Why is my territory in a 2D anime art style?

Chapter 100 Exaggerated Costs of Level 3 Buildings

But after waiting for a while, the two level 4 Ice Crystal Giants did not reappear.

Only on Sui An's detection station projection, the orange dot had long since disappeared.

The small flame sword, upgraded to level 3, now has the power of a level 4 professional's all-out attack with each strike. Unless a high-quality burst energy skill is used, it is simply incomparable.

"Great! I feel like this thing could easily take on four opponents in an extreme situation!"

The sound of an erhu playing a praise tune came from the wall: "Unless they are armored and skilled in defense, four or five swords are enough."

"With one level 5 enemy in the entire group, there shouldn't be much of a problem. We just need to slightly restrict his movements and increase the hit rate."

Sui An asked curiously, "Have you ever played the erhu against a level five player?"

"No~" Erhu shook his head, "But I've seen it, it's much stronger than level four, but I don't feel that big of a difference between level three and four."

"I've fought them. Even a regular level 5 professional's suppression is still very strong!" Fang Si walked over from the wall and got closer to the two of them.

"If it's a metal-type character that excels in offense, without considering differences in equipment and source energy skills, a level 5 professional should be able to completely defeat five level 4 professionals. Any more than that and they would be injured or even killed."

"But that's because they used their speed and energy strength to defeat them one by one. If it's just a pure battle of energy, one against three is the limit."

"I see~" Sui An understood Fang Si's meaning. To put it simply, the improvement of a level 5 professional compared to a level 4 professional is comprehensive, and this comprehensive improvement will create a huge advantage in combat.

However, in pure confrontation, its strength is limited.

Therefore, if one wants to deal with a level 5 source beast or professional, one must force them to fight against one.

As time went on, the illusion in the arena had just changed for the third time.

Fang Si sat numbly on the wall, feeling for the first time that the wages she hadn't received yet were already burning her hand.

"What happened to my role in fighting the Source Beasts?"

"This shouldn't be happening~"

Although he had roughly figured out Sui An's tactics, he still hadn't figured out Sui An's limits, so he could only wait idly as Sui An's buildings cooled down.

Sui An summoned his territory's secondary core and took a look. Even though he had been very restrained in using his powerful weapons, five level-four ice crystal giants still appeared, and he still had to use them three times.

At this moment, 900 of the 1,200 source stones have already been spent. You should know that the previous time, when I used Sword Star more than ten times, it only cost a little over 700 source stones.

With this territory upgrade, the consumption has become outrageous.

"I'll have to stockpile even more Originium from now on!"

"Erhu, Fang Si, could you go and collect some source stones for me? I'm worried that the rift might not be over by the time I get back, and I'll be running out of energy."

"Wow, this consumes so much energy. Didn't you store up thousands of source stones?" Erhu looked at him in surprise.

"What do you think?" Sui An rolled his eyes at Erhu, feeling annoyed. He always felt that this kid couldn't be in charge, otherwise he wouldn't have any sense of resources.

"The three elemental statues have been blasting for 20 minutes now, two of them are level 3. Each shot is practically worth a piece of Originium. How can they not consume energy?!"

"Okay, okay, okay~"

Erhu felt a headache coming on when he heard about settling accounts, so he quickly waved his hand and said, "You get rid of the illusion, we'll go pick it up, give us two bags."

Sui An took two bags from the house and tossed them to the two of them.

"I don't need too much, just a hundred or so level 3 loot will be enough to come back!"

Be careful, pay attention to safety!

"I know~"

Without saying much, the two jumped off the wall.

Fang Si even felt a sense of relief. Just watching for one night and getting 40 source stones, even her conscience was pounding.

The two jumped out, and Sui An began to stare at the detection station. After he moved the illusion away, that area was much emptier.

Actually, the number of ice crystal giants emerging from the rift is already very small, but Sui An still asked Erhu and the others to collect some source stones, just in case the last situation happened again.

If a huge mutant appears near the end, it would be hilarious if there wasn't enough energy to power up Sword Star.

Looking back at Wang Hu, he saw him using a crossbow to clear out the source beasts that were wandering around. There were very few of these creatures, with only a few appearing every now and then.

Turning his head to look at the other side, Fang Nian was shooting arrows at the illusion with a large crossbow, having a great time.

Based on observations over the past two days, Fang Nian has had almost no contact with the wild. His understanding of source beasts is limited to what he has learned while working in the city. He has never even actually used this crossbow.

Judging from the way the siblings get along, Fang Si seems to have protected his sister very well.

However, in this era, this kind of protection offers no benefit unless she is allowed to live as a completely ordinary person.

Or perhaps it's because Fang Si is always out and about and doesn't have time to take care of his younger sister, so he brought her here as a hostage to teach her a lesson.

In short, Fang Si is a very deep person. He thinks a lot, and Sui An doesn't think he can figure him out.

But the presence of such a naive younger sister in the territory also shows that Fang Si has no other ulterior motives and simply wants to rely on him.

They probably felt they could advance their careers and, by leveraging their seniority, could secure a position and advance their professional standing.

Ice crystal giants kept gathering there, and such a large target was easy to hit. However, the crossbow bolts were only so powerful that they could only shatter a few ice crystals.

Sui An hasn't changed this item, mainly because he focused all his efforts on getting the limited-time blueprints in the early stages.

Now that the time-limited blueprints are gone, Sui An might not know where to spend his money when he has more later on.

"How exactly is this limited-time gacha pool triggered? I don't understand, there's not a single hint."

Just as Sui An was lost in thought, Erhu and the other two returned to the wall. Sui An quickly took the two bags; they were a bit heavy, indicating that they had taken quite a few stones.

"The rift has been completely closed, so we're heading back now."

"Is it already closed?"

Sui An was slightly taken aback. He glanced at the projection on the detection platform and found that there were indeed very few white and green dots appearing from a distance. Unconsciously, the frequency of the elemental stone statues in the courtyard had also completely decreased.

"What a pity~ I only had a few more minutes left to use my illusion~"

"Your harvest tonight is already quite extravagant. There are so many adult ice crystal giants, more than the number of adult rock golems last time, and this time their bodies are mostly only slightly damaged."

"Even if the body of an elemental being is cheap, it can't compare to the price of meat. But when it comes to weighing itself, this relatively complete level three ice crystal giant must weigh at least four or five hundred pounds."

Erhu sighed, marveling at the speed at which they were making money: "Today's rift has opened on an unprecedented scale, even more ruthless than the one we had last time."

"Are we going to clean up the battlefield tonight?" Fang Si glanced around.

"No, I don't think so. I feel it's too dangerous at night. Anyway, with the Blood Moon starting, there won't be many roaming Source Beasts around to steal food. Besides, this Ice Crystal Giant won't be able to eat anything today."

Sui An shook his head. Safety should be the priority. Money can be earned again, but life is gone forever.

"Then I'll stand guard tonight!"

Fang Si seemed determined to do something, and even volunteered to stand guard.

Sui An scratched his head. If someone was willing to stand guard, it would indeed be a good thing, since a detection station could earn 20 Originium every 12 hours.

Previously, I was only thinking about my friends, and I didn't want them to stay up late. I thought it would be better to use that time to exercise more.

But the day before yesterday, Erhu said that they all rely on source energy to temper their bodies. Source energy is limited, so they can temper themselves quickly.

Recruiting people is starting now, so we really need to arrange guard duty for them. After all, in terms of vigilance, people are cheaper than machines.

However, humans can become complacent, careless, and have blind spots, while machines generally do not.

Each has its advantages and disadvantages.

"Okay, actually there shouldn't be any problems during the latter half of a blood moon. Since you brought it up, you can stand guard. I'll turn off the detection station to save energy. If anything happens, don't run out of the energy shield directly; just call me first."

"Tomorrow afternoon, you can switch shifts and rest. There's usually nothing to do in the afternoon anyway."

"Okay~" Fang Si didn't care about these things.

Erhu stood to the side with a smile, not intending to say anything. Given his personality, unless Sui An brought it up himself, he probably wouldn't fight for such a thing.

If he wanted to help Sui An, he wouldn't have needed to rush to do it.

Wang Hu was about to bring up the matter of standing guard when Sui An stopped him.

Wang Hu's current focus is on improvement, and given these conditions, it's quite achievable that he can catch up with Wang Zhen and the others.

Without reaching the intermediate level, one cannot even make a ripple within the coverage area of ​​Jiangcheng's forces.

"I'm exhausted!"

Erhu straightened his back and glared at Sui An, who was squatting to the side, cursing, "I see now, you didn't hire people for defense, you hired them to do hard labor!"

Sui An looked completely innocent: "Why don't you ask someone else if they'd be willing to do it for 10 source stones a day just to move some things?"

Erhu's expression froze, but he didn't let up, continuing to mutter to himself.

"Pah! Capitalists, landlords, heartless bosses—"

At this moment, outside Sui An's walls were several small hills, all made up of countless ice crystal giant corpses, which glistened in the morning sunlight.

These peculiar ice crystals do not melt as the sun rises; they are more like a transparent white mineral.

These organisms are called elemental beings because their bodies are composed of materials with a certain elemental tendency.

The stones that make up the rock golem can better utilize earth-attribute energy, while the ice crystals that make up the ice crystal giant are somewhat adaptable to ice-attribute energy.

"Have you counted them all? How many are there?" Erhu sat on the ground, disregarding his image, and threw the last clump of ice crystals near the small mountain.

Sui An glanced at his territory's core resource module and did some quick calculations.

「源石：1级121块、2级213块、3级510块、4级5块，含昨晚你们先挖的那部分。」

"Inside the loot orb, there are two white materials, one green building blueprint, and one green level 3 weapon."

「元素核：1级79块、2级145块、3级361块、4级3块，损毁率大约在3成左右。」

Erhu looked at the piles of ice-blue elemental cores in surprise. The smaller ones were like marbles, and the largest was only level 4, no bigger than a fist.

"The damage rate of the elemental cores has been greatly reduced this time. Last time, only 20% or 30% remained."

"Yes, this time they were all killed by elemental statues. Although some elemental cores were damaged, the overall damage was much better."

"You were right! High firepower alone isn't enough; you have to preserve the corpses to make big money. There are still nearly a hundred tons of materials to sell. We're really going to strike it rich!"

Erhu was incredibly envious, but quickly frowned and turned to ask, "Why does it seem like there are fewer source beasts overall than when Lao Wang and I met?"

"There were also Shadow Lizards that day, a whole bunch of level one and two Shadow Lizards, the number was definitely more than that time."

Sui An took a shovel and slowly piled up the small scraps. These were fragments from the elemental statues or those blasted apart by mutual attacks. They were too much trouble to sell, but there were quite a few of them.

"Beep~ Beep~ Beep~"

The convoy hadn't fully approached yet; only Wang Zhen's car drove up first.

Having learned from his previous experience, Sui An placed the communicator that Erhu had given him on Wang Zhen's car. If Wang Zhen approached, he could greet him and ask if he needed another car to come over.

There's no rush to sell today's goods; Wang Zhen can take his time and ensure daily income. He just needs to bring plenty of money.

"Huh, it's an Ice Crystal Giant!"

Wang Zhen and his group drove around to get to the main character, and Wang Zhen could already see him clearly from afar.

"Boss, there are so many ice giants! How are we supposed to eat them all?"

In the squad, Shi Cong's mouth was agape. This was even more spectacular than the black-armored beast from a while ago. It was a real small mountain, almost the size of the territory next to it.

Shi Heng withdrew his gaze from the distance and said in a low voice.

"These are all ice crystals, they won't rot, what's the rush? This is the boss's younger brother taking care of him~"

"That's true~" Shi Cong nodded, but looking at the territory in the distance, he asked curiously.

"Boss, how come Sui An's territory is still so big? At this rate, it should have been upgraded to level 3 by now."

""

Wang Zhen turned his head, glared at Shi Cong, and said in a serious voice.

"Sui An has his own plans, so don't ask too many questions. Just focus on making money. If you think business is too good, I can transfer you to another team."

Shi Cong's expression changed, and he repeatedly begged for mercy, "No, boss, I was just being nosy, I won't ask again!"

Soon, the car arrived near the territory, and the group jumped out.

"This was an amazing success!"

Wang Zhen met up with Sui An and Erhu, and without any preamble, went straight to the point: "6"

How do you explain these?

Sui An had already made a plan and took out a list from his hand, handing it to Wang Zhen.

"Brother Zhen, please estimate the price of these elemental cores and bring them all back today. I need you to buy 120 Gray Steel Rock Cores for me, along with 700 basic materials and some other miscellaneous materials."

"Also, prepare 400 level 2 Originium stones for me to exchange with you."