Free Web NovelChapter 103: Chapter 97: Surging Undercurrents
「Underground in the Wasteland.」
The Conscience Merchant knew the Undead City Lord had recently fought a battle with the Headhunter Race. He knew the Lord had won, of course, but he had no idea how heavy his losses were. Could he really fend off another attack from several hundred Headhunters?
Though his heart was pounding with anxiety, he chose to trust him. Amid the churning soil, the Gophers received their orders and began to turn the fortress. freewebnσvel.cѳm
He had no idea what was with those Headhunters. He’d tried every trick in the book, but all he could do was slow them down. He just couldn’t shake them. They latched onto him like a wolf pack stalking its prey, a constant, prickling threat at his back.
’Since the Undead City Lord said to lead them to him, then that’s what I’ll do. It’s do or die now. I have to go all in!’
However, the Conscience Merchant had no intention of heading straight there. Even though his Mobile Fortress could travel underground, it still had to burrow, and the time that took would make it even easier for the Headhunters to catch up. He’d have to rely on his old tricks.
"Release the decoy drills!"
Portholes opened up on the hull of the advancing Gopher Mobile Fortress. With a violent shudder, eight drills launched out into the surrounding soil. At launch, the drills were less than a meter long, but once they bored into the earth, they rapidly extended and pushed forward. The tunnels they created were nearly identical to the one dug by the Mobile Fortress itself.
Gophers weren’t particularly strong fighters, but they had their own ways of staying alive. These decoy drills were one of the Conscience Merchant’s trump cards. The tunnels they dug would confuse his enemies, making it impossible for them to determine the fortress’s true path.
The Conscience Merchant was normally loath to use them. He had poured nearly all the resources he’d earned from his trade into these eight drills. But now, to buy himself more time, he couldn’t worry about the expense.
He didn’t waste time wondering if the drills would be enough to shake the Headhunters. If they were that easy to lose, he wouldn’t have been run ragged like this in the first place. The only reason to deploy the decoy drills was to buy more time to escape. That was all.
After launching the drills, the Gopher Mobile Fortress accelerated and began moving in circles underground. That’s right—circling. It constantly connected its tunnels, making it impossible for its pursuers to pinpoint its exact location while it slowly, painstakingly inched its way toward the given coordinates.
...
"Boss, what’s the good news?" Liu Xingxing asked as soon as he entered the main building. He saw the big smile on Li Ziyu’s face and knew right away. ’Something good must have happened,’ he thought, ’or he wouldn’t be smiling like that.’
"Ah, Xingxing," Li Ziyu said. "You know, luck is a funny thing. When it decides to show up, there’s just no stopping it." Li Ziyu beamed at the thought of his nearest and dearest friends: the Headhunter Race.
’Rushing all this way just to deliver some Soul Energy... They’re truly the best of bros.’
After he wiped out this wave of Headhunters, he’d be able to add a good number of Skeleton Longbowmen to his ranks.
’Can I beat them? That question wasn’t even worth considering. What a joke. With the entire Wraith Mountain Range at my back, if I can’t even handle a few hundred Headhunters, then I should just give up being a City Lord and kill myself.’
’I have more than enough Skeletons. I could just drown them in a tide of Skeleton Undead and bury them!’
’Are ten thousand Undead enough? If not, I’ll send twenty thousand. That’s no problem at all,’ Li Ziyu thought. ’Go ahead, kill as many as you can. Let’s just see how many of my Undead your pathetic little group of a few hundred can actually take down.’
It all came down to the same principle: every Race had its own unique trait. The Undead Race’s trait was that, given enough materials, they could mass-produce units at an incredible speed and in a never-ending stream. They could form a terrifying Skeleton Sea, using sheer numbers to compensate for a lack of high-tier combatants and simply overwhelm their enemies.
Forget the Headhunters—with the Wraith Mountain Range supporting him, he’d even dare to take on a Giant Dragon if one attacked.
After a moment’s thought, Li Ziyu sent a new set of coordinates to the Conscience Merchant. The previous location was still a fair distance from his current position; if something went wrong, a rescue would be difficult.
Once the coordinates were sent, he summoned several thousand more Undead to supplement his logging army, expanding the force on the mountain to ten thousand Skeleton Undead.
Ten thousand Skeleton Undead at the wood resource point, a combined ten thousand Undead at the stone and ore resource points, and over two thousand Undead transporting Corpse Remains within the mountain. The number of Undead under Li Ziyu’s command had reached an unprecedented total of over twenty thousand. This was, without a doubt, the richest he had been since arriving in this world, and his confidence soared accordingly.
By the time dawn broke the next morning, two nights of accumulation had brought the number of Skeletons in his Warehouse to an astonishing figure of over ninety thousand units. And this was after summoning more than twenty thousand Undead and constructing the resource points. He was not far from the one hundred thousand units of Skeletons needed to create a Soul Coffin.
Staring at the display showing over ninety thousand units of Skeletons in the Warehouse, Li Ziyu felt like he was in a dream. It was surreal. He was finally experiencing what it felt like to get rich overnight. Ever since he put down roots in the Wraith Mountain Range, his haul from a single night surpassed the sum of everything he had gathered before by several times over.
’He finally understood why the nouveau riche were always so ostentatious. If I’m not a little brazen right now, I’d be doing myself a disservice. This feels like I’ve activated a cheat code.’
Before going into Hibernation Mode, Li Ziyu had Liu Xingxing and the Conscience Merchant add each other as friends. He instructed Liu Xingxing to notify him immediately if anything came up. Only after making these arrangements did he allow the fortress to enter Hibernation Mode once more.
While Li Ziyu was developing at a breakneck pace, the Wasteland was far from quiet. Following a secret meeting a few days prior, the three great malignant Races had formed an alliance, determined to eradicate the threat of the Undead.
