The summit of the volcanic formation opened into sothing he had not anticipated from the exterior.
From below, the column of spiritual energy had looked like a single concentrated stream rising from a fixed point. From the summit’s edge, the reality was considerably more complex.
The peak was not a peak in the conventional sense. It was a basin. An enormous circular depression in the top of the volcanic formation, wide enough that the far edge was visible but not close, the walls descending steeply inward from the rim to a floor that glowed with the specific deep orange of contained geothermal energy.
Channels of liquid fire ran through the basin floor in patterns that were too regular to be entirely natural, connecting pools of concentrated fla that burned without consuming anything because there was nothing to consu. The air above all of it shimred with the heat displacent and the spiritual energy column he had seen from a distance rose from the largest central pool in a continuous dense stream.
The Greater Qilin stood at the rim beside him, its evolved scales reflecting the deep orange glow from below in shifting patterns across their multicolored surface.
And filling the basin from floor to wall in every direction, occupying every flat surface, every ledge, every accessible section of the volcanic interior with the dense distribution of a population that had been building here for a very long ti, were the lions.
Lin Yi’s eyes moved across the basin. He counted in clusters rather than individually, the way you count very large numbers in environnts where individual counting is impractical. Thirty per visible section. Forty sections of comparable density in the visible periter. And the interior, where the density was higher than the periter, would add considerably to that.
Thirty thousand was a conservative estimate.
He looked at the system prompt that appeared as his scan registered the nearest group.
[Furious Fla Lion]
Level: 145
HP: 86,400 / 86,400
Physical Attack: 2,060–2,380
Physical Defense: 1,740–2,020
Magic Resistance: 1,220–1,480
[A fire-attribute predator native to volcanic environnts within the Allheaven Expanse. Its body generates continuous combustion energy that enhances physical strikes with fla damage on contact. In groups, individual fla outputs rge into a shared combustion field that raises the effective fire damage of every mber within range. The larger the group, the more intense the shared field. In isolation, each lion is formidable. In numbers approaching the thousands, the shared combustion field reaches a threshold where it becos an environntal hazard independent of individual attacks.]
Level 145. HP 86,400. Fire attribute with a group combustion field that scaled with population density. Thirty thousand of them in an enclosed volcanic basin.
"If I can just get in there," he said quietly, to no one in particular, "and start clearing from the periter inward with wide arc Celestial Sword Qi, I can hit dozens at once. Maybe hundreds if I position in the center." He paused. "At a thousand tis amplification per kill, thirty thousand level 145 elites is..." He did the math. "That’s enough to reach 200. Easily. Probably with room to push past it."
The Greater Qilin looked at him from the rim.
"The combustion field is going to be the issue," he continued. "The shared field at this population density is environntal. But Iron Body Fortification handles the physical threshold, Celestial Armor handles the energy layer, and Celestial Absorption is going to be running on full intake the entire ti from the spiritual energy concentration in this basin." He paused again. "Which ans the environnt that makes this dangerous for anyone else is the sa environnt that makes it sustainable for specifically."
He looked at the Celestial Lord Blade. Attack power 4,905. Wide arc Celestial Sword Qi covering everything in its radius at that output.
"One strike per group," he said.
He stepped off the rim.
The descent into the basin was not a controlled drop. He activated Heaven Step the mont his foot left the rim edge, the spatial transition carrying him from the outer rim to a position in the basin’s middle distance, above the lion population but within the range that Celestial Sword Qi could reach the periter density in wide arc mode.
The lions registered his arrival with the imdiate threat response of thirty thousand creatures simultaneously. The shared combustion field, already present as a baseline environntal condition, spiked in response. The temperature in the basin elevated sharply. The collective roar of thirty thousand Furious Fla Lions arriving at the sa mont was a physical force that had nothing to do with sound, a pressure wave of coordinated response that rolled upward through the basin air.
Lin Yi released Celestial Sword Qi.
Wide arc mode. Maximum radius.
The golden arc expanded outward from him in a sphere rather than a directional sweep, covering the full three-hundred-sixty-degree radius simultaneously.
Every Furious Fla Lion within the arc’s range dissolved.
[Furious Fla Lion ×342 Defeated]
[EXP Gained: 29,548,800]
[Reward Amplification Triggered — ×1000]
[New EXP Gained: 29,548,800,000]
[Level Up! — Level 177 → Level 178]
[Level Up! — Level 178 → Level 179]
[Level Up! — Level 179 → Level 180]
Level 180!
Three levels from a single release. The EXP from 342 simultaneous kills, each one amplified a thousand tis, had consud three level thresholds at once.
He was already activating the next release before the notifications finished rendering.
The surviving lions were closing in, the shared combustion field intensifying as the surrounding population density registered the loss and the collective threat response elevated. The fire channeled through the surviving lions’ coordinated charge in streams of fla from hundreds of simultaneous sources.
The flas hit Iron Body Fortification and Celestial Armor. Both passives absorbed without being aningfully tested.
He released Celestial Sword Qi again.
[Furious Fla Lion ×418 Defeated]
[EXP Gained: 36,115,200]
[Reward Amplification Triggered — ×1000]
[New EXP Gained: 36,115,200,000]
[Level Up! — Level 180 → Level 181]
[Level Up! — Level 181 → Level 182]
[Level Up! — Level 182 → Level 183]
[Level Up! — Level 183 → Level 184]
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