Zhan Long

Chapter 686 - Iron Blade Mountain

For lunch we hurriedly ate our hot pot. We didn’t even let the food properly absorb the taste of the broth. The entire time we were all worried about the game. Could Matcha really stand up to the pressure from [House of Prestige]? Swift thunder brought 5000 players with him for battle. These 5000 are all players that have experienced a hundred battles. They were quite experienced with virtual battles. On top of that, Matcha was only leading 500 players from the main guild and three divisions. That was around 6000 total. That wasn’t much more than the opponent. Of course that was a completely different topic compared to actual battle power. This was going to be a difficult test for Matcha.

……

At 1:30 in the afternoon, I logged on!

“Shua!”

As before, I appeared in the Magma Falls Mountains. I immediately opened up the guild chat. I could see that people were already sharing the situation of the battle in the guild chat. It was a battle between [House of Prestige] and [Zhan Long] to the south of Tian Ling City. It was located in a long valley that was completely covered in bramble. Matcha raised her bloody sword and commanded people to fight while they retreated. However, [House of Prestige]’s Swift Thunder only laughed savagely and pursued them. He seemed to be cursing something under his breath. However, most people were too far from the scene to hear what it was.

[Zhan Long]’s divisions took heavy losses. They couldn’t hold their formation against [House of Prestige]’s attacks. However, Matcha did not give up and continued to lead the battle. Suddenly, archers and mages appeared from the brambles. One after another, poison arrows flew out and they carried poison vines. “Pu pu pu” they pierced through the [House of Prestige]’s players and, nailing the knights to death while they were in the valley. It was the Death God arrows. There weren’t many, probably at most around 200. However, when they were used together and in a location like this, it was highly effective

Swift Thunder’s expression turned extremely lucky. He pulled at his horse’s reins and began to charge forward like crazy. He commanded the mages to burn the [Death God Arrow]s’ poison vines. As he shouted the orders, he continued to advance forward. He was probably telling all of his subordinates that they didn’t need to bother with the attacks to their flank. As long as they could defeat the [Zhan Long] division armies that Matcha was leading, they would have victory.

As I expected, the [House of Prestige]’s main guild had at least 2000 knight type players. They were all players with high levels and quality equipment. Under the command of Swift Thunder, they were cutting up [Zhan Long]’s advances like they were cutting vegetables. Their team battle was one of the top while [Zhan Long]’s divisions were probably around second place. The gap in their abilities was obvious.

Despite this, Matcha’s lips curled into a smile. She continued to direct the flow of battle. The knight type players stopped to battle and then retreat. They were dragging out the site of the battle. If it were to continue like this, then [House of Prestige]’s explosive power would be greatly decreased. Furthermore, they would suffer even more damage from the flank attacks.

Matcha was very smart. She had situated quite a few players on the two sides of the mountain. [Lullaby] and [Scattershots] trapped the [House of Prestige] players. They retreated as soon as they attacked, whittling down [House of Prestige]’s numbers. Within 20 seconds, they had lost over 2000 of their players.

“Pa…”

I softly pressed the exit button on the interface. There was no more need for me to worry about the battle situation there. Wolf and Fox would do everything to execute Matcha’s orders. Looks like they really weren’t exaggerating. In terms of military strategy, Matcha was definitely the top commander. This battle was just one piece of proof. Knowing this comforted me. In the future guild battles and nation battles, I will definitely not be the only one leading the battle. I would most likely be the commander of the entire situation, but I would leave the details of the battles to Matcha, Wan Er, Qing QIan and Li Mu. Nevermind, actually, I don’t like being the kind of commander that only strategizes in the tent. I’d must rather be a general leading the charge. Besides, in a game, those two didn’t necessarily conflict with each other.

……

I closed the guild chat and glanced at my side. Wan Er and Dong Cheng had already logged on. Li Mu, Wang Jian and the others were grinding levels in the Magma Falls Mountains. This mountain range was at least 5000 meters above sea level. It was truly astonishing. The peak of this fire mountain was actually a sea of flames. In reality, a mountain that was 5000 meters above sea level was probably an icy wasteland. For example the Himalayas. But 5000+ meters above sea level, it was pretty much locked in ice.

Li Mu cut off the head of a Flame Tailed Scorpion. He looked up at the cave of the volcano and he licked his lips. With an expression full of curiosity and adventure, He smiled at me, “The higher we go, the higher level these monsters were. Just now that Flame Tailed Scorpion was Level 127. I think that the monsters near the opening of the mountain will be around Level 129.”

I smiled, “You want to head over there?”

Li Mu nodded, “The entire map is still completely black when you look at it from a map. Aren’t you curious about what’s behind the mountain?”

“Yup!”

I gripped my fist and said, “However, we can’t just all go en masse. The monsters up there are too high level. They’re close to Level 130. Any players around Level 110 would be easily killed. And so, we can only pick out the elites. Yup, pick up 1000 players from the 5000 we brought. The rest can grind levels at the central area of the mountain. There’s enough monsters here for all of us.”

Li Mu chuckled, “Yes sir!”

……

Not long after, Li Mu picked out his thousand man team. I, the guildmaster, was to be on the team leader while Wan Er, Qing QIan, Wolf and Dancing Forest were all among the core group. I lead my horse forward and we all advanced in a line. On the way, we killed quite a few Magma Ox and Flame Tailed Scorpions. The experience here was very plentiful. On top of that, they had dropped a lot of gold. Everyone spread out and advanced with every kill. Seeing gold continuously drop was a very happy feeling.

After an hour, I was the first to reach the peak of the Magma Falls Mountain Range. A thick burning fog surrounded the area. Just before my horse’s hooves was a thousand league deep flaming abyss. This was a live volcano. Who knows when it will act up. If it did act up, then our entire army would pretty much be destroyed. But, our luck shouldn’t be that bad.

Wan Er raised her dagger and walked over. She looked down with her beautiful eyes and said, “Wu, I can’t see anything down there. Don’t tell me you want to grind levels by jumping into the mouth of a volcano. Then you’ll become a grilled pig….”

I wiped some of the sweat off of my forehead and said, “Can’t you think of some more positive thoughts. Besides, I’m not that suicidal….”

Qing Qian lit up a light and looked towards the south of the mountain range through the smoke and said, “South of the volcano’s south, there looks to be a map. But I can’t really see it on the big map. Should we go and check it out?”

I narrowed my eyes as I looked into the distance. A breeze blew some of the smoke in front of me away. For a short moment I was able to see a higher set of mountains that was next to the Magma Falls Mountain Range. The only difference was, Magma Falls was completely covered with streams of lava and it looked as though the entire mountain was on fire. This other mountain however, was completely dark, as though it was made of steel. Furthermore, the mountain seemed to form a sharp peak. Rather than a tall mountain, it looked like a black mountain was covered in blades

I looked at the map and made a decision, “Ok, we’ll leave the 4500 brothers to their grinding. Death God’s Elegy will lead the grinding team. The thousand of us will go around the volcano’s mouth and pass through the Magma Falls Mountain Range. Let’s go and see what those dark mountains are?”

Li Mu nodded with a smile, “Yup, this will be interesting!”

……

With me in the lead, we began to go around the mouth of the volcano. My warhorse walked across the burning stones. My Flying Scythe War Horse was still ok, after all, it had hooves. The other players however, which had meat paws like Tigers, Leopards or Wolves were having more trouble. Even the players were slowly beginning to lose health. As we wandered through the smoke, some of them even began to cough. On top of that, there were quite a few Level 129 Magma Oxen and Flame Tailed Scorpions for us to deal with. There was no way this environment could get any worse.

After wandering around for half an hour, we finally reached the other side. The other mountains were starting to look more clear without the smoke to cover it up. Looking down however made us extremely disappointed. There was an abyss between the Magma Falls Mountain and this black mountain. It was so deep you couldn’t see the bottom. Wang Jian tossed a rock into the abyss but we didn’t hear an echo of it hitting the ground.

“F*ck, we came here for nothing….” Li Mu angrily patted his leg.

Qing Qian bit her lip, “That abyss is too deep. The Wind Elves definitely can’t fly over…. What do we do?”

Wan Er’s clothes fluttered from the breeze as she stood on the border of the abyss. She glanced around at the valley. Suddenly, she smiled and said, “I’ve got it. Everyone look over there, maybe that can be our bridge to the other mountain….”

Everyone looked to where the beautiful vice guildmaster was pointing. Suddenly, we saw enormous trees growing on the black mountain. Each one of them had thick vines. Some of the vines were several hundred meters long. These vines shook in the wind and just happened to swing across the two mountains. The other end of the vine was growing off of a tree on the cliff of the Magma Falls Mountain. This seemed to create some kind of a rope bridge made up of ten vines. It was also the bridge that Wan Er was talking about.

“Eh….”

Wolf frowned, “Isn’t that bridge a little too dangerous? Who knows how much it could hold. What if we crawl halfway and it breaks. If we fall, we’ll die!”

I picked up my sword and said, “Well, we’ll know when we try. Seeing as there’s no other way, we’ll just have to go down this road then.”

“Ok!”

……

I walked over to one side of the vines. I sheathed my swords and grabbed one of the vines. It was pretty thick. It was about as thick as a large noodle bowl’s circumference. I used all my strength to give the vine a tug. All I could see was the vines shaking in the air. But, it remained as solid as it had looked before. Yup. This should be able to take the weight of ten people without a problem.

I put down the vine and said, “Alright it’s sturdy enough. Everyone crawl onto it one by one. Do not walk on it. The wind here is strong enough to blow you away.”

“Yes sir!”

Hugging the vines, I inched my way forward. Our method wasn’t exactly very attractive. We moved like inch worms across the vine. It was incredibly ugly. But, safety was much more important. I could hear the hash winds blow against my ear. It was incredibly powerful, proving my judgement to be correct.

……

After crawling for fifteen minutes, we finally finished crawling the length of the hundred meter long bridge. Once I let go, I jumped off and lightly landed on the black mountain. I then heard a system bell by my ear——

“Ding!”

System Notification: Please Note, you’ve entered an extremely dangerous map—— [Iron Blade Mountain]!