Doomsday Lord

The level of danger Ascendants had was plain for all to see, but if you asked Cheng Yang if he wanted to run into one, he would raise his hands and feet to give you an affirmative answer.

That wasn’t to say Cheng Yang was impatient to die. Rather, Ascendants had a very valuable quality.

Ascendants could be tamed and turned into Familiars.

Sadly, finding an Ascendant was too rare and with their variable strength, finding a decent Familiar was even rarer. In his past life, a woman with a powerful Ascendant Familiar had gone from an ordinary person directly to the Lord of a territory. That story had inspired thousands around the world to try and obtain their own Familiar. It was quite common for a person who didn’t have any hopes for getting stronger to venture deep into the wilderness in hopes of taming an Ascendant. Almost none of them returned.

Although Cheng Yang hoped to encounter an Ascendant, he also knew that it was impossible right now. In his past life, an Ascendant had never been sighted in this area. The areas around the safe zones and Territory Altars were the places god cared about the most and as a result, the new rules of this world were most complete in these areas as well. Since they were a byproduct of the clash of two worlds, Ascendants tended to live at the edges of god’s world, where the rules were incomplete.

Ascendants were still a very distant existence for Cheng Yang and it was more important to get stronger here than to risk everything in the wilderness.

As Cheng Yang continued to sweep the forest, if he ran into hordes with less than 80 monsters he wouldn’t use a potion. Instead he would use the old method of hiding and replenishing his Mana. This was to maximize the benefits he gained from his potions.

Over the next hour and a half, Cheng Yang destroyed: a large monster horde of 300, two hordes of two hundred, and eight smaller ones. Once again, his Experience Fragments reached the 1600 range.

By that time, he had used all of his potions and decided to go home.

Back in Phoenix Village, he found Liu Hau training. His team was also training in their respective Meditation Halls. In order to ensure maximum training efficiency, only Professionals were allowed to use the Meditation Halls. All of the civilians had to sleep outside.

Perhaps if these people had been in Phoenix Village since the start of the apocalypse, they would have protested this treatment, but after what they experienced in Huimin they were grateful even for that. They had seen too many deaths during the rescue and cleanup operations. If you were lucky you’d have a complete skeleton, if you weren’t it might just be a few finger joints scattered on the ground.

Those scenes made the survivors of Huimin grateful just to be alive and safe. As for a place to sleep, who would still demand that? Who would dare demand that?

Cheng Yang now had to decide what to do with the thousand Experience Fragments he had. Should he use them for himself or let others train with them?

There was no doubt that if he lent out the Experience Fragments it would greatly speed up the growth of Phoenix Village’s soldiers, but Cheng Yang couldn’t trust many others yet. That many Experience Fragments wasn’t a huge amount for a territory but they were still important to Cheng Yang’s personal growth right now.

The catch was that if he didn’t lend the Experience Fragments they wouldn’t help his training speed at all. To unlock a faster training speed, he would need a lot more than two thousand Experience Fragments. After the eight-times training speed you would unlock sixteen times training speed when you gathered ten thousand Experience Fragments. Cheng Yang would still need a week to obtain that many.

If he lent his thousand Experience Fragments to his soldiers, six would be able to level up to Standard-Grade in the same amount of time.

After some thought, Cheng Yang decided to lend these Experience Fragments and the ones he would make over the coming days to others for training. After the total he had lent out reached ten thousand, he would take them back and unlock sixteen times training speed for him and the team Captains.

Right now it was 10:00 at night and Cheng Yang still had four hours before he could train again so he decided to settle an important matter. Waking Liu Hau from his state of meditation, Cheng Yang asked: “What do you think of your subordinate Chen Chao?”

“Chen Chao? She’s a capable person and reliable. She’s a Ranger and was a soldier before the apocalypse so she’s adapted quite easily. She’s contributed a lot to Phoenix Village after we saved her and her mother from Huimin. She’s also well respected by many of the people from Huimin.”

“If you approve of it, I think you should make her your Vice Captain. Your team will only get bigger and it won’t be possible to manage it on your own so it’s important to choose someone you can trust before you need them.”

Liu Hau understood what Cheng Yang was saying so pondered on his words for a minute. “In that case, I really think Chen Chao is the right choice. Her military background will help me compensate for my lack of management experience. Now that I have someone good, you better not try and steal her from me Yoko.” Liu Hau warned.

“Why would I need to do that?” Cheng Yang chuckled.

“That’s true, the entirety of Phoenix Village is in your control after all. Even so, you absolutely can’t transfer her to a different team!”

“Alright, I promise I won’t.” Cheng Yang said throwing up his hands. He knew that if he didn’t make that promise, Liu Hau wouldn’t ever let the issue rest.

Cheng Yang then asked if Liu Hau thought anyone from the other teams was worthy of a promotion. After a few minutes of discussion, Cheng Yang had a list of suitable candidates.

At the same time, Yu Kai’s team returned from Huimin with a group of survivors and a large amount of resources. Cheng Yang had the same discussion with Yu Kai who immediately nominated a member of his team that Cheng Yang hadn’t expected.

When the nominee stood in front of Cheng Yang, he realized it was the taxi driver who had been with Lau Hui. It was only now that he learned his name, Lu Jiacheng.

Lu Jiacheng was a Warrior and had a B-Rank Innate Ability. Although this wasn’t impressive for Phoenix Village, he would have been a fairly high ranked individual in the Phoenix Village from Cheng Yang’s previous life.

Cheng Yang knew the other teams wouldn’t return for a while so went to rouse Chen Chao from her meditation. Cheng Yang then explained the rules for experience sharing before loaning her one thousand Experience Fragments.

The rules were fairly simple: the Experience Fragments could not be used for personal reasons and after using them for four hours, they must immediately be given to the next Vice Captain.

Next, Cheng Yang went to the Alchemy Tower and bought another twenty Mana Recovery Potions. After that he left Phoenix Village.

This time, Cheng Yang’s goal was different so he bought Ever-Burning Oil from the Alchemy Tower as well to make a torch. His goal now was to collect the alchemical components needed to make a Mana Recovery Potion. He wanted to quickly level up his Job and couldn’t do that by wasting Energy.

Energy wasn’t a resource that could be recovered by a potion. His Energy would only be refilled every day at midnight. If you didn’t use it all before midnight, the remainder was completely wasted. Skills gained from a Job were powered by Energy instead of Mana so there was a limited number of times you could use them every day. The only way to increase that number was to level up your Job and the only way to do that was to use Job skills.

This time, Cheng Yang not only brought a torch but also took his Alchemy Pot with him. Although it was rather large, his superhuman strength allowed him to carry it with ease.

He had to say, although the first few weeks of the apocalypse was like a hell to most people, the crafters from his previous life would consider it heaven. Just like monsters, the spawn rate for various materials used by Jobs was incredibly high on the first day. Right now, materials that would take an hour to find in his previous life, were scattered all around the village.

Using a torch to light his way meant that even distant monsters would travel to attack him, but it made finding alchemical components very easy.

After walking two kilometers, Cheng Yang’s bag held more than twenty uprooted plants. If he hadn’t just been collecting the ones needed to make Mana Recovery potions he would have harvested dozens more. Unfortunately, the amount he had collected was only enough to make three potions.

Whenever Cheng Yang got close to a large monster horde, he would have to smother the torch’s flame. If he wasn’t careful, he might find himself totally surrounded.

Cheng Yang would then eliminate the horde and relight the torch and search the area. If he found any of the plants he needed, they would immediately be snatched up by him.

Electrical lighters couldn’t be used right now but luckily Cheng Yang’s soldiers had found hundreds of gas lighters in the ruins of Huimin. If they hadn’t, Cheng Yang would have had to resort to using flint like in ancient times.

It was ten minutes before midnight when Cheng Yang finished gathering enough components to make twenty potions. Since he didn’t need to use the Identify of Harvest skills thanks to the experience from his past life, he was able to devote all of his Energy to the Refine skill. Although, if the materials were of a higher level he wouldn’t dare risk harming them by manually harvesting them.

Cheng Yang stopped wandering around and went into a ruined building to refine potions. The actual process was quite simple. He just needed to prepare the components according to the recipe, put them in the Alchemy Pot, and use the Refine skill. After a certain period of time, the potion would either be completed or explode.

Of course, the Refine skill didn’t have a perfect success rate. For the Mana Recovery Potion, the success rate was around 60% for a Low-Grade Apprentice Alchemist. The success rate was quite high since recovery potions were the most common potions. For rarer potions, the success rates would usually be abysmally low.

The actual refinement only took a few seconds and if it succeeded, Cheng Yang would pour it into one of the bottles he had prepared.

Cheng Yang’s Mana Recovery Potion (Low-Grade): Restores 20 Mana instantly and then 4 Mana every second for ten seconds