Chapter Eighty-Five: The Final Assault

He advanced his blink skill.

Blink, level eight: ignore terrain and teleport instantly up to five hundred meters. Cooldown: ten seconds. Can carry other living beings along, up to five at once.

After the upgrade, it even gained the ability to bring others with him. Judging by the old cooldown, raising it by three levels should never have left the timer still at ten seconds; chances were that ten seconds was already the skill's minimum.

But if he could bring people with him, Li Ren's mind turned, thinking of the powerful figures within Falling Cloud City, and he looked greatly pleased.

Since his current objective was already complete, the skill points were in hand, and the skill itself had been upgraded, staying any longer in this dangerous place would be sheer foolishness.

So Li Ren began cutting his way back along the route he had come, and with his newly upgraded blink skill added into the mix, in less than a minute he had successfully reached the outskirts of the city.

Arriving amid the countless monsters gave him a great sense of security.

Only then did he truly have time to relax a little. The period spent on the side quest had left his nerves utterly taut. After all, he had no idea what sort of guards lay ahead, and he had been surrounded all along by innumerable players. No matter who it was, there was no way not to be tense.

While he was busy with the quest, the defensive line of Cloud Soaring City seemed to grow increasingly weak. The true guarding force was already beginning to lag behind, and although players kept pouring in from the rear to reinforce it, that still could not save the front line from its gradual collapse.

Naturally, Li Ren following behind would not stand on ceremony. Vast quantities of equipment and enormous amounts of blood essence once again fell into his hands, and now that he had risen to level seventy-eight, his level continued to climb at a breakneck pace.

The experience bar surged wildly after he once again summoned a hundred underlings to help convert blood essence.

Although the battlefield situation was quite unfavorable for the players, it could not conceal the radiance of certain individuals.

Zoron was one of them.

While the earth dragon knights held the monsters at the front, he pressed forward with twin blades in hand, his shifting figure darting left and right through the horde. Every thrust of his sword brought with it a spray of brilliant blood light, and for that reason the experience he gained was terrifying beyond the norm.

The level ranking kept being refreshed, over and over again, but Zoron still stood proudly at the top. With the massive level gap granting double experience bonuses, he soon surged ahead in a relentless chase. As the monsters grew stronger and stronger, with elite foes often above level one hundred and fifty, the nearly one thousand percent overlevel experience reward he earned as a level fifty was enormous.

Before long, with his team behind him, white light kept flashing across the crowd, and Zoron was the first to reach level sixty.

And because of his activity and extraordinarily high luck, many of the equipment drops on the battlefield also fell into their hands, among which there was naturally no shortage of superb gear.

After Zoron reached level sixty, the silver longsword in his hand vanished, replaced by another blade whose surface was covered in dark red blotches, crisscrossed with patterns like spiderwebs.

Once that sword appeared, his killing speed increased by more than double, and the area of the defensive line where he fought actually began to show signs of being revived.

Of course, as the players' overall levels rose and the mages' spells improved again, the damage they could unleash also grew ever more violent.

Only thirty minutes remained, and Li Ren still waited in the rear. He did not believe that the lords who had stood unmoving back there would simply watch this mission fail in the end and lose twenty thousand points of all attributes for nothing.

As expected, at the moment when thirty minutes remained, the lords in the rear finally moved.

They had finally begun to act. The powerful lords, with their personal guards, charged forward, and even the sole dragon, a dark green giant dragon, let out a savage roar.

A wind sprang up violently. Li Ren saw that behind the dragon, swarms of flying beasts were taking to the sky. Led by the dragon, they charged straight toward Cloud Soaring City.

Beneath the might of a dragon, all things bow their heads.

Looking at that mass of black, oppressive clouds, Li Ren felt nothing but envy, jealousy, and bitter resentment.

No matter the world, air power was always the most crucial force. If control of the skies were lost, then no matter how strong the forces on the ground might be, they would surely be hard-pressed to resist.

The dragon race at this moment perfectly embodied that truth.

A mighty breath attack burst from its mouth. The players below did not even have time to react before they were reduced to white light in that blaze. No one could survive such flames.

Just as the players began to feel despair, Fan Yunsan finally made his move.

From within the city lord's manor, swarms of knights behind Fan Yunsan mounted their griffins and soared into the sky as well.

Griffin knights, the advanced elite branch of knight units, kings of the air, famed for their formidable mobility and combat strength.

Even in the face of a dragon, Fan Yunsan showed no fear at all. Riding his dragonhawk, he took the lead and charged straight toward the dragon.

Blinding arcs of lightning began to gather in his hands, finally taking the shape of a long spear. Brilliant and searing bolts shimmered along it, and lightning danced on the spearhead, as if it contained a blazing sun. Ordinary people could not bear to look directly at it.

The dragon's long, cold eyes watched Fan Yunsan rushing in at speed. Its burning breath spat lightly, then it turned and flew toward the outskirts of the city. Fan Yunsan said nothing, simply following after it. After that, the aerial forces of both sides erupted completely above Cloud Soaring City.

Whether players or the city itself, all the strongest power they possessed had now been laid bare. The strength of the three great guilds had begun to bring order to the chaos. Though seven lords from the rear charged forward, they were immediately blocked in front by an even greater number of earth dragon horse knights, who used their bodies to hold them firmly in place.

This created an excellent output environment for the players behind them.

As the battle entered its final climax, all the guards of the city lord's manor had already been deployed. The other gates no longer even showed a single guard. Everyone, every nonplayer character, had gathered on this one line of death.

Watching the battle before him, watching Fan Yunsan's back as he followed the dragon into the distance, Li Ren smiled darkly.

It seemed it was time for him to make his move again.