"But there's no doubt that the Witch Demon Mage and Makarov are soulmates, or should I say, partners in crime (literally, 'the best criminal buddies')..."

Of course, Zhang Yanhang wasn't actually suggesting there was a romantic relationship between the Witch Demon Mage and Makarov. That would be highly improbable. He mainly thought that if that unfortunate Alchemist from before had even ten percent of the Witch Demon Mage's reliability, Makarov never would have ended up in his current predicament. It just goes to show how crucial it is to choose the right partner at the startup stage of any venture.

"And even though the Witch Demon Mage is already so badass, he still needed Makarov's help to build his Mage Tower, which goes to show another truth: without initial capital or an angel investor, the dream of starting your own business with a hundred percent of the shares is just a pipe dream."

Well, all these truths have nothing to do with Zhang Yanhang, after all. If things were normal, even without the resurgence of Spiritual Qi, he wouldn't go into business but would more likely become a thirty-year-old bald man, laid off by thirty-five, and worked to death by a heartless company by forty, laughable really, as if he'd ever live to see retirement.

It was also because he was so pessimistic about the life of a programmer that Zhang Yanhang always dreamed of retiring, aiming to retire quickly as soon as his strength met his standards. As for what exactly those standards would be, that remains uncertain, but at the very least, he would have to reach the level where he could shatter God with one punch, right? Otherwise, how could he retire in peace?

"This time, the 'Flame God's Blessing' directly scored a perfect 680 points at Orange quality, and I have to say, Makarov's forging skills are truly impressive. Or should I say, his advanced training results are quite remarkable.

Orange quality's score range is between 531-680, which is a 150-point scoring interval. That's a sizable increase from the previous 90-point scoring interval for Golden and Dark Golden qualities, with an increase of sixty points."

Zhang Yanhang had initially thought that if Orange quality still required only ninety points to fill, then his 'Flame God's Crown' might have been directly enhanced to a level above Orange quality. But now, it seems that was just wishful thinking. It might not even reach the medium score of Orange quality.

"Of course, the most important thing is the additional attributes. This time, the Orange quality 'Flame God's Blessing' provided me with a 60% Movement Speed enhancement, almost catching up to half of my SS-ranked Talent 'Ocean Rhythm.' Orange quality truly lives up to its name—it's ridiculously powerful."

Zhang Yanhang remembered that even after upgrading his 'Ocean Rhythm' Talent to SS-rank, it only provided a 135% increase in Movement Speed enhancement. It just showed that his 'Ocean Rhythm' Talent was currently a bit under-leveled and needed to be further improved.

Unfortunately, Zhang Yanhang didn't have the time to do so at the moment. Moreover, he hadn't found the relevant area, so he could only put it aside for now and deal with it after cleaning up the abandoned transmission channel in the Raccoon City sewers across from that area.

Besides additional attributes, Zhang Yanhang also noticed that the 'Flame God's Blessing' had a Usage requirement of seventy-five Agility, which he could still comfortably use.

Of course, even if the requirement were higher, it wouldn't really matter. After all, he wouldn't need to engage in any fights soon, and he was about to get a Promotion in Rank. So it wouldn't be a problem, not even if it were eighty-five or ninety-five points; he would easily meet the requirements by that time.

"So, I chose 'Divination Tarot Card·Sun[Fake] (Gate of Truth)', '9 Legendary Essences', '9 Ash Sources', 'Divination Tarot Card - Pope[Weak] (Gate of Truth)', and 'Flame God's Blessing'."

After reviewing all the options, Zhang Yanhang quickly made his final choice, and the Time Pause instantly disappeared, but since there were still eighty-two Drop treasure boxes that needed to be opened, Zhang Yanhang quickly picked up another Drop treasure box.

October 30, Friday, five days after the Double Ninth Festival, was still Zhang Yanhang's first day in the Ashen World, 2:45 AM, Ashen World, Crimson Iron Ore Vein, Large Crimson Iron Ant Nest Talano, Core Area, Lord Monster Crimson Iron Queen Ant's Nest.

Since there weren't many treasure boxes, Zhang Yanhang took less than five minutes to open them all. After opening the treasure boxes, he immediately began tallying the related earnings, starting with Talent Earnings, which, while not the most important, was still very important.

This time, Zhang Yanhang opened a total of eighty-three C-grade Talents "Mystic Steed Power", and after upgrading his XX-grade Talent "Longbo's power", he had one hundred ninety-five Mystic Steed Power left in his Waist Bag. The two combined totaled two hundred seventy-eight Mystic Steed Power, not a lot, in fact, quite little.

"XX-grade Longbo's power, if you want to continue to upgrade it, you need a total of 59,049 E-grade Talents Ant Power, and converted into C-grade Mystic Steed Power, that still requires 6,561 Mystic Steed Power to upgrade Longbo's power to the XXX level.

So, the two hundred seventy-eight Mystic Steed Power I have now are not even close to a twentieth of that, let alone the tail end of six, it barely covers about 4% of the progress and is only a drop in the bucket overall.

And to gather 6,561 Mystic Steed Power, based on the normal probability of killing nineteen Crimson Iron Destruction Ants or Crimson Iron Flame Ants to drop a treasure box, I would need to kill nearly one hundred thirty thousand of the Second Tier Large Crimson Iron Ants, which is more than twice the designated number of the Large Crimson Iron Ant Nest Talano.

Moreover, this is because I am currently at the Third Tier; once I am promoted to the Fourth Tier later, due to the Rank Penalty, the treasure box drop rate when I kill these Crimson Iron Destruction Ants and Crimson Iron Flame Ants is likely to drop to one treasure box for every thirty kills.

At that point, I would need to kill nearly two hundred thousand Second Tier Large Crimson Iron Ants to gather enough, which is more than three times the total designated number of Large Crimson Iron Ants in the Large Crimson Iron Ant Nest Talano."

Therefore, from the current situation, it's completely unrealistic for Zhang Yanhang to rely on the slow, automatic refresh of the Large Crimson Iron Ant Nest Talano to gather those 6,561 Mystic Steed Power.

Thus, the only way to continue upgrading the XX-grade Talent Longbo's power to the XXX level is to find new areas related to Ant Power or Mystic Steed Power to hunt, and the number of monsters in the new area must be sufficient, otherwise, it won't meet the upgrade requirements.

However, Zhang Yanhang does not currently have the time to find and clear new areas, so it will have to wait until later, at least he won't be clearing any new areas before he is promoted.

After tallying the Talent earnings, Zhang Yanhang quickly moved on to tally the Equipment earnings.

Or perhaps it's better to say that since Zhang Yanhang didn't get any artifacts from the Lord's Treasure Chest this time, his only gains were Talent and Equipment. Aside from that, there was no presence of weapons, artifacts, materials, or pets.

As for the equipment gains, the first were the Crimson Marrow Flame Demon Armors that he obtained from the Drop treasure boxes of Crimson Iron Flame Demon Ants. This time, Zhang Yanhang opened a total of thirty-one pieces of Crimson Marrow Flame Demon Armor.

Apart from the four pieces of Dark Golden Quality Crimson Marrow Flame Demon Armor +5 that he was currently equipped with, he still had fifty-six pieces of ordinary Crimson Marrow Flame Demon Armor in his Waist Bag, making a total of eighty-seven pieces of Crimson Marrow Flame Demon Armor combined.

"But unfortunately, these extra pieces of Crimson Marrow Flame Demon Armor are of no use to me anymore since the Dark Golden Quality Crimson Marrow Flame Demon Armor +5 is already the normal fusion limit of the Crimson Marrow Flame Demon Armor. It can't be enhanced further, and the mere eighty-seven pieces of ordinary Crimson Marrow Flame Demon Armor are far from enough to meet the needs for a limit break."

If Zhang Yanhang wanted to break the limit of his Crimson Marrow Flame Demon Armor, he would need a total of 32×8=256 pieces of ordinary Crimson Marrow Flame Demon Armor, and if he wanted to upgrade all four pieces of the armor to +6 at the same time, then he would need as many as 1,024 pieces of ordinary armor.

Based on a drop rate of one Drop treasure box for every seven Crimson Iron Flame Demon Ants killed, it would take the defeat of more than seven thousand Crimson Iron Flame Demon Ants to gather enough, which is five times the allocated number of a Large Crimson Iron Ant Nest Talano of one thousand five hundred.

So, let alone breaking the limit of all four pieces at the same time, even just attempting to break through one piece would still not be sufficient with a complete refresh of the entire Large Crimson Iron Ant Nest Talano's allocated number of Crimson Iron Flame Demon Ants.

Of course, if he counted the extra Crimson Marrow Flame Demon Armors he had, then a barely sufficient amount might be scrounged together with only one refresh, but that would probably take until the year of the monkey to gather.

Therefore, it's virtually impossible to gather enough. After all, with the speed of his promotion, by the time he could gather them, he probably wouldn't even need them anymore, so what's the point of gathering them?

After taking stock of the Crimson Marrow Flame Demon Armors, Zhang Yanhang continued to inventory the Crimson Marrow Hell Fingers contributed by the Crimson Iron Hell Ants. This time, he opened a total of twenty-two Crimson Marrow Hell Fingers.

Aside from one piece of Dark Golden Quality Crimson Marrow Hell Finger +5 that was previously in his hands, he has three more pieces of Dark Gold Quality Crimson Marrow Hell Finger +4, one Golden Quality Crimson Marrow Hell Finger +2, one Light Golden Quality Crimson Marrow Hell Finger +1, and one ordinary Crimson Marrow Hell Finger.

All these combined were equivalent to fifty-five ordinary Crimson Marrow Hell Fingers, and including the ones he just opened, the total was seventy-seven ordinary pieces.

Compared to the Crimson Marrow Flame Demon Armor, the Crimson Marrow Hell Fingers were still of great use to Zhang Yanhang, as he had only fused one Dark Golden Quality Crimson Marrow Hell Finger +5 so far and still needed to complete another three pieces.

After finishing the count of Crimson Marrow Hell Fingers, Zhang Yanhang quickly put all of them into the Alchemy Array to begin the fusion process.

Because there were only dozens of items and three of them were Dark Gold Quality Red Marrow Hell Fingers +4, Zhang Yanhang managed to complete the fusion of the Red Marrow Hell Finger +1 in just one round, and then consecutively fused the +2, +3, +4, and finally the +5 in a single round each.

Compared to the previous fusions of the Crimson Marrow Ghost Face and Crimson Marrow Ghost Claws that often involved hundreds of pieces, the few dozen Red Marrow Hell Fingers could be fused much faster. Zhang Yanhang spent just a few minutes to finish all the fusions.

However, due to the limited number of Red Marrow Hell Fingers, Zhang Yanhang wasn't able to fuse all three possible Red Marrow Hell Fingers +5, not to mention three, he couldn't even achieve two, ending up with only one Red Marrow Hell Finger +5.

Besides the Red Marrow Hell Finger +5, he also managed to fuse two Red Marrow Hell Fingers +4, one Red Marrow Hell Finger +3, one Red Marrow Hell Finger +2, and one regular Red Marrow Hell Finger.

Although Zhang Yanhang could use the two Red Marrow Hell Fingers +4 to fuse a Red Marrow Hell Finger +5, a combination of a Red Marrow Hell Finger +5 and a Red Marrow Hell Finger +3 was not as good as two Red Marrow Hell Fingers +4, so he did not go ahead with the fusion, after all, the Red Marrow Hell Finger +3 was merely Golden Quality.

"I only need one more regular Red Marrow Hell Finger and one Red Marrow Hell Finger +1, which means three regular Red Marrow Hell Fingers to fuse another Red Marrow Hell Finger +5 and Red Marrow Hell Finger +4.

However, unfortunately, these are the total designated drops from the Large Crimson Iron Ant Talano Hell Ants, and it's simply impossible to find any more Crimson Iron Hell Ants to hunt."

Of course, if the Lucky Slot Machine inside the Large Crimson Iron Ant Talano could refresh its third prize pool, he might be able to gather one or two more Red Marrow Hell Fingers, so there is still hope of fusing a new Red Marrow Hell Finger +5 and Red Marrow Hell Finger +4.

After completing the fusion, Zhang Yanhang quickly put back on the new Dark Gold Quality Red Marrow Hell Finger +5 and Red Marrow Hell Finger +4.

"After a long session of fusion, the result compared to before was just an extra Red Marrow Hell Finger +5's Additional Attribute bonus, which is merely an increase of 1.2% to my Armor Penetration Effect bonus, increasing the total bonus from an initial 36.4% to 37.6%, a marginal change."

After taking care of the Red Marrow Hell Finger matter, Zhang Yanhang quickly moved on to tally the Flame God's Crowns contributed by the Crimson Iron Prince Ant.

This time Zhang Yanhang obtained a total of thirty initial Flame God's Crowns that were Golden Quality with Full Score.

Since it was his first time acquiring Flame God's Crowns, Zhang Yanhang briefly examined their appearance. As expected, they were indeed headpieces, specifically crown-type equipment.

However, the Flame God's Crowns were not of the type with a top but rather were open crowns, more simply, they were like headbands—crown-shaped bands that expose the hair when worn, quite rudimentary.

But the workmanship was still fine, with flames patterns deliberately etched along the edges, and embedded with numerous Rubies and Yellow Gemstones. Zhang Yanhang could recognize the Rubies as Flame Gems, but he did not know about the Yellow Gemstones, which could be something like Sun Gems.

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