Chapter 127 – Outflank
Cheng Yang scanned the surrounding area,, the herd of Bone Devouring Ants doesn’t seemed to be migrating in a certain direction, rather they were nesting in place. At this moment, their nest has already begun to take shape.
Seeing this scene caused Cheng Yang’s frown to tighten. For enchanted beasts without a nest, they must rely on the daily respawns if they want to increase the quantity of their racial group. Once the number of enchanted beasts in the group increases to a certain extent, the respawn rate would become extremely low.
However, once the nest has been built, the speed at which the enchanted beast’s population expands wasn’t much related to the respawn rate, and to a greater extent by reproduction rate of the type of enchanted beast. It was clear that the reproduction rate of the Bone Devouring Ants were absolutely terrifying.
Cheng Yang doesn’t wish to face the attack of millions of Bone Devouring Ants in his own territory one day. At that time, the so-called walls under the attack of the Bone Devouring Ants was like free-range chicken roof tiles stopping dogs. Once touched, its breaks. Luo Feng Village has no resistance against this kind of offensive force.
Was there such a herd of enchanted beasts around Luo Feng Village in his last life? Cheng Yang doesn’t seemed to recall. However, one thing was certain, if there was such a nest of Bone Devouring Ants in the vicinity of Luo Feng Village, it was absolutely impossible for it to stay safe and sound for a year into the apocalypse.
Was it due to his presence that made god paid special care to Luo Feng Village? If that was the case, it was definitely not good news.
Even though Cheng Yang seemed very strong among humans, but in god’s eyes he was just a slightly stronger ant.
It was certain that this colony of Bone Devouring Ants must be wiped out. In addition, it must be done as soon as possible.
Cheng Yang roughly estimated the number of Bone Devouring Ants in this colony to be well over 10,000, with the quantity of first medium-order monsters to also be over 2,000. If they were allowed to continue reproducing, Luo Feng Village might seriously be in danger of falling.
Cheng Yang became utterly agitated. If he choose to fight, he wouldn’t win. However, he also couldn’t afford to sit around and do nothing. What should he do?
Suddenly, Cheng Yang thought of a solution to his dilemma. Apparently, it was time to resort to the old method. A moment ago, he seemed to had fallen into a vicious cycle of muddleness. It was true that these Bone Devouring Ants were very formidable, but no one was forcing him to fight head-on with these monsters. With the health of these Bone Devouring Ants, each round of his attack could kills nearly 100 Bone Devouring Ants. Even if he couldn’t defeat them, retreating was a cinch.
As long as these Bone Devouring Ants didn’t surpass his speed, the risk to his life was extremely low.
But in order to nip the danger in the bud, Cheng Yang still had to take preventive measures. First of all, the potions must be adequately prepared. Before this, Cheng Yang was using medium bottles of health potion to restore his health. However, after the Alchemy Room in Luo Feng Village was upgraded to level 2, it has begun to sell large bottles of health potion behind its stall.
This kind of potion could instantly restore 60 points of health, and then continue restoring 16 points of health every second for ten seconds. If you combined this with Cheng Yang’s Natural Medicine talent, as long as he wasn’t killed in a single attack, this potion would be able to save his life.
In fact, Cheng Yang could now refine medium bottle of health potion. Moreover, a medium bottle of health potion personally refined by him has the exact same pharmaceutical properties as an ordinary large bottle of health potion. But since he has signed an agreement to sell his personally refined potions to Zhao Yi, the boss of the Alchemy Room in the main city in order to receive 1,000 points of power value each day, he didn’t had any stock remaining. Anyways, the effect of a purchased medium bottle of potion had the same effect as a large bottle of potion on him. As for the special instance Zhao Yi spoke of last time, Cheng Yang didn’t care about it too much. After all, these potions was refined by him. When the moment comes, he could always refines some more and save them.
Cheng Yang had a far-sighted mindset. He only sold the small bottles of potion to Zhao Yi. As for the medium bottles of potion, he wouldn’t even refine them. Before his pharmaceutical skill reached level 4, small bottles of potion was more than enough to rapidly increase the proficiency.
When Cheng Yang returned to Luo Feng Village, the first thing he did was spent 2,000 points of power value to directly purchase 100 bottles of health potion. He had no choice but to admit that the recovery effect of this large bottle of health potion was indeed high, but it also costs a lot of power value.
While buying the potion, Cheng Yang also borrowed a bronze-grade heavy sword from one of Old Niu’s subordinate before leaving the village again. He went straight south.
The heavy sword that Cheng Yang borrowed actually didn’t increase his physical attack. After all, only warriors could used sword-type weapons. Although this was not to say that other professions couldn’t hold swords, it was merely that the sword in their hands couldn’t exert its attack power. It was like handing a magic wand to a warrior. They could equally used mana to hit people, but to play the magic damage of the wand, it had to be a magician.
Fortunately, Cheng Yang didn’t picked this heavy sword for its attack power, but for its shape features and high durability. With this sword, he could cut down thorns a lot fast.
It only took him a short time to reach his original location. This time, Cheng Yang no longer had any hesitation in his eyes. He waved the heavy sword in the air, as he cuts down the thorns and rattens in his path.
Cheng Yang’s movement wasn’t that big. Although the Bone Devouring Ants had no hearing organ, its perception of touch was unmatched. For a moment, ants swarmed towards Cheng Yang’s side like a black tidal wave.
“Time to draw back!” Cheng Yang muttered. Instantly, he put away the sword. At the same time, the Mithril Wand appeared in his hand, followed by by ice thorns descending from the sky, sweeping an area that the Bone Devouring Ants covered.
“Boom boom boom…” Following the impact of the ice thorns, nearly 100 Bone Devouring Ants’ corpse could be seen laying on the floor. Even though some of these ants were in the first medium-order, they were still spiked under Cheng Yang’s skill. In exchange for the Bone Devouring Ant’s strong talent, their attack power and health were weaken, so it wasn’t surprising for them to be spiked on the spot.
After the attack, Cheng Yang didn’t dare to stay and immediately retreated. In this battle, apart from aoe skills, using defense and control skills were useless to the situation. Therefore, other than using Ice Thorn, the rest of the time was spent withdrawing.
The Bone Devouring Ants didn’t withdraw because of the death of some of their companions, instead they rushed over even more frantically.
If at this moment the monsters was facing against someone with a speed that was only a little different from them, perhaps it wouldn’t take long for not even the bones to remain. Bone Devouring Ant, listening to the name sends chills down people’s spine.
However, in the end Cheng Yang had the strength at the peak of the apprentice level. Moreover, it belongs to the remote profession. This lets him occupied a big advantage.
Two seconds later, Cheng Yang’s Ice Thorn came off of cooldown. Another Ice Thorn skill dropped down towards the most densely populated areas of ants. Suddenly, Cheng Yang’s killing quota increased by dozens of first medium-order enchanted beasts.
Cheng Yang’s retreating speed was about 14-15 meters per second, which was almost the same as that of the first medium-order leaders in the colony. As time passed on, the weaker Bone Devouring Ants would fall behind, while the monsters in front were without exception all in the first medium-order.
After Cheng Yang released another two rounds of attack, his task assignment has already reached 40% completion. This efficiency was enough to amaze anyone.
At this point, Cheng Yang noticed the Bone Devouring Ants slowing down, and began to maintain the same speed as those weaker Bone Devouring Ants behind them.
“These monsters are pretty smart, knowing that the shot will hits the bird that pokes its head out.” Cheng Yang lifted the corner of his mouth, “But do you think this will change your fate? Hehe, it just delay the time of your death.”
Cheng Yang ignored them, and continue the same attack rhythm as before.
After a minute, Cheng Yang receded approximately a kilometer and was out of the unclaimed area. But at this time, he noticed something was wrong. The number of Bone Devouring Ants that chased was actually reduced by a lot. Even though the number of ants he killed in this minute was close to 2,000, the quantity in front of him was only less than 5,000.
For a moment, Cheng Yang didn’t had the slightest clue of what was going on. Adding to the sudden increase in the attack rhythm of the Bone Devouring Ants, Cheng Yang had to put his full concentration on coping with the matter at hand, for fear of being surrounding by the other side.
After another round of ice thorns, dozens of Bone Devouring Ants died. As the battle progresses, the density of the Bone Devouring Ants became less packed, making Cheng Yang’s killing efficiency much lower than what he wanted it to be.
At this time, Cheng Yang ran out of mana….
Cheng Yang took out a medium bottle of mana potion from his storage ring and placed in on his lips. The content inside the potion flowed down his throat, and the depleted mana value slowly went back to full value.
Suddenly, Cheng Yang heard a wolf’s howl on his left side. It was tragic voice, many times worse than being killed. Before Cheng Yang could react, on his right came the roar of a Green Anorak, followed by silence.
An ominous premonition arised from Cheng Yang’s heart. What the hell was happening around here?
At this time, the pursuing Bone Devouring Ants in front of him suddenly accelerated their speed towards Cheng Yang.
“Not good!” Cheng Yang thought of something. He seemed to realize what was happening, but he felt the notion of the idea inconceivable.
At this time, how could Cheng Yang still continue to kite. He turned around and madly dash away from the colony. He could only hoped his speed was a bit faster, so as to not get trapped in the Bone Devouring Ants’ siege.
In two seconds, Cheng Yang has dashed for nearly 200 meters. This was already his max speed. The colony of ants behind him was duped about 100 meters from his location.
At this time, rustling noises were heard from both sides in front of him. An unexpectedly familiar sound floated to Cheng Yang’s ear. It sounded like rain colliding with leaves. The ones making these noises were the Bone Devouring Ants, as they collided with the leaves that were on the ground.
Moreover, judging from the sound, these ants weren’t that far from him.
He clenched his teeth violently before becoming hopelessly depressed a moment later. He didn’t think these Bone Devouring Ants would possessed such wisdom. They even designed a trap to kill him. Using this colony of Bone Devouring Ants to attract his attention, while secretly separating two different division to flank him from both sides.
This was intelligence practically equal to human! Even monsters with higher intelligence were unlikely to reach this level, let alone the weakest of monsters like the Bone Devouring Ants.
Cheng Yang had no time to consider why these Bone Devouring Ants were so intelligent. The only thing going in his mind right now was how to escape from the three sided converging attack that the Bone Devouring Ants conjured.