Chapter 48

A leap of more than 700 ranks also signified a drastic increase in their opponent’s combat power.

However, it did not matter how great it had increased. Faced with Alice’s combat power, they too were extinguished within a single turn.

255 diamonds, 200 prestige points, and 2 credit points.

The total amount of diamonds had increased to 509 pieces, Lin Ke felt that he was rich!

After that, the opponent they faced was a team that ranked a little more than 2,100 in the leaderboard.

Although it was only a leap of 400 ranks this time, the pressure was beginning to mount for the team.

A slight, insignificant pressure.

Alice could still instantly kill the tank of the enemy team, but when it came to her group attack, there were two NPCs who still managed to survive after.

Although the remaining survivors were quickly finished by the rest of Lin Ke’s team shortly after, it revealed that Alice’s offensive power was becoming insufficient.

When faced with higher-ranked opponents, she could no longer instantly kill the entire team on her own.

“Urr… ” Lin Ke hesitated for a moment before standing up, “Hold on, I’ll upgrade your Equipment.”

He prepared for the upgrades as he finished speaking. Unfortunately, he could only complete two levels of upgrades before a revelation hit him – he had not researched the technology required in the Research Institution.

The Equipment Chain was still not unlocked and he could not obtain the Stats Bonus.

Lin Ke immediately made his way to the Research Institution. Fortunately, it was not too far away and he could reach the destination after a short walk.

In the Research Institution, there was only one technology that was available for research. It was specifically Equipment Chain technology.

The first level of Equipment Chain function enabled him to achieve a certain Stats enhancement once a set of all 6 equipment were upgraded to Level 10.

Lin Ke initiated his research right away. He was pleased when he saw the duration needed to complete the research.

The time needed to research on the first level of Equipment Chain was a mere 5 minutes. Compared to the vast amount of time taken for constructions, it was considered short and sweet.

Lin Ke returned to the arena and decided to upgrade the Equipment to full levels first. By then, the research would probably be completed.

Upgrading Equipment was a puzzling task.

He saw that it took only a few hundreds of silver to upgrade one of his Equipment and proceeded to level it up until the maximum level of 30 – but as Lin Ke’s own level increased, so was the cap for his Equipment’s levels. After that, he was dumbfounded.

He had spent more than 46,000 silver.

All for one Equipment!

Whereas for a single hero to upgrade her equipment set to its fullest level, the combined prices of 6 Equipment would cost more than 280,000 silver!

This was only for an upgrade of one member’s Equipment set!

If he were to do the same for every member of his team… Lin Ke counted the Silver in his possession and let out a helpless smile.

He thought that having more than a million silver was equivalent to being filthy rich, the truth was he did not even have enough to upgrade his Equipment!

‘Bloody hell!’ Lin Ke cursed from within. He decided to first max out the Equipment levels for two of his heroes.

One was for Alice, another was for Dra.

They were both Dark-gold Grade heroes, having these Equipment on them would bring greater benefits.

Whereas for the rest, Lin Ke could only feel bad and apologize. His resources were limited and had to maximize its utility amongst limited people in the group.

Maybe when the time was ripe, he would upgrade the equipment sets of the rest to Level 10 so that they could all benefit from the Bonus Stat of Level 1 Equipment Chain.

This way, he would not need to splurge on many resources to benefit from a decent amount of Stats increase.

After spending 560,000 silver, Alice and Dra’s powers instantly shot up.

To what extent their capabilities had objectively increased, Lin Ke did not know. However, from the number of resources Lin Ke had spent, if their capabilities had only increased onefold, it would be considered insignificant.

Level 1 Equipment Chain had been achieved, whereas the bonus stats from Level 2 Equipment Chain could also be achieved by similarly leveling an equipment set to Level 20. However, it was still unobtainable at the moment as the Research Institution required upgrading, so that research of higher-level technologies for Equipment Chains could be unlocked.

With Alice now stronger, her damage became even more terrifying. In her first turn during the challenge, she wiped out all members of an opponent team that ranked 1820.

This time, the diamond rewards were lesser. It was probably due to the fact that Lin Ke had ascended slightly in the leaderboard compared to before, he only received a little more than 40 diamonds in that round.

After 5 challenges, Lin Ke’s team had risen to more than 1600th rank on the leaderboard. Aside from his profit of diamonds and prestige points, he had also accumulated a total of 10 credit points.

Lin Ke had always been puzzled about the purpose of the credit points, it was then that he got his answer.

An envelope image appeared before him, Lin Ke chose to read it and earned some rewards.

The reason for the reward was simple, it was because he had earned a total of 10 credit points that day in the arena.

The reward items were decent, there were 500 prestige points and a chest containing 2 heroes’ Soul Shards.

One was for a Blue Grade hero whereas the other was for a Green Grade hero, both grades were not considered high. The heroes Soul Shards entered Lin Ke’s heroes pool, waiting to be summoned once enough Soul Shards were collected.

Relying on Alice’s brutal damage output, Lin Ke found it rare to meet an opponent team that was capable of defending themselves. It was only until the 7th round when Lin Ke’s team was ranked more than 1000, that he finally met an opponent team that could not be instantly defeated in a single round.

His opponent’s capability grew stronger each time, so was the time taken to defeat them.

In the end, Lin Ke’s team still stood victorious.

Now, each time Lin Ke selected from a list of teams he could challenge, the gap between his team’s rank and the highest-ranked opponent team was slightly more than 100 ranks away. This gap grew closer as he became one of the top 1000 ranked teams.

When he finished consuming all 10 free passes, Lin Ke’s team was ranked 820th.

Having earned 20 credit points, Lin Ke was rewarded with another 500 prestige points and 2 heroes’ Soul Shards.

Being ranked at 820th place, he was satisfied with his team’s position on the leaderboard.

The ranking was not to be underestimated. Although it would reward him every day with only 20 diamonds, this reward would be accompanied by an additional amount of 20,000 silver.

This was already an impressive number.

One must take note that Lin Ke’s income from his dormitory had only reached this number at that moment!

Furthermore, after 10 rounds of battles, Lin Ke earned a profitable amount of diamonds; a total of more than 1,100 pieces of diamonds. All he needed to do now was to consider how he would spend this amount.

Although this rank was still not the final one for Lin Ke’s team, he felt that he would soon hit a bottleneck.

The opponent teams that he faced currently had team compositions of a mixture of Blue Grade and Purple Grade heroes. It was already sufficient to cause casualties in his team.

That was right, as one of his team’s tanks, Lin Ke had started to face situations where he would be instantly killed by his enemy team.

The reason was simple – his Equipment set was not upgraded and was still at Level 1. That pitiful amount of stats, when combined with his own low amount of levels, was sure to spell death quickly when faced with an enemy team that was at least Level 15 on average. Even with his healer present in the backline, she was not able to restore Lin Ke’s health in time before he was dead.

Besides, Lucy’s Compassionate Skill did not work as he expected. It was a unit-targeted skill and could only last for a single round. The effect would also disappear as soon as she was attacked.

What a tricky situation!

It was different from what Lin Ke witnessed in battle at dusk. In that battle, once Lucy had cast Compassionate Skill onto Dra, she could withstand multiple attacks without the effects vanishing. Obviously, there was a distinct difference between what happened in the arena and in reality.

Hence, in the last few battles, Lin Ke swapped Lucy for Avina and saw that his team’s performance instantly improved.

Avina’s strong offensive power had compensated for Lucy’s weakness. There was a clear improvement in his team’s combat power.

It seemed that the only measuring stick of heroes in the arena were their grades.