?1968 Decision
Leonel plucked the reward and rolled it between his fingers for a moment.
Then, with a thought, he pushed it toward the core of the city and agreed to accept the change.
After a wild bout of vertigo, everyone opened their eyes to smell an air that was decidedly more humid, refreshing and... salty. Even from here, they could hear the sounds of the crashing waves. Without even looking out of the city, they could tell that they had all suddenly been moved to the oceanside.
Leonel didn't flinch after this happened, he had already expected it. Without hesitation, he pushed forward a second reward and accepted it as well.
The ground rumbled and the sound of heavy rocks crashing into the ocean resounded. Many who didn't know what was going on rushed to the city walls and their eyes widened as they felt that the city was about to fall right off a cliff and into the raging waters below. However, just when it seemed that this would happen, the city stabilized and became rock solid.
Waters rushed in from the side and the moat that had surrounded the city before was filled instantly with a rush of heavy salt water. It felt like, in that moment, the city was enveloped by the embrace of the ocean.
The mountain range they had been hidden within was completely gone and they found themselves on soft, sandy land. If not for the fact that this was a simulation and not completely analogous to real life, there was no way such a heavy structure could exist on such fragile land.
At the same time, they had been right near a cliff face which had now crumbled and collapsed, lowering their elevation and causing a rush of ocean water to tide in. Their city was now half perched on sand and another half in the ocean, and with their moat, they felt a step away from being entirely submerged.
In order to accomplish this, Leonel had done two things. The first was that he used a territory moving reward. Since it was just Silver-Grade, it only allowed him to move his territory to anywhere within his territory's range, however given the size of his territory to begin with, that gave him access to over half the supercontinent!
Then, he used yet another terrain change reward, but this one, rather than being used for mountains, was instead used to direct waterways. Its original purpose was to create a source of water by extending it from a primary source. So, Leonel used it on the ocean and extended it into their moat.
Only underwater territories were allowed to expand into the ocean. Well, was he not technically underwater now? His city limits had been entirely submerged in ocean water.
Even if Leonel was just trying his luck, using these rewards like this still only benefited him. Although he had abandoned the mountain range, attacking his territory like this was even more difficult because you could only send an army from a single direction now, in addition to the fact the moat was even heavier.
But it seemed that Leonel wouldn't have to worry about only having this to gain. When he saw that his territory map now extended into the depths of the ocean, he almost couldn't refrain from grinning ear to ear.
The ocean was vast, just as vast as any one of the supercontinents, so Leonel wasn't anywhere near close to mapping it all out. His territory should have extended 2000 kilometers from his city now, or rather, however far it could go before it ran into other territories, but territory distance was counted differently within the ocean. There seemed to be a 100 times reduction.
Leonel wasn't surprised by this. On land, territory only had to account for two dimensions, but with the water, depth had become very important.
Now, his territory map wasn't flat, but it also had to incorporate a distance down to the greatest depth of the ocean. But even then, because he had
2000 kilometers, to 20 kilometers in this case, in perfect detail, the things he could see were almost too much.
The ocean's depth ranged from five kilometers to 20 kilometers. This was far deeper than a moon of this size should have had, but it was likely that Ancestor Hito had done this on purpose.
Challenges and dungeons appeared at all depths and because of the difficulty in reaching them, they were far more tightly packed. In just this 20
kilometer range that Leonel could see, there were already over 200
challenges and over four dozen dungeons. Half of those were Bronze-Grade, about a quarter were Silver-Grade, however there were over 40 Gold-Grade challenges and almost 10 were Heir-Grade! At the same time, there were over 15 Gold-Grade dungeons and five Heir-Grade ones!
To put this into perspective, the land had yet to even spawn Gold-Grade challenges and dungeons. Only now that Leonel's territory had become Gold-Grade would it start to. This was completely game changing.
As though this wasn't enough, Leonel had also spotted the territory of several Heir-Grade oceanic beasts as well, each one of them was worth 100
000 points so long as they were killed.
"This is a huge treasure trove. If others tapped into this, all of the effort I put into getting ahead would be completely crushed. I expected this possibility, but it's even more exaggerated than I assumed.
Leonel narrowed his eyes.
He was very much correct. Right now, the Pisc and Quarius families were behind, but once they entered the ocean, their advantages would sky rocket with great speed. In just a few steps, they would go from the bottom ranks of Constellation families to amongst the top ranks.
Even so, the advantage that Leonel had was even greater. Who could afford to buy 2000 kilometers worth of territory right now in exchange for 20
kilometers worth of information?
Beyond that, he was even planning on pouring all 30 billion points he had not into underwater outposts to extend this range.
The Gold-Grade underwater outposts each cost 10 million, and each one had a range of just one kilometer, but if 20 kilometers of space had this much information, how much would 300 kilometers have?
Leonel didn't care about points right now, there were only a few things he could spend them on to begin with.
However, if he managed to monopolize a large number of Heir-Grade dungeons, the rewards he gathered from them could put him so far ahead that the Heir Wars would become meaningless.
If the Silver-Grade rewards for these dungeons were already so useful, what could the Heir-Grade ones do for him?
Leonel's expression flickered.
He had a decision to make.
He currently had over 3 million soul constructs that would only last for a few more hours. He knew that they wouldn't be enough to conquer the supercontinent, but he did know that they would be enough to wreak havoc...
He was very understanding about the strength of the Heirs. If the Gold-Grade upgrade was a million, that meant that very soon, the Heirs would be able to deal with it. And if he made such a large commotion, he would attract public ire even sooner, not to mention make it even easier for them to deal with it by giving them a reason to band together.
If he could separate out this army of three million, it would be one thing. But they were soul constructs held together by his Lineage Factor, he had to be there to direct them and he couldn't move his formation freely to use clones as a stand in...
The other option was, of course, to press his advantage and claim as many Gold and Heir-Grade rewards as possible, so that when he was eventually ganged up on anyway... They wouldn't stand a chance.
Leonel fell into his thoughts. He couldn't afford a misstep.
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