Infinite Gods Reign Supreme

Chapter 61: A Sign of a Team Battle

The afternoon meeting has now concluded.

After that, it was just one ordinary noon after another—the veterans got along very well, and the new members were quite cooperative. Under Siming's guidance, they didn't become close friends, but they at least successfully transitioned towards becoming acquaintances.

Emergency measures in the Cursed World unknowingly became a tradition through conversation and sharing—Almaria gave herself the codename 'musician,' while Luo Yinglong called himself 'sword cultivator.' And once the reincarnators had established a certain level of mutual trust and consensus—

Time is up.

The time for the third-to-last day finally arrived.

— [Captain's privileges are being activated... The next reincarnation world has been revealed in advance.]

—【The Celestial Team is about to arrive in "Dragon Wars," a world focused on team battles.】

"The War of Dragons?"

"Team fight?"

The reincarnators of the Celestial Team looked at each other across the table. The direct communication link to the Supreme God was quickly established, and the content and setting of a movie were immediately displayed on the huge projection screen around the table.

"It's actually a 08 US-South Korea co-production." Si Ming had a slight recollection of it. He had seen the movie a long time ago, but only once, and only a vague outline remained in his memory.

The video started playing.

The general content was presented to the reincarnators of the Celestial Team.

It's a story, a myth originating from ancient Korea—legend has it that in the distant past, a group of powerful giant pythons lived on the earth. Every five hundred years, one of the most benevolent pythons would be granted a dragon pearl from the heavens, thus shedding its mortal body, transforming into a dragon, and ascending to the heavens to enjoy blessings. Of course, the arrival of this dragon pearl required certain ritualistic steps.

It will first be born into the world as a baby girl. At the same time, a guardian warrior will accompany the Dragon Ball, ensuring its safe growth. When the baby girl reaches the age of twenty, the Dragon Ball will mature, and the benevolent serpent will appear and accept the sacrifice of the Dragon Ball's incarnation. After that, the snake will become a dragon.

Everything should have been this way—but five hundred years before the story began, an evil but powerful serpent named Bragi attempted to bypass the Benevolent Serpent and directly obtain the Dragon Balls—it dispatched its evil army to attack the Dragon Ball incarnation before she reached her 20th birthday. Ultimately, the Dragon Ball incarnation and her guardians leaped into the sea, thus ending this prelude to the story five hundred years ago.

And this is actually the crux of the matter, because the story that unfolds five hundred years later is quite clichéd and ordinary—

The reincarnated Dragon Ball incarnates as an ordinary American girl, and her guardian also becomes an American youth. As her twentieth birthday approaches, Blazi's evil army awakens and finds her. After a nonsensical urban chase, Blazi's army captures the incarnation and her guardian, then sacrifices them to a giant evil serpent that has been dormant for five hundred years.

Then, the Serpent of Ultimate Goodness, along with the Guardian's special ability, was activated—the jade pendant on the Guardian unleashed powerful energy, wiping out Bragi's army. The Serpent of Ultimate Goodness then fought Bragi, but was repeatedly defeated. At the critical moment, the Dragon Ball incarnation fulfilled its duty, sacrificing the Dragon Ball to the Serpent of Ultimate Goodness. Afterwards, it was a typical story of good triumphing over evil, and the dragon ascended to the heavens. The incarnation's soul bid farewell to the young Guardian who loved her, and the story thus came to a swift end.

"...It seems pretty ordinary." Yu Zhiwei rested her chin on her hand, repeatedly observing the final battle between the evil giant python and the benevolent python after its transformation into a dragon. "...It can't summon wind and rain, nor does it possess thunder magic. Its only special ability is breathing fire... Does this thing even deserve to be called a dragon?"

“Some kind of creature in North Korea that’s called a ‘dragon,’” Luo Yinglong frowned in dissatisfaction. “It doesn’t look majestic or sacred at all; it feels more like some kind of intelligent beast… I’ve been to a world related to dragons before and saw a real dragon called ‘Qiantang Jun’… Even from tens of kilometers away, its naturally generated pressure made me unable to move, but this one is clearly far from enough.”

Qiantang Jun, a powerful background character in "The Legend of Liu Yi," is a creature so powerful that even the Heavenly Court couldn't do anything to it. Clearly, Luo Yinglong's mission wasn't to fight it.

“That’s not important.” On the other side, Song Tian shook his head slightly after careful observation. “Their strength and speed are enormous; even in their python form, they can easily destroy a building. Coupled with their physique and mobility, they are undoubtedly tough creatures with combat power far exceeding that of a second-tier creature—even if we completely follow the movie's depiction, the steel giants summoned by the captain would have difficulty inflicting effective damage on them. To defeat them, we need efficient equipment.”

This is true.

Compared to a giant python that is hundreds of meters long and can move at high speeds, a steel behemoth that is at most a dozen meters tall probably doesn't even have as much strength as a snake's scales.

"...Wait a minute, why are we suddenly talking about this?" Valentina looked up, puzzled. "This benevolent serpent that has transformed into a dragon is good, right? Why do we need to fight it...? It's unnecessary, isn't it? We only need to fight that evil serpent."

“That might be true under normal circumstances,” Si Ming shook his head. “But this isn’t a normal situation. Look at the main god’s message; this is a team battle.”

“In team battles, the weaker team enters first, and the stronger team arrives later,” Jacob continued. “The Supreme God will balance the two teams with different ratings, giving the weaker team a chance to leverage their strengths and thus compete with the stronger team. As things stand, I think our Celestial Team is the strongest in the Reincarnation World.”

“So the other teams will enter before us,” Si Ming nodded. “Perhaps one, perhaps two. But no matter how many reincarnation teams there are, they will all be wary of us and will make the originally simple situation a mess—in the worst case scenario, we will face the combined forces of the evil giant serpent, the benevolent python, and even the US military in the very short time after our arrival—and in addition, we cannot rule out the possibility that the giant serpent, after transforming into a dragon, will forcibly stay in the human world just to help its ‘human friends’ fight against us, these ‘extraterrestrial enemies’.”

PVE and PVP are ultimately different.

When fighting against characters from the main storyline, the Reincarnation Squad has the advantage of complete information transparency. However, when facing another Reincarnation Squad, they must find alternative methods.

“But there’s also the possibility that they’re wary of our team’s strength, and that they haven’t been able to fully capitalize on our momentum. Isn’t that right?” Valentina was still frowning; it was clear she really didn’t want to fight the other Reincarnators. Perhaps she was worried about the Senzhou team being in a team battle against the opposing side?
“It’s always better to be prepared than to have to worry about things when they’re not ready, Wana.” Yu Zhiwei produced a large plate of fruit from somewhere and leaned back lazily in her chair while eating. “Besides, even if you want to subdue your enemy without fighting, you need to make sure they can clearly see your strength and threat from the start… Okay, stop looking so glum, come on, have a grape.”

She fed him a juicy grape.

As Valentina received the message with a worried expression, Almalia also shared some information about the team battle.

“Team missions can conflict. Our main mission might be to kill Bragi, while another team's mission is to protect him. If we can't find a way to satisfy both, one team will have to face deductions in reward points, side quests, or even more severe penalties. And if one team happens to have insufficient resources…”

“Then we have no choice but to fight to the bitter end,” Siming finally concluded. “We are the strongest squad, but we are not the squad that can decide when the war begins. However, if we are well-prepared and properly configured, we can at least be the squad that decides when the war ends. As of now, our squad has only one weakness.”

He paused for a moment, then sighed helplessly.

"We do not have any psychic beings."

“…A psychic?” Valentina looked up again. “Is it…that psychic scan thing? I had a rookie in the Mori team who could buy it, but that skill is so expensive…”

“Yes, mental energy scanning.” Jacob, who had experience in team battles, chimed in, “That’s an enhancement that only those with certain traits can obtain. Back when I was still in the Sandbar team, and the former captain was still alive, it’s said that the guides at that time had already emphasized the importance of this profession—”

"While its self-defense capabilities are poor, it possesses extremely strong intelligence-gathering abilities. Even without purchasing anything other than scanning, it can easily observe the environment within a range of hundreds of kilometers. Furthermore... if there is no other psychic in the target area, scanning will not trigger a reaction from the target."

"...That's amazing! Even the captain couldn't sense it?" Valentina exclaimed in surprise. She could hack into a satellite, but the latter...that was a significant strategic advantage.

"I'm afraid not." Si Ming remembered very clearly that before the mid-to-high level of the fourth tier, ordinary reincarnators could not sense the mental fluctuations of even the weakest mental power user... except for a certain unlucky guy who owed him a debt from the entire multiverse, because the essence of mental power scanning was actually a rudimentary form of some special form of mental light.

—The Light of the Soul.

He recalled his nighttime fighting spirit.

It seems that he will soon have the opportunity to verify whether his Night Battle Qi is connected to the Light of the Soul.

But before that...

He glanced at the large sphere of light overhead.

"I want to exchange for a mental energy scan. It requires 6000 basic mental energy points."

"I want 5500 points." "I have 7000 points." "Am I a bit out of luck with 13000 points...?"

"9000." "Damn it, why is it 15000!?"

The reincarnators looked at each other in bewilderment.

Then...

Everyone looked at Yu Zhiwei, who was showing off her fruit platter.

"Why are you looking at me?" She tilted her head. "Do I look like someone who would buy this thing?"

(End of this chapter)