BXBX NOVEL Chapter 121: Advancing to C-rank Arcane Skill!
The gates below the city walls suddenly swung wide open.
Then, an overwhelming force surged forth!
A heavy horn sounded.
Sterl watched as a torrent of cavalry, followed by heavily-armored infantry, surged towards the players!
In an instant, a cavalry regiment of over a thousand riders was upon the players!
With his Star Insight, Sterl saw clearly that these cavalrymen were elite forces from various nations within the Netherworld, forcibly gathered by the world\'s will.
Though their armor was standardized, it was clearly not from a single set. Their mounts varied as well—tigers, leopards, jackals, and wolves.
There was even an exceptionally large elephant among them.
Generally, the cavalrymen with the same mounts and armor formed squads to fight together. Each cavalryman was at level 60-70, and their leaders were almost entirely elite-tier.
This thousand-strong cavalry regiment was equivalent to a thousand second-class players! They were even stronger than a normal player squad because they had the support of a military formation!
In terms of individual strength, these cavalrymen might not match players with various skills and equipment.
But in a head-on clash, they could easily eliminate an equal number of players, or even twice that number!
"This counterattack means the Netherworld is pulling out all the stops." Sterl couldn\'t help but marvel. The terrifying momentum of the thousand cavalrymen represented the elite forces of an entire world!
Sterl marveled, enjoying the spectacle without a care.
The first wave of arriving players was incredibly unlucky.
The players charging at the forefront were immediately engulfed and struck by the cavalry\'s advance!
The leading players instinctively activated their protective skills, raising various colored shields, or their bodies glowed to fend off attacks.
However, it was all in vain!
The cavalrymen at the forefront of the charge plunged their swords into the shields! Although they might not have broken through the players\' defenses, the sheer impact force knocked the players off their mounts!
Once they hit the ground, they had no time to react before being trampled by the following cavalry!
Under the massive weight and impact—
Even the sturdiest shields couldn\'t hold for long!
Not to mention, the cavalry\'s trampling wasn\'t just a matter of physical inertia and gravity. Many of them and their mounts were surrounded by strange glows, clearly enhanced by skills.
Players, inherently more fragile than typical wild monsters or NPCs, faced the terrifying charge and trampling of the second-class cavalry, and one by one, they were crushed to death!
And this was just the beginning!
As the cavalry charged, the rear players also suffered!
The player team was split and interspersed!
Rear-line players like mages and priests couldn\'t even cast many spells before being skewered by the cavalry\'s lances, falling miserably to the ground.
"Help me!"
"Damn it! How did so many soldiers appear out of nowhere?"
"I knew the Dark Moon Alliance sent us here to die!"
...
Players were being slaughtered, crying out in despair.
For a moment, the situation was utterly chaotic!
The players might have had decent individual combat abilities, but against the most formidable force of the cold weapon era—the cavalry charge—they stood no chance without overwhelming power.
In the first wave of the assault, the slightly weaker players were completely wiped out.
The surviving players fared no better. After being divided by the cavalry, they had to fight alone, unable to receive help from their comrades. They were surrounded on all sides by soldiers rushing past them at high speed.
One by one, players activated their internal powers, with some even unleashing purple-quality skills!
From a bird\'s-eye view, bursts of energy swirled within the surging cavalry formation, like flowers suddenly blooming on the prairie.
These counterattacks might have been powerful, but unless the players could kill the cavalrymen instantly, the mounted soldiers would speed past, making it impossible for the players to finish them off. The enemies would be hundreds of meters away by then, while new foes continuously surrounded the players.
Even the stronger players found themselves in a tight spot! Despite their full-force outbursts, they struggled to kill their opponents.
What was even more terrifying was that as the cavalry charged through, heavily-armored infantry surrounded the players!
Without the mobility constraints of the cavalry, the infantry\'s heavy armor provided formidable defense. At the same level, ordinary spells and attacks barely scratched them.
"Damn! We can\'t even harm them!"
"With our strength, how can we be slaughtered by such a ruthless army?"
"Who has a teleport scroll? I\'ll trade a platinum-level item for it!"
...
The remaining players had no will to fight. All they wanted was to escape!
The structured army was simply too terrifying!
Subsequently, under the soldiers\' encirclement, the "strong" players were all slaughtered, except for a few who had lifesaving items like teleport scrolls.
Even Sterl, observing from the watchtower on the city wall, couldn\'t help but marvel, "So this is the power of an army?"
"Truly formidable!"
He even found a new idea forming in his mind—
Recruiting ordinary players as subordinates wouldn\'t be helpful in direct combat since his strength had skyrocketed too fast. But if he could form an army, he could leverage military formations to win with less power! After all, a planet and human civilizations had already emerged in his mental realm.
Although he couldn\'t yet utilize those human civilizations, Sterl had a feeling that if he ever reached the level of a god, or even a demigod, he could gradually interact with the "people" in his mental realm, bringing them into reality!
That would be a natural source of troops!
The more Sterl thought about it, the more excited he became, envisioning himself commanding vast armies to conquer various dimensions with a single gesture.
He got so excited that he rolled over in the watchtower and lay down in a different position.
"Alright, I\'ll just wait for now…" Sterl couldn\'t do much at the moment. After the players outside died, the Divine Power and Law Power needed to be worn down by the world\'s will before he dared to absorb them. For now, he decided to invest his time in training his arcane skill.
Time flew by quickly.
More players gradually arrived, varying in strength, but none were as powerful as the first wave.
Naturally, they were slaughtered by the army, which behaved like rabid dogs.
Sterl wasn\'t in a hurry. He continued to happily train his arcane skill, gradually maxing out his proficiency.
By the afternoon of the second day, he had successfully maxed out his arcane skill proficiency and skill points.
This time, he advanced his arcane skill directly to C-rank, just one level away from the B-rank arcane skill, Mountain.
However, Sterl was somewhat regretful. It seemed he needed to reach at least level 60 to complete the second stage of the arcane skill advancement. His current status panel showed the following:
[Arcane Skill: Star Soul Rotation (C-rank)]
[Effects: ① Converts experience, gaining an additional 80% yield]
[② All your attributes receive a 50% boost]
[③ Talent enhancement, effect increased by 30% (currently selected: Divine Descent, current awakening level at 50%)]
[Proficiency: 4999/5000 [Stage One] (maximum of three stages)]
First, the experience yield had nearly doubled, and the attribute enhancement had reached 50%, effectively increasing Sterl\'s overall attributes by 1.5 times! The awakening level of Divine Descent had also increased, and the SSS-level talent was nearing a breakthrough, approaching a secondary awakening!
Furthermore, Sterl noticed that his proficiency was almost maxed out, just a tiny bit away from breaking through to the second stage of the arcane skill!
Once Sterl reached level 60, his combat power would receive a significant boost!
After finishing his arcane skill training, Sterl didn\'t hesitate to head to the battlefield and absorb the Divine Power and Law Power left behind by the dead players.
This time, his Divine Power reached 0.64 points, and the growth progress of his Law Power reached 64 points!
As a result, Sterl could clearly sense a bright full moon illuminating his mental world!
Moreover, he could sense countless "people" on the life-bearing planets silently gazing at the bright moonlight.
Only half of these "people" worshiped the moon, spreading milky-white threads of light, which seemed to be a power called faith, dispersing into Sterl\'s mental space.
"What\'s going on here?" Sterl thought as he watched, realizing that by adding celestial bodies or entities that matched the characteristics of the human race to his mental realm, he could promote the flourishing of the human race within it.
And it would also provide more faith power? Although Sterl didn\'t need this power at the moment, he knew it was undoubtedly valuable.
"But it seems that only Law-level powers can create new entities in the mental realm."
"In other words, if I want to gain more faith power, I need to acquire the laws of the sun, stars, and other celestial bodies, as well as mountains, earth, rivers, and the like—the more, the better?"
Sterl looked at the mental world evolved from his [Divine Office: Human Race], feeling as though he was beginning to understand something.
He now vaguely felt that the [Divine Office: Human Race] might have way more potential than he initially imagined!
He didn\'t know the circumstances of the fallen deity who previously held this office, but combined with Sterl\'s SSS-level profession, he gained almost complete compatibility with all laws!