Chapter 43: He is practically a god of war!

At the end of the other passage, Xiao Yang confirmed this unfortunate piece of news. Appearing before him was an identical fractured passage. He tossed a torch into the crevice once more, but unlike the broken passage on the other side, there appeared to be a platform situated below this one.

It was a recessed platform piled high with massive amounts of shattered stone bricks, fractures from broken walls, and all sorts of miscellaneous debris. With his sharp eyes, Xiao Yang spotted an iron treasure chest, of which only the upper half was exposed amidst this wreckage of rubble and debris.

Unfortunately, although this protruding platform lay right beneath Xiao Yang and seemed within reach, when he casually dropped a stone down, a full two to three seconds passed before it finally hit the bottom.

At a height of at least twenty meters, such a drop was enough to make one's heart skip a beat. Clearly, reaching this platform was no easy task.

Lacking suitable tools, Xiao Yang recalled having previously seen pairs of mountaineering pickaxes for sale in the Heavens Trading District. That was exactly what he needed right now, so it was best to retreat temporarily for now.

The second floor of the Skeleton Dungeon was not as complicated as the first, featuring at least three paths for the time being. Two of them had already been confirmed by Xiao Yang as impassable, leaving him with only one final choice.

That was to charge at the small plaza occupied by the skeleton army! Xiao Yang was already quite experienced at this sort of thing. Moreover, what fortunate was that he had already eliminated the biggest trouble in this skeleton army right from the start—the skeleton knight capable of commanding the undead.

Xiao Yang tossed a torch toward the small plaza. In an instant, the skeleton warriors standing stiffly in the arena turned their heads in unison. These skeleton warriors were not as easy to deal with as the prisoner zombies; they seemed to possess a hatred-linking mechanism. Xiao Yang could not pull a single individual away at all. When they charged, they charged together, and when they retreated, they retreated together.

Under such circumstances, the undead knight's death seemed rather unjust. Sometimes, having higher intelligence wasn't entirely a good thing. If that undead knight hadn't insisted on lingering outside the safe house and instead retreated blindly along with the other skeleton warriors, Xiao Yang probably wouldn't have been able to do anything to him.

Clearly, however, endowed with a certain level of intelligence, the knight had sensed something amiss when Xiao Yang suddenly vanished, and had chosen to pace back and forth right where Xiao Yang disappeared.

Such cleverness naturally came with a reward: the reward was being ambushed by Xiao Yang, who came howling and brandishing weapons of justice to greet him, beating him to death with a flurry of clubs and sending him straight up to the heavens.

Subsequently, after drawing the aggro of these skeleton warriors, Xiao Yang would simply dash into the safe house. When the skeleton warriors lost their aggro and turned back, he would suddenly rush out from the safe house and launch a fierce sneak attack on the stragglers at the very rear of the retreating horde.

After a chaotic flurry of strikes, the moment these skeleton warriors regained their senses, he would dive right back into the nearby safe house.

This could be considered exploiting a bug. However, how could a bug in a divine game be called exploiting? This was merely making good use of mechanics.

就这样, 这大群失去头领的骷髅战士像是呆瓜一样的被萧阳在这条通道中拉扯，疯狂的涌动，追逐萧阳，萧阳钻进安全屋，丢失敌人，逐渐的退去，萧阳再次出现，发起偷袭，这些骷髅战士再次疯狂的涌动，反反复复的在这条通道中来回徘徊，同时数量在不断的减少。

Every such ambush allowed Xiao Yang to kill three or four skeleton warriors. After repeating this process back and forth a few times, a thick layer of skeleton warrior remains had already piled up on the floor of the passage. Xiao Yang was left panting heavily, his hands trembling from the continuous, heavy blows.

Yet the harvest was exceptionally bountiful.

Leaving aside all sorts of large marrow bones, there were also the weapons carried by the skeletons, which were generally of green rare quality with damages hovering between six and eight. Among them, the rusted longsword dropped by the sword skeleton came with bleeding and tearing effects, while the bone spear in the hand of the spear skeleton possessed an inherent five-point penetration attribute.

In just this single day, while beating until his hands went numb, Xiao Yang had looted some five or six rusted longswords and bone spears from these skeleton warriors. He kept one of each weapon type for himself and planned to sell the rest during the next trading session in the heavens.

With a new large-scale campaign opening up, the prices rising the fastest were far from being various potions; weapons and equipment of all kinds were the ones experiencing truly skyrocketing costs. Normally, although the additional effects of these rusted longswords and bone spears were decent, they were still green rare quality equipment at best, fetching around fifty to sixty thousand spiritual coins at most.

However, during the critical juncture of preparations for a large-scale campaign, the situation was completely different. Right now, a green weapon of this caliber would fetch at least four times its usual price, soaring past two hundred thousand!

In other words, Xiao Yang's harvest for this single day alone had a total value likely exceeding one million spiritual coins.

And this was not the end. With such a vast number of skeleton warriors in the small plaza, wave after wave, Xiao Yang dared not even imagine how many spiritual coins he would earn in the next heavenly trade. He was truly cashing in on the dividends of war!

Of course, weapon yields were not the only benefits the skeleton warriors could bring to Xiao Yang.

Over the subsequent days, Xiao Yang grew truly dissatisfied with the low efficiency of constantly kiting and repeatedly ambushing monsters. He changed his method of farming: standing right at the entrance of the safe house, he fought the skeleton warriors head-on as they surged toward him.

Before this narrow passage, the enemy's numerical advantage was minimized to the greatest extent, while those skeleton archers and crossbowmen were unable to unleash their potential. Relying on his own high damage resistance and exaggerated health pool, Xiao Yang, standing tall at the threshold of the safe house, felt quite like a true god of war.

Slashing from morning till night, he projected the aura of one man holding the pass against ten thousand attackers. Of course, it wasn't quite that exaggerated; when besieged by too many skeleton warriors, his health bar would drop rapidly as well. To play it safe, whenever his health fell below half—meaning below one hundred—Xiao Yang would retreat back into the safe house to recuperate.

At times like this, that epic-level treasure, the World Membrane (Life), could truly demonstrate its value.

No matter how much health Xiao Yang lost, it consistently provided a fixed recovery of ten percent per minute. This meant it took only about five minutes for Xiao Yang to fully restore his health and step back out. Under the blessing of the World Membrane (Life), Xiao Yang's endurance in prolonged combat was terrifying to the extreme.

As long as his stamina and mental state could hold out, he could keep fighting indefinitely, and in truth, that was precisely what he did.

Over the past few days, Xiao Yang had almost fought like a madman against the skeleton warriors. He fought frantically, grinding without sleep or rest, and the results were remarkable. Within just a few days, the densely packed skeleton warriors in that small plaza had thinned out dramatically. It would not be long before Xiao Yang completely cleared the area.