Chapter 1771 - 1044: Sain’s Form

"I really can’t win..."

Leon sat up with a tired look and glanced around. All around him was still a wasteland of ruined buildings, and the Dark Ring hung high in the Skyrim.

From where he was, he could still see the Pilgrim Granny with the big lid on her back, still standing not far away, staring up at the sky.

For fuck’s sake, he’d come back to where the dream started again!

Leon flopped backward with a "pa" onto the ground, staring blankly up at the gathering place’s dim yellow sky, not having the energy to react in any other way for the moment.

Since he hadn’t found a single bonfire yet in his exploration of the gathering place, dying meant he’d resurrect here, at this very first starting point.

And this crappy place was a long, long way from the Demon Prince’s boss arena... way farther than running from the gate of Fran Fort to the Fran Undead Team.

Plus, once you resurrect, the Monsters all respawn too, and he’d just suffered a total, unmitigated defeat. It was exactly the period where both his Spirit and body were exhausted.

Now he’d been sent back to square one and his exploration progress reset to zero. That really did make him want to just give up completely, lie on the ground, and never get up again.

It was rare for Leon to get into this kind of "let it all rot" mindset, but if anyone else had been running around in a high-difficulty map like this with such high intensity for so many days, they’d probably have long since given up and left the Dungeon.

Looking at it overall, Leon’s Patience was really on par with a nuclear-powered donkey.

"I really can’t beat that Demon Prince..."

Leon let out a long sigh and muttered to himself.

With just himself and Gael right now, there was no chance of victory. He carefully replayed his battle against the Demon Prince, extracting any combat experience that could definitely be applied next time, and finally discovered something.

It felt like Shield Stab was the optimal solution against the Demon Prince.

Faced with this super Mad Dog with ultra-high attack desire and ultra-high attack speed, any Dodge-type Skill would get punished in the endlag. In times like this, you were supposed to just honestly turn yourself into the sturdiest city wall: one hand holding a thick Big Shield in front of you, the other hand using a long spear—whether it’s smeared in shit or some other attribute—to pierce the enemy.

You hit yours, I hit mine. That was the optimal solution against the Demon Prince!

Leon pictured it: if he had the choice, he’d bring at least five companions who were proficient in Shield Stab to come subjugate the Demon Prince together. The rest of the team would focus on neutralizing the Demon Prince’s ranged attacks and providing healing and other support.

Done like that, they might actually win. It’s just that it’d probably take a huge amount of time, and he was afraid that during that process the Demon Prince would get triggered into some kind of map-clearing Big Move.

"In the end I still need to practice it a few more times in the field. Just the intel from this one fight isn’t enough."

A qualified Strategy Group member would make choices about their adventuring content, trying to maximize the returns of every single adventure.

In Leon’s mind, if he wanted to maximize the returns this time, he at least had to squeeze a bit more combat intel out of the Demon Prince, and then find at least one bonfire. Only then could it be called not a wasted trip.

But after several days of high-intensity combat and adventuring, the sloth inside him had already awakened. There was this voice in his head constantly telling him: you’ve worked hard enough, you’re already exhausted, it’s okay to rest now, and so on.

No matter how diligent a person is, in this kind of situation they’ll still become lazy!

"So what am I supposed to do next?"

Leon pulled out his homemade map and looked it over again and again, then raised his head to look around.

Based on his observations over these past few days, the gathering place was "alive."

The entire gathering place was slowly rotating around a certain "center." Because the speed of rotation was too slow, you wouldn’t notice it at all without careful observation. Leon only realized this because he noticed changes in the places he’d marked.

A gathering place that moves—this really matched the Pilgrim Granny’s description of it: the place where the world converges after the flame goes out.

If it rotated a bit faster, it might even look spectacular. Leon now also hoped the gathering place would spin faster, but not to satisfy his own desires—rather, for the sake of exploration.

He’d said before that there were still huge swathes of the gathering place he hadn’t explored.

But in reality, most of those areas were places that were hard to reach by normal means. Back in Sain Dungeon, even if you went to the trouble to climb up to these kinds of regions, there generally wasn’t any reward worth that effort, so they were basically optional.

Setting aside these chicken-rib areas, Leon could pretty much say he’d walked every region of the gathering place that could be measured with his own two feet.

According to the Strategy Group’s internal standards, to completely step through a new area on the first encounter already counted as extremely outstanding.

The pit where the Demon Prince resided was something he deliberately left for last, because he’d long had a feeling that it would be where the final boss was located.

"If I stay here and wait, will the constantly moving gathering place reveal new areas?"

That was what he was curious about now, because not long ago he’d seen a cliff collapse due to the gathering place’s movement, and after it collapsed, a subterranean pit that could be called a side quest path was exposed.

Curiosity was what had supported everything he’d done so far. Without curiosity, he wouldn’t have chosen the adventurer profession in the first place, so deep down he wanted to stay and witness the changes in the gathering place.