Chapter 96 - 78: Eradicating the Root and Bountiful Rewards
Chapter 96: Chapter 78: Eradicating the Root and Bountiful Rewards
In the center of the blazing prairie, an enormous clump of grass erupted from the ground. It was a mutated thicket, and countless long, grassy whips shot out from it, lashing at the surrounding flames. Unafraid of the fire, these whips quickly extinguished the blaze that had burned its way to the center.
From his post in the Lingxin Department, Lin Yu clearly saw the information on this clump of grass.
[Name]: Rampaging Vinegrass
[Grade]: Legendary (Gold)
[Description]: The king of the Great Prairie, it awaits the chance to evolve further and spread the prairie southward.
[Attack]: ...
"Fuck, I knew it. So that’s why the graveyards in this Great Prairie are different from everywhere else. It was this thing’s damn fault."
Lin Yu understood at once. The grass covering the graveyards wasn’t ordinary grass, but a type of wild creature that just looked like it.
When these creatures stood still, they were indistinguishable from ordinary grass. That was why the scouts hadn’t discovered the graveyards during their earlier patrols.
"Phantom, take out that giant grass monster! It’s in league with the zombies!"
Hearing Lin Yu’s telepathic command, Phantom immediately ordered the Wind Element Druids and Fire Element Druids to cast a joint spell.
A tornado, combined with an immense and powerful wall of fire, formed an incredibly destructive Fire Dragon Tornado.
Phantom also moved to cut off the grass monster, preventing it from escaping the Fire Dragon Tornado’s grasp and relentless assault.
Grass was grass, after all. No matter how high its fire resistance, it still feared being burned for a prolonged period.
After the Fire Dragon Tornado had raged for several minutes, the giant grass monster was reduced to ashes.
Then, Phantom ordered the troops to continue incinerating the entire prairie.
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Once the entire prairie had burned to cinders, Lin Yu’s water-element units cast a joint spell, summoning a torrential downpour to extinguish the flames.
Lin Yu’s scouts immediately entered the prairie, conducting a dragnet search of the entire area, vowing to clear out every hidden zombie and zombie graveyard.
The Flying Bird Demon Race and the Fierce Raptor Druids led the charge, flying into the charred grasslands.
They had been the ones responsible for scouting this Northern Great Prairie. Back then, because the grass was so dense and their initial reconnaissance had focused only on structures above ground, they had failed to discover the graveyards hidden beneath.
Later, after learning the graveyards were hidden underground, they scouted it a second time. Since they didn’t find any clearings on the prairie, they assumed there were no graveyards, and that miscalculation led to the zombies’ assault on the Northern Territory.
(The graveyards discovered elsewhere all had burial mounds on the surface where not a single blade of grass would grow, forming a distinct clearing.)
To atone for their previous failure, they were determined to find the graveyards before any other units or heroes.
This time, they all flew low to the ground, generating powerful gusts of wind as they went.
These gusts blew away all the ash in their path, revealing the ground beneath.
Although the fire had incinerated all the zombies and grass monsters, leaving no tracks to follow to the graveyards, the destruction of the grassy cover made the burial mounds on top of them clearly visible.
Before long, they discovered nearly ten graveyards in the stretch of prairie bordering the forest.
The Death Devourers completely surrounded the newly discovered graveyards and unleashed their innate skill in unison: "Devour Death."
"ROOOOAR—"
A series of roars echoed from the graveyards as Zombie Commanders (Legendary Heroes) of all different shapes and sizes charged out, leading their zombie hero subordinates.
Having developed for over half a month and absorbed the energy from the graveyards, their levels were quite high and they were brimming with power.
Yet, facing the circle of Death Devourers surrounding their graveyards, the Death Energy inside their bodies was being forcibly extracted.
They were much stronger than the first Zombie Lord that had been eliminated by the Death Devourers. At the very least, they managed to put up a fight while enduring the ability of a whole pack of them.
Their attacks, imbued with potent Death Energy, became feeble by the time they struck the allied heroes guarding the Death Devourers, failing to even break through their defenses.
Before the zombies could organize a second wave of attacks, the surrounding Death Devourers had drained their bodies of Death Energy completely.
Moreover, although it seemed like only the Zombie Commanders and a dozen-odd hero zombies had charged out to fight back when the Death Devourers mobbed the graveyards, the reality was that countless more zombies deep within each graveyard had their Death Energy drained before they could even move.
Each of these besieged and drained graveyards added tens of thousands of points to Lin Yu’s score.
Watching his score on the leaderboard climb, slowly overtaking Yun Qihao to reclaim the number one spot, Lin Yu chuckled to himself.
’He hadn’t really been interested in taking the top spot this month. After all, he’d already gotten an epic-grade treasure chest last month. Renting out the Tree-men this month had also earned him a good number of chest fragments, and between that and the graveyards he’d conquered on his own, he had already stockpiled 56 gold-tier Calamity Treasure Chests. Getting the first-place chest really didn’t matter anymore.’
’But then, on the very last day, the zombies decided to group up and offer themselves on a silver platter. If it weren’t for his territory’s high-speed transport system—the Heaven-Reaching Vine—which allowed his troops to arrive as timely reinforcements, his defensive line would have nearly been broken.’
’Thankfully, it had been a close call, but with no real harm done.’
Lin Yu felt a little bad for Yun Qihao losing the number one spot again, but that wasn’t going to stop him from continuing to clear out the graveyards.
"Find the graveyards, and be quick about it! According to the intel from last month, they’ll be able to return to the Undead Realm after today. We can’t let these damn bastards get away!"