149: Chapter 149 Descending to a Higher-Level Dimension

In the pitch-black fog, the Floating City jolted violently.

Xu Qin gripped tight to steady himself and looked at the shield durability on the command panel.

[Shield Durability: 996,000 / 1,000,000]

[994,000...]

[992,000...]

It was decreasing by 2,000 per second, enough to last for eight minutes at most.

Xu Qin frowned and looked at the mini-map.

There were no coordinate points.

Only the Floating City's own green dot hovered lonely in the very center.

"Why does something feel off?" Xu Qin muttered to himself.

The jolting continued for three minutes.

Boom!

The jolting stopped abruptly.

The black fog dissipated, and the area outside the shield instantly became clear.

Xu Qin looked up outside the Watchtower, his pupils constricting slightly.

It was a blood-red sky, covered in dense, dark purple patterns.

And the ground—no, to be precise, what was below—consisted of massive rocks floating in the void.

Some of these giant rocks were rotating slowly, while others were colliding with each other.

Most were tilted, making it impossible to land on them.

Only a few were large enough to barely maintain a level surface.

"...Good grief, where on earth have I been sent?"

Xu Qin opened the mini-map and discovered that the Floating City's detection range was extremely small.

Previously, in the original plane, the radiation range was at least five kilometers.

Now?

The map could only display a range of less than two kilometers around the Floating City.

Beyond that, everything was shrouded in fog of war.

"Could it be mana interference?" Xu Qin rubbed his chin, frowning in thought.

He turned to look behind the Floating City and immediately saw the teleportation rift built onto a massive boulder.

This boulder was drifting in mid-air, with the potential to collide with other floating objects at any moment.

"Strange."

Xu Qin looked at that boulder, his eyes full of confusion.

"Why is there no monster nest near this portal?"

That's right, he remembered something.

Previously, when rebuilding the portal ruins, those Void Rift Demons could crawl out of the portal endlessly.

If the portal was built on such a broken rock, where did the Void Rift Demons come from?

They couldn't just fly in the void, could they?

Wait, some Void Rift Demons did fly.

But what about the majority of the ground-based ones?

Xu Qin recalled the feeling of traveling through.

Three minutes of darkness, a complete loss of orientation.

"Could it be... that there is more than one portal? Is it a random teleportation?" Xu Qin pondered.

Otherwise, this phenomenon could not be explained.

Of course, there was another possibility.

That was that the exit corresponding to each portal was different.

Just like a bus stop; you get on at the previous stop and get off at this one, and those getting on at this stop can only go to the next one.

"If that's the case, then things get interesting." Xu Qin nodded slowly.

Just then, a notification popped up in the top right corner of the command panel.

[Warning! High-concentration mana environment detected!]

[Lord and entire army are suffering from a negative effect: 'Mana Erosion']

[Mana Erosion: -1% HP per hour]

[Note: Undead units are immune to this effect.]

After reading the prompt, Xu Qin hurriedly checked his own attribute panel.

His HP hadn't changed.

He looked outside the shield and saw the orange film of light covering the platform, isolating the dark red air outside.

It was the Floating City's shield that was blocking this negative effect.

Xu Qin turned and returned to the Lords Hall.

It seemed that for what was to come, the Undead Army would still have to be the main force, as they could completely ignore the damage.

But he, as the Lord, could not; if he stepped outside the shield, he would be corroded by the mana.

"It's a good thing I didn't let Tie Ge come along; this plane is very unfriendly to living races." Xu Qin rubbed his chin.

"No wonder it's called a high-tier plane; not just anyone can come here."

If Tie Ge had come along, those orc soldiers of his would lose 1% HP per hour... without buffs for continuous healing, they wouldn't be able to handle it at all.

Just thinking about it was suffocating.

"Forget it, let's not think about that for now."

Xu Qin opened the command panel and pulled up the Vulture formation.

"All Vultures, deploy. Spread out and scout."

The order was given.

The bone gates on the side of the Combat Readiness Platform opened, and over two thousand Skeleton Vultures filed out, flapping their bone wings as they dove into the blood-red void.

Xu Qin watched the mini-map.

Sure enough, as the Vultures spread out, the scouting range slowly expanded.

Five seconds later, the first batch of red dots appeared.

Immediately after, more and more red dots appeared on the mini-map.

"So many?" Xu Qin widened his eyes.

He zoomed in on the map and discovered that there were red dots near almost every floating boulder.

Some were clustered together, while others were scattered.

Just as he was planning the route, some of the red dots on the mini-map began moving toward the Vultures.

Within a few seconds, they were entangled with the green dots of the Skeleton Vultures.

Immediately following this, the command panel popped up a series of notifications.

[Skeleton Vulture is under attack!]

...

[Skeleton Vulture has been killed!]

[Skeleton Vulture is under attack!]

[Skeleton Vulture has been killed!]

Within a second, over a dozen red notification messages popped up, flooding the screen.

Xu Qin hurriedly pulled up the battlefield view.

In the void, a swarm of fist-sized, dark purple flying creatures was besieging the Vultures.

They flew extremely fast and shattered the bone frames upon colliding with the Skeleton Vultures.

[Rift Locust]

[Level: 8]

[Attack Power: 280 (Magic - Shadow)]

[Defense: 120]

[HP: 1,800 / 1,800]

Upon seeing the stats, Xu Qin gasped.

Is this the combat power of a high-tier world?

For such a small creature, its attack power was significantly higher than the ordinary units in his original plane.

No wonder those other lords had such a hard time fighting Void Rift Demons.

But then...

Boom!

The first Skeleton Vulture to be killed exploded on the spot.

[Wraith Fury]!

The Skeleton Vulture's HP had been strengthened by the Ore Spirit; it wasn't just the original amount.

Within the explosion range, three Rift Locusts were blown to pieces.

Boom! Boom!

A chain reaction.

The killed Vultures exploded one after another, blowing apart the pursuing swarm of locusts in swaths.

However, the losses continued to mount.

[Skeleton Vulture has been killed!]

[Skeleton Vulture has been killed!]

...

In less than a minute, the Vulture legion had lost over fifty.

Xu Qin opened the command panel.

"All units retreat! The outer Vultures intercept the pursuing enemies, everyone else return!"

The order was given.

The Vulture army began to turn back.

Two hundred Vultures on the perimeter actively engaged the pursuing swarm, and the two sides tangled in the void.

Thanks to the reinforcement from the Ore Spirit, the Skeleton Vulture's stats were not much worse than these Rift Locusts.

One Vulture might not be able to beat one Rift Locust in a one-on-one fight.

But the Vulture's advantage was that it didn't fear death.

They would grab the opponent and never let go, and even if they were torn to shreds, they would trigger Wraith Fury.

Boom!

Another wave of explosions.

The void was filled with dark purple bursts of light.

"The losses are a bit heavy."

Xu Qin looked at the loss numbers with a pained expression.

Skeleton Vultures weren't like ordinary units that could be easily resurrected.

These things required specific vulture skeletons; one dead meant one less.

But he had no choice now; he could only sacrifice a batch.

Seeing this, Xu Qin steered the Floating City and flew toward the nearest floating landmass marked on the map.