The Doomsday Lord: Starting as a Insect Queen
Chapter 143 - 59 Current Rankings (3k)

Chapter 143: Chapter 59 Current Rankings (3k)

"Not bad at all, to have climbed to the top ten so quickly in the rankings."

But Bai Yi quickly understood the reason behind this.

Other Lords aren’t like her, able to dispatch the Insect Swarm to every corner of White Poplar City, penetrating the uninhabited areas to hunt those Mutant Creatures.

For them, they could only set out from their own territories and gradually push outward to find prey.

Moreover, since most Lords’ territories are actually distributed around the ruins of the cities, there are not many Mutant Creatures to begin with, and powerful groups capable of producing Third-tier or even Fourth-tier creatures are even rarer.

There would not be Mutant Creatures actively harassing their territories.

To hunt, they would need to find ways to cross the cold snow and leave their territories to enter the dangerous areas they normally avoid.

Unless one truly has absolute power and can be confident that their territory will remain unharmed while also being able to assemble an expedition team capable of hunting Fourth-tier creatures within the groups, it would be difficult to score many points in this challenge.

The majority of Lords who were hovering around the tenth place in the rankings have now disappeared from this challenge.

On the contrary, some Lords, who originally did not manage to secure a position around the city ruins and whose power was developing slowly in the middle tier, have climbed up the ranks from the bottom by relying on the challenges that did not require Combat Power for rewards and garnered enough benefits.

With sufficient combat strength, by proactively attacking the Mutant Creatures infringing on their territories and successfully slaying them, they have accumulated enough points to leap up from the lower ranks of the leaderboard, surpassing many former powerhouses who used to be well above them.

All of these conditions combined have brought quite a few fresh faces into the top ten of the rankings.

"It seems that there has been quite a bit of change in the strength among the Lords this time...

Speaking of which, it seems that since I’ve returned, I have never thought to check the channel, and the rankings from the last week should have been settled by now, right? Where am I ranked now?"

Bai Yi suddenly became curious. Having spent such a long time in the instance, and with the situation at the Sanctuary afterwards, she had almost forgotten about the rankings and the channel.

After a month, Bai Yi once again opened the channel, and seeing the familiar chats and trades of the Lords, she felt as though the familiar sensation had returned.

After browsing through the chat history for a while, Bai Yi was somewhat surprised by the changes among the Lords over the past days.

It seems that in the last challenge, many of the points rewards were food, and many Lords realized the importance of food during the cold disaster and deliberately chose blueprints for various food-related buildings as rewards.

After entering the cold disaster for over a week, food surprisingly hadn’t run out to an extent where survival was impossible; at least they could maintain sufficient Combat Power in a state of ’fighting to sustain the war.’

Moreover, it seems that after the cold disaster, the frequency of chat in the channel also dropped, and even those Lords who consistently were at the top of the rankings seldom made any comments.

The most active recently was a Lord called Iron Blood.

She faintly remembered that this Lord was the leader in the Personal Combat Power rankings.

After several normally chatty Lords quieted down, he became more active and accumulated a considerable amount of prestige.

As for her own messages, after being silent for ten days, she was scarcely mentioned, only occasionally appearing in conversations that contrasted her with Iron Blood or in reminiscences of her once abundant food distribution.

What’s more, Fan Mao didn’t show up in these two challenges’ leaderboards, and doubts even began to arise whether Fan Mao had declined.

There were even logical speculations made.

They inferred from Bai Yi’s past words and actions that Fan Mao was a Plant Series Lord, but had fallen from grace due to the sudden cold disaster.

However, after opening the leaderboard, Bai Yi understood many reasons behind the decreased activity in the channel.

Based on the population statistics above, the current number of Lords had fallen to less than half of what it was when she first arrived here, having dropped below five hundred to only 447 remaining.

Okay, it seems it’s not that food is not lacking, but rather due to survivor bias, those who survived are the ones holding onto some food, and those without food can no longer speak.

First, it was the cold disaster that lasted a week, filtering out most of the weaker Lords. This was followed by powerful Mutant Creatures that harassed the territories.

Presumably, most of the Lords who settled in the primitive forests outside the city ruins have already disappeared completely in this activity...

Their initial lack of resources and the dangerous environment already made development difficult, and the location of their territories made them even more vulnerable to attacks by Mutant Creatures.

Thinking of this, Bai Yi felt that the Lords who had survived were indeed lucky.

The rewards from the last leaderboard settlement had been claimed, with no change in ranking, still holding first in territory rankings, second in Comprehensive Combat Power, and fourth in Personal Combat Power.

The former requires no doubt, while Comprehensive Combat Power ranking did not include the Combat Power Bai Yi displayed in the instance.

Although Personal Combat Power would forcibly read the current Combat Power of Bai Yi, her Transcendent profession was not recognized by the game system, and that’s why it remained unchanged.

Regarding the rewards, after deliberation among the four Zhan Yi left to guard the territory, some were used and became part of the buildings in the territory and behind the mountain.

The rest was stockpiled in the panel and not used.

Looking at the specific rankings, Bai Yi’s territory is still rightfully in first place, firmly securing the position with a third-tier Gold above the second-ranked Corpse King.

But the Corpse King is no longer second-tier, having been promoted to third-tier along with a few other Anonymous Lords, showing a momentum of close pursuit.

Indeed, what surprised Bai Yi was that in just over a week, the leaderboard saw a surge in Anonymous Lords, including familiar faces such as Jun Lin and Landon, all leaving just a name on various leaderboards.

The rest of the boards had been made anonymous.

Bai Yi speculated that those who left their names on the leaderboards did so to declare their ongoing strength, while anonymity could better disguise one’s true power.

However, considering she was about to be promoted to the next tier, and that it was unlikely anyone could catch up with her anyway, she stopped paying it much heed.

On the other side of the Comprehensive Combat Power board, with the return of the Insect Swarm and three fifth-tier Superpower Users who were Parasites, she finally surpassed the Corpse King and ascended to the number one spot with a fourth-tier Green.

However, Bai Yi found it odd that those Lords who had gone silent seemed to not only have not increased their Combat Power since before she entered the instance, but it had even decreased slightly.

Yet, since this decline was consistent across several people, the rankings remained unchanged.

Bai Yi couldn’t help but suspect that they, like her, may have entered an instance.

The temporary drop in Combat Power could be due to taking too many high-level combat forces away.

The more she thought about it, the more plausible it seemed to her, and she decided to private message and try later, continuing to read on.

Having ascended to the first place in two leaderboards, only the Personal Combat Power was left. Although Bai Yi was already close to tier five with a Transcendent profession and a little tree branch at her side, it was still the same problem—

The Transcendent profession was not recognized by the game’s system, only attributing a few enhanced attributes into account despite her power.

Added with the Swarm Network’s buff, she barely squeezed into second place as a fourth-tier White Luo, following behind Jun Lin’s fourth-tier Blue.

But Bai Yi was not in a hurry.

This slight gap in Combat Power, whether through the attribute boosts gained from her Transcendent profession’s promotion or by releasing the Sealing of the Insect Swarm and relying on the Swarm Consciousness to forcefully stack, could be easily bridged.

If there was no other way to surpass this ranking before the tally, Bai Yi was prepared to use this method.

She was determined to take that number one spot!

Moreover, her Transcendent profession’s power not translating into Combat Power was actually a blessing in disguise.

As the surviving Lords grew fewer, Bai Yi realized that the level of familiarity among the Lords was increasing, especially among the top echelon within that small circle, and it was only a matter of time before her true strength was exposed.

In addition, after the recent moves against the Sanctuary, even if she were to remain hidden, it wouldn’t be long before news got out.

It was time for her to follow the lead of the other Lords and put her name on the leaderboard.

Thinking about how she appeared in the eyes of the other channel Lords, she had two identities: one as the "Fan Mao", a Lord of the Plant Series, and the other as "Bai Yi", who had secured multiple first kills.

The latter, of course, could not be used for ranking; it would only appear later in first-kill records, like last night.

Last night, in order to lay the foundation for victory, she killed a fifth-tier Superpower User in the initial assault, resulting in a first-kill announcement.

Yet, as "Bai Yi" she publicized the announcement, receiving no shock from any powerful Lords outside of Iron Blood.

That was why Bai Yi suspected that Jun Lin and the other leaderboard Lords had all entered an instance.

As for "Fan Mao", she had always maintained a modest profile in the channel and planned to continue establishing the identity of a Plant Series Lord.

Hence, she certainly couldn’t rise on the Comprehensive Combat Power leaderboard; it was fine to rush for the Personal Combat Power leaderboard, but to maintain a stable ranking would have to wait until the spread of the Fungus Blanket could support enough Insect Swarms to maintain the necessary bonuses.

She could only choose to list as the top Lord of the territory leaderboard, which fit the impression of "Fan Mao" as a specialist in plants focusing solely on territorial development.

As for the timing of the ranking, Bai Yi planned to wait until the end of this Cycle Challenge, timing it with the leaderboard tally.

At that time, with everyone’s attention on the leaderboard and her simultaneous push on the challenge of the week, it would be a combined promotional effort.

The only problem was, she needed to find a way to explain how a Lord specializing in territories suddenly made a last-minute push on the kill leaderboard.

After all, the persona she had created for "Fan Mao" was a Lord specialized in territories, stronger in defense and less in attack.

If she couldn’t attack proactively, she would have to find a way through defense.

After much thought, Bai Yi suddenly had an idea.

...

Magic Garden (Tier 3/Gold): A special Magic building publicly sold by Landon I, which consumes Magic Power to cultivate plants, effective on Magic Plants, but is widely used to grow crops. Despite its enormous consumption and steep price, it’s still better than starvation...