Seized by the System

Inside Vigilante A’s farm villa.

Brett the Black Dog picked up the call from Fang Ning and immediately executed his requests without hesitation.

He felt pleased and started loitering around. He walked all over the house before deliberately stopping in front of the aquarium situated in the main hall.

He held up its Dragon God branded summoning phone and said, “Dragon carp, since you said you are a disciple of the Dragon Clan’s leader in the upper realm, you must be knowledgeable. Do you have any idea what I am holding right now?”

The dragon carp whipped its tail before answering, “What’s so special about a stupid handphone? Do you think I am slacking after I descended? Those in the Zhao family were on their phones all the time. I even saw many others that are a few times more luxurious than the one you are holding right now.”

Brett the Black Dog sneered at the dragon carp, “You are an idiot for someone who claimed to have learned under the leader of the Dragon Clan. All you do is bullshit about your own wisdom. This is not just a stupid handphone. This is the treasure to summon our Dragon God!! Even the upper realm will never have such a treasure with similar functions!”

He pointed to the call button on the phone and said proudly, “See this button right here? My owner told me this button is, what he calls, a Cloud-Piercing Arrow for a thousand cavalry. When I press this button, my owner will rush to my side regardless of where he is or what he is doing. This handphone is specially made for me only. Even Yellow Boss doesn’t have one.”

The dragon carp was utterly shocked when it heard the function of the handphone. It swam around for a moment.

It couldn’t sense if the handphone the dog was holding was as powerful as it mentioned since it lost all its magical power when it descended.

However, through the years as a disciple, it learned to read facial expressions, and it realized that the stupid dog was telling the truth.

That ability was imprinted into its brain, and it didn’t need to spend any magical energy to activate it.

‘Ai, after trying to figure out for so long, the True Dragon Lord doesn’t favor anyone in this house, including the butler who is always smiling, the wise old yellow dog, the white hamster that appears randomly while chewing on chestnuts, or that great green insect that keeps coming for food.

‘This puny and idiotic black dog is the one he actually likes.

‘No wonder the True Dragon Lord didn’t really pay attention to me all this while. I am proving to be too clever for his liking. He must be the kind of boss that favors underlings with no mental capabilities.

‘I already met a few people like him before this. Some of those leaders in the upper realm also preferred to pick these stupid and honest people as their prodigies…’

As it realized the truth, it took a few breaths underwater and said respectfully, “Looks like brother Brett gained a lot of trust from the True Dragon Lord. You must have made some significant contributions and completed your work with flying colors to receive such a positive treatment from him.”

Brett the Black Dog was indulging itself in the pool of praise he was receiving. It had been a while since the last time he received such a compliment.

He wagged his tail, but replied with a straight face, “It’s nothing too glorious. Basically, whenever my owner travels away from home to clear out the monsters, he will bring me along. I had traveled around the world looking at our master being the hero for mankind. I am considered the most knowledgeable in this house.”

The dragon carp had no intention in stopping and continued to lick Brett’s shoes. At that moment, it no longer held back its praises and compliments.

It also threw its noble background and the fact that it was a true dragon before it descended out of the window for that…

…

System Notification: [Brett the Black Dog is currently in a life-threatening situation in Qi City. Activating the skill Thousand-mile Assistance.]

Sir System quickly regain control of Vigilante A and walked into the faintly lit portal. Fang Ning the White Dragon followed suit.

By then, Long Fan was the only person left behind on the deserted island, and it was stunned by what it saw.

It was confused by their action. Even though it mentioned that inside the portal lived a great demon lord, yet both the Venerable Dragon God and Venerable White Dragon were looking more eager than before?

However, it quickly realized what was happening. It shook its head while mocking itself, “Ai, seems to me I am now similar to the squirrel inside the story A Little Horse Crossing the River ¹ . The area I feel is too deep for me might be nothing for the others.”

After mocking itself, it coiled onto a piece of wood and waited for the others to return.

…

Fang Ning entered the portal behind Sir System and understood the reason Long Fan dashed out from the place and insisted that there was a great demon lord inside the area.

The air was greyish and was filled with black gas flowing around the places. The air felt like it was alive and was ready to devour anyone it could get its hand on.

The black air caused the visibility to decrease dramatically, but he could still see the area clearly thanks to the System.

All he saw was black sand. The black sand that covered the area was flowing throughout the area like it had it was alive as well. It would send shivers down the spine of anyone who saw it.

Fang Ning saw that among the black sand, there were a few spots that were white in color.

As the surrounding was black, the white spots looked striking as it contrasted the background. He thought of a scary theory that might explain the presence of those white spot, but he decided to keep it to himself.

A distance away was a few hills made of the black sand. Even though they couldn’t see what was happening behind the hills, they could barely hear something being killed brutally.

“Is this the Land of Demonic Energy?” Fang Ning remembered the report generated by Anderson and asked.

Through the abilities they ² gathered and listed out, there was one that was related to a cultivation training in absorbing Demonic Energy, and they thoroughly described the properties of such energy.

Demonic Energy was classified under the same category as Yin Energy. They were both types of elemental energy present in the world.

The Demonic Energy had a special property, where it could aggressively infiltrate and disseminate the mental resilience of any human and guide them onto the path of demonization. Whoever that had a weaker mental resistance would turn and become mentally distorted. In conclusion, such energy had the ability to change a completely sane human into a crazy one.

Most importantly, it could significantly increase the strength and improve the physique of its target almost instantly.

For normal elemental energy, it required the user to take the initiative to absorb it and convert it into magical energy to improve their strength and power level.

However, the Demonic Energy worked differently. It not only able to penetrate the human body, it could transform the victim even if the victim never wanted to. If the target willingly accepted the energy, the cultivation time would be greatly reduced.

By itself, it could push the vitality cultivation proficiency of its liking to the next level.

Vitality cultivation proficiency is further divided into two categories. The sensitivity of the person towards vitality, as well as the vitality absorption efficiency of the person.

That meant that it could work along with its target’s innate absorption efficiency and improve the speed of vitality absorption from B-rank to A-rank, or A-rank to S-rank. Even those that were born without such proficiency would be pushed to F-rank through this energy.

That was the reason that made it more volatile compared to others.

However, there weren’t many such places in the world. Most of the areas had a calmer and balanced vitality without special properties.

There were only a few places that, under the presences of the right time and right factors, could be converted either to Yin Energy or Demonic Energy.

Even though Yin Energy and Demonic Energy are classified as a type of energy like those previously mentioned such as the morality, murderous intent, or death aura, the latter ones were created through the mentality of humans and cannot be included into the family of elemental energies.

Basically, those latter ones required the presence of lives to be manifested and cannot be created out of nothing.

Whereas Yin Energy and Demonic Energy were both advance forms of energy converted from the original vitality, so the presence of lives had no effect on the creation of such energies.

After the creation of such energies, they would go on and gather life forms that favored such energies and went on to produce more such energy from vitality, and both the life forms and the energies will co-exist in a mutualistic relationship.

Fang Ning recalled that information and became more alert, ‘The chances that a great demon lord doesn’t reside in such a place is close to none.’

Sir System understood his doubt and replied, “Richman Host has gotten wiser nowadays. This should be Demonic Energy in its purest form. No normal demons can possess such energy. I believe that the massacre happening at there must be between the great demon lord that Long Fan mentioned and something else. Let us hurry.”

Fang Ning quickly warned, “We should try to keep our presence a secret…”

System replied, “I don’t need you to tell me that…”

Fang Ning was speechless. He realized that he was just worried about nothing since Sir System was a renowned powerhouse.

A moment later, Vigilante A hid behind one of the sandhills while observing the battle happening on the other side of the sand hills.

There were a group of white men surrounded by the black gas wearing black camouflages. There were around thirty of them and all of them were Pond level powerhouses.

The person they were attacking was a huge man holding a great sword.

Even though the man was at the peak of Pond level, his attacks were skillful and didn’t felt like it had any weakness. His attacks were sequential, and each hit was enough to take the life of one enemy. He was moving like a butterfly but stung like a bee.

He was so skillful with the sword and the power he demonstrated was on point… Yet Fang Ning just calmly commented that it was nothing impressive. He saw similar things many times prior to that, and he felt that the moves Sir System was performing were better than what he was doing.

The thirty white men were not weaklings as well. All their attacks were equally deadly. Every strike they made were followed by a trail of thick black mist, and even the slightest contact would cause a deep injury, while a solid contact would easily take one’s life.

However, none of their attacks managed to land on the huge man.

From time to time, someone would jump out from their formation and attempted to activate area attacks, but every single time the huge man would correctly predict their movement and hid among the deepest area among the black sands. By then, their attacks would fail, and there were a couple of times they almost hurt their allies.

The confusing part was that he didn’t seem to be affected by the rich Demonic Energy concentrated inside the black sands.

Fang Ning connected the events to the information he received from Ren Ruofeng and said, “Looks like those white men must be part of the soldiers from the States that set up their camp just outside. They planned to take this area for themselves and must be trying to cultivate Demonic Energy in secret and create their own group of demonic powerhouses.”

Demonic Energy was a dangerous element in the world. It could guide its victim to the path of demons with its innate evilness and manipulation power.

Even so, what harm could this energy do to such a nation? This is a country that pushed the usage of toxic gases and bioweapons, which were not much better compared to the Demonic Energy. Yet, they were still carrying out their researches in broad daylight and further weaponized them against other humans.

For them, the only thing they cared about was the ability to rapidly increase their strength through the use of such Demonic Energy.

In the new era where new threats were appearing frequently, the people from the States will never ever just lock away such a resource without trying to exploit its special properties for their own good, especially something that could improve their power in such a short time.

As for the potential for such a plan to backfire, they believed that even though the weapons they researched also carried a huge risk, they were still using them without hesitation. So long as they could sustain the damage resulting from the plan going wrong, they wouldn’t worry too much since they were a huge country in the world.

Fang Ning finished saying his thoughts, but Sir System didn’t reply for a while. Just as he was feeling confused, a loud music appeared out of nowhere right next to his ears…

‘Oh my, Sir System is getting excited again.’

Even though that area was yet to be revealed in the System Map, Fang Ning believed that through the number of white spots among the black sands, they could conclude that those people in front of them were coded in red.

Everyone who walked the path and trained with Demonic Energy would’ve killed a few innocent lives prior to that.

That was one of the points Anderson pointed out regarding the Demonic Energy.

How long had it been since the last time they encountered a Pond-level Powerhouse coded in red?

It would be at least four weeks since the last time…

The thirty-plus men got confused by the music and stopped their attacks. They looked towards the sand hill where the music originated.

The huge man stopped as well and got out of the battle.

Yet, he looked calmer compared to the others like he had expected it all this while. He just stood by the side and waited for someone to appear.

…

At the same time, inside an army camp located deep below the black sand inside that mysterious space.

A group of white men made up of different ages were looking nervously at a big screen which was showing the incident above them.

They were the group of people who organized the riot that disrupted the formation of the Alliance of Justice and Order previously.

“Vigilante A came as well? Why didn’t he arrive earlier?”

“That’s right. If he could’ve just arrived earlier, he would have managed to stop that crazy man instead of letting him continue his rampage on our men who were situated in our Hell Island Military Base!! Our Demonic Space would also remain a secret if we didn’t need to send our Demon Generals to fight him.”

The superiors from the States started complaining without realizing that earlier they had just tried their best in stopping Vigilante A from becoming the leader of the Alliance of Justice and Order, while continued to devalue his effort.

“It is all your fault hiding our base from him just to prevent him from identifying our bases. He must’ve thought that this place is deserted when he flew past, so of course, he wouldn’t pay much attention to us…” some of the superiors continued their criticisms.

There was a saying since the older days where those in power would focus on the short-term goals instead of thinking about the future. They never realized that through their continuous criticisms and defensive mindset, they lost the protection provided by him in the process.

Sit System mentioned previously that the reason why it never patrolled the area as often as others were that the friendliness attribute of that area was increasing at a slower rate compared to the other areas it was handling. That was also thanks to their work behind its back.

These bunch of superiors was using any information they could obtain and frequently villainized Vigilante A within the local communities.

It was an easy task defaming someone in the current era. It was not difficult to magnify and over-analyze every single misstep that a hero or a philanthropist took in their lives.

“I am still curious though. This maniac managed to discover Hell Island and was certain that we are trying to utilize the Demonic Energy concentrated here. How did he sense it?”

“True. The Hell Island Military Camp is being kept as a secret using our latest disguising technology. Even Vigilante A who flew over from time to time didn’t notice us with his Heaven’s Eye. Plus, our men never left the Demonic Space. No matter how I try to think, I still feel that it is nearly impossible for us to reveal ourselves so easily.”

“Damn it. We just need another month to pass over the trusteeship of such a location to another private organization. By then we will remove our direct connection with this area without compromising our source of Demon Generals, which are required to develop our own Land of Heritage.”

While the others were feeling depressed and confused, a calm voice appeared.

“We don’t need to be so negative right now. Isn’t this the right time for such a thing to happen? Everyone was praising and saying how strong Vigilante A is, so shouldn’t we take this opportunity to really test out the strength of our own Demon Generals? This is the chance for us to gather valuable information for our future work, and we can never buy such an opportunity.”

“I agree with you. Order the others to be prepared for data mining work. I need them to produce a complete analysis report on both the Vigilante A and our Demon Generals.”

As the order reached everyone on duty inside the Black Sand Military Base, the camp started working.