96
Chapter 96: Desert Fruits, Hard to Come By
The skeleton warriors charged towards the oasis together.
As expected, they were met by a large group of desert giant scorpions.
The skeleton warriors didn't attack, but dragged the scorpions along as they ran forward along the oasis waterway.
The scorpions relentlessly pursued the skeleton warriors.
The skeleton warriors controlled their running speed to stay about even with the scorpions.
The group grew larger and larger as desert scorpions along the way joined the pursuit.
Lin Moyu followed behind the group, maintaining a distance of about 1000 meters.
After running like this for half an hour, they finally saw young ants.
Lin Moyu quickly sped up to catch up, while the skeleton warriors collectively stopped and engaged the desert scorpions in battle.
Desert scorpions fell one after another to the skeleton warriors' blades.
The huge attribute difference meant it was a one-sided slaughter.
By the time Lin Moyu arrived, a third of the scorpions had already been killed.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Explosions suddenly rang out.
Yellow sand filled the air again.
Skill: Corpse Explosion!
Lin Moyu used the skill continuously without pause, not sparing his spirit power at all.
Even after all the scorpions were dead, he kept using the skill.
He was training the skill.
Corpse Explosion could only be trained in actual combat.
At the end of the last dungeon run, Lin Moyu had already felt his Corpse Explosion skill was about to level up.
This time he used it 30-40 times in a row.
His spirit power was directly consumed by a third.
Finally, as he wished, the skill leveled up.
[Corpse Explosion (Level 3): Detonates a corpse, dealing 20% of the corpse's max HP as damage to enemies within 3 meters.]
The range increased, and the damage increased.
After talent amplification, the damage range reached 100 meters, and the damage reached 600% of the corpse's max HP.
The attack power increased greatly again.
Arriving at the ant nest entrance, Lin Moyu again saw patches of cacti.
Unfortunately, this time there were no fruits on the cacti.
Bai Yiyuan had said these things were hard to come by.
Lin Moyu felt a bit disappointed, but brushed it off the next second.
"Then I'll just treat it as leveling, can't waste the points."
The skeleton army charged into the ant nest.
With the previous experience, this time they didn't need to search everywhere for the map and exit.
The team advanced almost in a straight line directly towards where the ant queen was.
Gradually, a group of ants followed behind the team.
Young ants, worker ants, soldier ants, flying ants.
All kinds of ants, numbering several hundred.
Lin Moyu put Bone Armor on himself, trailing far behind.
When the team arrived at the ant queen's nest, the ants all stopped outside, not daring to enter.
It seemed many dungeons were like this, with small monsters not daring to enter the boss's territory.
Lin Moyu found this normal.
The skeleton warriors blocked the entrance and fought the ants.
Until Lin Moyu arrived and used Corpse Explosion to end the battle.
Lin Moyu smiled inwardly at the constantly appearing notifications, "Time for another round of experience gain."
Since entering the dungeon, his experience had skyrocketed twice, once with the desert scorpions and once now.
These two waves of corpses gave him a 15% experience increase.
This was just the appetizer, the main course hadn't started yet.
Lin Moyu drank a junior spirit potion, recovering 100 spirit power.
Though 100 spirit power wasn't much, it was enough for him to use Corpse Explosion 10 times, or cast Bone Armor on himself a few times.
After clearing the small monsters, the team charged into the ant queen's room.
They quickly rushed towards the queen's four guards.
"Focus fire!"
Under a round of concentrated attacks, one guard was instantly killed.
At this point the other three guards entered a defensive state.
They activated skills, covering their shells with a layer of luster, pushing their defense to an extremely high level.
The skeleton warriors attacked non-stop.
Massive wind, fire, lightning and ice attacks fell on the ant queen's guards simultaneously, rapidly consuming their defensive skills.
The ant queen flapped her wings and screamed, launching a sonic attack.
Having tasted the ant queen's sonic attack once before,
Though wide-ranging, its power wasn't great.
The Bone Armor on Lin Moyu flashed constantly, completely blocking it.
It was the same for the skeleton warriors.
It couldn't be said to have no effect, but it had no impact.
The skeleton warriors' attacks continued. In just ten seconds, the luster on the three ant queen guards had become very dim.
The ant queen flapped her wings again.
Skill: Storm Strike!
A storm swept through, blowing the skeleton warriors away.
After landing, the skeleton warriors got up and ran back to continue attacking without pause.
The skeleton mages stood in front of Lin Moyu, becoming his meat shield.
Seeing the light on the ant queen's guards about to disappear,
Lin Moyu gave a mental command.
The skeleton warriors all activated their skills.
Skill: Berserk Strike.
Almost instantly, the three ant queen guards' defenses collapsed, and they were beaten to half health.
The skeleton mages finished them off, a large number of skills falling with brilliant light.
At the same time, Lin Moyu raised his palm.
Skill: Corpse Explosion!
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Four huge explosions in a row swept through the cave.
The ant queen screamed as she was blasted to critical condition, instantly entering a curled up state.
In the curled state, the ant queen's injuries rapidly recovered.
At the same time, screams echoed throughout the entire ant nest.
Lin Moyu smiled, this was what he had been waiting for.
Unlike last time,
This time he hadn't cleared out the monsters in the ant nest.
The number of ants inside would be astonishing.
Now he was lying in wait, waiting for the ants to deliver themselves.
A batch of skeleton warriors had already run back, standing in front of him.
Seconds later, dense crawling sounds came from the cave, accompanied by the ants' shrill cries, making one's scalp tingle.
The ant nest was interconnected in all directions, with large numbers of ants rushing here from all sides.
Soon, a dense mass of black ants appeared in view.
Crawling ones below, flying ants above.
Lin Moyu didn't know how many there were.
After waiting two more seconds, with the ant swarm less than 20 meters away,
"Attack!"
At his command, the skeleton warriors sprang into action, the skeleton mages even faster.
Dozens of skills were launched simultaneously.
The cave was filled with colorful lights.
Screams rang out from the ant swarm as ants began to die.
Lin Moyu instantly locked onto the monsters.
Skill: Corpse Explosion!
Explosions echoed through the ant nest.
The entire cave trembled.
One after another, very rhythmically.
Lin Moyu wasn't mindlessly spamming, but waiting for the ants to gather before detonating a wave.
Gradually, large numbers of ant corpses began to accumulate in the cave, piling into small mountains.
Ants coming in later knocked over these piles, stepping on their comrades' corpses as they charged towards Lin Moyu.
Under the ant queen's summons, the ants fearlessly rushed to their deaths.
Massive amounts of experience poured in.
In the blink of an eye, his experience had reached 50%.
The speed was astonishing.
After level 21, leveling speed had slowed down again.
Though not like the big jumps every 5 levels,
It was still at least 10% slower.
Lin Moyu estimated that after clearing Tyrant Desert this time, reaching over 85% experience would be good.
It would be even slower after that.
"A bit slow!"
Lin Moyu couldn't help sighing.
If others heard this, they would probably spit blood.
For others to go from level 20 to 30, it took a year if fast, two to three years if slow.
At Lin Moyu's speed, it would take at most one or two months to reach level 30.
Yet he still thought it was slow. Comparing oneself to others was truly infuriating.
Lin Moyu kept detonating monsters one after another.
Ten minutes later, no more monsters came.
All the monsters in the entire ant nest had been killed.
The ant queen's screams also stopped.
Her curled state ended.
The ant queen's injuries recovered.
But waiting for her was the saturated attacks of the skeleton warriors and mages.
135 skeleton warriors raised their blades simultaneously, activating skills.
They attacked from all angles, whether under the ant queen, on her body, back, or head.
The just-healed ant queen was instantly on the verge of death.
The skeleton mages' spells followed, finishing her off.
The ant queen was almost instantly killed, dying much more miserably than last time.
She didn't even get to use a single skill.
[Killed Desert Ant Queen, Experience +800000]
[Obtained Silver-grade weapon: Ant Queen's Longsword]
[Obtained Silver-grade accessory: Ant Queen's Ring]
[Obtained Low-grade Monster Crystal Core]
[Ant Queen's Longsword: Silver-grade weapon, Strength +50, usable after level 20]
[Ant Queen's Ring: Silver-grade accessory, Spirit +50, usable after level 20]
The rewards this time weren't as much as last time.
No Desert Ant Queen Egg was obtained.
Stepping over the ant queen's corpse, Lin Moyu walked out of the ant nest and entered the lion tribe's territory.
Looking at the towering castle and sturdy gates,
Lin Moyu knew that to quickly open the castle gates, siege equipment was needed.
Siege equipment wasn't sold in the exchange, but required collecting materials and finding a blacksmith to craft.
Lin Moyu didn't have time for that.
He would still use the simple and brutal method of having skeleton warriors directly break down the gates.
At most it would waste a few more minutes.
He had only been in the dungeon for five hours now.
Over twice as fast as last time.
He could afford to waste this bit of time.
"World-class boss, I'm coming again!"
Lin Moyu waved his hand, and the skeleton army charged forward.