Volume 5: Protracted War Chapter 165: Evolutionary Crisis (1)
He threw me a fist-sized, shiny black crystal ball, which should be the so-called "Soul Bead". After saying "Don't disturb me before I collect the souls of the six sacred beasts", the Abyss Dragon King Robinho and a dozen of his tribesmen retreated back into the water or underground and disappeared without a trace.
Only by killing the six sacred beasts of the three series, namely the Great Demon, the Bloodthirsty Demon Emperor, the Golden Dragon, the Ultimate Hydra, the Black Tortoise and the Behemoth, can the first seal of the "Dead Scepter" be lifted. This requirement is indeed a bit harsh. However, the "Underground Maze" is located in the Central Continent and was originally opened after the player was promoted to level eight. For players of level seven, the difficulty of the task is indeed greater. Moreover, the "Dead Scepter" is one of the powerful main artifacts. Naturally, it will not be so easy to lift its seal.
Of course, I can't do it alone. Unless I have the ability to summon a group of bone dragons, I can't kill any of the holy beasts. However, the Abyss Demon Dragon King only asked me to use the "Soul Bead" to collect the souls of the six holy beasts that were about to dissipate at the moment of death. He didn't specify that I had to kill the holy beasts myself. I could find other people to help me and let them surround and kill them. As long as I stay by the side when the holy beasts die, it will be fine. It seems that I have to trouble the Tongxin League for this matter. After all, it has now developed into a large mercenary group of 10,000 people. It is not a problem to find a group of expert players who are capable of challenging the holy beasts. There is also enough financial resources to support such an action. Xue Wuxia and Afeng came forward to recruit people to participate. First, to help me, and second, they can take the opportunity to fight for a few pieces of equipment. If they are lucky, they can drop a few pieces of equipment with better attributes, which should not be too much of a loss.
I informed Xue Wuxia and Afeng of the situation and asked them for help. They naturally would not refuse my face and readily agreed. However Khufu was about to start evolving and needed to constantly absorb my spiritual power. Wuxia must have gone to collect the souls of the holy beasts. We could only start after the evolution was successful. Moreover, even if the participants were all players of level 7 professions, it was not an easy task to challenge the powerful holy beasts. They still had to kill six holy beasts of different types. They had to take different attack methods and formulate reasonable tactics based on their respective characteristics - those that could fly, those that were good at running, those with high attack and those with strong defense. Therefore, they also needed some time to select suitable personnel and prepare various auxiliary props to ensure the success of the challenge to the holy beasts.
Khufu has already started to evolve, and I need to constantly activate the "Touch of Death" to absorb spiritual energy to ensure its supply. At the same time, I also need to take into account the subjugation of those "enclosed" corpse witches and prepare for the expedition to the "Valley of the Wind" in the future. According to the information provided by Khufu, the volcanic undead have the help of the "Hell Magma Pool", so they do not need to hunt and absorb the soul energy of other undead in large quantities like most undead creatures. However, since the alien undead have a limited soaking time each month, the absorption time is short and the transformation time is long, the energy reserves in the body are not sufficient. In this case, when evolving, they must soak in the "Hell Magma Pool" and constantly absorb magma energy to ensure the normal progress of evolution.
This is the right enjoyed by every volcanic undead, and Hades, the Dark Dragon King, is powerless to obstruct it, and it is impossible for it to openly destroy the evolution of alien undead. However, Hades is the actual ruler of the "Hell Volcano" after all, and there are ways to interfere, such as using his own ability to artificially affect the supply of magma energy. Although in order to avoid suspicion, it cannot be done too obviously, the magnitude of the impact is generally not too large, and it may not matter much at ordinary times, but at the critical moment of evolution, especially the evolution of high-level forms, once the energy supply is insufficient, there is a great possibility that the evolution will fail. According to Gu Ben's knowledge from the Flying Fire Ghost King and Khufu's observations over the past few hundred years, Hades usually uses this more obscure method to eliminate dissidents, making the probability of successful evolution of high-level alien undead extremely low.
If Hades uses this method to deal with Khufu, it will be easy to deal with. As the subordinate of the necromancer, he is no longer a pure volcanic undead. He can not only absorb energy from the "Hell Magma Pool", but also absorb the master's spiritual power to promote evolution. If the magma energy is insufficient, it will only be a little harder for me to increase the spiritual power supply to it. It may be a little difficult for ordinary necromancers, but I have the "Touch of Death" in my hand, so it should not be a problem.
At the same time, I transferred three thousand terror knights to the foot of the "Hell Volcano". Once Khufu's evolution entered the most critical stage that determines success or failure, I must rush over to keep in touch with it at all times and place this group of terrors in place in advance so that I can absorb spiritual power and supply Khufu's needs.
Everything was normal in the first two days, and my mental power was draining away slowly. But I gradually felt something was not right. With my mental power at this time, I should be able to supply Khufu with it for a while, and I would have enough time to subdue many corpse witches. But its demand for mental power seemed to be increasing, and it was constantly speeding up the speed of absorption. The growth rate was a little too fast, and I had less and less time to subdue corpse witches. Within five days, its absorption rate was almost equal to the speed of my "Touch of Death" absorption, and there was a trend of "supply exceeding demand". Logically speaking, with the "Hell Magma Pool" acting as another source of energy supply, and the evolution had only just begun for a few days, it was far from the critical stage of determining success or failure, so the demand for mental power should not be so great? Could it be that Hades, the old guy, wanted to do things thoroughly, and minimized the supply of magma energy to Khufu, forcing Khufu to rely more and more on my mental power?
At first, I didn't take it seriously. I thought it might be because Khufu's initial ability was high, and Hades, the Dark Dragon King, would definitely do something, so the demand for mental power would be relatively large. But the situation became more and more serious. It seemed that Hades's "withholding" of magma energy had exceeded the level of "obscure" and became "blatant". I was worried about Khufu's evolution. I didn't know what crisis he encountered. I didn't dare to delay any longer and immediately set off to the "Hell Volcano" to get in direct contact with Khufu. The evolution of high-level undead was different from that of lower-level undead, especially special races like volcanic undead. Because the requirements were relatively high and the difficulty was relatively large, the evolver must maintain a clear consciousness to accurately control the evolution process and increase the success rate, so that he could contact me in the evolutionary state. At the same time, in order to prevent accidents, two thousand horror knights were transferred to ensure that there was mental power absorption at any time.
