Ashen God
Chapter 604 - 603 [Decree·Death]

Chapter 604: Chapter 603 [Decree·Death]

"Next, I should continue with the first phase of the demonized swamp cleaning plan," Talent mused.

Had it been before he received the Grey Maned Arm Guard, Zhang Yanhang might not have been too confident about clearing the entire Southern Forest in one go and might have needed to use some potions to complete the task. But now, as long as nothing unexpected occurred along the way, he should be able to steadily execute the cleaning plan and definitely clear the area in one sweep.

"So, the question is, should I go and clear the Lucky Slot Machines in Raccoon City and Goblin Plain first?"

After contemplating for a bit, Zhang Yanhang decided it might be better to first clean up Southern Forest. After all, both prize pools were only refreshed during the day, and according to his current progress, he would probably manage to clear the entire Southern Forest by early morning. Then, he would still have time to clear the slot machines’ prize pools in Raccoon City and Goblin Plain.

"Since that’s the case, I might as well go straight to cleaning the Southern Forest, which is also a good opportunity to test the impact of the bonus to Physical Recovery Speed provided by the Grey Maned Arm Guard," he concluded.

Zhang Yanhang had already tested this aspect before sleep but had not been able to obtain accurate data due to the short duration of just over an hour. However, this time was different. His Physical Strength was fully recovered, and after depleting his stamina once more, it would certainly be possible to calculate more reliable data.

After making up his mind, Zhang Yanhang immediately leaped out of the window and headed quickly toward the Southern Forest.

...

October 25th, Sunday, Double Ninth Festival, and also the first day Zhang Yanhang was jumping back and forth between the Main World and Ashen World. It was 5:49 pm, in the demonized swamp’s central area of the Southern Forest.

[Successfully killed a First Tier Three Stars monster ’Demonized Dogtooth Giant Ape (Ordinary)’ × 1, Soul points +10.]

[Successfully killed a First Tier Three Stars monster ’Demonized Dogtooth Giant Ape (Ordinary)’ × 1, Soul points +10.]

[Successfully killed a First Tier Three Stars monster ’Demonized Dogtooth Giant Ape (Ordinary)’ × 1, Soul points +10.]

...

After spending four hours clearing an area covering thirty-two square kilometers, Zhang Yanhang now sat on the corpse of a demonized dogtooth giant ape pondering over the direction of his life, or rather, the next direction of his cleaning mission.

Due to the irregular shape of the Southern Forest, although Zhang Yanhang had smoothly pushed through from the outskirts to this point before, he now needed to choose a direction to continue.

His current location was like a crossroads: to the east was the Lucky Slot Machine in the Demonized Swamp, while to the west were the remaining majority of the demonized dogtooth giant apes in the Southern Forest.

Of course, since Zhang Yanhang was definitely planning to clear the entire Southern Forest, there wasn’t really any essential difference between the two directions. It was simply a matter of whether he cleared the slot machines one or two hours earlier or later in the evening.

After a brief consideration, he eventually decided to clear the west first, then continue to push eastward. He had always preferred to clear the monsters first before clearing out the slot machine reward pools. It wasn’t for any special reason; it was just a simple habit.

During the previous four hours of cleaning, Zhang Yanhang also managed to calculate his current efficiency in clearing the area.

How should it be put? The increase wasn’t much. Although Movement Speed had indeed improved, the overall hunting efficiency had only decreased by half a minute—from needing eight minutes to clear one square kilometer, down to seven and a half minutes to do the same.

While it seemed small, these incremental savings added up to something more substantial. For every fifteen square kilometers cleared, he saved enough time to clean an additional square kilometer. Thus, the thirty-two square kilometers he had just cleared amounted to two cycles.

"The Southern Forest spans a total area of ninety square kilometers. Including the ten square kilometers I cleaned before sleeping and the thirty-two I’ve just cleared, I’ve already cleared forty-two square kilometers—almost half. There’s still forty-eight square kilometers left to clear.

Based on my current progress, optimistically, I might even clear the entire Southern Forest by midnight today."

Zhang Yanhang was quite satisfied with this rate of efficiency, meaning he would easily accomplish his goal of clearing the entire Southern Forest in one go.

"Earlier, my clearing progress was around 11.1%, but now, the first-phase cleaning plan’s progress has shot up to 46.7%, increasing rapidly.

Of course, this is only the first-phase cleaning plan. If I included my current progress in the overall cleaning plan, then the completion rate is merely 10.5%. There’s still a need to keep up the effort."

While the overall progress still looked quite poor, it was normal as Zhang Yanhang hadn’t even completed the mid-section of the most basic first-phase cleaning plan yet. It wasn’t going to be high.

Presumably, once he cleared the entire Southern Forest and completely finished the first-phase cleaning plan, the overall cleaning progress wouldn’t look as poor as it did now.

As Zhang Yanhang pondered, a Green quality Drop treasure box appeared silently on the corpse of the demonized canine giant ape he was sitting on. He immediately picked up the Green quality Drop treasure box and directly placed it into his Waist Bag.

Previously, Zhang Yanhang hadn’t been able to calculate the Treasure box drop rate of monsters in the Demonized Swamp due to an insufficient number of samples. But now the situation was different since he had cleared forty-two square kilometers, taking down more than two thousand demonized creatures.

Thus, he had successfully calculated the drop rate for the Demonized Swamp area.

On the whole, it was very ordinary, which made Zhang Yanhang slightly disappointed. The Demonized Swamp was not like Goblin Plain where killing nineteen would drop a treasure box; instead, like most normal areas, it meant that you had to kill twenty to get a drop treasure box, just like with Raccoon City and the small Crimson Iron Ant Nest Dala Gu.

Although on the surface, the difference in total yield was small, sometimes this small difference turned out to be crucial, for instance, when there were not enough fusions of equipment or when Talent upgrades fell short.

Take Zhang Yanhang’s Swift Leggings as an example, even after clearing the entire Goblin Plain, he was still one short to break through the limit and upgrade them to Dark Purple, but he just couldn’t obtain it.

In the end, it was only in the early hours of this morning that he managed to get the last necessary Swift Leggings from Goblin Plain’s Lucky Slot Machine prize pool. Through fusion with his original Swift Leggings, he finally broke the limit and forged a Dark Purple Quality Swift Leggings +5.

Therefore, to avoid such situations in the future, Zhang Yanhang naturally hoped for the monster’s treasure box drop rate to be as high as possible. Sadly, the Rank Penalty was unavoidable, and even Multiple Choice had no influence over it.

"Every time I think about this, I feel my Luck Value isn’t enough, even though compared to other Awakeners I already have luck that seems from an entirely different dimension. But, indeed, I need to continue improving my Luck Value."

Though he needed to improve his Luck Value, Second Tier was definitely not going to work unless he suddenly found equipment related to Luck Value on a demonized creature or obtained an Artifact that could increase his Luck Value from a slot machine, or perhaps achieved an increase in Luck Value from the Achievement Vending Machine.

However, unfortunately, even though it seems possible to gain these, in reality, none of these three channels are reliable. Even for someone with Zhang Yanhang’s luck, he had absolutely no expectation at all.

So, issues like increasing Luck Value really could only be dealt with when reaching Third Tier. He planned to ask the group leader once he returned to the Main World to see if she knew of any ways to increase his Luck Value.

But even if there really was a way, it would probably be very difficult, or else he thought the group leader wouldn’t keep behaving like she had the worst luck imaginable.

Compared to difficulty, what he feared more was the group leader not knowing any methods to increase Luck Value at all. In that case, he’d have to resolve this on his own, which might be a bit troublesome.

After all, if there was a readymade method, using it would definitely be better, even if it was a bit more challenging. But his Multiple Choice should be able to help out, and once it reached Third Tier upon promotion, it would definitely show much stronger capabilities.

Second Tier’s Multiple Choice could already manipulate others’ destinies, and Zhang Yanhang thought that Third Tier’s Multiple Choice might even evolve abilities like some "Decree·Death," where paying Energy Value could kill the target unseen.

While most of his abilities were quite plain and unadorned, he actually quite liked cooler abilities. Of course, the prerequisite was that they had to be powerful, otherwise, they were just cool for cool’s sake, which was basically useless.

So, if there was an ability that was both cool and extremely powerful, why wouldn’t Zhang Yanhang like it? Or to put it another way, anyone would like it.

After picking up the treasure box and putting it into his waist bag, Zhang Yanhang quickly charged toward the distance again; he could only rest a little while waiting for the treasure box to refresh. At other times, he was basically in high-speed movement throughout the entire process.

On October 25th, Sunday, the Double Ninth Festival, and also the first day that Zhang Yanhang was hopping back and forth between the Main World and the Ashen World, at 10:11 PM, in the Demonized Swamp, the central region of the Southern Forest.

After just having cleared the area on the western side of the Southern Forest, Zhang Yanhang had now made his way back to the central region. In the hunting process of over four hours, he had cleared another thirty-five square kilometers.

Although the process of hunting the Demonized Canine Giant Ape had become more skilled, due to other more fundamental reasons, his hunting efficiency hadn’t increased much; it still maintained a clearing speed of roughly seven and a half minutes per square kilometer.

After all, Zhang Yanhang had hunted tens of thousands of monsters by now; there’s a knack to everything, and it would certainly be impossible for him not to have mastered the corresponding hunting skills after hunting tens of thousands of monsters.

Thus, with his current skilled hunting techniques, there was no way to get much faster; after all, he was a true Gun Mastery and Fighting Master with improvements in both ranged and close combat skills, which made him a legitimate Grandmaster of Gunplay and a Fighting Master.

Therefore, what limited his hunting efficiency were never hunting skills, but rather some more rigid indicators, like movement speed and treasure box drop refresh time.

If drop treasure boxes could refresh immediately after killing a monster, Zhang Yanhang was completely confident he could instantly reduce the current clearing efficiency from seven and a half minutes per square kilometer to below five minutes, and even four minutes was not impossible.

For this persistent problem, like with his previous boost to Luck Value, Zhang Yanhang was prepared to think of a solution after his promotion to Third Tier; at present, indeed there was no better solution.

"I cleared a total area of forty-two square kilometers before, and this time another thirty-five square kilometers; without realizing it, I’ve already cleared a total area of seventy-seven square kilometers, with only the last thirteen square kilometers remaining before I can completely clear the entire Southern Forest and complete the First Tier of the cleaning plan.

If converted into a cleaning progress percentage, my current progress of the First Tier cleaning plan has increased to 85.6%, a growth of 38.9% compared to the previous 46.7%, not in vain for over four hours of hard work.

Moreover, even if converted to the overall progress of the Demonized Swamp cleaning plan, that also has increased considerably, directly going from the original 10.5% to 19.3%, a full increase of 8.8% in the progress, almost reaching one-fifth of the cleaning progress."

From the current situation, Zhang Yanhang had now confirmed he could indeed easily clear the entire Southern Forest in one go; after all, the only monsters left in the Southern Forest were those near the Lucky Slot Machine.

With a total area of only thirteen square kilometers, Zhang Yanhang estimated that he probably needed no more than one or two hours to completely clear it, and thinking about the first and second prizes in the pool of the Lucky Slot Machine, Zhang Yanhang’s already sufficient motivation became even more substantial.

But although Zhang Yanhang had indeed cleared seventy-seven square kilometers of the Southern Forest, due to the lower density of monsters in the Demonized Swamp Zone, he had actually killed less than five thousand Demonized Creatures.