Ashen God
Chapter 654 - 653: Implementing the Final Stage Cleanup Plan

Chapter 654: Chapter 653: Implementing the Final Stage Cleanup Plan

"Since there’s no drop treasure box, then let’s quickly continue to hunt other monsters in the swamp area."

In the swamp area, there are a total of two hundred demonized mammoths as the designated number. I’ve only killed seventy so far, and I still need to kill another one hundred and thirty to complete the preliminary part of the Fifth Stage of the Demonized Swamp Clearing Plan."

Fortunately, given current clearing efficiency, the task is progressing quickly, so Zhang Yanhang doesn’t have to worry at all. After quickly scanning the surrounding area, he immediately charged towards the nearest demonized mammoth.

......

On October 27th, Tuesday, the day after the Double Ninth Festival, and also the third day Zhang Yanhang entered the Ashen World, at 10:15 PM, in the Demonized Swamp, swamp area, habitat of the demonized mammoths.

[Successfully killed a Second Tier Two Star Monster ’Demonized Mammoth (Common)’ x1, Soul points +80.]

[Successfully killed a Second Tier Two Star Monster ’Demonized Mammoth (Common)’ x1, Soul points +80.]

[Successfully killed a Second Tier Two Star Monster ’Demonized Mammoth (Common)’ x1, Soul points +80.]

...

After killing a demonized mammoth with his fists, whose nose wobbled like a flower after using its demonization skill, Zhang Yanhang finally took down the last demonized mammoth in the Demonized Swamp.

Now, not a single one of the designated demonized mammoths remained in the entire Demonized Swamp—they had all been eliminated by him. This time, since the number of monsters was small, he kept count without fail, ensuring not a single one was missed.

In the last nearly twenty minutes, Zhang Yanhang had once again cleared an area of twenty square kilometers in the swamp area. Together with the previously cleared ten square kilometers, he easily completed the preliminary part of the Fifth Stage of the Demonized Swamp Clearing Plan by clearing a total of thirty square kilometers.

"It only took half an hour to clear three-quarters of the swamp area. Now, it seems that clearing the entire Demonized Swamp today is indeed certain, even possibly before eleven o’clock.

If the area I’ve just cleared is converted into the specific progress of the Fifth Stage of the Demonized Swamp Clearing Plan, it has reached 75% of the clearance progress, a 50% increase compared to twenty minutes ago. Of course, it would be even quicker if ’Death Wave’ could be used."

At first, Zhang Yanhang wasn’t very confident about clearing the Demonized Swamp and then reserving time to clear Raccoon City and the Goblin Plain afterwards, but now, it’s no longer a matter of confidence—it’s about to become a done deal.

Zhang Yanhang plans to take a break tonight after clearing the Demonized Swamp, and then go to clear the monsters in Raccoon City and the Goblin Plain tomorrow.

The reason for clearing tomorrow instead of tonight is twofold: firstly, more monsters will respawn tomorrow, and secondly, because he wants to get up early tomorrow to check when exactly the Lucky Slot Machines in the Goblin Plain and the Demonized Swamp refresh.

The refresh times of these two have troubled Zhang Yanhang for three days now, each attempt to check thwarted by oversleeping. Tomorrow is his last day in the Ashen World, and if he still cannot determine the exact times, there will be no more chances.

If that happens, he would have to wait until next time to find out when exactly the Lucky Slot Machines in the Goblin Plain and the Demonized Swamp refresh, and he really does not want to postpone something that could be accomplished now until next time.

"If I convert the twenty square kilometers I’ve just cleared into the overall progress of the Demonized Swamp Clearing Plan, my completion progress would rise from the original 92.5% to 97.5%, an increase of 5%. Only the last 2.5% remains before the entire Demonized Swamp Clearing Plan is complete.

If previously my completion degree of the Demonized Swamp Clearing Plan was just at nine out of ten, now it is at thirty-nine out of forty, an improvement not much higher than the initial nine out of ten, but the denominator has quadrupled."

Zhang Yanhang is naturally very confident about clearing the last ten square kilometers of the swamp area. However, before doing so, he wanted to open the drop treasure boxes from the demonized mammoths.

This has become a tradition. Starting from Raccoon City, he developed this good habit—giving it his all against bosses, and showing the utmost respect for Lord Monsters.

Zhang Yanhang stood in place and waited for a moment. Soon, a blue quality Drop Treasure Box emerged from the corpse of the boastful demonized mammoth that had swung its trunk like a flaunting hand in front of him.

But this time, after picking up the drop treasure box, he didn’t put it into his waist bag; instead, he placed it beside him and also poured out the other Drop Treasure Boxes from the demonized mammoths from his waist bag.

This time, since there were only treasure boxes from the demonized mammoths, Zhang Yanhang decided not to go back to Raccoon City. After all, he would have to return here later anyway, and did not want to bother with the back and forth.

Before opening the treasure boxes, Zhang Yanhang, as usual, first checked his soul point balance to see his earnings, though he didn’t have any expectations in that regard.

[Soul points: 146933 (+16000)]

"This time, the soul point earnings are very much as expected, only sixteen thousand soul points. After all, besides demonized mammoths, I didn’t manage to hunt any other demonized monsters.

And with only two hundred demonized mammoths in the Demonized Swamp, each worth eighty soul points, multiplying two by eight gives exactly sixteen thousand, very neat indeed.

After gaining these sixteen thousand soul points, my soul point balance increased from the original 130933 to 146933, not too much and even slightly less. It’s still not enough for any upgrade."

To gain extra soul points, Zhang Yanhang used to rely on cleaning the third prize pool of the Lucky Slot Machines.

But that isn’t possible this time, as whether it’s Raccoon City or the Goblin Plain, or even the Demonized Swamp, the third prize pool of the Lucky Slot Machines has already been cleared by him during the day, and the pool only refreshes once a day.

After checking his soul points balance, which wasn’t at all worth looking forward to, Zhang Yanhang immediately began counting the equally unanticipated drop treasure boxes.

He had obtained a total of thirty drop treasure boxes this time, all of blue quality and all from the demonized mammoth, indisputably ranking first in the contribution list for drop treasure boxes, clearly the main force in the earnings from this round of treasure box drops.

After counting the drop treasure boxes, Zhang Yanhang randomly picked one and chose to open it.

"Do you wish to open ’Drop Treasure Box (Demonized Mammoth)’?"

"Yes, open," Zhang Yanhang decided, and the long-missed time pause once again descended upon the Demonized Swamp Zone.

However, compared to the continuous time pauses during the last treasure box openings, which numbered over three hundred, this time the amount of time pause, although also starting with the number three, was on a magnitude of difference, making Zhang Yanhang less enthusiastic about opening boxes this time. After all, opening just thirty drop treasure boxes really didn’t invoke much excitement.

And it would probably be even less exciting later on, considering there were only eight monsters left in the swamp area. It was uncertain whether he could even get three more drop treasure boxes, let alone three hundred.

There were a total of 18,558 demonized creatures in the Demonized Swamp Zone, and Zhang Yanhang had nearly cleared out nineteen thousand monsters, leaving only the Four-eyed Wild Boar and the Lord Monster Demonized Four-eyed Wild Boar Queen Pei Qi yet to be cleaned out.

If Zhang Yanhang were to check the Evaluation Settlement Treasure Box of the Demonized Swamp Zone now, he believed that his completion rate should be at least 98%, or even 99% was not impossible.

Either way, he definitely had already reached an S+ grade evaluation, only to continue wiping out the Four-eyed Wild Boar and Lord Monster Demonized Four-eyed Wild Boar Queen Pei Qi to raise his completion rate to over one hundred percent and claim the highest-quality Ashen Treasure Box of EX level.

Although he was opening treasure boxes, Zhang Yanhang was very confident about clearing the entire Demonized Swamp before eleven o’clock. After all, he was only opening thirty boxes this time, which couldn’t take too long, and he wouldn’t upgrade his skills or talent after opening the boxes, so it definitely wouldn’t take much time.

Zhang Yanhang figured that opening and sorting through these thirty drop treasure boxes from the demonized mammoth should take him at most ten minutes, or at most a quarter of an hour at the longest.

And it was just past ten fifteen now; even if he took another quarter of an hour, it would only be ten thirty, still leaving him half an hour to clean the last ten square kilometers of the Demonized Swamp.

Besides, speaking of ten square kilometers, in reality there were only eight monsters, it was impossible for him to not take out those eight creatures in half an hour. If he couldn’t, he was better off buying a block of tofu and smashing his head against it.

"Please select the specific content of ’Drop Treasure Box (Demonized Mammoth)’"

"Item One: ?"

"Item Two: ?"

"Item Three: ?"

"Item Four: ?"

"Item Five: ?"

"Based on my previous experience, this drop treasure box from the demonized mammoth likely won’t yield any artifacts or weapons.

So, after I open all the boxes, I won’t be able to improve my skills or talent level and it’s pretty much certain that I won’t be able to advance in other ways either. But that’s normal, considering I’m already a genuine Second Tier Peak, there’s not much room for improvement.

Hence, the only thing that might take up some time after I’ve opened all the boxes would just be the equipment fusion.

But from the number of boxes at present, the amount of equipment can’t be that much — there could at most be thirty pieces, so just fusing these equipment pieces definitely shouldn’t take the estimated fifteen minutes, in fact, even ten minutes might be quite ample."

After all, with only thirty drop treasure boxes, based on Zhang Yanhang’s past experiences, opening the boxes would take at most a minute or two, and the remaining eight minutes or so would be just enough for fusing a +4, obviously a breeze. But the real problem lies in whether a +4 is sufficient.

"The soul point value of this demonized mammoth and that of the Demonized Emperor Crocodile are almost the same, it’s just five points higher. Although there is some difference, it isn’t big, so the value of the treasure box should be about the same as that of the Demonized Emperor Crocodile.

Therefore, if I could get equipment from these drop treasure boxes, without any surprises, they should be the same series as those crafted by the High Elf Apprentice from before.

And if it’s still her equipment instead of those created by Azikasa Baofeng Saint Silvado, then the new equipment would likely need to be fused up to +5 to upgrade from purple quality to light golden quality, just like the Emperor Crocodile Belt did before.

The problem is, I can at most get thirty pieces of new equipment, but fusing a +5 requires thirty-two pieces, so I’m still two pieces short to directly fuse the new equipment from purple quality to a light golden quality +5, and that’s quite regrettable."

Zhang Yanhang remembered the last time he felt this disappointment, which probably was the previous time. Of course, this is not just stating the obvious, but really the last time he cleared an entire zone of all monsters, yet still wasn’t able to fuse the equipment to break through the quality barrier was indeed the last time.

Or more precisely, it was during the last treasure box opening when Zhang Yanhang opened the drop treasure box from the Demonized Saber-Toothed Tiger that due to the insufficiency of monsters, he could not gather enough to break through the limit and upgrade the quality, thus temporarily created a purple quality full score Cloud Tiger Shoulder Armor +5 to fill the gap.

But unlike the Cloud Tiger Shoulder Armor, which was five pieces short of creating a dark purple quality Cloud Tiger Shoulder Armor +6, even with the help of the Lucky Slot Machine’s third prize pool in the Demonized Swamp, it wasn’t certain he could gather them all before leaving Ashen World.

The new equipment, however, was a different story, only short by at most two pieces. Even if the Lucky Slot Machine in the Demonized Swamp Zone updated its third prize pool only once before he left the Ashen World, it was still very possible to gather them all together.