Close Combat Mage

Chapter 362 - Haggling Part 1

Seeing Suo Jia’s excited expression, the station master couldn’t help but give a dry smile, “Don’t get excited too soon; although going back might not be a major issue, how are you going to return here? To my knowledge, there’s a huge backlog of adventure groups waiting on that side, yet there’s only one ship that comes here per day.”

Suo Jia shook his head and confidently replied, “That’s not a problem at all. Neither going back nor returning here are issues, I can just build my own ship to travel!”

“What! Build your own ship?!” The station master stared at Suo Jia in shock. “Stop joking. If ships could just be built like that, wouldn’t everyone have done it ages ago? The stretch of water between the first and second checkpoints is called the Changing Sea. There’s only one chance to cross through every week; if you try to go any other time, you’ll end up lost at sea.”

After a pause, he continued, “Even if you go on that specific day, you won’t necessarily be able to get here. The Changing Sea can only be safely crossed by the local fishermen that have been trained at the relay stations. In addition, this training takes at least 10 years to complete. You shouldn’t underestimate these matters.”

Suo Jia’s expression turned to one of disappointment as he did some quick mental calculations. After a while, he resolutely declared, “Alright, well, even if I can only carry out this business once, I must do it! I’ll get on the next ship and rush back to the first checkpoint!”

“Alright…” The station master helplessly replied. “Since you’re so adamant about it, I won’t say anything else. You should prepare immediately; the ship is about to head back now. The next time it will leave will be exactly a week from today.”

Suo Jia gratefully thanked him and stood up to head towards the wharf to board the ship and return from whence he’d come.

Although the distance between the two checkpoints was only 100 kilometers or so, it still required an entire day of travel to go back and forth at the small boat’s speed. The boat would set out in the morning, and not arrive until the afternoon, before once more setting off and arriving at the first checkpoint in the evening. Once it was nighttime, the Changing Sea’s dense fog would rise, and the chance to cross the waters would have passed.

During the following half month, Suo Jia was constantly moving around day and night. After running around the ten major cities at the first checkpoint and successfully filling his ten interspatial rings with pickaxes, he rushed back to the wharf.

Suo Jia spent another five million coins to buy that week’s ship pass, and rushed back to the second checkpoint. This time, he didn’t make a stop at the relay station. Instead, he mounted his Diamond Dragon and directly advanced to the nearest major city.

Ever since obtaining the ten rank 10 Giant Icebear cores, the Diamond Dragon was pretty much able to maintain its combat state forever. As long as it held the core in its mouth, the Diamond Dragon didn’t have to worry about lacking in energy; thus, Suo Jia’s progress rate was raised several fold, and he didn’t need to take breaks anymore.

The only unfortunate part was that the Diamond Dragon still couldn’t fly. Its enormous heavy body made it impossible to stay in the air. All it could do was jump up with its strength and open its wings to glide over a distance. At the moment, it couldn’t do this for a distance longer than 200 meters.

After passing the relay station, Suo Jia followed the main path to the closest location: Scarlet City. This wasn’t the largest city at the second checkpoint, but it was the most famous for producing Illusion Gems. Many adventurers tried to test their luck there, so selling the pickaxes there was undoubtedly the best decision.

Before he’d progressed very far…countless magical beasts suddenly swarmed around him in dense packs, pouring towards him from both sides of the path. Upon closer inspection, he realized that they were all giant wild boars!

Although these beasts were similar to boars, they were actually much larger, closer to the size of oxen. In addition…they had fierce tusks coming out from the corners of their mouths that were at least a meter long. It seemed almost as if the boars were hanging off of these tusks instead of the other way around.

These wild boars had cyan colored Life Protections, meaning that they had stronger defenses than the Crimson Bears from the first checkpoint. Although they didn’t possess the fierce bear paws that the Crimson Bears had, Suo Jia knew that those tusks were definitely even stronger than the Crimson Bears’ attacks.

Any experienced hunter knew that the ranking of magical beast types in terms of might from strongest to weakest went boar, then bear, and then finally tiger. The wild boar was ranked first because of its extremely powerful charge. Even tigers or bears would avoid encountering boars.

As Suo Jia thought about this, more and more large boars came bounding out of the forest from both sides, swiftly gathering around him, amounting to the appearance of over 200 boars in mere seconds.

Suo Jia stared in shock at the massive amount of boars crowded around him, and hurriedly stood up on the Diamond Dragon’s head. With a flick of his right hand, he materialized the Sea God’s Trident. Suo Jia knew that relying on the Diamond Dragon alone wouldn’t be enough; if he wanted to eradicate so many boars, he’d have to rely on himself.

Finally, the boars stopped pouring out from the forest. Suo Jia couldn’t help but feel astonished at the sea of boars before him; there were nearly 300 now! Magical beast encounters of this scale were never seen at the first checkpoint.

The boars all began to run over in short strides. The further the distance between them was, the faster their charging speed was. In just a short while, they’d already reached a frightening speed.

Suo Jia firmly gave the Diamond Dragon a command. When the boars were around 20 meters away from the Diamond Dragon, it used its powerful legs to jump up high in the air.

In Suo Jia’s mind, as long as they jumped up above the ground, the wild boars would charge into each other and ultimately lose their speed. Then, upon landing, Suo Jia could blast out the Hailstorm Technique around the Diamond Dragon. Once these wild boars lost their speed, their attacks were pretty much negligible.

Just as the Diamond Dragon’s body quickly rose up, the crowd of wild boars below had already covered the distance between them, and was now 10 meters away from where the Diamond Dragon had been.

Suo Jia watched, expecting them to charge into each other, but just then…a shocking scene unfolded before him. The wild boars that had crossed the ten meter distance below them suddenly lifted their front hooves and jumped up like arrows, swiftly charging towards the Diamond Dragon.

Although the Diamond Dragon had jumped at a very high speed, its body was too large and heavy after all. In comparison, the wild boars were way faster. Suo Jia watched as the wild boars seemed to transform into piercing arrows that rapidly caught up with the Diamond Dragon in midair, their bodies violently crashing into the Diamond Dragon’s sturdy body.

“Bang! Bang! Bang…” Following a series of muffled bangs, the boars all leapt up and rammed their sharp tusks into the Diamond Dragon’s body. In that moment, the Diamond Dragon lost its center of gravity due to the large number of impacts. Without the ability to fly away or land down on the ground again, its body shuddered under the fierce collisions.

Suo Jia inwardly cursed. Once the Diamond Dragon was defeated, he’d lost its protection, and he’d have to face the impacts from the boars himself. There was no way he’d be able to hold up against more than a few such powerful attacks.

Suo Jia clenched his teeth and suddenly raised the trident up high, instantly activating Hailstone Technique. Only such a move would be enough to change the current situation.

With a surge of blue light…a large mass of blue gathered in the air above Suo Jia, and a ton of ice arrows whizzed downwards from the sky.

Suo Jia’s mind went blank as he stared at the concentrated rain of arrows. This obviously wasn’t the first time he’d used Hailstorm Technique before, but it was completely different this time.

Firstly, in terms of range, the Hailstorm Technique coverage had increased from a 40 meter diameter area to an 80 meter diameter one. In addition, the number of arrows that poured down in the same amount of time had doubled. The effect of the freezing air that these Ice Arrows contained, as well as their flying speed, had all doubled as well!

Suo Jia was completely unable to comprehend what was going on as he stared in shock with Spirit’s Eye at the wild boars being shot down one after another. Their Life Protections continued to shatter while the storm of arrows showed no sign of halting.

Finally, the Hailstorm Technique finished. However, Suo Jia had discovered that, most importantly, apart from the fact that the Hailstorm Technique’s attack range, arrow count, speed, and freezing air effect had increased, the duration of the magic itself had doubled.