Global Game: I, the Necromancer, am the scourge

Chapter 513 - 345: The Freakish Map Hack, Lord’s Mansion Upgrades to LV4_2

Mo Yi: I’ve done the same, winning two levels in a row to reach the Level 3 Lord’s Mansion.

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Zi Liyuan: You guys carry on, I’m going to scout the forest; one of our skeleton warriors just lost contact.

I had planned to wait for the fine iron ingots and copper ingots to be smelted before directly upgrading the Lord’s Mansion, but to my surprise, I lost contact with five skeleton warriors almost at the same time.

These were Level 40 skeleton warriors; to wipe out five at once indicates that the enemy is extremely powerful. Naturally, I need to check it out.

It’s a good time to go and investigate while the ore is melting.

Four skeleton warriors, carrying a palanquin, charged out in a great hurry.

The palanquin, bobbing up and down with the skeletons’ nimble strides, would have tossed me out if not for my sturdy base attributes.

Fortunately, it wasn’t long before I arrived at the scene, only to encounter a giant beetle?

A three-meter-long beetle with massive mandibles and a pair of scythe-like forelimbs.

At that moment, it was attacking a tree demon, and not far from the giant beetle, there were many shattered bones scattered on the ground.

Clearly, this creature was the culprit responsible for killing my skeleton warriors.

However, it seemed that this giant beetle was not specifically targeting my skeletons but rather looking for food.

That’s right, food!

The tree demon under attack was sliced in two by the beetle’s scythe-like arms and fell to the ground.

Then the beetle climbed onto the broken body of the tree demon, and its massive mandibles plunged straight into the trunk.

In just a few seconds, the trunk, which at first seemed full of vitality, rapidly decayed and withered, eventually crumbling into a pile of desiccated wooden scraps and dust.

And this creature was not satisfied; its back carapace split open, revealing three pairs of translucent wings. It took off in a low flight, swooping towards another tree demon a hundred meters away.

This was a rare Second Order Level 50 boss; no wonder it dispatched skeleton warriors as easily as slicing tofu, killing them in one fell swoop.

Lord Zi noticed that this giant beetle seemed to have a particular penchant for eating tree demons—the sheer focus on them was quite blatant.

Within a few minutes, the beetle had traveled over a kilometer, feeding on five tree demons before stopping.

And Zi Liyuan also noticed something alarming—the size of this beetle matched very closely with the various complex tunnels I had found just five meters below the ground surface.

This creature was very likely the monster lurking beneath the earth.

The extent of the tunnels displayed on the map was certainly not the work of one such beetle. There might well be a whole nest of them.

The thought of a nest of Second Order bosses living right next to his territory gave him the chills, especially since he had to instruct the skeleton collection squad to work right above them every day.

One or two, even a dozen pouncing on him wouldn’t scare him; he could wipe them all out.

But what if there were hundreds, maybe thousands?

Insect creatures often appeared in swarms and could easily number in the thousands.

He truly feared that once the newbie protection period ended, these creatures might surge and assault his Realm Territory—after all, my territory is currently quite defenseless.

Luckily, after consuming five tree demons, the beetle seemed satiated, then with claws and forelimbs working together, it rapidly burrowed into a large hole in the ground and disappeared with a roll.

Looking from the map plugin, as the strong life essence rapidly vanished into the underground tunnels, Zi Liyuan remained speechlessly perplexed.

The movement speed of this creature underground was much faster than I expected, almost like it could burrow through the earth, several times quicker than when it was flying.

I instructed the four skeleton warriors to quickly follow the direction in which the giant beetle disappeared with the palanquin.

Alas, even after a pursuit of five thousand meters deep into the forest, he had not tracked the lifesign of that creature.

"How could it have just disappeared? With so many underground channels, losing the target should be impossible,"

Standing beside a waterfall formed by a stream, Zi Liyuan was puzzled about how the large beetle could vanish without a trace.

The reason he stopped the pursuit was because of the other monsters and beasts that appeared near the stream.

Where there was a water source, there were sure to be many monsters and beasts, and at the moment, a large swath of lifesigns had appeared on the map.

There was even a dense Fourth Order lifesign. Lord Zi certainly did not wish to provoke such beings right now.

"Forget it, I don’t want to think about it anymore. It’s been over an hour, and on the way back, I’ll kill off a batch of Tree Demons and gather a bunch of Fine Timber to take back."

This excursion had taken him beyond the maximum range of the Skeleton Collection Squad’s activities; it was an exploration, indeed.

The terrain had been recorded on the map. Even beyond the detection range, the map could still be viewed, but it would not display monster signals.

Lord Zi felt as if he were playing Heroes of Might and Magic with the map open, but there would still be fog of war that only cleared around the nearby area.

This matching detection skill was truly powerful, giving him the ability to anticipate his enemies’ moves and make advance preparations.

You see, Zi Liyuan’s abilities were currently restricted by the Sea of Realms; he could only rely on his own attributes and the bonuses from his Cultivation Technique, hence he could only detect as far as a little over five thousand meters.

Once the Lord’s Mansion reached Level 10 and the restrictions were lifted, with equipment and item buffs added, his attributes would instantly surge several times over, and his detection range would be at least tens of thousands of meters, amply enough to oversee a minor battle on the map.

On the way back, he killed the Tree Demons that appeared on his path, and the Skeleton Collection Squad following him simply dragged the Tree Demon corpses and dropped items away.

In just over half an hour, Zi Liyuan had returned to his territory.

The smelting of Fine Iron Ingots had already reached the quantity required for the Lord’s Mansion upgrade; without any hesitation, he immediately opened the Lord interface and clicked on upgrade.

[Ding, consuming Stones (White) X4000, Timber (White) X4000, Fine Stones (Green) X400, Fine Timber (Green) X400, Iron Ingots (White) X400, Fine Iron Ingots (Green) X200, Copper Ingots (White) X200, Energy 400. The upgrade of the Lord’s Mansion has begun, countdown 30 seconds!]

The Fine Iron Ingots (Green) he had just managed to gather were instantly used up.

As the 30-second countdown reached zero, a gentle golden light once more enveloped the Lord’s Mansion.

Amidst the golden light, the stone courtyard began to expand and transform.

In just a few seconds, as the golden light faded, the small stone courtyard had turned into a building with four bedrooms and two living rooms, almost doubling in size and now featuring more furniture within.

[Ding, upgrade complete, congratulations to Zi Liyuan for becoming a Level 4 Lord, your Realm Territory has expanded!]

[Ding, congratulations to Zi Liyuan for being the first in the 99th New Realm Territory to upgrade to Level 4 Lord, reward: Spirit Crystals X100, Random Treasure Box (Green) X4, 99th New Realm Territory Reputation Points 10!]

[Ding, Lord’s Mansion upgraded to Level 4, territory expanded by 100 square meters, and the buildings Crystal Workshop, Jewelry Workshop, and Casino have been unlocked.]

[Ding, requirements for the Lord’s Mansion to upgrade to Level 5: Common materials (Stones, Timber, Iron Ingots, Copper Ingots) X5000, Fine materials (Stones, Timber, Iron Ingots, Copper Ingots) X500, Energy 500.]

With each upgrade, the territory expanded by 100 square meters; the only novelty was the new buildings that were unlocked.

This time there were three new structures, but the first two required finding the corresponding mines, and Zi Liyuan had already scouted quite a bit of the map without finding any of these mines near his territory.

However, the Casino piqued his interest, as it was an establishment all Lords could participate in. The interesting part was the wagers were placed on the various rankings that would appear in the Sea of Realms!

Once any Lord upgraded their Lord’s Mansion to Level 5, they could open the various leaderboards in the Sea of Realms. Then, Lords who had established a Casino could bet on who would be first on the various leaderboards.

For example, who would be the fastest to upgrade their Lord’s Mansion to Level 6, or who would top the power rankings...

There were many ways to play, all Lords could participate, and the winners would split the betting pool, with the Sea of Realms taking no fees.

The only pity was that Zi Liyuan had to wait for other Lords to at least upgrade their mansions to Level 4.