98: Chapter 97 The Ferocious Arrogance of the Kicked Out
Gaul Faction.
Emily leaned against the mast, her Rose Thorn resting across her knees. The blood on the blade had congealed into dark red ice crystals. Her right hand—the one that held the sword—was an unnatural grayish-white from fingertips to wrist, as if drained of all vitality by something.
The thirty-meter giant beast—labeled by the magic sea compass as a "Nightmare Jellyfish"—was completely transparent and lacked physical attack capabilities, but its mental toxins could plunge a person's brain into an eternal nightmare within seconds. She had killed it while in a hallucination.
Twelve hallucinations, twelve sword strikes.
Each strike pierced her most cherished memories. Her mother, the apartment in Paris, the roses on the windowsill.
Looking at her hand now, she would occasionally drift into a daze.
Of the ten teammates she had painstakingly gathered over the past ten days or so, only three had survived with severe injuries. One of them was still unconscious, muttering their daughter's name.
In the Symphony Realm, snippets of conversation from Yanhuang Civilization survivors drifted by.
Preparing for war.
Top 1000 Tournament.
Forming teams.
A wry smile appeared on Emily's face; this Yanhuang Civilization really didn't give other civilizations any room to breathe.
But this was also an opportunity for their Gaul Faction to make a comeback against the odds.
She used her left hand to open the team-up applications.
She began to look through them one by one, carefully.
...
Hebrew Camp.
Solomon's Houseboat was unharmed.
Demonic Beast repellent and energy camouflage coating had turned this place into a blind spot; the beast tide surged past him, and not a single sea beast spared him a second glance.
But he had witnessed the extinction of those green dots on the magic sea compass throughout the entire process.
The terrifying sea beast labeled by the magic sea compass as the "Abyssal Vortex Whale" was fifty-five meters long, covered in slick, dark cyan scales, and capable of controlling high-pressure water blades and vortex impacts.
It did not bypass Solomon's Houseboat like the other sea beasts.
After observing for a while, it pounced directly at him.
Solomon still remembered the tremor when the shield was struck by the first water jet. The entire boat felt like it was about to be overturned, and the alchemical bottles and jars in the cabin shattered all over the floor with a clatter.
But he didn't panic. While using rune arrays and protective potions to withstand round after round of impacts, he stared intently at the magic sea compass. The compass was scanning the giant beast to analyze its weak points and characteristics.
Every impact made the Houseboat feel like it would fall apart at any moment, but it only made him feel more excited.
At the very last moment before the Houseboat was about to shatter, he concocted that specific neurotoxin potion.
Then he grabbed his alchemical hand crossbow and accurately plunged the potion-tipped arrow into that ganglion.
He had achieved final victory.
At this moment, when he saw the Yanhuang Civilization people discussing team-up strategies in the Symphony Realm, he felt no fear at all; instead, he felt an indescribable excitement.
It wasn't the excitement of being certain he could defeat the Yanhuang Civilization, nor the vanity of showing off personal strength capable of crushing powerful survivors from other civilizations.
It was a surging desire for the opportunity to see that mysterious Lord of the Fate Altar with his own eyes.
At this moment, even the issue of the survival of his civilization in the hegemony battle was cast to the back of his mind.
He could already concoct various powerful alchemical weapons and potions from just those ordinary sea beasts.
What if it were that existence known as a god?
To obtain a strand of his hair, a drop of his blood, or his cells?
He opened the individual merit ranking and began to carefully screen for teammates.
...
Star-Spangled Banner Camp.
Jackson's Houseboat looked like scraps chewed up and spat out by a giant beast. The house had completely disappeared, the deck was shattered, the mast was broken, and there was blood everywhere. His bare upper body was covered in scratch marks, and a laceration on his left shoulder stretched from his collarbone to his ribs, with the flesh turned inside out.
He had no Fate Platform. He had left long ago when the first batch of foreign civilizations were kicked off the Fate Platform.
So he knew nothing about the Yanhuang Civilization's war preparations.
Until he discovered the flashing red number behind his name on the individual merit ranking.
9999+.
Jackson frowned and opened it. Team-up applications. Dense, packed applications from those Stars and Stripes tough guys who had also been kicked off the Fate Platform. Each application was accompanied by a brief message, piecing together a message that made his blood run cold—the Yanhuang Civilization was mobilizing its entire camp to form elite vanguard teams for the Faction Sequence Battle.
They had the Fate Platform, the compass, and a massive official organization.
They intended to completely crush all foreign civilizations in this battle.
Jackson stared at those messages for a long time.
Then he laughed.
He remembered that super high-tier overlord he had taken down—the "Abyssal Shield Whale," fifty meters long, with a keratinous shield shell as black as cast iron. The wings of freedom fired three hundred and ninety-seven shots at its head, shattering only a few pieces of the keratinous shield shell. What finally killed it was him exhausting all the devouring energy of his dual pistols, pushing the power of a single bullet to the limit, firing it into its oral cavity, and piercing its brain.
The price was his Silver Grade Houseboat, which had blocked the death blow for him and shattered, leaving only a broken raft and the fishing spot that still glowed with a faint blue light.
That Fate Platform, that compass, that massive organization.
He had nothing.
Jackson looked at the two menacing silver pistols in his hands that had undergone a massive transformation.
The originally streamlined silvery-white gun bodies now had ridges and bone spurs bulging from every inch of the surface, as if deep-sea skeletons had broken through the skin. The barrels were wrapped in spiral gullies, with dark red patterns deep inside pulsing like blood vessels.
The grips extended backward-facing thorns, each pointing forward, and Jackson's palm lines fit perfectly between them, as if a bloody symbiosis had been achieved between the man and the weapon.
The muzzles split into three petals, like hungry mouthparts, their edges slicing through the air.
The entire gun was a pale bone-silver color, covered with an oily film of faint blue cold light, with faintly visible scale patterns, as if the dual pistols were formed from the fangs of a giant beast.
Now it was no longer a technological weapon, but a pair of handheld Vicious Beast skulls—menacing, overbearing, and suffocatingly oppressive.
Bang! Bang!
Jackson raised his hand and fired two shots toward the distant Magic Sea surface.
Dozens of meters away, dozens of meters of water exploded upward.
The sound was deafening.
It directly kicked up a tsunami dozens of meters high.
No!
Perhaps calling them pistols at this moment was no longer appropriate; they were hand cannons.
"wings of freedom"—Gold Tier dual pistols, infinite ammunition, ballistic correction, dead-point locking, devouring upgrades.
This was the appearance of wings of freedom after devouring that Abyssal Shield Whale.
It was also his reliance for the individual Faction Sequence Battle and the Faction Sequence Battle.
At this moment, he sincerely hoped that the Fate Master Yang Hang, who was revered as a god, truly possessed the strength to match his reputation.
Otherwise...
Jackson opened his mouth wide, laughing with a menacing and twisted expression.
...
Taegeukgi Camp.
Park Jun-ho knelt on his automated fishing platform. The robotic arm was still running, drones hovered overhead, but more than half of the six automatic ballistae had been destroyed.
But his fleet had gone from over fifty people to just one person. He was covered in wounds, his eyes hollow.
That super high-tier sea beast—the "Iron-Armored Abyssal King Horseshoe Crab," an overlord-class sea beast fifty meters in length.
Its massive body was nearly ten stories tall, covered in black spikes on its dorsal shell, with twelve crimson compound eyes, and a carapace so hard that even Silver Grade weapons could only leave white marks.
The six automatic ballistae poured out thousands of bolts, only managing to create a patch of white spots on its head.
It crushed his fleet section by section as if they were toys.
Ultimately, after consuming his last dozen or so teammates, it wasn't even him who killed it—it was another, more powerful overlord that bit it in two on the seabed.
He had relied on luck to escape that area, fighting other sea beasts for a whole night before luckily surviving.
Ever since he was kicked off the Fate Platform, he had lost all channels of information regarding the Yanhuang Civilization and other civilizations.
So when he saw the 9999+ number of team-up applications on the individual merit ranking, he was stunned.
He opened it.
Countless messages, and the attached information pieced together the same fact—the Yanhuang Civilization was mobilizing its entire camp to prepare for war.
They had that damn Fate Platform, the compass, and the Trading Realm.
And they were already using it to prepare for war; the Revival Society with its so-called fleet of one hundred thousand had convened some Top 1000 Tournament, declaring that they would completely crush everyone in the Faction Sequence Battle.
Park Jun-ho clenched his fists, his nails digging into his palms.
He thought of that Iron-Armored Abyssal King Horseshoe Crab. He thought of those compatriots who were shot through by bone spikes, torn apart by walking legs, and chewed up by sickle-like mouthparts. He thought about how they had survived by luck.
Yanhuang Civilization. It was Yanhuang Civilization again. Why? Why did they get everything?
Park Jun-ho stood up abruptly, a light burning in his eyes that was almost insane.
"Even if there are only tens of millions of people," he gritted his teeth, "it's enough."
He opened the drone control interface and adjusted the scanning range to the maximum.
"Taegeukgi doesn't need a Fate Platform, doesn't need a compass, doesn't need that trash given as charity, doesn't need a massive number of people just to make up the numbers; it only needs its own elite."
He stared at the coordinates of the Iron-Armored Abyssal King Horseshoe Crab's remains on the screen, his fingers typing frantically on the virtual keyboard.
"Faction Sequence Battle, right? Yanhuang Civilization survivors, Yang Hang, Fate Master—just you wait."
"I'm going to build a machine. A machine that can grind your Fate Platform, your compass, and your Fate Master Yang Hang—all into fragments. When that time comes, I will lead the Taegeukgi Civilization to stand at the top of this Magic Sea."
"I'll let you see what a real civilization is."