Chapter 768: Searching for Water
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
"But chief!" Joseph reacted almost immediately. "The Kingcross's Sword is a holy sword handed down to us by our forefathers. How can we simply gift it to an outsider?"
"Desperate times call for desperate measures! This draught is getting worse with each passing day, do you wish to see our villagers die of thirst?" Hushma spoke with such anger that his whiskers shook. He then calmed himself down and said in a softer tone, "And besides, the holy sword is incomplete. Holding on to only a piece of it is of no use to us!"
"A wise decision, chief!" Joseph instantly buttered up to Hushma instead.
Zhang Yang who watched the conversation taking place in front of him was speechless. If this was an anime, he would have streaks of black lines going down his head.
Hushma then turned and faced Zhang Yang. "So, how about it, stranger? If you bring us enough water to survive this draught, I'll give you the Kingcross Holy Sword that our village has kept for generations!"
"Ding! Chief Hushma has a quest for you: Searching for Water. Will you accept it?"
To be honest, even if the quest did not give him any sort of reward, Zhang Yang would have still taken it nonetheless. After all, having an active quest will make hunting mobs a lot easier. But most of all, it is a sure way of encountering a BOSS monster instead of having to run around, waiting for random encounters.
ACCEPT!
"Ding! You have obtained: Flask x 100."
[Searching for Water] (Difficulty Level: C)
Quest Description: Village Chief Hushma has requested that you search for freshwater to help the village survive the dreadful draught! However, this task will not be easy, and you will be facing a lot of dangers on your journey. Please be careful! According to Hushma, there is a freshwater lake located at the peak of Spirit Stone Mountain, to the west of the village.
Progress: Freshwater accuired 0/100
Quest Reward: Kingcross' Sword Piece
[Kingcross' Sword Fragment] (Special Item)
Item Description: Combine seven Kingcross' Sword Pieces with Heavy Smithing to complete the Kingcross' Sword.
The quest did not introduce or explain what the Kingcross' Sword is capable of, and it was obviously not another assembled equipment since it has already been stated that it was a "special item".
Well, whatever. Let's first get this quest over with!
Zhang Yang stepped out of the wooden hut and summoned his pet Phoenix, and under the envious and awe-struck gazes of Joseph and Hushma, he mounted and took off through the skies at blinding speeds.
Riding on the back of his pet Phoenix, Zhang Yang flew west. Although it was stated that Spirit Stone Mountain was not far away from the village, the fact that he took almost two hours of continuous flight before finally having the mountain in his sights proved otherwise! However, this was to be expected. If the water source was close to the village, the villagers would not have needed his help and could have acquired water easily themselves.
The mountain itself was not huge, but had a lake some ten metres wide at the top of it. The water was crystal clear, and occasionally, its surface rippled, caused by billowing mountain winds.
Zhang Yang dismounted from his phoenix and walked up to the lake. But before he can retrieve the flasks from his inventory, a horde of black bulls with green symbols on their backs appeared out of nowhere and charged at him! The bulls moved to surround him while they and stamped and clomped their hooves on the ground, kicking up grass and dirt. The horde closed in on him in a menacing manner, with black flames flaring from their snouts whenever they snorted!
[Wild Bull of Death] (Elite, Beast)
Level: 185
HP: 9,250,000
Defense: 11570
Melee Damage: 81,566-121,566
Skills:
[Wild Charge]: Rushes towards an enemy target at great speed and stuns the target for 3 seconds as well as dealing 50,000 physical damage. Effective Distance: 3 – 10 meters.
[Flames of Death]: Spits the black flames of death which reduces the enemy target's HP by 10%, but not more than 100,000 each attack. Effective range: 30 meters. Cooldown: 30 seconds. If the enemy target is out of range, Flames of Death has no cooldown.
Note: Although not the strongest beasts of Marlin's Land of Salt, these Wild Bulls of Death come in great numbers together, enough to frighten off any other monster that approaches them! Be advised, do not ever taunt or challenge a group of these bulls, unless you are looking for death!
"MOO!" One of the bulls signaled to attack, and some ten or so other bulls aimed their horns at Zhang Yang and charged.
So many of them!
Zhang Yang could not fly off at this point, because he would have to deal with their Flames of Death if he did! With this many of them attacking him at once, the damage he will have to take will be in the millions! And even with his shield wall up, that's still not enough!
Having decided to take up this quest to retrieve water for the village, Zhang Yang realized that he would have to deal with these bulls either way, and thus there was no point in running. He has to fight them!
Having decided on that, he activated his phoenix's skills!
The Phoenix screed, and its whole body grew in size. Its purple and red feathers glistened with a captivating glow, making it appear strong and majestic!
At level 177, his pet phoenix had a base health of 1,278,060 points. But with the boosts from his {Vitality Aura} and Phoenix’s Transformation it now has a max health of over 36,000,000! This number is already on par with Han Ying Xue after he transforms! And that's also because Han Ying Xue has an S class inheritance! This demonstrates just how important having good items is!
BAM! BAM! BAM!
The bulls used their {Wild Charge} and attacked Zhang Yang, taking a huge chunk off his health bar and stunning him for 3 seconds! But despite being stunned, Zhang Yang did not debuff himself with {Warriors Will} just yet. He wanted to wait for the whole mob to step into his melee range first, instead of getting repetitively stunned again and again.
{Flames of Death}!
The bulls then unleashed their fiery attack unto Zhang Yang, each one attack taking off 100,000 points from his heath! Health reduction attacks like these are similar to Forbidden Scrolls, they are not subject to armor or damage reductions, and even ignores invincibility!
As soon as the last of the bulls finished its charge and entered melee range, Zhang Yang finally activated the {Warriors Will} and dispelled the stun, and with a quick Sweep from his Scythe, the weapon collected blood off the first bull it struck, and he quickly activated {Horizontal Sweep} to cleave at the mob! Due to the expanded size of the Phoenix Transformation, the Wild Bulls of Death could easily attack Zhang Yang, but were also easily in the range of his attack.
-389,923!
-402,344!
-873,322!
...
Rows and rows of numbers kept popping up, informing him of the damage being dealt. Each attack alone dealt up to 380,000 points of damage, but when there is a critical strike, the damage output jumps up to 900,000! And even though {Horizontal Sweeps} does not have any armor piercing properties, in a group of mobs like this, the damage potential is still very huge!
Swiping once every ten seconds, as long as uninterrupted, was currently his best AOE damage ability. Especially due to its low cooldown!
With this kind of damage, even the bulls and their 9,000,000 plus health points could not last for long. Angry MOOs echoed through the air, and they charged again at the Phoenix.
Zhang Yang dared not dismount from his pet. He was relying on the health buffs it gave to survive. And so, he limited his attacks to only {Blast Wave} and {Horizontal Sweep}. {Thunder Strike} required that he dismount to use, and that was too risky for him.
As it is, his single target attack damage may be very high, but it is still not as much as the cumulative damage from one {Horizontal Strike}! After all, the {Horizontal Strike} was originally a strong single target attack skill itself.
9 seconds later, Zhang Yang used {Charge Up Strike}.
{Horizontal Sweep}!
-1150928!
-1352928!
-1286720!
...
This time, the {Horizontal Sweep} was much more devastating. After being boosted by {Charge Up Strike}, not only were his attacks all critical, the damage had also been increased by 50%!
If any other player were to see Zhang Yang's attack damage right now, they would definitely wrap their hands around their faces and scream in disbelief! More than 1,000,000 damage per hit from an AOE skill! Not even a player with a 99% completed Inheritance Transformation could pull that off!
But in all actuality, not all AOE skills are boosted by the player's Inheritance Transformations. In Zhang Yang's God of War Transformation, for example, {God of War's Crushing Strike} could be considered as a pure and as his best AOE skill, but the damage potential that it has is only as much as 10 times of his strength, and without the buffs from {Strength Aura}, it could only deal as much as 19,000 damage per target, half of what {Horizontal Sweep} can do!
But considering the fact that {God of War's Crushing Blow} has an AOE of up to 50 meters, and cannot be canceled or evaded, it could potentially deal more damage in total than {Horizontal Sweep} if there were a lot more mobs in the area!
Due to the significant increase in size of the Phoenix, the bulls that were surrounding him became more well-spaced apart. The flames coming from the Phoenix's attacks are in a cone, it is also dealing additional damage, but only in the direction that it is facing. Thus, only a sixth of the bulls are affected by the phoenix's flame attacks.
But after activating the {Phoenix Transformation}, its damage had also increased by many folds. Each simple attack it does is already at 300,000 damage, already at the same level of {Horizontal Sweeps}! Coupled with Felice's flame, the health bars of the entire horde of Wild Bulls of Death keep dropping so fast, and very soon, they started dying to the damage.
That was somewhat to be expected. Zhang Yang had already activated the {Phoenix Transformation}. If Zhang Yang could still not demolish this mob, that would have been weird!
POW!
Finally, the last remaining bull fell, the battle is finally over! It was a shame that Zhang Yang was not a Skin Flayer, or the leather of these bulls would have brought him a small fortune!
What an utter waste!
Zhang Yang shook his head. He then retrieved the flasks from his inventory and started to fill them with water from the lake.
With each flask filled, the progress bar of his quest slowly rose. And as soon as he finished filling all the 100 flasks, he had completed the quest.
The Phoenix transformation could still last for a while more, and Zhang Yang did not want that to go to waste. He started roaming the area and cleared the remaining mobs before returning to the village and reporting to Village Chief Hushma.
Seeing Zhang Yang bringing out flasks and more flasks filled with freshwater made the whole village exclaim in excitement, they all now idolized Zhang Yang as their hero. Their hunting expedition had also just returned, and thus, a bonfire was lit up in the village with a Trunk Boar being roasted on it. The fragrant aroma of roasted meat flowed through the whole forest.
Zhang Yang took out the Kingcross' Sword Piece that he had just received from completing the quest. It is only a small blade fragment of the actual sword, and until he finds and combines them all, this item had no use whatsoever to him. Since it was not a weapon or a quest item, it was absolute junk to him right now!
Well. Whatever. Just put it aside for now.
Zhang Yang sat next to Hushma and was enjoying a nice piece of roasted meat. "Living out here is not easy, why haven’t you all thought about moving away?"
"That's easier said than done!" Hushma shook his head as he replied. "For one, the village has been here for many generations, not many of them are willing to move. Secondly, the salt plain is filled with various dangers! Twenty years ago, we tried moving the village once. But just one third into our migration, and we have already lost one-quarter of the villagers, and all of those who died were men! If we had continued moving that time, we would have all succumbed to the wilderness. And so, we came back!"