Witch Special

There were too many questions, so Lin Zhenxi chose to keep quiet and wait for Teacher Patchouli's answer.

Of course, she couldn't control her eyes and kept staring at the row of torii gates on the map, which were brightly colored and completely different from the surrounding environment. She understood the meaning very clearly.

Teacher Patchouli was understanding. After reading Lin Zhenxi's gaze, she pointed to the torii gates that stretched from the top of the mountain to the foot of the mountain and said, "These torii gates are the passages to the Festival World and are also the 'birth points' for participating players."

"Choosing a good spawn point can make the game much easier, right?"

"But Patchouli-sensei, why do you need a torii gate? Torii gates are relatively rare in the Garden of the Dead, right?"

Anyway, the only torii gate Lin Zhenxi had seen was the one at Hakurei Shrine. After all, it's a standard feature of shrines, so it would be strange if there weren't any. But the shabby torii gate at Hakurei Shrine felt completely cheap, so it's better not to mention it. The torii gates shown on the map now were not only magnificent, but when they existed, the surrounding space also had an inexplicably calming atmosphere. It was obvious that they were not ordinary things.

Since Patchouli was the one organizing this celebration, why did she choose something so incompatible with her painting style as the entrance? A teleportation array would be much more convenient, or perhaps a portal made of books would be just fine. Why choose a torii gate?

Teacher Patchouli shook her head and said, "Maki, you're mistaken about that. The torii gate actually holds a symbolic status in the Garden of the Dead, because the gate leading to the Holy Residence is composed of ninety-nine layers of torii gates."

"Holy Residence?" Lin Zhenxi was puzzled. This was another term he had never heard of.

"That's right, the Holy Residence." Patchouli nodded and explained, "The Holy Residence is the residence of the Source Spirits. It's located on the unnamed hill just south of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, between the Lost Bamboo Forest and the Sunflower Field."

"After passing through the ninety-nine torii gates, you will enter the sacred residence. However, ordinary people cannot get close to the sacred residence. They can only see the row of torii gates from afar."

"Lady Yuanling is the highest-ranking being in the Courtyard of the Dead World. Their residence is also the iconic building of the Courtyard of the Dead World."

"The reason why we chose the Torii as the entrance and exit for this celebration is because the 'Gratitude of the World' in my hands alone is not enough to complete the layout of the celebration world, so I sought some help from the Source Spirits. Those Torii are part of that help."

"The power of the Ash's followers isn't easy to imitate. For authenticity, I asked Kasa, who's been in charge of external affairs for the past two hundred years, to capture some real Ash's followers and place them in the Celebration World. Although the Ash's destructive power isn't as great as the Void's, it's still very dangerous. We sages might not be able to handle them, but the others in the Courtyard of the Dead might not be able to handle them."

"So I borrowed the Torii Gate from the Source Spirits and suppressed all the Ash Followers in the Celebration World to prevent them from escaping and polluting the Death Courtyard outside."

"Those torii gates have a purification and filtering function, completely confining the power of the Ash Followers within the festival world without hindering the entry and exit of festival participants. This is also a protective measure. If you find yourself unable to deal with the attacks of the Ash Followers within the festival world, you only need to activate the amulet to be teleported out through the torii gate."

After Teacher Patchouli finished explaining the function of the Torii, she did not pause and began to explain the rules of the entire Fantasy War game to Lin Maki.

According to Patchouli, the celebration world is essentially a petri dish. She's divided it into several distinct zones, then tossed in bacteria of varying toxicity, allowing them to freely and happily multiply. Now, these bacteria have completely taken over their own section of the petri dish, and this is the zone the celebration players will soon be heading to.

Teacher Patchouli, with the help of the Source Spirits, set a restore point for the Celebration World, ensuring that when each player leaves, the Celebration World will be restored to the state they were in before entering. Furthermore, the Celebration World also possesses the properties of a mirrored space. Even if multiple players enter at the same time, they will be assigned to different spaces and will not interfere with each other.

The trace of power helped by Lord Yuan Ling became the barrier separating the mirror space. Unless one can surpass Yuan Ling's understanding of the rules of time and space, it will be impossible to break through the barrier between the worlds and affect other mirror spaces.

This was impossible, and the word "basic" wasn't even necessary. There was no need to ask why; the Source Spirits were simply this exceptionally powerful.

Having introduced the general framework of the celebration space, let's move on to its contents. Patchouli has prepared five difficulty levels, each represented by a moon: First Moon, Third Moon, First Quarter Moon, Waiting Night, and Full Moon. Patchouli has deployed increasingly powerful Ash Minions into each level, each one contaminating the entire world they inhabit, transforming it into their lair.

In other words, as long as you enter those worlds, you will face the world that has been polluted by the Ash Followers.

After talking about the environment in the celebration world, the next thing is the most important gameplay and the rewards that are even more important than the most important.

Players must enter the polluted celebration world through the Torii gates scattered throughout the Departed Courtyard and choose a desired location to establish a base. Once built, the base will regularly produce soldiers, and players must deploy their troops, using them to defend the base, resist the constant onslaught of Ash Minions, and search for the location of the enemy headquarters.

Once you've eliminated the enemy's headquarters, all the Gray Minions in the current world will go berserk, charging towards the player's base. This is the enemy's final counterattack. Survive this final wave of monsters, and you'll be considered a world cleared. You'll be ranked based on your clearance time, and the higher your ranking, the more points you'll earn.

The five difficulty levels each have their own score multipliers. Even on the slowest, Moon-Moon difficulty, completing the game will rank higher than anyone who only cleared the first four levels. Patchouli's intention is to encourage players to complete the highest difficulty level, to experience the horror of a world completely devoured by the Ashes, and the difficulty of saving such a world.

Then comes the very important aspect of military forces. Because in the celebration world, the player's own military force is limited. At the beginning, he is only allowed to fire some very basic small bullets and small light cannons, which can make up some damage before his base is developed.

Later, as the number of purified areas increases, players will also get enhancement points. Players can choose to use these points to enhance their automatically produced soldiers, or they can choose to unlock their own abilities. There are not too many restrictions on this. Anyway, as long as the player can finally destroy the enemy's base camp and survive the subsequent monster wave, it will be considered a success.

Celebration World offers players several different standard soldier classes, ranging from guards and ranged units to healers and support personnel. However, fairness is never absolute, and Fantasy Wars also allows players to create their own unique soldier classes and grant these DIY soldiers their own unique abilities.

These special soldiers created by the big guys of the Departed Courtyard are much stronger than those basic soldiers. It is basically equivalent to the difference between white cards and gold cards.

However, Patchouli is still doing her best to maintain a balance between the strong and the weak, allowing the weak to defeat the strong. Therefore, the troop library of Fantasy War is public. When a strong player creates his own exclusive troop, the data of this troop will be uploaded, and then all players can choose it.

Of course, this merely gave the players a chance, a glimmer of hope, or even a false sense of "I'm competing with them." By unlocking a bit of their individual strength, the strong players could synergize with their own specialized units, creating a far greater-than-two effect, crushing those who played games with ordinary soldiers.

Therefore, when it comes to the actual points ranking list, those who rank high are all well-known bigwigs in the Courtyard of the Departure. Ordinary people find it difficult to clear the Three-Day Moon difficulty level, so they can only play around at the First Moon difficulty level to see the world.

Patchouli set a goal for Lin Zhenxi: to complete the most difficult level, the Mochizuki level. She included a perfect item for Lin Zhenxi among the rewards for that level, as a reward for Lin Zhenxi's completion of this training. If Lin Zhenxi could truly complete the Mochizuki level, the item would surely be very helpful for her future travels.

Lin Zhenxi pestered Patchouli to know what that thing was, almost breaking Patchouli's arm. But this time Patchouli was very tight-lipped. No matter how hard Lin Zhenxi tried to coax her, even using coquettishness, she just kept saying one thing and refused to say anything more.

"Anyway, that thing is in the reward for clearing the Moon-Watching difficulty level, but I won't tell you what it is until you clear it first."

The rewards for the Moon-Watching difficulty level are so plentiful! Lin Zhenxi glanced through the Fantasy War reward list and was dazzled by the dazzling array of items. There were simply too many, and every single one was so desirable. Trying to pick out the one item Patchouli had included so thoughtfully from such a vast pile was practically impossible!

The rewards for the Fantasy War were actually pooled together by everyone in the Garden of Desolation. Since it was a Garden of Desolation-wide celebration, everyone had to contribute. Consequently, the rewards for the Fantasy War were incredibly generous. The lower limit was incredibly low, even including clods of mud, things that weren't even considered trash, but the upper limit was also ridiculously high.

No, the word "outrageous" is not enough to describe it, it should be called ridiculous.

A habitable blue planet or something…even this kind of thing is not even considered high on the list of rewards.

Among all the rewards, the one ranked first by Teacher Patchouli was actually a bracelet mixed with hair.

Because it is mixed with the hair of the source spirit.