Kill one monster, stack one poison, and I alone will poison my way across the world!

As before, the deeper we went into the inner city, the denser the poisonous miasma became.

The houses on both sides of the street looked as if they had been chewed up and spat out by some extremely large creature, covered in dark purple slime.

The ground was not covered with dust, but rather with a black mud that resembled some kind of dried flesh and blood congealed into a paste.

"ah--!"

"Help me...my hand..."

"I'm so hungry..."

The sounds of wailing and screams echoed from all directions through the ruins, sending chills down one's spine.

Su Chen walked at the front and casually threw out a few fireballs.

Boom—!

The fireball instantly engulfed several [Demonized Royal Capital Civilians] that were trying to pounce on it, followed by a series of explosions that instantly turned them into green pus.

He didn't even stop, continuing forward through the black mud.

Behind him, forty-nine senior elites formed an extremely tight [Iron Wall Circular Formation], like a hedgehog shivering in a storm.

"Su Shen... there's the sound of fighting ahead!"

The hidden assassin, a handsome young man, suddenly called out in a low voice.

A violent magical explosion came from beneath the collapsed clock tower nearby.

A burst of blue arcane light blasted the several demonic civilians who lunged at it into mincemeat.

"Back off! Don't let these monsters get close to the defensive line!"

An extremely hoarse voice came from behind the ruins.

Su Chen didn't speak, quickened his pace, and bypassed the ruins of the clock tower.

Soon, Su Chen found the makeshift defensive position.

As before, there were only a dozen or so human soldiers in the position, surrounded by a faint dispelling barrier, and the outer edge of the barrier was piled with the corpses of demonized monsters.

"You...you actually managed to get here by passing through so many monsters..."

"..."

The old general grabbed Su Chen's clothes.

He said exactly the same things as last time, and Su Chen patiently waited for him to finish.

"Please... you must destroy those four nodes..."

The old general's voice grew weaker and weaker.

"bite."

A crisp system notification sounded simultaneously in everyone's ears.

Immediately afterwards, a semi-transparent task panel popped up on their retina.

[Trigger Mission: Stop the Spread]

[Mission Objective: Destroy the 'Abyssal Corruption Nodes' (0/4) located in the east, south, west, and north of the inner city.]

……

Dead silence.

When the forty-nine soon-to-be graduates saw the mechanism instructions on the task panel, a collective gasp rippled through the formation.

"hiss--!"

Chen Shan's hand gripping the tower shield trembled violently. "What... what kind of hellish mechanism is this?!"

"Thirty-hour countdown? Must they all be destroyed?"

Zhang Ming frantically pushed up his glasses, cold sweat pouring down his forehead. "The inner city is enormous; the straight-line distance between the four points in the east, west, south, and north is at least a hundred kilometers! And it's all ruins, full of obstacles and monsters!"

"How is that even possible?! Just running through hordes of monsters for thirty hours wouldn't be enough!"

Li Huo'er's face turned deathly pale; she finally understood what was going on.

"No wonder...no wonder the veterans of the War God team were stuck in this dungeon for three days and three nights, and almost suffered a total wipeout!"

Li Huo'er's voice trembled: "This mechanism forces troops to split up!"

"A fifty-person team must be split into four squads, advancing simultaneously on four separate routes, risking total annihilation, to forcibly destroy all four nodes within the agreed time!"

"If any squad in any direction falters or makes a positioning mistake that delays the enemy, the previously destroyed nodes will be fully restored and become invincible!"

"This isn't a test of pure damage output, but rather the perfect coordination and speed of advance of the four teams under extreme pressure!"

Hearing Li Huo'er's analysis, everyone was utterly despondent.

They looked around at the dense, poisonous abyss miasma, and then at the elite monsters with abnormally high stats scattered all over the ground.

Divide the troops into four groups?

With their weaklings who can't even withstand the initial attack, they'd be turned into mincemeat by those high-agility, stealthy monsters before they even reached the next street without Su Chen's protection!

"It's over, dead end."

The assassin-type heartthrob rubbed his hair in despair.

All eyes turned to Su Chen.

"Su...Su Shen...what should we do?"

Zhang Ming swallowed hard and asked cautiously, "How should we divide into groups? Let's be clear, if we split up, we definitely won't be able to withstand the strength of the monsters here..."

Su Chen was looking at the map when he heard Zhang Ming's words and turned his head slightly.

"Grouped?"

Su Chen glanced at them with the look of someone looking at idiots.

"Are you guys not feeding the enemy enough kills already?"

He pointed to the old general's relatively safe barrier-dispelling position next to him.

"You all stay inside this barrier and don't go anywhere. Just stay here and guard it."

Zhang Ming was stunned: "We're staying here to keep watch? What about you?"

"I'm going to do a mission."

Su Chen said it as a matter of course.

"You do it yourself?!"

Chen Shan's eyes widened, he almost jumped up, "Su Shen, these are nodes in four directions! Even if your damage is high enough to kill monsters instantly, the time it takes to traverse the map is a major weakness!"

"This ruin is full of obstacles. How could you possibly travel to four locations, each over a hundred kilometers away, by yourself in thirty hours?!"

"..."

"Yes! There's simply not enough time!"

Li Huo'er also became anxious.

Zhang Ming suddenly remembered something and said, "Are you guys stupid? Su Shen passed it all by himself."

"..."

The students looked like they suddenly understood.

Yes, Su Chen passed the test before.

But how did he do that?!

Su Chen ignored them.

He took two steps back and came to a slightly more spacious open space in the center of the ruins.

"Smack."

He snapped his fingers.

"boom!"

An extremely violent spatial current exploded in the center of the ruins, and the huge shockwave directly blew away the surrounding black mud and rubble.

The forty-nine bosses were blown about by the blast wave, and Chen Shan quickly slammed the tower shield heavily onto the ground to barely stabilize their formation.

In that blinding purple light.

A metal airship with a menacing mechanical dragon head, a streamlined hull, and huge magic-powered thrusters on both sides landed with a bang on the open ground!

A massive shadow instantly enveloped the entire defensive position.

【Dragon Slayer Portable Airship (Epic)】

……

The impressive panel data was directly shared in the team channel.

"Gulp."

Someone swallowed hard.

The sound was deafening in the deathly silence of the ruins.

The forty-nine elite seniors, who were frantically calculating the time to traverse the map and thinking it was a dead end, were now looking up at the mechanical behemoth that radiated epic light and was full of violent aesthetics, their jaws almost dropping to the ground.

"An epic-level flying mount?!"

Zhang Ming's glasses slipped off completely, fell to the ground, and cracked.

But he was completely unaware that his finger, which was pointing at the airship, was twitching wildly.

"A base speed of 800 kilometers per hour?! And it can accelerate by 300%?!"

"Is that an airship? That's clearly a supersonic fighter jet!"

Chen Shan slapped his forehead, feeling that the world was too crazy.

"10 billion durability... Automatically dispels wild monsters below level 80..."

The assassin-type beauty's legs went weak, and she leaned against the tower shield, her voice trembling: "What were we worried about just now? Were we worried about not having enough time to explore the map? Were we worried about being blocked by hordes of monsters along the way?"

"An epic mount... is it really that powerful?!"

Li Huo'er felt like her worldview had been thoroughly rubbed into the ground once again.

For a normal team to clear this dungeon, they would have to split into four teams, slowly grinding through the horde of monsters, risking their lives to make up for the time difference.

As a result, Su Chen pulled out an epic-level airship and prepared to speed through the sky and blast the ground!

This is hardly a hellish mechanism that forces troops to split up.

This is a devastating blow to all those who honestly run through the maps and change jobs!

Su Chen leaped and jumped directly onto the deck of the airship.

"Buzz—!"

He gripped the control rudder with both hands, instantly connecting his mental energy to the airship's core.

The massive mechanical turbines on both sides spewed out long, dark blue tail flames.

He looked down at the group of stunned bosses below.

"You guys stay down here and enjoy the show, don't wander off."

Su Chen pressed the red button on the control panel.

"BOOM—!!!"

A deafening sonic boom echoed over the ruins of the inner city.

The airship transformed into a purple afterimage, instantly tearing through the mist and disappearing from everyone's sight.

Only a bunch of pendants were left scattered in the strong wind.

Zhang Ming's lips curled into a bitter smile.

"I'm only now realizing... how huge the difference is!"