My Apocalypse Territory-Chapter 284 - 281 Dispatched

His heart skipped a half-beat…

White light?

No, that’s not right!

This didn’t seem to be the glow that appears when the adventurer’s phantom shows up.

He looked through the bright light towards the Array, unable to see any phantom, yet the light from the Array was getting more and more intense.

Suddenly, Tang Yu seemed to realize something; a semi-transparent screen appeared before his eyes.

The Source Crystals stored in the warehouse, displayed as numerical units, appeared in the top left corner of the screen.

However, at this moment, the number representing the store of Source Crystals was decreasing crazily.

Decreasing at the rate of ten thousand per second!

Tang Yu had never seen anything like this before.

His eyelids twitched wildly as he stared at the numbers on the panel, feeling a heartache so intense that he couldn’t breathe… yet he did not stop the Summoning Array from drawing energy from the Source Crystals.

After half a minute.

The energy extraction finally slowed down.

Two minutes later, the number representing the store of Source Crystals finally stopped decreasing.

Tang Yu roughly estimated that, in just that brief moment, five hundred thousand Source Crystals had been consumed.

Five hundred thousand!

That’s about the same amount needed to upgrade the Territory from tier four to five!

In the core of the light ring, a bright gold light burst forth.

Before Tang Yu could ponder further, the long-absent system prompt sounded in his mind.

“Ding, summoning energy replenishment complete, beginning to summon.”

“Ding, required condition missing, summoning failed…”

“Ding, required condition missing, summoning failed…”

“…”

Tang Yu: “!!!”

What the hell!

The ancients didn’t deceive me, ten consecutive attempts ruined a life!

Give me back my five hundred thousand Source Crystals!

Tang Yu stared blankly at the Summoning Array, as if everything had turned to gray before his eyes.

“Wait a minute…”

He was stunned to find that although the summoning had failed, the Summoning Array in front of him hadn’t disappeared, just like the gold light at the core of the ring was still flickering and jumping. He just couldn’t see the adventurer’s phantom; it was as if… it was halfway summoned, but got stuck and couldn’t come out?

For some reason, Tang Yu had this thought, and disregarding the heartache for those five hundred thousand Source Crystals, he furrowed his brow, pondering the cause of the summoning failure.

In the description of the tavern.

The summoning only varied in qualifications and professions, or in the difference between more or fewer Consuming Crystals; there was never any mention of failure.

I hadn’t heard that a Summoning Array required absorbing a large amount of Source Crystals in the middle of the process…

Originally, the energy required for summoning was already expended at the beginning. Now the situation was like having bought a two-hundred-yuan high-speed train ticket and getting on board, only to be told by the conductor midway that an additional twenty thousand yuan was needed for the fare. Without paying the extra, one would be thrown off the train.

Tang Yu felt that the current Summoning Array was in such a situation. If the Source Crystals stored in the warehouse were insufficient or if he had chosen to cancel…

The entire Summoning Array was very likely to collapse directly.

Now, after topping up the fare, the train had reached its final destination, but there seemed to be a lack of some condition, which prevented the train doors from opening.

Tang Yu carefully recalled, “The tavern’s description mentioned qualifications from D to C to B to A and above, but did not explicitly mention anything about S-rank. The golden light should correspond to the glow of an S-rank qualification…”

“The gap between S and A ranks must also be huge, like the difference between the Awakening Tier and the Transcendent Tier. Summoning an A-rank adventurer does not consume much energy. For S-rank, in addition to five hundred thousand Source Crystals, another condition needs to be fulfilled.”

He had mentally cursed the system hundreds of times, but the response he got was still that a condition was missing.

Fortunately, the Summoning Array was still quietly suspended in mid-air, which indicated it wouldn’t collapse immediately.

Tang Yu had asked Eileen and others about their experience of responding to the summon. It seemed that they had agreed before signing a Contract… He had a moment where he wondered if the adventurer on the other side had refused the Contract, causing the summoning to fail.

But he quickly shook his head.

Having summoned so many times, he had some understanding and speculation about the tavern’s summoning mechanism. It might involve causality, and every adventurer chosen, at the moment they were selected, was actually already on the “thieves’ ship”… ahem, ahem, ahem!

This summoning seemed to be an accident, but it also made Tang Yu realize that the system had flaws…

“If the condition could be fulfilled, and the adventurer was summoned, perhaps it would be possible to further access the core secrets of the system.”

…

The castle hall.

After the internal welcome party, Tang Yu was meeting the new followers who had arrived.

Nine people, some dressed in their original clothes, while some were in dire straits before being summoned and had since changed into modern-looking attire.

Tang Yu’s gaze focused on three of them.

Three A-rank qualified followers, also the strongest among the nine.

One Awakening eleventh layer, two Awakening tenth layer.

The follower at the eleventh layer was shrouded in a black robe, her face obscured, silent and taciturn, with only her body’s outline hinting at her identity.

The Red Moon Witch.

Her real name was Red Moon, or perhaps she had already abandoned her past name.

She stood there, an aura of dead silence around her. The others stood at least a few meters away from the Red Moon Witch, and even though they were companions, they still frowned at the thick scent of fresh blood emanating from her.

Having read the briefing, Tang Yu knew that she was a truly ruthless person, having once slaughtered fifty thousand people in a small city to achieve her goals.

It was said that in her region, the name Red Moon Witch could silence crying children.

Of course, though Red Moon was bloodthirsty, she was not without principles. That massacre had been the result of various reasons overlapping each other. Otherwise, even with A-rank qualifications, he might… he might consider abandoning the summoning.

“I plan to divide you into three groups and send you to various locations to perform tasks, mainly to gather intelligence and collect rare resources…” Tang Yu paused, “Especially concerning the Secret Realm. No matter what means you use, as soon as you discover any information about a Secret Realm, report it immediately.”

Finding a Secret Realm meant finding a Sky-splitting Crystal.

The energy of the Summoning Array had been supplemented, and the missing condition was very likely related to space. The only space-related item that Tang Yu could think of was the Sky-splitting Crystal.

Not to mention that the Secret Realm itself possessed immense value.

Zuofo, Skeleton, Abyssal Rift…

Various puzzles might find some answers in the Secret Realm.

At this moment, a cool voice rose:

“I do not need assistants.”

Tang Yu looked over in surprise, his gaze meeting the eyes beneath the hood.

Dead silence… seas of blood…

After a pause, Tang Yu spoke, “Alright.” He then looked towards the two who were originally meant to be in Red Moon’s group, “You can team up with Greta.”

Greta was another Transcendent Tenth Layer expert, sporting long hair that looked like steel needles.

Upon hearing this, he stepped forward, glanced at Red Moon, clenched his fist to his chest, and grinningly said, “Lord, wait for our good news.”

Tang Yu looked at the last follower, his gaze lingering on her face briefly before moving upward to rest on her fluffy pointed ears.

Wolf Girl·Fani.