As Shi Feng stepped into the spacetime corridor, his vision blurred for a moment. When he opened his eyes again, he found himself in a place that was both familiar and foreign.
System: Player has discovered the ancient site — Twilight Forest.
System: Player will be teleported out of Twilight Forest in eight hours.
"Looks like I got lucky — spawned in the werewolf area." Shi Feng swept a glance around his surroundings, roughly figuring out where he was.
Ancient sites were essentially special secret realms. They opened at regular intervals, and each time someone wanted to enter, they had to complete a key quest. The entry point also changed with each teleportation.
The Twilight Forest was massive — no smaller than a full leveling map — with a total of eight zones. Each teleport would randomly drop you into one of them, and the danger level varied from zone to zone. The werewolf area was considered one of the easier zones to pass through.
The werewolf area was dangerous primarily because of its monsters. In the swamp zone, one wrong step could see you swallowed by shifting quicksand. The stone forest zone rendered magic completely unusable. And the worst were the ice rain and darkness zones — one relentlessly pelted you with hailstones from the sky, while the other's visibility was so abysmal that seven or eight yards was the absolute maximum, making it easy for teams to get ambushed and suffer casualties.
The werewolf area, then, was considerably more forgiving by comparison. The only trouble was the sheer volume of monsters and the organized nature of their attacks.
However, all eight zones ultimately funneled toward the same destination: the center of the Twilight Forest. It was just that very few teams could make it there alive.
After arriving at the Twilight Forest, the group didn't advance right away. Instead, they first reorganized their formation. Feng Qianyu dispatched a scout squad composed of Assassins and Rangers to survey the surroundings before deciding on a course of action.
Ancient sites weren't like Dungeons. Dungeons came with system-provided maps, but ancient sites had none. Players had to explore on their own, which was precisely why they were given a full eight hours. Many teams couldn't even reach the central zone and ended up wandering into other areas instead.
After more than ten minutes of scouting, each squad relayed back the intelligence they had gathered.
You wouldn't know until you looked — and looking was a shock.
"So this is a first-tier ancient site?" Feng Qianyu frowned slightly as she reviewed the reports.
The area they were in was extremely dangerous on all sides. According to the scout squads' reports, werewolf gathering points surrounded them in every direction, with numerous werewolf patrols covering the roads in staggering numbers — as if they'd stumbled into the very heart of werewolf territory.
Even the most lenient escape route required facing twenty to thirty werewolf packs, each consisting of roughly a hundred werewolves. Every pack was led by at least one Great Lord-rank werewolf, and the stronger ones were even commanded by High-grade Great Lords. The weakest pack leaders were still Leader-rank, all at level 52 or above, with the pack commanders sitting at level 55.
A single werewolf pack was already a handful, let alone twenty or thirty of them.
And if they accidentally disturbed a nearby gathering point, it would be an absolute nightmare.
Because each werewolf gathering point contained at least ten High-grade Great Lords and one specialized-type High-grade Great Lord. In a real fight, there would be no way out.
After several evolutions in the Divine Realm, even monsters of the same level exhibited differences in strength. Some monsters, due to incomplete evolution, would develop enhanced attributes ahead of the rest — strength reinforcement, agility reinforcement, defense reinforcement, and the like. These were collectively known as specialized-type bosses, and they were considerably stronger than regular bosses of the same rank. They were also exceedingly rare.
Even Xuan Jing, who had come to assist, was startled by the sheer number and quality of monsters here.
She had completed second-tier ancient sites before, but compared to a first-tier ancient site, they were child's play. Even the incredibly rare specialized-type bosses were commonplace here. One wrong move could easily lead to a total party wipe. While death inside an ancient site didn't result in a direct level drop or equipment loss, you still lost 20% of your experience — and dying too many times was still unacceptable.
"No wonder everyone says ancient sites are harder than clearing Hell Difficulty hundred-player Dungeons. A first-tier ancient site makes it nearly impossible to advance." Feng Qianyu gave a bitter smile and turned toward Shi Feng. "Captain Ye Feng, do you have any way to break through?"
"I don't have any clever methods for breaking through either. The only thing to do is fight our way out," Shi Feng replied.
Other zones might have had certain tricks, but the werewolf area offered no such tactics. The only approach was to kill your way toward the center.
"Fight our way out?" Feng Qianyu was momentarily speechless. That was precisely the issue — if they could have just fought through, she wouldn't have needed to ask. "Looks like there's no other way. We'll have to use the four third-tier summoning scrolls ahead of schedule."
To conquer the Twilight Forest, she had prepared plenty of trump cards, but she hadn't expected to need them the moment she set foot inside.
No one else said anything either. Facing twenty to thirty werewolf packs in succession — with over twenty level-55 Great Lords alone, several level-55 High-grade Great Lords, and a massive number of other monsters — their current party was simply too outmatched.
If four third-tier summoned beasts could hold off the High-grade Great Lords, it would significantly lighten the burden.