The Bottomless Abyss. A shattered cavern.
"The gravity here is already close to where the Dark Wyrmlings appeared last time. If I dig any deeper, those Dark Wyrmlings will probably sense my life force." After dispatching a Heretical Guardian Puppet, Shi Feng turned his gaze toward the Bottomless Abyss beyond the cavern wall.
After nine days of effort, he had finally reached the point where he was almost touching the area where the Dark Wyrmlings lurked.
Although the Dark Wyrmlings were merely Tier 3 Great Lords, as the pinnacle race among the dragonkind, a single Tier 3 player standing against them was nothing but wishful thinking—let alone three Dark Wyrmlings.
The best way to advance to a Tier 4 class right now was to keep killing Heretical Guardian Puppets, steadily raising his inheritance power to 85%, and then go unlock his Tier 4 inheritance.
But as he carved through the cavern walls, the Heretical Guardian Puppets appeared less and less frequently. Just now, he had spent nearly an hour breaking through rock before a single Heretical Guardian Puppet finally showed up.
He could already foresee what would happen: if he blasted open more rock to summon another Heretical Guardian Puppet, the three Dark Wyrmlings in the abyss would almost certainly detect him—and then they would all attack at once.
"So the Main God System really won't let players advance classes that easily. In the end, I still need to get one of the inheritance shards?" Shi Feng glanced at his inheritance value and couldn't help but sigh.
With his current strength, if he activated his burst skills, he should be able to quickly kill a Heretical Guardian Puppet in front of the three Dark Wyrmlings. But he was still short three Heretical Guardian Puppets before reaching the 85% minimum requirement, and the chances of finding three of them within his limited burst window were extremely slim.
After all, it had taken nearly an hour of demolishing cavern walls to produce a single Heretical Guardian Puppet. After that, the most he could hope for before being discovered by the Dark Wyrmlings was maybe one more—leaving two still needed. Trying to dig while simultaneously fighting off the Dark Wyrmlings was, by any measure, impossible.
The only way was to grab the inheritance shard below.
Inheritance shards contained varying amounts of inheritance power—anywhere from a mere dozen points to as many as thirty or forty. With his current inheritance value, obtaining just one shard would push him over the 85% minimum, allowing him to unlock his own Tier 4 inheritance.
In the Divine Realm, unlocking a Tier 4 inheritance at the bare minimum did have some impact on the class-advance success rate, but it wasn't a certainty either.
The inheritance power was only what opened the door to one's own Tier 4 inheritance. The more inheritance power one gathered, the more of one's own inheritance could be unlocked—but how much a player actually gained from it depended entirely on the player. If they gained nothing, then the Tier 4 advancement would end in failure.
In the previous life, far too many Tier 3 experts had failed to advance to a Tier 4 class not because they couldn't gather enough inheritance power, but because they couldn't extract anything of value from their own inheritance.
This was exactly why the more powerful the inheritance, the harder the advancement.
The stronger the inheritance, the harder its contents were to learn. The inheritances of races like Giants or Elves were especially abstruse and difficult to grasp, making the advancement far more challenging. The powerful weapons and equipment players obtained were merely a means to gather as much inheritance power as possible and unlock more of the inheritance for them to study.
At 85% inheritance power, it was already quite sufficient. Reaching 100% was by no means necessary to advance to Tier 4.
But getting the inheritance shard below was no simple matter. He would have to face three Dark Wyrmlings, and within the limited burst window, there was very little he could do—especially when it came to retrieving an inheritance shard.
If this were any other player who didn't understand inheritance shards, that alone would be enough to doom them.
That was because inheritance shards didn't grant inheritance power the moment you picked them up. You needed a considerable amount of time to absorb the power within. If you moved too far away or interrupted the absorption process, the shard would simply dissipate on its own. The absorption time ranged from ten minutes to over twenty, and generally required a relatively safe environment.
Right now, that was clearly impossible. The only option was to force the absorption—but his burst skills couldn't possibly sustain him for that long…
"No—that's not right. It's not impossible." Shi Feng's eyes narrowed as he thought it through. "If I can hold out for a significant duration in my normal state, I might still be able to absorb the inheritance power." He decided to take the risk and try. After all, the person he was now was not quite the same as when he had first entered.
He had mastered a simplified version of Sacred Devour. Its power couldn't compare to the true Sacred Devour, but the force concentrated on a single point far surpassed Light and Shadow—it might just be enough to go toe-to-toe with a Dark Wyrmpling.
Shi Feng took a deep breath and pulled the Ring of Gospel from his inventory. He activated the Micro World and the Ring of Radiance first, holding nothing back.
At this point in the class-advance trial, there was no avoiding the three Dark Wyrmlings. There was no reason to save his trump cards anymore.
With the Micro World and the Ring of Radiance active, the ambient mana in the surrounding space began to rise slightly, boosting Shi Feng's base attributes by 5%. The effect was weaker than using them in the outside world, but every bit counted.
Once the Ring of Gospel was sorted, Shi Feng leaped straight into the Bottomless Abyss.
In an instant, he plummeted like a meteor, the fierce wind pressure even affecting his movement.
After just a few seconds, a dragon roar echoed from the distance. Three Dark Wyrmlings burst from the depths of the abyss, exactly as predicted, and charged straight at Shi Feng.
As one Dark Wyrmpling appeared before him, its massive claw swung down with terrifying force—completely unaffected by the Micro World—tearing rifts in the very fabric of space as it slashed toward Shi Feng.
"Everything comes down to this one strike!"
Shi Feng had been fully prepared. The Abyssal blazed with true crimson flames as he swung it to meet the giant claw head-on.
BOOM!
The clash of metal reverberated through the entire abyss. Sparks erupted, illuminating the midair darkness. The massive claw that had been tearing through space was knocked off its trajectory, slamming into the cavern wall and ripping away a huge chunk of rock. Shi Feng, for his part, was unharmed—the sheer impact of the collision only accelerated his descent.
"Good! There's a chance!" Shi Feng's heart surged with elation as he watched the Dark Wyrmpling get knocked back slightly.
His biggest worry had been that he couldn't withstand even a single blow from the Dark Wyrmpling. After all, he hadn't activated the Heavenly Dragon's Power like before. Fighting the Dark Wyrmlings in the Bottomless Abyss—under the suppression of its gravity and with the enemy holding the home-field advantage—even with the Sigh of the Sacred Dragon to suppress them, it would have been nearly impossible.