Chapter 2630 – Tier 4 Divine Will

While the ancient secret land might be known as a secret land, it was several times larger than a large-scale map in the outside world, essentially a miniature world.

Even though Shi Feng and the others were Tier 3 players, since they were prohibited from using Mounts, they ended up running for more than half a day to reach a majestic city in the middle of a canyon.

The city in question had several layers of magic barriers as defense. Through the translucent barriers, one could see multiple Magic Towers and buildings several hundred meters tall. There were even floating buildings that could not be found in any of the kingdoms and empires on the main continent. This city was far more developed than even the capitals of kingdoms and empires.

Shi Feng was shocked when he laid eyes on this majestic ancient city for the first time. Even while standing several thousand yards away from the city, he could already feel a frightening pressure constantly bearing down on his body, making his body indescribably heavy. If Tier 2 players were subjected to this pressure, they wouldn’t be able to approach the city at all.

“Be careful of those statues erected behind the city walls. Although there are magic arrays suppressing the power of those statues, if you look at them for too long, you’ll fall into a Mentally Weakened state,” Crimson Star warned the curious crowd behind her. “If that happens, you’ll need four or five days to recover. Let alone challenging the trial, you might not even have enough time to make it out of the secret land.”

Those statues will cause players to fall into a Mentally Weakened state?

Upon hearing Crimson Star’s words, Shi Feng could not help taking a closer look at the stone statues enveloped by magic arrays. As soon as he did so, he felt a frightening spiritual pressure invading his mind. At the same time, the figure of an ancient being appeared briefly before his mind’s eye.

Shi Feng’s heart palpitated from this mental pressure. Fortunately, his mind was able to resist it, if just barely.

Tier 4 Divine Will? Shi Feng was somewhat surprised at the mental pressure the statues were exuding. No wonder Violet Sword was able to produce so many Tier 4 experts back then.

At this point, Ancient Gods had long since withdrawn from the main continent of God’s Domain. Now, it was incredibly difficult to meet even Demigods there. However, before disappearing, many Ancient Gods had left behind Legacies in dangerous locations. Meanwhile, these Legacy locations generally possessed Divine Will.

On the surface, the Divine Wills in these Legacy locations functioned to inflict powerful mental pressure on trespassers and deter casual approach or observation of the Legacy locations.

However, Divine Will also had a very useful function for players: the tempering of Concentration!

In God’s Domain, players’ Stamina and Concentration were considered Hidden Attributes and were incredibly difficult to raise. This was especially true for the Concentration Attribute. Aside from tier promotions, there were no clear methods that players could use to raise their Concentration.

Originally, Concentration was an Attribute few players paid attention to, as they would generally run out of Stamina before they would Concentration. However, as more and more players started learning combat techniques, everyone finally understood the importance of Concentration.

With stronger Concentration, not only could players afford to execute many more combat techniques, but they could also reduce the Stamina and Concentration consumption of combat techniques. Most importantly, powerful combat techniques required sufficiently high Concentration.

Unfortunately, there weren’t many known methods that players could use to reliably increase their Concentration. Generally, players could only rely on raising their tiers or improving their brain activity to do so.

However, as more and more experts came into contact with ancient locations and Divine Will, they had discovered an astonishing matter—Divine Will could actually be used to raise the maximum limit of players’ Concentration. Although the improvements were small, players would eventually receive an impressive boost to their Concentration over time.

However, Divine Will wasn’t something that easily found. Moreover, Divine Will couldn’t improve a player’s Concentration in perpetuity. The improvements players could receive from the Divine Will would differ depending on its strength. If players already possessed very powerful Concentration, certain Divine Wills might not even be effective on them.

Meanwhile, the statues erected within the ancient city contained Divine Will capable of tempering players’ Concentration up to the Tier 4 standard; hence, Shi Feng had referred to it as Tier 4 Divine Will.

If a Tier 3 player could elevate their Concentration to the Tier 4 standard, it would be of tremendous help when challenging the Tier 4 Promotion Quest. With stronger Concentration, players could better control their body, Strength, and Mana. They would be able to exhibit much greater potential than they used to.

However, due to the magic arrays enveloping those statues, the Divine Will the statues emitted was heavily suppressed. While this weakened Divine Will might be effective on ordinary Tier 3 players, it would be almost no help to Tier 3 peak experts. Tier 3 peak experts that tried to temper themselves using this Divine Will would only exhaust their Concentration to no avail.

“Guild Leader Black Flame, ahead of us is the entrance to the trial grounds,” Crimson Star said as she pointed at a gigantic gate nearby. “As we are challenging the Hero Trial, we have only one opportunity. If we team-wipe inside, we won’t be able to enter the trial grounds anymore. However, so long as we have even one person alive, even if everyone else on the team dies, we can still enter the trial grounds after getting automatically resurrected outside. Only, the resurrection period within the ancient secret land is very long—one full day—so everyone needs to be careful while inside.”

It might be fine if they were challenging the Normal Trial, but they had only one opportunity to challenge the Hero Trial. If the players on their team kept dying, they definitely wouldn’t be able to clear the Hero Trial before the effects of their alchemy arrays ran out. Hence, when challenging the Hero Trial, controlling the casualty rate was crucial.

This was also the reason why she wanted to avoid the Region Chiefs. Had their team gotten annihilated by the two Region Chiefs back then, they would’ve had to wait one full day before they could head to the trial grounds.

“I understand,” Shi Feng said, nodding.

Since Shi Feng already understood her intentions, Crimson Star did not say anything more. After all, experts of Shi Feng’s caliber generally needed only small reminders to know what they should do.

Following which, Crimson Star, Wildfighter, and several other Violet Sword members approached the 10-meter-tall Teleportation Gate. Each of them then took out an ink-black crystal from their bags and started chanting an incantation.

As soon as these dozen or so players started chanting, the divine runes engraved on the Teleportation Gate lit up and drew the ambient Mana toward the Teleportation Gate.

While Crimson Star and the others were activating the Hero Trial, Sandstorm and Mythology’s other members were quietly observing the situation from behind a pile of shattered rocks 500 yards away.

“The Hero Trial!” the female Guardian Knight standing beside Sandstorm exclaimed in surprise when she identified the divine runes lighting up on the Teleportation Gate. “Violet Sword actually plans to challenge the Hero Trial now?! Are they insane?!”

She had experienced the ancient city’s trials herself. While she didn’t know what the Hero Trial was like, she knew that even the Elite Trial was not something current players could hope to conquer. If not for their previous raid team having plenty of Advanced Battle Arrays, they wouldn’t have made it to the Trial Boss’s feet.

As for the more difficult Hero Trial, that was something even the current Mythology didn’t dare dream of challenging.

“The Hero Trial?” When Sandstorm saw Crimson Star’s group activating the Hero Trial, a wide smile bloomed on his face. “Good! Wonderful! Although I don’t know what gave Violet Sword’s and Zero Wing’s people the courage to challenge the Hero Trial, this is our chance! Since Crimson Star and Wildfighter are personally activating the Hero Trial, they can’t stop midway without wasting their one chance! This is the perfect time for us to take action!”

“But dealing with Black Flame won’t be easy,” the female Guardian Knight argued worriedly as she eyed Shi Feng, who was standing beside the Teleportation Gate. “With him around, it’ll be difficult for us to gain any advantage.”

“Relax. The vice commander prepared a trump card for our operation this time,” Sandstorm said, grinning. He then took out several gleaming gemstones from his bag. “These are Tier 3 Magic Devouring Gemstones, which the vice commander obtained from the Demon God’s Shrine. If we equip them on Level 100 Dark-Gold Weapons or above, we can sacrifice the weapon and the gemstone to gain Tier 4 power for a short period. This item isn’t subject to any restrictions inside the ancient secret land. The vice commander gave me five of these as a precaution. So long as we five team leaders use this gemstone, we’ll have five Tier 4 combatants on our side. Including the HP and Defense we’ll gain from the Advanced Battle Array, we should be able to pin down Black Flame with just three people. The remaining two team leaders will lead the rest to slaughter Violet Sword’s and Zero Wing’s members! All their efforts will go down the drain!”

“If you had such treasures on you, why didn’t you take them out earlier?” the female Guardian Knight grumbled as she rolled her eyes at Sandstorm.

Previously, the task their vice commander gave them was for them to spoil Violet Sword’s plan, as well as kill Shi Feng if possible. With the Magic Devouring Gemstones, while they might not be capable of killing Shi Feng, spoiling Violet Sword’s plan would be child’s play.

After all, players that died in the ancient secret land needed to wait one full day to get resurrected. If they could kill a significant number of Violet Sword’s and Zero Wing’s members, the two Guilds would waste one day of the alchemy array’s operational time, which would, in turn, drastically reduce the two Guilds’ odds of clearing the Hero Trial. And if they could interrupt the activation of the Teleportation Gate, they would thoroughly shatter Violet Sword’s plan of raiding the Hero Trial.

“Alright, one for each of you,” Sandstorm said as he distributed the Magic Devouring Gemstones to the four other team leaders on the team. He then looked toward Shi Feng and said, “It’s time we let Black Flame know how foolish it is to offend Mythology!”