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

Chapter 172 The Strange Source Beast with Armor and Sword

On March 1st, the fourth Blood Moon Rift descended once again.

But this is actually not the fourth blood moon, but the fifth.

On one occasion, Sui An used it to test something very important: whether the professionals in the secret realm would affect the opening of the rift in the territory.

The answer is no.

Zhao Feng rests during the day and enters the secret realm's underground caves to cultivate and mine at night.

It was discovered that as long as she was absent, the rift would not be triggered under the Blood Moon.

The next level is still too valuable.

The fact that a level four territory could withstand the presence of six level four professionals, including myself, and 24 low-level professionals did not trigger the opening of the Blood Moon Rift.

This surprised Sui An.

This time, Sui An clearly paid much more attention, because in the previous level three territories, starting from the fourth rift, the scale would increase significantly, and the number of the highest-level source beasts would also increase.

As Sui An had predicted, this rift was the largest in the territory's history.

"It's probably already 7 meters!" Zhao Feng said, holding up the binoculars, her voice trembling slightly.

As a veteran of the previous generation, she is different from Sui An, a new generation of professionals in Jiangcheng who have been in a relatively stable environment since birth; she has truly experienced more.

She had naturally seen the 7-meter-high crevice with her own eyes. She was still young then, and it was hard not to be deeply impressed by the horde of beasts that roamed the land.

Even knowing the strength of this territory, I still felt subconsciously nervous.

Fortunately, she soon brought good news.

"It's stopped, it's stopped rising. I'm getting a little scared if it keeps going up!"

Even from a distance of one or two kilometers, Sui An could see that dazzling starlight without a telescope.

"This fourth rift is already this size. I really want to know how big the fifth and sixth rifts were for that role model that Captain Zheng mentioned!"

Ye Tengyang subconsciously replied, "Probably. The difference between level 7 and level 6 is huge. It's unlikely that a single rift could allow someone to jump such a large level."

He squinted, trying to look at the night sky a kilometer or two away without using binoculars, but even with the blood moon shining, he could only see...

It was a blurry mess.

"Have the Source Beasts appeared yet?"

Sui An held up the binoculars and shook his head: "Not yet, the crack is still expanding horizontally, and it may not be completely fixed yet."

But the next moment, a golden sword tip suddenly emerged slowly from the starlight through the crack, immediately attracting the attention of several people observing with telescopes on the city wall.

"Something's coming out! But why does it look like a weapon?"

Sui An stared at the slowly emerging sword blade, somewhat bewildered.

The blade seemed hesitant, as if testing something.

But soon, the greatsword extended faster, and its complete form was almost fully revealed. It was a golden two-handed greatsword with a thick hilt and a broad, heavy blade. Strange patterns were engraved on the blade, with golden light swirling around it, making it look like it was of extraordinary quality.

There were even faint traces of blood on the sword, as if it had just been through a fierce battle.

But the size of that greatsword seemed a bit unusual; from a distance, it looked to be nearly two meters long!

Following closely behind the sword was a tall figure clad in full golden armor, wielding a golden greatsword nearly the size of his own body.

At this moment, after he stepped completely out of the crevice, everyone saw his full form.

"Holy crap, that's so cool!"

Erhu exclaimed in surprise, but he quickly realized, "Wait, what kind of source beast is this? A humanoid creature wielding a sword and wearing armor?"

"A humanoid figure wielding a sword and wearing armor?"

The city wall erupted in chaos. "Are there really such source beasts?"

Even Ye Tengyang, who was usually very knowledgeable, was stunned. Although he was not a seasoned professional, he had been traveling around for many years and this was the first time he had ever seen such a thing.

Faced with Sui An's probing gaze, Zhao Feng shook her head, indicating that she didn't know.

Seeing that neither of the two veterans knew of the existence of this thing, Sui An felt somewhat curious and even had some strange thoughts.

"This thing can't be a person, can it?"

"Humans? Don't talk nonsense. With so many source beasts on the other side of the rift, how could anyone possibly be alive?"

Erhu blinked, feeling that Sui An had a very wild imagination.

Just as the crowd on the city wall was discussing this, the figure had already locked onto the direction of the territory and began to move.

He was wearing extremely heavy armor and wielding an enormous two-handed greatsword, charging across the wilderness in a strange running posture.

But when he runs, he is not slow at all, and even looks extremely powerful.

Only after the unknown being left did new figures begin to appear in the rift behind him—they were just ordinary low-level source beasts.

It seems that this very presence prevented them from rushing over at the outset.

"They're charging in!"

Sui An looked at the figure and didn't care what it was. It was charging wildly into his territory, so he would definitely treat it as a source beast!

As the sword star soared into the sky, the golden flower cannon activated its vision lock. The moment the sword star entered attack range, Sui An tentatively fired a water-attribute rose crystal bullet.

Relatively small targets with high movement speed are always the bane of ranged attacks, unless the difference in rank and stats is not significant.

Otherwise, with an attack range of one kilometer, you simply cannot lock onto the target completely unless your attack method is incredibly fast.

Slowing down is a very necessary measure.

A light blue rainbow streaked across the night sky, but surprisingly, the golden-armored being merely swung its greatsword once during its charge, and a dazzling golden energy blade flashed by, colliding with the crystal bullet just before it reached it.

The rose crystal bullets were detonated prematurely in mid-air, greatly reducing their power. Only a few small ice shards fell down. The golden-armored being made a single dash and passed through the ice shards without losing any speed.

"Hiss~"

The swift turn of events caused several intermediate-level professionals on the city wall to gasp involuntarily.

They had witnessed the power of Sui An's golden flower cannon, which had killed three level five or six source beasts. This was the first time it had been so easily neutralized.

"If this is truly a professional, then wouldn't it be a high-level professional?" Erhu stared at the fleeting ranged attack, lost in confusion.

Fang Si's expression was also grave: "I'd prefer it to be a humanoid source beast; that would increase the chances of it being a mid-level one!"

"Even humanoid source beasts are not to be trifled with. Their combat skills and intelligence are generally superior to their beast forms. This is troublesome!"

Sui An had experienced many attacks from humanoid source beasts, whether it was the rock golem at the beginning or the ice crystal giant later. In fact, their methods of dealing with ranged attacks were better than those of ordinary source beasts.

They know how to use energy defense and techniques to deal with problems, rather than simply relying on their strong physique to tough it out.

But Sui An refused to believe it. The cannon containing fire-attribute crystal bullets roared to life, this time with flames shooting into the sky. Even if you detonated it in advance, the stronger explosive force should force you to slow down.

But a surprising scene unfolded again. This time, the golden-armored figure did not attempt to detonate the blazing cannonball. Instead, it suddenly emitted a burst of golden light and shot forward like an arrow.

"boom!"

Intense flames shot into the sky more than ten meters behind the golden-armored man, but they did not stop him in the slightest; in fact, they brought him even closer.

"Can this system predict potential attacks based on attributes?"

Now Sui An had to be cautious. Judging from the way the golden armor had dealt with the attacks in the past two times, its combat wisdom seemed to be extraordinary.

Being able to find a way to respond and implement it in such a short time after the shells are fired is not just simple combat wisdom, but a battle-hardened instinct.

"Let me see if you're really that smart!"

The golden armor had already crossed several hundred meters again, entering the attack range of the Sword Star Totem. Sui An did not choose [Sword Rain], but instead chose the [Burning Night] effect.

Furthermore, the firing point was predicted well in advance, so it didn't matter if the shot missed.

But Jin Jia's performance once again confirmed Sui An's guess. His wild running posture turned into a slowing down and gliding, as if he had predicted that the sword would fall on the running path ahead.

His feet slammed into the ground, forcibly stopping his momentum in a very short time with the help of resistance. The flaming greatsword pierced through to within ten meters of him, but he didn't even let his guard down. He held the two-handed greatsword, which was as big as a door panel, in front of him to prevent a secondary impact.

After the flaming greatsword dissipated, it did not explode; instead, it turned into countless sparks that spread out. Upon realizing the anomaly, his first thought was to leave the place again.

This time, he finally didn't dodge. In fact, to resist the possible attacks from that strange spark, he enveloped his entire body in golden energy.

"bass!"

Intense flames suddenly erupted from his body and all around him; the more source energy he used to resist the damage, the more intense the sinful flames burned.

His body was covered in sparks that ignited the flames of sin, and in the blink of an eye, his entire golden armor became a giant torch.

Seeing his attacks repeatedly evaded, Sui Anxin was somewhat annoyed, but seeing this scene now made him feel much better.

"Hey, no matter how clever you are, you'll still have to suffer my wrath!"

Of course, he didn't forget to take this opportunity to fire two more fire-attribute crystal bullets.

The reason why metallic crystal bullets were not chosen is that they rely entirely on penetration to deal damage, and are useless if the opponent successfully dodges. They are only suitable for dealing with large targets.

Perhaps because his body was engulfed in flames of sin, his reaction time was noticeably slower this time.

Unlike the Ice Demon, he didn't directly explode his body to remove the flames, nor did he sever the energy connection on his body surface like Ning Pan did, dissipating the energy to prevent the flames from spreading.

Instead, they chose to roll on the spot to remove the flames, but the Sin Flame is not an ordinary flame; its burning depends only on how much source energy you are exposed to.

This action was exactly what allowed Sui An's fire crystal bullet to hit him squarely.

"boom!"

This time, the golden armor was completely hit by the explosion of flames, and was hit by the explosion twice in a row. The moment the flames dissipated, the golden armor was seen to be blown far away from its footing, and slowly struggling on the ground.

The golden energy flowing around him had been blasted away, the flames of sin had dissipated, and his armor was even badly damaged. Even the greatsword in his hand was sent flying several meters away.

This result also relieved Sui An and the people on the city wall. Being able to hit and injure meant that they could kill.

"This doesn't seem to be human or a source beast!" A sudden exclamation rang out from the side. Everyone turned around and saw Zheng Xu holding up his binoculars and exclaiming in amazement.

"Look, his chest is hollow; there's no flesh or blood!"

"And his eyes are flames!"

Zheng Xu's reminder immediately made everyone subconsciously turn their heads to look at the golden-armored figure in the distance.

However, without a telescope, it's impossible to see such details from that distance.

Sui An squinted and could barely make out the tattered chest of the golden armor. Just as Zheng Xu had said, it was completely dark and empty inside. It was neither flesh nor blood, nor was it flesh and blood charred by flames. It was just empty.

As for the holes for the eyes on the mask, they can finally be seen clearly. They are not human eyes, but a pair of faintly flickering flames.

Whether it's the empty shell or the sparkling eyes, it all proclaims that this guy is no ordinary being.

"I see!"

Zhao Feng suddenly patted the city wall; she had thought of some information about this thing.

"I once heard of an extremely rare type of Source Beast. Their bodies are shaped like various man-made objects. Although you can get Source Stones after killing them, they do not have a power core. Source Beasts with flesh and blood have organs such as hearts, elemental bodies have their own energy cores, and ice demons have ice cores, but this type of Source Beast does not have such an existence."

"Moreover, the level of these source beasts is basically fixed and cannot be changed later. This may be because they lack their own energy core. Later, some people jokingly called them artificial source beasts."

"In old-world terms, the objects have come to life!"

"But we still don't know this guy's exact identity?" Sui An frowned, looking at the golden-armored being struggling to stand up, hesitating whether to try again.

"For example, are their items valuable? Would it be a waste to damage them?"

Zhao Feng's expression froze for a moment; this touched on a blind spot in her knowledge. However, she was a seasoned veteran, and her thinking was still quick.

"I've only heard of this kind of thing once or twice, so it's hard to determine whether the thing itself is useful. After all, the things that are actually made up of this thing come in all sorts of forms. But it doesn't have an energy core, so if we don't break the thing itself, it probably won't die."

"That seems to make sense!" Sui An didn't hesitate any longer and this time fired a metallic crystal bullet.

The heavily wounded Golden Armor was barely able to move. The golden crystal bullet pierced through its chest armor and exploded instantly, shattering its massive body into pieces that scattered in all directions, where it remained motionless.

The source beast was killed without leaving any blood or even its soul essence.

"Is this thing not dead, or does it simply lack a soul essence?" Sui An found this somewhat absurd. If it survived being smashed to pieces, what kind of terrifying existence must it be?

He prefers to believe that this thing has a special structure and may not have a soul from the start?

But the battlefield didn't allow him to think too much at this moment, as the army of source beasts following behind the golden-armored warrior had already appeared.

Even under the blood moon, the dust in the distance was still flying violently. The sparse grass was no match for the number of source beasts. The sand and dust blocked the view, making it almost impossible to observe the situation of the rear half of the team.

The golden armor that had just amazed everyone was no longer so important under the current beast tide. Even though everyone knew that the vast majority of these beasts were low-level source beasts, the visual impact was still powerful.

Even those on the city wall had felt the tremors coming from the ground.

"My God, how can there be so many!"

"This is twice as many as the last time!"

"Isn't this number a bit too exaggerated?"

"Is Boss Sui's illusion going to work? —"

The discussions on the city wall grew increasingly intense, and even the trusted confidants began to worry, casting their gazes over.

"Don't worry too much, it's not a big problem!" Sui An reassured her.

A colossal illusion appeared outside the city walls, and the murmurs on the walls visibly subsided as the illusion rapidly moved towards...

Moving forward, they met the surging crowd.

The source beasts at the front of the group instantly shifted their target, roaring as they charged toward the illusion. The torrent of source beasts surged forward, completely enveloping the illusion in just a dozen breaths.

Despite having a 50-meter enticement diameter, some source beasts have already been pushed to the outside of the 50-meter circle, which shows just how enormous the size of these source beasts is.

The source beasts, squeezed out to the outside, could only bypass the massive beast horde and diverge from both sides to charge towards the territory.

Even Sui An couldn't control the illusion to pull back the source beasts that had bypassed it, because as soon as he tried to pull the ones on the other side, the source beasts that had been attracted in the opposite direction would wake up because they were no longer within the illusion's range and couldn't squeeze back in.

"This is the first time there have been so many source beasts that even the illusions can't absorb them all!"

Sui An's expression tightened slightly. He controlled the illusion to attract the first wave of beasts to the outside of the city wall. The huge beast group now became his city wall defense.

The elemental statues had already begun to roar, but the clearing speed was clearly not fast enough, and the source beasts on both sides of the beast group had already charged to the bottom of the city wall.

At this moment, Sui An no longer cared about preserving more intact corpses. The fire-attribute golden flower cannon began to bombard relentlessly, each explosion killing a large number of people.

However, because the source beasts were too densely packed, the effect of the fire explosion was largely blocked by their bodies. What was originally a six- or seven-meter radius was now reduced to only three or four meters.

In this respect, it is not as good as the lightning bullet effect of the elemental statue. Although both are explosive attacks, the lightning attribute seems to have extremely strong penetrating power, but when it comes to targeting groups of monsters, its effectiveness is not much reduced.

Sui An simply fired two golden flower cannons in quick succession, swiftly clearing out the first wave of source beasts.

Ten shattered gold cannons roared in unison. At this moment, Sui An had almost activated all the buildings in his territory, except for the three sword star totems and the remaining two golden flower cannons.

If this firepower is not enough, he can directly consume the stored materials to make four more Golden Flower Salutes.

Give the Source Beast a direct barrage of fire.

However, it is clearly still not useful. The Golden Flower Salute Cannon has a major advantage over the Sword Star Totem: it can store crystal bullets, which makes its attack frequency in the first half even higher than that of the Elemental Statue.

After all, the elemental statues have a cooldown of three or four seconds.

After each of the two fire-attribute turrets emptied their eleven crystal bullets, almost all the source beasts around the illusion had been killed.

"That's more like it! Now your territory is starting to look like a powerful one!"

The erhu's eyes lit up at the sight of the territory now under heavy fire.

He used to think that Sui An was too stingy with money. He clearly had the ability to quickly clear out the source beasts, but he insisted on slowly eliminating those elemental statues in order to preserve more relatively intact, unripe bodies.

Although I earn more money, I always feel that something is missing when it comes to the erhu.

This time, Sui An didn't hold back and quickly cleaned up the thousands of low-level source beasts. He felt much more comfortable looking at them.

"All you care about is having fun; you're completely unprepared to be in charge!"

Sui An naturally knew what this guy was thinking. While complaining, he controlled the illusion to quickly guide the beast tides from both sides and the following side together.

Without the terrifying number accumulated in the first wave, things became much more normal in the later stages.

Although there are still many, it's no longer a situation where the elemental statues can't suppress them. At most, the number can be reduced occasionally by using golden flower cannons.

As for the level four source beasts caught in the beast tide, they were no longer able to attract Sui An's attention. Any source beast that could be lured by the illusion was already a lamb to the slaughter in the territory.

"Now I know how awesome it is to have a mage with a tank pulling monsters in MMORPGs!" Sui An subconsciously breathed a sigh of relief and turned his gaze toward the direction of the golden-armored creature.

Unfortunately, the area was already filled with the Source Beasts, and the remains of the golden armor and the golden greatsword were probably trampled into the ground.

He could only send someone to check it out after the beast tide ended. He was still very curious. If the beast tide hadn't been imminent, he would have already brought the things back.

Perhaps because he had reached the intermediate level, apart from the Dream Eater Butterfly last time, he had basically never encountered any single low-level beast groups like the Black Armored Beast, Ice Crystal Giant, or Energy-Devouring Treant that he had encountered at the level three.

Although the Dream-Eating Butterflies are also a species group, they are a level four beast group.

"Xiao An, Xiao An, there's something going on to the north!" Erhu put down a communicator and shouted to Sui An.

"The sentinel has detected a powerful source beast heading towards the territory!"

"A powerful source beast?" Sui An frowned as he looked at his detection projection. Although the north was in the opposite direction to him at the moment, even after deducting the territory diameter of about 200 meters, he could still detect a position 100 meters away.

But at this moment, the detection projection did not react.

"Did you see clearly what kind of Source Beast it was?"

Erhu pointed to the row of elemental statues that were roaring nearby: "Zhao Tong said he didn't recognize them at all, but thought they might be intermediate-level source beasts, so he asked us to send someone over to take a look. Besides, you moved all the elemental statues away, so there are no attack structures covering that area."

"I'll go take a look!"

"Okay, you go over and keep an eye on things first. I have a way to keep an eye on things."

Sui An relocated the idle Golden Flower Salute Cannon to the northern watchtower. After connecting his consciousness to the observation field of vision, he quickly found the powerful source beast that Zhao Tong had mentioned.

Those were actually three unicorn thunder beasts traveling together, a level 4 elite source beast race.

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