Chapter 736: Both sides suffer
Translator: Translation Nation Editor: Translation Nation
Zi then added.
"Guys, don't ever forget that both Skull and Zeus are just beginners of this phase. If Skull can upgrade his ability to a higher level, he'll transform into a metalloid; substantially reducing damage dealt to himself and possibly buffing every member with a dark metal armour!"
"If Zeus's ability can be upgraded to the highest level, he'll turn into a golem himself. Perhaps, he'll be able to shoot out eight rays of gravitational rays that encompass 500 square metres. He can easily envelop opposing parties in gravity zones or abruptly remove gravity to cause opponents to float up! An incomparably master of displacement."
Reef was currently spectating silently, and finally spoke after hearing Zi's speech.
"Looking at the situation now, Skull's MT ability can only be used on his own comrades while Zeus can use his both offensively and defensively. Delving deeper, Skull's ability also requires a permanent equipment sacrifice. Seems like Zeus's ability is stronger."
Zi shook her head in response.
"Not necessarily, even though Skull sacrifices an equipment, he may not need to spend anything else. Furthermore, the better the equipment consumed, the longer the MT ability will last. Perhaps, the quality of armour he bestows onto his comrades is related with the grade of equipment consumed; sacrificing a dark-gold grade equipment in exchange for a dark-gold metal armour. Moreover, you'll realize this after crossing hands with the contestants enhanced by Skull; the metal armour he conjures actually strengthens all aspects. The greatest strengthening is survivability, followed by movement speed, attack speed and others."
"In comparison, Zeus's MT requires achievement points, utility points and potential points to activate once. The wastage of both side is nearly identical but Zeus's ability is more focused towards agility only."
"Thinking in this perspective, both abilities have the same starting point despite their immense differences. The reason you guys think Zeus is superior is due to the narrow area skewing more to his advantage. If that was a broad battlefield, Zeus's gravity influence would minimally be reduced by half."
Sheyan doubtfully surveyed the fight before abruptly inquiring.
"What, you are saying an MT's path…..is chosen by the realm when one advances to an Awakener?"
Zi hesitated slightly before softly answering.
"In most cases....yes."
"Meaning there are some rare cases that differs?" Sheyan captured the underlying meaning beneath Zi's words.
Instead, Zi kept quiet and continued sipping from her coffee mug. Evidently, she wasn't willing to delve more into this topic.
At present, subtle deviations were occurring throughout the battle scene. After Zeus's appearance, his gravity zones effectively guarded his subordinates and prevented the two metal armoured, close combat Growth-Hunters from achieving anything.
As for combatants utilizing arrows or darts, their barrages of projectiles were undoubtedly slowed by the sphere of gravity and failed to threaten.
If Skull Party had more powerful extremely longe-range combatants, they could still bomb indiscriminately into the gravity zone of Glory Party and perhaps achieve some success. Alas, Glory Party possessed the redoubtable Aziz!
After assassinating the blowdart male, Aziz had redirected his focus and unexpectedly managed to suppress three members of Skull Party; leaving 'markswoman' Tristana, 'unpredictably vanishing' Plague, and Patrice gasping for breath!
Furthermore, he still managed to manifest his existence to other fighting members of Skull Party once in a while.
Under the terrifying shadow of Aziz, how formidable could the long-range combatants of Skull Party compare with?
As he witnessed his scene, Sheyan inscribed two names on the coffee table – 'Finarsih' and 'Aziz'.
To him, only those two could be hailed as Zeus's left and right arms. In order to strike down Glory Party, both individuals must definitely be eliminated. It was hard to tell if they were fortunate or unlucky to have their names noted down by Sheyan.....
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Time swiftly trickled away.
Even though both parties were focusing fire on the MTs, the Skull Party actually occupied the manpower advantage. Thus, after seizing a wonderful opportunity, a five men combined assault succeeded in slaying another contestant of Glory Party.
However, in that same instance, two bullets from Aziz whizzed in with a phantom of colossal snow-wolves.
The first bullet rampantly chewed Plague out from her hiding void, while the other directly shot Tristana into a near-death state. Thus, members of Skull Party had no choice but to deviate their attention to aid them.
Zues quickly ordered the Metals Professor to unleash her horrifying 'Metallic Tempest' upon identifying this opportunity. With this move, he succeeded in breaking through this 'execution ground' and fled the parking area.
In this situation, the Glory Party now had ample space to escape while defending.
Meanwhile, Skull was exceedingly clear that persisting in pursuit would inevitably lead to a terrible fiasco of a war of attrition. Any party of the nightmare realm definitely wouldn't wish to land into such fighting circumstance, even if their party leader had gone crazy, the members absolutely wouldn't accord.
After several attempts of 'probing' offenses, both Zeus and Skull lost their will to continue battling.
Both leaders soon led their parties, each respectively to the north and south, before disappearing into the distant.
Meanwhile, was Sheyan squinting his eyes with a peculiar glint as he observed them leaving.
Zi glanced at him and insipidly uttered.
"Do you feel extremely dejected? Similar to an MT but unable to stand toe to toe with them. Actually, there isn't a need to undervalue yourself. As a contestant, you are already doing a pretty remarkable job, as long as you have ample time....."
Sheyan chuckled and abruptly refuted.
"Your words are wrong from the beginning. Firstly, why should I feel dejected? Even right now, I dare to confront Zeus! Perhaps I can't cope against him, but he can't do much to me either! Secondly, you seem to be forgetting who was it that masterminded this double-side defeat fiasco. No matter how indomitable one is, without a brain for resourcefulness, what can power amount to?"
Zi offered an indifferent smile but refrained from arguing with Sheyan. Clearly, she was rather thrown off by his attitude.
Nevertheless, she noticed both Reef's and Mogensha's gaze.
Gazes that shockingly displayed unwavering certainty in Sheyan's words!
Waves of tremor shook Zi's heart as she failed to repress a notion from welling up her heart.
"Could it be he meant what he said???? How...how's that possible?! A mere contestant dares to contend against the might of an Awakener MT?!"
A moment later, she realized Sheyan created a surprise in her once again. He was truly an existence that broke common sense. It was like an indescribable bewildering fog enshrouded him. Whenever she felt like she had uncovered a layer of fog to see through the real him, she would soon discover that another layer of fog was still masking him....
"Let's go.' Sheyan scanned the chaotic plaza once again before gently ordering.
"Our harvest today is sufficient. Oh yeah, for our next step, we need to gather detailed information on Hammond. Although we can now roughly deduce he is residing in Jurassic Park, we must still amass more information to make adequate preparations. Recklessly wandering into that ghost island would be akin to committing suicide!"
Hence, the contestant quartet proceeded to board the elevator down.
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Inside the high-speed elevator.
The sophisticated Zi couldn't resist her urge to question Sheyan.
"Seaman, exactly what ability are you relying on to have such confidence in contesting Skull and Zeus?"
Sheyan burst into jubilant laughter as he answered.
"I was just kidding, you actually believed me a casual joke. Zi, you must've been cheated by others before right?"
"YOU...…"
Sheyan's last phrase contained a double underlying meaning. Asking a woman if she had been cheated before....it was truly an inappropriate statement.
Zi's skin was fair and a blush had surfaced on her cheeks that would take one's breath away. Nobody could tell if it was embarrassment or frustration as she glanced away and ignored him.
Three hours later, the gang of four arrived at Stormfold City.
This was a metropolis nearest to the dinosaur disaster zone. There were three airports and the city was flourishing greatly.
Originally, it had been a medium sized city, but when the dinosaurs came ashore, the government rapidly intervened to develop the scale to leverage on the introduction of dinocrystals. Factories for processing dinosaur leather and other dinosaur related affairs quickly sprouted one after the other. Very quickly, the city expanded and became the largest metropolis in this world.
Presently, above 70% of all dinosaur research facilities were located in this city. As for the Hammond whom the gang was looking for, he was previously a vice head engineer of the Sando TeraTech Company and was in charge of the research on cultivating dinosaur hereditary.
The headquarters of the Sando TeraTech Company was a tremendous 43 storeys building.
The first twenty storeys had rather relaxed security but from then onwards the security became insanely tight with various high tech installations supporting it.
According to Zi's report, weaponry such as laser channels that could threaten a contestant's life were prevalent. Moreover, the guards were equipped with special weapons used for dealing with dinosaurs and were extremely hard to deal with.
Thus, attempting to barge in would be out of the question, and wanted to acquire any intelligence would be impossible.
After some contemplations, Sheyan asked if Zi was relatively familiar with any storyline character here. Zi then brought the gang to a Korean BBQ restaurant.
After entering the BBQ restaurant, they took the elevator to basement three.
The basement was actually a black market workshop for dinosaur meat and reeked of an exceedingly rich blood stench. Many workers were chopping dinosaur meat and sprinkling all sorts of repulsive condiments like Meat tenderizers, reused cooking oil, Sudan Red G and others….