infantry to return and support the crossbow shooters.

The arms of the Super Large Fire Elemental raised once more, showering down a swath of red light, bestowing all the infantry with a flame shield that could reflect fire damage, as well as imbuing their blades with fire damage.

The rest of the battle had no more surprises. Even if the Boar Knights killed off all the crossbow shooters, they were obliterated by the Super Large Fire Elemental’s spells in a few waves. Still, Lin Xiao won.

The battlefield they were on was virtual, and the death of soldiers did not affect the next battle, as they would all return to full numbers shortly thereafter.

After the battle ended, a prize wheel appeared before Lin Xiao’s eyes. He knew this was the opponent’s card pool, and according to the rules he could draw one to three cards from the opponent’s pool to replenish his own.

He pressed down on the center of the wheel, which spun rapidly. After more than ten seconds, the speed slowed until it stopped, revealing two new cards before him.

“Not bad.”

He examined the two cards closely, one was a three-star ordinary quality Boar Knight Card, and the other was a two-star Summoning Card capable of summoning a small pack of Seat Wolves, which could be ignored.

It’s a shame he didn’t draw that Teleportation Card, or it would have been fun.

Next, after defeating an opponent, he could choose a card to add to his Combat Card Group.

After pondering for a moment, Lin Xiao pulled out the Boar Knight Card and added the two-star ordinary Goblin Card. Both cards summoned Goblins, and since Bear Goblins were also Goblins, they could be fused.

After combining the two cards, they became a three-star rare quality Soldier Card, capable of summoning three hundred Bear Goblins and three hundred regular Goblin Cannon Fodder.

Although the added strength wasn’t very impressive, and the boost to his power wasn’t huge, this bunch of Cannon Fodder was just right to buy more time for the five hundred archers. A hundred heavy infantry were too few to hold back the enemy’s attack.

Moreover, he didn’t have anything good, and others didn’t have much either.

Everyone had limited card slots; there weren’t that many advanced card combinations.

After a brief rest, Lin Xiao didn’t leave the battlefield and directly continued to match up with a second opponent.

At the God’s Tomb square, as time passed, the first round of battles ended one after another. Lin Xu emerged from defeating his first opponent, prepared himself again, and when his consciousness returned to the square, he found that the HuaXia District’s players had been significantly reduced.

At least two-thirds of the players were defeated in the first round, a margin that shocked him greatly.

Compared to the ease and laughter of the players from the high school league, the atmosphere in the HuaXia District was quiet and extremely heavy, with everyone feeling unwilling and unconvinced.

If they lost because they were technically inferior, that would be one thing, or if they really had worse luck, they could accept that. But they felt particularly indignant about competing at a disadvantage from the start.

But the rules were as such—who would have command in the God’s Tomb if not their own people?

Lin Xu was helpless in this regard. Although he also had an advantage and his luck wasn’t bad, adding up to a fairly good situation, he was certain he couldn’t make it to the end.

Glancing left and right, he saw that both Lin Xiao and Shen Yuexin were still present, meaning they weren’t eliminated. That was somewhat comforting.

He wasn’t very optimistic about Lin Xiao; he had seen his card pool was not much stronger than his own. But he had high hopes for Shen Yuexin. Her luck was exceptionally good – she started with an Ancient Godly Card, and with the advantage of a few gold and orange cards, she had a good chance of making it to the end and taking the God’s Tomb.

He felt the hope of the HuaXia District rested on her.

With a bit of solace, Lin Xu’s consciousness sank, and he began the second round of challenge.

In the virtual plane, Lin Xiao carefully observed his opponent’s strength, and from the start, he summoned the Super Large Fire Elemental to position in front of the archers. Further forward were a thousand heavy infantry and three hundred Goblin Cannon Fodder, while another three hundred Bear Goblins broke away early to circle around to the side, forcing the opponent to allocate some forces to defend against a possible sneak attack on their archer formation..