They won the Holy Grail War, but this turned out to be the Virtual Tree Universe.

Chapter 185 The Unbeatable Rick and Shubi

The continent of Lucia was nearly turned into hell in the past three years because Danlei's Avalon City was building up its destructive weapon.

Every day on the mainland, one can see scenes of magic and missiles flying together.

The Avalon Federation is protected by the order maintained by Danlei and Morgan, and the crops grown by the elves ensure food security.

After resolving the issue of attacks by the Skywing race, things were relatively better.

However, on the Dark Alliance side, both the demon race and the vampire race have been reduced to eating each other's wounded soldiers.

If it weren't for the goblins bringing humans and orcs from another continent as food, they would have collapsed long ago.

Even so, this supply line is now attacked by more than a dozen dragons every day, and only about 20-30% of the supply ships can actually reach the continent of Lucia.

Therefore, the neutral forces on the mainland of Lucia are already at the point where the Dark Alliance is draining them dry.

However, in the middle of the battlefield, there was still one human tribe that struggled for three years in this great war.

This human tribe is the tribe to which the protagonist, Rick, belongs.

Thanks to Dan Lei's special care, they were less affected by the war, and the main battlefield never reached their residential area.

However, this also led to the demons and vampires using this area as their last hunting ground and hiding place.

Fortunately, over the years, the power of destiny has long since reached this tribe. Now, everyone who goes out to find food and gather intelligence, including Rick himself, has awakened their destiny.

Due to the cooperative nature of human society, the fate of these awakened native humans is generally a choice between preservation, hunting, and abundance.

Moreover, those who roam the path of life will generally choose ranged weapons and form a standard melee, ranged, and healing configuration with others.

Therefore, when humans encounter demons or vampires in the outside world, it's no longer an era where they can only run for their lives; it's really hard to say who will kill whom when they meet.

Then, one morning, the people who had infiltrated the tribe of the protagonist Rick from the original work sent back information that Rick had brought back a little girl named Shubi when he returned from exploring the ruins of the Earth Elves alone.

Upon hearing this, Dan Lei knew that the original storyline timeline he had been waiting for had finally arrived.

You should know that at this stage, I have already achieved my original purpose for coming to this world. Although the magical puppets in Avalon City were mainly made by fairies, I also took the time to personally participate in the final assembly of the parts, and made about 100,000 of them.

These 100,000 magical puppets, like the monkey puppets of the past, can be transformed into special effects and brought back to the Star Iron Universe.

These golems are currently housed in several large sacs made from local magical metals and materials from the bones of Aronlev.

Yes, even after ten years, Aaron Reif is still "shining" for Daniil.

After learning that Rick and Shubi had met, Dan Lei began to pay close attention to their situation.

Whether we can obtain the unique magical technology of the Mech race depends on this opportunity.

It should be noted that although Danlei has not actively provoked the Mechs over the years, there have always been creatures that dare to face the might of the Mechs.

Therefore, the number of times the Mechs have clashed with other races is not small.

So Danlei had people buy the remains of the Kaiji from the black market, hoping to obtain the various magical formulas they had devised from them.

Especially the [Passage Control] series of spells, which are like having a cheat code. The effect of this thing is similar to Accelerator's vector manipulation. As long as you have enough energy, you can deflect any attack.

A similar ability exists in the Star Iron Universe, but there it is a deflection field from the technological side.

However, that thing requires enormous computing power; only by instantly calculating the properties of the incoming energy can an attack on the stress field deflection be generated.

Comparatively speaking, the [Passage Control] series of spells, which can be activated using magic, is definitely more suitable for me.

However, the Mechs seem to have a mechanism that automatically deletes key data after the machine is disconnected. The Mech wreckage that Dan Lei obtained either had its data storage hardware completely destroyed or contained almost no complete data, so he has gained nothing so far.

Therefore, Shubi is Danlei's greatest hope in obtaining this series of techniques.

Therefore, Danlei decisively ordered the battle line to advance and bring Rick's tribe's location into their territory.

At this point, Danlei was no longer afraid that Rick would lead the entire tribe to defect and thus miss out on Shubi.

Moreover, given Rick's strategic wisdom, he had long ago guessed that Avalon City was deliberately refusing to accept their human tribe.

Otherwise, why would the pursuit forces of Avalon City stop chasing the demons and vampires as soon as they escaped to the vicinity of the tribe?

Moreover, since Rick took power, he has sent envoys to contact Avalon City over the past six years, but each time they set off, they were blocked by demons.

If it weren't for the fact that demons were always Avalon's primary target for elimination, Rick would have suspected that the demons surrounding his tribe were raised by Avalon, and that his tribe was merely food for them.

Therefore, once the Rick tribe also began to have its own pathfinders and gained a certain level of self-protection, they stopped sending people to Avalon City for protection.

Even now that the central and northern parts of the entire Lucia continent have become the territory of the Avalon Federation, this remains true.

However, Rick knew that his tribe had been deliberately abandoned here by Avalon City, and there was nothing he could do to resist.

After all, no one is obligated to save you. And no one would think that Avalon, which has already sheltered a large number of humans, must save a small human tribe.

Moreover, once Rick learns the truth about the war of the gods, he will definitely want to bring down Avalon as well.

Because Avalon, under Danlei's control, exhibited intentions no different from other races, all aiming to seize the throne of the One God through war.

Sure enough, just six months later, Rick launched the Ghost Project from the original story.

Moreover, Rick was very astute in perceiving who might not be on his side, and none of the men Dan Lei sent were chosen as "ghosts".

The Ghost Project was launched, and it was these few people who reported back to the tribe that many of the Fated Walkers suddenly disappeared.

And spies on the other side of the continent have reported that strange people are lobbying various races, according to their analysis.

Moreover, the change in the position of the mark Danley left on Rick also indicates that he has been moving at high speed recently.

He certainly didn't have that kind of speed himself; he must have been riding on Shubi and having her carry him.

Danlei continued to observe Rick's location through the mark until one day, the mark suddenly disappeared.

The disappearance of the mark doesn't necessarily mean that Shubi discovered and destroyed the mark on Riku; it could also mean that Riku died or that the mark was blocked.

Of course, the first two possibilities are really unlikely. If Hughie was going to discover the mark, she would have discovered it long ago, and the possibility that Rick is dead is even lower.

It's important to understand that when Rick's intellect and Shubi's fighting prowess are combined, they have a chance to turn the tide unless they encounter a god-level opponent.

In the original story, if Riku had been there when Shubi encountered Jibril, even though his fighting ability was almost zero, he might have been able to find a way out through his words.

After all, verbal sparring is the strongest weapon of all Japanese protagonists, a fact that is generally acknowledged.

Therefore, Danlei was certain that Rick had used black ash, because the black ash would destroy Danlei's mark when it corroded the flesh.

After all, Dan Lei's mark was imprinted on the body, not the soul.

So Danlei immediately set off for the location where Rick's mark had disappeared. In this world he had changed, Rick shouldn't need to use the black ash to corrode himself to deceive Xinku anymore, and Xinku was currently in Avalon City, a hundred and eight thousand miles away from where the mark had disappeared.

Therefore, Dan Lei couldn't think of anyone worth Rick using his black and gray disguise to deceive at this time.

However, Danlei quickly found the answer to this question.

With Dan Lei's speed and the constant use of [Spatial Transfer] to travel, he quickly arrived at the place where the mark disappeared.

In order not to arouse the suspicion of Rick's target, Dan Lei did not use magic to find Rick, and he did not even use magic to become invisible. Instead, he used the Cloud Chant spell.

As for how to find Rick when magic is unusable, the most primitive method is naturally to track him by smell and traces.

Dan Lei wasn't good at smelling things. After all, the Chiming Clan was an aquatic race, and their sense of smell in the air wasn't much better than that of ordinary people. If they were underwater, Dan Lei could smell things from dozens of kilometers away if he wanted to.

As for tracking, although detection magic cannot be used, elemental vision is fine, and this technique does not involve magical fluctuations.

Once the elemental vision was activated, the surroundings were filled with the magical corrosive fluctuations brought by the black and gray.

There was no way around it; the surface of this planet was covered in black ash, and naturally, it was full of corrosive fluctuations.

However, black and gray stuff is everywhere, but a walking humanoid black and gray thing is one of a kind.

Therefore, the distorted traces of magical corrosion remaining more than a meter into the air could only have been left by Rick.

Unless there's a creature carrying a lump of black ash on its back running on the road.

However, no animal that can survive in the surface environment would be that foolish.

So, following the path of the distorted magic, Danlei quickly found Rick.

The unlucky guy chosen and tricked by Rick, whom Dan Lei recognized, was none other than Jibril, the final individual of the Skywing race.

Jibril came to the continent of Lucia either to carry out bombing missions in cities or to hunt dragon spirits.

Because these are the only two things here that interest her.

As for how Rick tricked her into going to the ground, you can tell by looking at the huge characters written in engravings on the black ash next to her.

Because it says on it, "I have information to prevent the extinction of the Skywing race."

Given Jibril's curiosity, the fact that someone dared to write these words on black and gray, and that the scan couldn't detect the target's true identity, naturally made her want to come down and take a look.

Moreover, Danlei discovered that Rick had undergone changes that he was unaware of.

Those lurking in his tribe reported that he had awakened the path of preservation, but now he is using the path of pleasure to create magical fluctuations.

Yes, Dan Lei was certain that Rick's destiny power was the Joyful Destiny, and that he would use the Joyful Destiny to create other energies.

Without a doubt, this move was taught to him by Hanabi.

Even though Rick is a self-awakened path of joy, only the Fireworks Association on this planet can use it to simulate other energy fluctuations.

However, Danlei had no idea when Hanabi had set her sights on Rick, how she had led him down the path of pleasure.

You know, Rick doesn't have any sense of humor at all. Is he going down a path similar to a mourner?

Danlei doesn't have an answer to this question right now; he can only go back and ask Hanabi, or ask Rick himself later.

However, this issue can be put aside for now. Dan Lei's timing is perfect; Jibril has clearly just landed and is asking...

"What are you? Don't hide your true colors."

It's normal for Jibril to ask this question. Rick's physique looks like a human's, but humans definitely don't have such strong magical fluctuations.

The magicians that Dan Lei wholesales using the Body-Cultivating Furnace are at most at the level of a Forest Spirit of the Third Ring.

What Rick has created is almost on par with Xinku.

Most importantly, the magic corrupted by the black ash on his body was mixed with the artificial magic, causing others to perceive him with magic as if they were looking at flowers through a fog, which was very much in line with the identity of a ghost.

So Rick didn't introduce himself, but instead said...
"You can call me Ghost. Let's play a game. If you win, I'll tell you why the Skywing race is doomed to extinction if things continue like this."

Upon hearing this, Jibril immediately grinned maliciously.

"Why should I believe you? Can you even withstand one of my moves?"

After saying that, Jibril raised her hand and condensed magic in it, unfurling a jet-black scythe of death, clearly intending to cut this mysterious man a couple of times before talking.

However, to her surprise, Rick didn't panic when he saw her intention to attack. Instead, he calmly rolled up his sleeves and said...

"I am the ghost. My intelligence concerns the superweapon of Avalon City. If you don't want to hear it, then take action. I'm already dead anyway."

When Jibril saw the severe corrosion marks of black and gray on Rick's wrist, she immediately lost interest in attacking him.

Because Jibril believed that no matter what the ghost was, its body was no different from a corpse due to the corrosion caused by the black ash, and she had no interest in desecrating a corpse.

So, Jibril, looking bored, put away her magic scythe and said...

"This is pointless. Fine, let's just consider it your last words. Tell me, what exactly is the secret weapon of Avalon City?"

However, Rick took out a chess set, laid it out on the ground, and said...
"You should know the principle that you can't eat without working. If you beat me at chess, I'll tell you the information you want to know."

"If you lose, tell me when the Skywing race plans to attack the Lucia continent, or have you already chickened out and are only engaging in this kind of harassment from now on."

Upon hearing this, Jibril erected a magical shield to block the black ash from the sky, and then coldly said...

"Even if you are just a corpse, I don't mind tearing you to pieces if you insult the Skywing race."

Rick's response was a "you go first" gesture, and he said...

"That would be very impolite. Please go first."

Then, the two of them actually started playing chess on the wasteland, chatting idly.

Seeing this, Dan Lei really wanted to complain, "Why does Ke always have to drag people into playing chess when he's trying to fool them?"

It's worth noting that although Rick was a skilled chess player, he almost never won when betting on chess against others.

He is clearly the strongest player besides the God of Games, but he deliberately loses every time.

That's how Rick earned his reputation as the strongest and undefeated.

Of course, every time Rick lost a game, he basically achieved his desired goal.

When playing chess, he relies on verbal sparring as a powerful weapon to convince his opponent, and this time was no exception.

(End of this chapter)