Earth’s Best Gamer

There wasn’t a single cloud in the dark sky.

It was a moonless night, and the sky looked like a piece of black cloth that had covered Dragon City.

Hum!

Suddenly, a silver dot appeared in the night sky. It was dim at first but grew brighter and brighter.

It wasn’t alone. More “stars” kept showing up, and the colors ranged from red, orange, and yellow to blue and purple…

They looked like colorful meteor showers and were quickly falling toward the island of Dragon City.

“Roar!”

In the city, the Transcendent Rank-7 golden dragon was over 300m long. It suddenly appeared in the sky above the city and roared.

Because the “meteors” were all made of materialized power of providence.

And it was the power of providence of alien races.

Boom!

The first meteor that crash-landed was a blue one. Its energy immediately covered an area over 1km in radius and created an eerie atmosphere.

The ground then fluctuated like water, and a giant skeleton with green flames burning in their eye sockets crawled onto the surface.

When the second one fell, the brown meteor burst like a water bomb. The “puddles” kept squirming, pulverizing all the soil and trees around it before devouring them. Before long, an entire mountain disappeared.

The third meteor was green. The plants around its landing spot grew frantically. In a few seconds, they grew into a forest with trees that were over 100m tall. Ape-like creatures then jumped down; all of them over 5m tall and holding sticks with their four strong arms.

Electric arcs flickered when the fourth silver-white meteor landed. A vast silver lake formed by liquid metal was then formed.

In the flashing light, high-tech weapons rose out of the lake, looking like 3D models in computer games.

“The Soul race, Sludge Monsters, Forest Monsters, and Metal Men… It seems that they’re all races that we’ve eliminated.”

The images of meteors falling to the ground were shown in the sky of the “dream division” of Dragon City.

In the command center, observers led by Elder Jiao and Li Qing immediately received information of the sub-settlements via SkyNet.

“More precisely, they’re all the races that we’ve eliminated.”

In the images that showed the surrounding areas of the main city, a semi-transparent meteor fell into the sea in the north. Immediately, there was an upsurge of waves, and over a dozen mermen appeared in the sea. A golden meteor landed on the west side of Dragon City, and several yaksha kings with golden wings flew into the sky.

A dark red meteor exploded to the south of Dragon City and formed a few giant monsters with blood-red eyes. The murderous energy they gave off immediately tainted the plants around them and turned them into ferocious monsters as well.

“So, is this the Legendary advancement test? To defeat the vengeful alien races?”

“This is great!”

“We’ve eliminated these alien races before and know their tricks. We’ve defeated them before, and we can do it again…”

“More importantly, we’ve guessed it right!”

After confirming what the alien power of providence had turned into, people in all settlements of Dragon City cheered loudly.

Dragon City had prepared for the possibility that the eliminated races would come back to take their revenge.

Because when Sun Wukong was summoned, the power of providence of rival alien races had all turned into various creatures to interfere with the sacrificial ritual.

The team that Dragon City had set up included a bunch of military heroes in history and an “advancement team” that had a great number of intelligent players. After some discussion, they decided that they couldn’t rule out that the Legendary advancement would be of a similar style.

Judging from the current situation, they had hit the bull’s eye!

Since that was the case, they should have no problem in passing the test, shouldn’t they?

“Well, there are 150 meteors in total… So, we have 150 alien races here.

“From what we saw so far, the number of alien race individuals a meteor can produce ranges from one or two to over 100. Based on my observation, the average is around 62, which gives us just under 10,000 individuals in total.”

The speaker was an old man with a lean face and a goatee. He had very sharp eyes. By watching the sky alone, he was able to come up with those figures.

“Wenyuan is indeed an expert in the sky and numbers. One look is all he needs to see everything!”

Zu Chongzhi, courtesy name Wenyuan, was an ancient mathematician, astronomical calendar scientist, and machinist. He accurately calculated the PI to the seventh decimal place, and the record wasn’t broken by Western mathematicians until a thousand years later.

“We have 20 settlements right now, and that’s about 500 for each settlement, which isn’t too many. I wonder how powerful they are,” said another elderly man, stroking his beard.

He was Zhang Heng, the outstanding astronomer, mathematician, inventor, and geographer of the Eastern Han era as well as the creator of the Celestial Seismograph in Dragon City.

“I hope it won’t be too over the top.”

Their tone was rather relaxed.

Since they had anticipated this type of attack, they had made preparations in advance.

Rather than having to fight all the alien races, they only needed to face over 100 ones, which was much better news.

Moreover, Dragon City had eliminated those races before and knew their tricks. Since Dragon City had defeated them once, they could do it again.

However, when feedback started flowing in, the looks on most people’s faces turned grave.

“What? They’re all Transcendent?”

Yes, although the aliens were of different ranks, they were all Transcendent, and some of them were even Legendary.

“This is outrageous! How are we supposed to fight them all?”

Standing on the blood tree in Lanruo Temple, Mister Bug opened his eyes widely. He had a stack of tattoo stickers in his hands and was about to stick them onto himself.

Although they had figured out the type of the test, they didn’t anticipate how hard it was.

It was a bit insane, wasn’t it?

They had prepared for the battle for three months.

Having transformed all the Honor points and Civilization Coins into resources, Dragon City had almost doubled its Transcendent-level combat capability. There were almost 3,000 members of that level in total, including the entire Giant Dragon race that had surrendered.

That was a great number of members.

They were equivalent to 3,000 human-sized nuclear bombs that could wipe off some small countries.

However, they were still not enough to fight against nearly 10,000 Transcendent aliens.

If the members below the Transcendent level were included, after Dragon City used up the Souls of Civilization dropped by the demons and from the rewards of completing the Road to Legendary, Dragon City had a total population of over two million. In a life-or-death battle like this, everyone counted. If one Transcendent member was worth 1,000 of those who were below that level, Dragon City currently had the combat capability of about 5,000 Transcendent members.

5,000 vs 10,000.

That didn’t seem to be too huge a gap.

After all, Dragon City was on the defensive side and had made preparations in advance.

In actual ancient times, it would be very difficult for an attacking force twice the size of the defending one to take down a well-protected city.

Dragon City shouldn’t be too disadvantageous. They might even have some advantage.

Because of Ji Ye, the Transcendent members of Dragon City were all extremely capable.

Even some ordinary members had weapons that could threaten Transcendent enemies. For instance, nuclear bombs.

Obviously, the maths didn’t work that way.

Any Transcendent creature had the ability to affect the entire battle.

Dragon City had too few Transcendent members. Even if all of them could fight two enemies at once, the remaining Transcendent aliens would still have enough power to destroy all the settlements of Dragon City.

The difficulty level had more than tripled that of facing the Four Great Villains in the advancement test to the Transcendent level.

Back then, the overall strength of the four villains doubled that of Dragon City.

But there weren’t any Transcendent powers involved, so Dragon City could adopt a huge-crowd strategy. The four villain forces were all from the Human race and had internal strife. Eventually, they were defeated one by one.

But these aliens were different. They were here to take revenge and kill.

Fighting an all-Transcendent force meant that the huge-crowd strategy would have very limited effect. On the contrary, the great population of Dragon City would become their weak spot.

The power of providence wouldn’t protect all of them. With the great number of enemies, the Transcendent heroes couldn’t protect them either.

Hundreds of thousands or even millions of people could die in this battle, and most of them wouldn’t have enough contribution points to “revive” themselves.

In other words, even if Dragon City could win, they would suffer a great loss.

“This is too difficult. It’s not a test but an annihilation.”

The alien races were still transforming and hadn’t started the attack yet, but after the news got around, everyone felt the pressure.

The less capable members were even filled with despair.

They had thought that after summoning Sun Wukong, the Quasi-Mythological hero, they wouldn’t have much trouble in passing this test.

The chance of having Sun Wukong stopping hundreds of Transcendent enemies was very low.

Hum!

Just then, they saw more dots of light in the sky.

“Seriously? More?”

“Are all eliminated alien races in this stage going to come here, even if we don’t do it ourselves?”

Everyone was talking on the SkyNet channel, and even some members of the management team couldn’t stay calm anymore.

“The ‘a hundred’ in ‘A Hundred Vying Barges’ was only an indefinite denotation, and the total number was over 500. But the number now is already beyond Dragon City’s capacity. If all the alien races come here to take their revenge, we can only conclude that the Land of Inheritance has the intention for a settlement to reach Legendary.”

“Wait. Look!”

“The color of the power of providence! Those are from the Human race!”

Some players noticed something.

Unlike the colorful “meteors” of alien races, the incoming “stars” give off yellow light that belonged to the Human race’s power of providence. As they moved closer, the players saw that they were of different shapes.

Some of them looked like a scroll of parchment and some looked like a four-wheeled chariot or unicorn. Some even resembled angels or spaceships.

“I think they’re the projects of other Human settlement cores!” said Elder Meng.

He was usually in charge of collecting information from maps.

That was to say, the stars in the sky represented the existing Earth settlements in the Land of Inheritance.

“There are 149 in total!”

Together with Dragon City, the number was the same as that of the “vengeful” alien races.

Why did they come here though?

Could it be…

“Look! One of them had landed!”

While members of Dragon City were still speculating, one of the “stars” jolted in the sky and fell down like the alien “meteors”.

Boom!

But it didn’t explode on the ground. Instead, it stopped above Dragon City.

It looked like a giant human-face mask but with some variations. It looked more like the face of a robot.

“Why does it look familiar?”

“I’ve seen it somewhere before!”

Players nearby had run up to the altar and studied this settlement core.

Boom!

A few seconds later, a giant shadow drove out of the mask-shaped projection.

It was a giant red-and-blue heavy truck. Although it was a piece of machine, every bit of it gave off the energy of a living organism.

“It’s a living machine. Has some alien race turned into a villain and entered our core?”

“No. That’s the sign of the Autobots!”

Crack!

After the heavy truck drove out of the mask-shaped settlement core, it made a series of sounds and turned into a giant red-and-blue robot that was over ten meters tall.

Many large-caliber barrels appeared from its compartment.

“Holy crap! It’s Optimus Prime!”

Many players cried out.

“Cybertron is here to help Dragon City!”

Optimus’ majestic voice had a metallic quality to it.

In fact, it was indeed a leader-level figure.

[Optimus Prime]

[Level: Transcendent Rank-6]

[Rarity: Legendary]

[Description: One of the most outstanding characters in the history of Autobots and Transformers. He is brave, kind, responsible, and has a sense of justice. He is a great warrior, a dutiful leader, and a loyal friend!]

“Cybertron. That’s an Ameagle settlement.”

“Reinforcement? They’re here to give us a hand!”

One after another, Autobots walked out of the projection of the settlement core. There was Bumblebee, Ironhide, Sideswipe, Rollbar, Jazz… All of them gave off the energy of the Transcendent level.

“Our settlement has completed the Road to Legendary task and cleared out all the alien settlements, so we thought we could come here to aid you and have a taste of what a Legendary test would be like,” said a human voice.

A young man wearing earrings and with platinum hair jumped off Bumblebee’s arm.

Seeing the Dragon City members that gathered around them, the young man smiled and greeted them.

“What did he say?”

Some heroes that had just arrived didn’t know much English.

“He’s Robert, the top player of Ameagle. I heard that he reached Legendary a month ago.

“His talent seems to be transforming any living creature to a mechanical form,” said Su Nongying on the SkyNet channel.

At the current stage, almost every day, star players that had been on the live stream would be reincarnated in Dragon City.

Because of that, Dragon City made a list of such players. After all, such players usually have special talents and good potential.

“He has reached Transcendent Rank-6 and carries five Legendary objects.”

Li Qing’s talent had reached the Transcendent level, enabling him to see the target’s skills and equipment.

That was impressive. Including heroes, Dragon City had fewer than ten Transcendent Rank-6 members with a Legendary evaluation, and most of them didn’t have that many Legendary objects.

“I wonder if Master Ji is here.”

The young man smiled and looked around for Ji Ye.

“Do you mean Mr. Ye?”

“We’d like to meet the top player from Earth too!”

Several other players jumped off the Transformers. They were of different skin colors and all looked intrigued. Every one of them was Transcendent Rank-5 and above.

“Master Ji is in a Dream. You’ll be able to meet him soon.”

Seeing that the visitors were probing, Guo Wei, the first member of the management team to arrive at the scene, took off his high-tech glasses and wiped them with a piece of cloth.

He looked at the players and spoke in a suggestive tone.

“Wait. Something’s not right.”

One of the Cybertron players sensed something, and one of his eyes lit up like a robot as he looked into the distance.

He scanned the area around the altar with the red light, but nothing seemed to be out of the place.

Then the scene began to change on the altar the way a new location was loaded in a computer game. A dream-like city unfolded. In it were buildings from different civilizations such as pyramids and the Notre Dame, as well as flying boats and UFOs that only existed in sci-fi novels.

“Is this an illusion?”

The Ameagle players were surprised.

They had been pulled into a different space.

“Look!”

They saw that the city was an island floating in the sky, and a semi-transparent silver dragon with six wings had wrapped its wings around the city.

“Is that the Legendary Queen and Dream Dragon?”

A settlement as advanced as Cybertron certainly had its ways to obtain information.

Because of that, they immediately noticed the Transcendent Rank-6 silver Giant Dragon in the sky. Not only was it a Legendary creature, but it also had a dense power of providence around it.

This meant that it was a Giant Dragon player and a Child of Providence with talent skills of the Perfect level and above.

However, such a Giant Dragon was the mount of the person in the sky.

Although Cybertron had also completed the Road to Legendary task, they weren’t able to subdue another race.

The man standing on the silver dragon’s head seemed tiny in comparison to the dragon and the city, but when they focused on him, they felt as if he were the only person existing in this world.

The pressure the man gave them exceeded that of a Transcendent Rank-7 Blood Tribe king, who was their last enemy in the task, and they lost over 10,000 people in the battle.

“Is he Transcendent Rank-7 or Rank-8?”

The Cybertron players looked at one another and lost their initial confidence.

“So, this is what a top player looks like.”

Although the look on Robert’s face was equally brave, he wasn’t going to admit his defeat. Because of his talent, his combat capability wasn’t limited by his actual level.

“I see.”

Soon, Dragon City learned from the Cybertron players of what was going on.

When the “meteors” of the alien races appeared in the sky, the rest of the Earth settlements in the Land of Inheritance received the news as well.

Each settlement could send out some people to help Dragon City with the advancement test.

As a reward, if Dragon City succeeded, their settlements would receive a prize as well.

Of course, they could choose to be an onlooker, but correspondingly, when they faced the advancement test to Legendary, Dragon City wouldn’t offer any help either.

“So, this is the key to this advancement test,” said Elder Meng in a brooding voice.

The alien races were too powerful for Dragon City to fight alone, and reinforcements were needed.

All settlements that had reached this far should be powerful enough to participate in the battle.

But they might not choose to participate in this battle.

Most of these settlements hadn’t completed the Road to Legendary task, which meant that they still had powerful enemies they needed to face. If they sent out troops to help Dragon City and their enemies learned this information, those settlements might be under attack, which could lead to their downfall.

“So, we won’t know how many settlements will be willing to help us.

“To some extent, it’s a test on an entire civilization as well…” Elder Meng sounded concerned.

In reality, Earth was in a panic-stricken state when the news of the Great Darkness went around. Many countries and governments had lost control over their people, and the regiments were on the verge of collapsing. Some ambitious players might even be behind this.

Even the confederate government might not be able to organize a reinforcement for Dragon City.

Needless to say, this was the most difficult test for the Earth civilization since the start of the Land of Inheritance.