Chapter 147 Meet Again

Having mingled around for these days, I finally obtained a new superpower system. This defection from the royal family was worth it.

With the goal of this trip completed, the two did not linger in the mountains. After a hasty night's rest, they set off down the mountain in the early morning and began their journey home.

Both of them had physical qualities far beyond ordinary people, traversing the mountains and forests as if walking on flat ground. Without the burden of guards, they actually moved faster.

They descended the mountain without any major incidents. The two simply disguised themselves slightly and took the main road home.

On the way, Zhou Jing asked Roman about his experience in developing the Gale Spirit, learning from him and starting to train.

As the saying goes, use it or lose it. Frequent use of abilities is the most efficient way to train, while meditation is a daily routine. One is consumption, the other is recovery, complementing each other.

After testing for two or three days, Zhou Jing roughly figured out the training efficiency of the elemental wizard system. Every four to five hours of cumulative use of abilities or meditation could increase development by 1 point.

If one worked hard enough in a day, setting aside time for eating, drinking, and sleeping, and spent fifteen or sixteen hours training, one could probably increase development by 3 points.

At this rate, it would take about a month to accumulate 100 development points and obtain 1 wizard point... but that was on the premise of training for more than ten hours every day.

Once he returned to Roman's base, he would have to fulfill his agreement to manufacture and research potions. It would be impossible to find so much time to train, at most a few hours a day. At that rate, it might take two or three months to obtain 1 wizard point and advance the development of the Gale Spirit.

This was roughly the normal growth rate of a wizard. It might take several years for combat power to take shape.

However, Zhou Jing had activated cultivation acceleration for the "Elemental Wizard" system. After testing it, he found that the efficiency had increased significantly.

Originally, it took four or five hours of training to increase development by 1 point, but under the cultivation acceleration function, it only took an hour at most to increase development by 1 point, shortening the time by eighty or ninety percent.

In this way, as long as he trained hard for a few days, he could obtain 1 wizard point. Even if he had work to do after returning to the base and could only spare a few hours each day, it would only take half a month.

Zhou Jing did not know how other wizards allocated their "skill points," but because he did not have a panel, normal wizards should not be able to visually allocate wizard points, and generally would not max out the level of each ability.

Because wizard points were hard-earned, they could not be fully upgraded.

A normal wizard wanting to unlock the three abilities of a layer and upgrade them all to the highest lv3 level would need 9 wizard points, which would take two or three years of normal cultivation... and based on the mechanism that the cost of cultivation acceleration would gradually increase, Zhou Jing also had reason to believe that as the degree of development deepened, the training time required to obtain wizard points would become longer and longer.

But for a Star Realm Apostle, accelerated cultivation could save a lot of time, and they had the capital to max out the abilities of each layer of the skill tree, thus becoming stronger in combat.

Given a few years, Zhou Jing estimated that Bill's strength could crush most Other-Blood Warriors. As for how strong he could become, it would depend on the upper limit of his aptitude.

On the other hand, in addition to exchanging experiences on wizard cultivation, the two were also investigating the changes in various towns along the way after the tribes became independent.

The empire was still mobilizing troops and had not taken the next step. All the tribes were paying attention to the empire's movements. Even among the common people, there was a tense atmosphere, knowing that war could break out at any moment.

If the empire was willing to accept reality and acknowledge the independence of the tribes, then the flames of war could be extinguished. If it stubbornly insisted on using force to subdue the alliance of independent tribes, then civil war would break out immediately.

The regular armies of the various tribes were basically mobilized and stationed around the towns, training day and night. The stronger tribe leaders had about three thousand troops, including some Other-Blood Warriors, while the weaker leaders had less than a thousand.

The empire's standing army originally numbered in the tens of thousands, but it included many tribal soldiers. Now that the tribes had become independent, the actual number of troops the empire could mobilize had quickly dropped to about twelve thousand.

In terms of superpower strength, the empire had a huge advantage, with one or two thousand imperial hunters. They could easily crush any tribal leader... but the problem was that imperial hunters were not soldiers. Most people were unwilling to violate their principles and raise their butcher knives against humans. Only a small number of people did not mind participating in the civil war.

In addition, the tribes were geographically dispersed. Although the empire had the strength to fight multiple tribes at the same time, it was hesitant to act rashly. Once the war was dragged into the mud, other tribes scattered throughout the land could fully bloom in multiple places, attacking the royal capital and other important imperial strongholds from the rear and sides, affecting the whole situation with a single move.

Currently, the map of the Terra Empire was divided into more than a dozen pieces. The tribes controlled their territories, causing the empire's decrees to be ineffective and losing most of its grassroots control.

On the way back, Zhou Jing discovered that many towns, which were usually bustling with people, had become solemn and desolate. Many people chose to hide in the wilderness to avoid the scourge of war, and lived in clustered villages to keep warm.

Patrols formed by villagers could be seen from time to time in the wilderness, guarding the main roads and wilderness to prevent attacks by alien beasts.

Because the towns could not spare the energy, many villages could only deal with the alien beast threat on their own, so they pooled money to hire alien beast hunters, causing more alien beast hunters to settle in the villages.

Under this situation, some villages experienced a population clustering effect, with more and more people, adding many fortifications, showing a trend of becoming walled villages.

As the saying goes, where there is demand, there is supply. Now, merchants and mercenaries were unwilling to go to the towns, preferring to go to the villages with more opportunities to do business and find work. Many large villages were as lively as the previous towns.

One day, the two passed through a village called Huangmu Village. People came and went, and it had gradually formed the prototype of a walled village.

The two, wearing hoods, entered an inn to eat and rest.

There were many customers in the store, many of whom were passers-by.

As they were eating and drinking, suddenly a commotion came from the street. Many people gathered together, and the clamor came from afar, as if celebrating something.

The two looked out the window and saw several alien beast hunters dragging a huge alien beast corpse, passing through the street, surrounded by a large group of gleeful passers-by.

Zhou Jing suddenly froze.

Roman keenly noticed the change in his expression and asked curiously, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, just ran into two acquaintances."

Zhou Jing's eyes fell on two hunters, one was a bald burly man carrying a giant axe, and the other was a short-haired man carrying a long spear. They were unexpectedly Baron and Weiss, whom he had not seen for a long time.

At the beginning of the White Plains City "farewell," he did not know where the two had gone, and did not inquire too much. Now that he had changed his face, he happened to meet them.

Baron and his party seemed to be injured, and seemed to have just completed a hunt.

Several hunters struggled to put the alien beast corpse in front of the inn, then walked into the store, shouting to buy food, looking very familiar with the store owner.

Zhou Jing's eyes turned, patted the shoulder of the guest at the back table, and asked curiously in the other party's puzzled eyes:

"Are they hunters hired locally?"

This guest was also a local villager, and nodded when he heard the words: "They were originally free hunters. When they passed by, the village chief asked everyone to pool money to hire these people to temporarily garrison the village. They have been here for two months."

This was the southern border of the Northern Territory, far from White Plains City. It seemed that Baron had found a new foothold.

Zhou Jing nodded secretly, but did not intend to meet Baron. Now that his face was different, the other party would not recognize him.

At this time, Baron and other hunters sat down, waiting for food while chatting, without deliberately lowering their voices, and their words floated into Zhou Jing's ears.

"There are not enough regular hunters. The alien beasts ravaging the wilderness are getting more and more numerous. This is the fourth one in the past few days." Weiss took a sip of wine and complained.

Baron shook his head, his face full of disapproval, and said angrily: "The world is really too bad now! More and more hunters don't care about the principles of this profession. They are actually absorbed by various tribes to prepare to fight against other humans, completely forgetting that alien beasts are our biggest enemy!"

"What can we do? Now a large number of workshops have been shut down. Not to mention making money, we can't even find anyone to process the alien beast corpses that we hunt, and they can't be turned into weapons and equipment or Other-Blood potions... It's all the fault of those suddenly independent tribes, who confiscated the workshop resources. Those artisans who originally served the hunters have to focus on maintaining the equipment of the tribal army, and have no energy to process alien beasts for us..."

"Even if there are still some towns that have not changed the purpose of the workshops, the best parts of the alien beasts we hit are made into equipment, but their army enjoys the priority, and we can only get the remaining scraps of equipment, or even give us some money and send us away. Are we short of that little money?"

Several hunters complained one after another.

The situation had changed. In the past, workshops simply served the hunters, and the hunters enjoyed the highest priority. But now, because of the stalemate between the empire and the independent tribes, the tribes could not take care of other things, and urgently needed to improve their strength. So they forced the workshops to take many military orders, and had no time to work for the hunters.

Only hunters who joined the army could continue to enjoy preferential treatment. The tribes could only use their limited productivity on the blade first.

So the previous model of hunters killing alien beasts, and then the workshops making equipment and potions to feed back the hunters in order to sustain the war, was no longer feasible... Now, the biggest thing that hunters who had not joined the army and still adhered to their principles lacked was actually artisan support, otherwise they could not transform their prey into combat power.

Hearing this, Zhou Jing looked at Roman, who was burying his head in eating meat.

"Why are you looking at me?" Roman asked suspiciously.

"I'm thinking about whether there is a way to improve this situation." Zhou Jing stroked his chin and lowered his voice: "Isn't your plan to spread the new Other-Blood potion? Are you interested in taking it a step further?"