MMO: Pierce Heaven Til' It Breaks

From the Eastern Continent, Li Yi had requested to begin Throne-claiming. From the Western Continent, it was Night Moon who applied, and from the Southern Continent, it was Arthur.

The three continents began Throne-claiming within a few days of each other, so by asking for an alliance now, Arthur’s intention was quite easy to comprehend.

He was afraid that Li Yi would go sabotage the Southern Continent after he became king, so Arthur wanted to stay Li Yi’s hand by sending this message.

“Rejected!”

Li Yi replied promptly. He had no intention of allying with Arthur!

Ever since the time where Arthur chased him down, Li Yi had made up his mind. He was not going to let Arthur go easy, and if he agreed to ally with Arthur now, how could he make Arthur miserable later?

Would he be an *sshole and break his promise just once? Should he pretend to ally with Arthur first, and then pretend nothing ever happened? That was a good idea, but… was Arthur worth it?

Arthur alone was not enough to make Li Yi go to that extent.

Be it in the previous life or the present, Arthur’s actions had crossed Li Yi’s bottom line. Li Yi had long since decided that, regardless of whether his own Throne-claiming went well, he would still go to the Southern Continent and prevent Arthur from becoming King.

“Don’t regret this!” replied Arthur.

When he saw this message, Li Yi could not even be bothered to reply.

Not long ago, he had made a trip to the Western Continent and contacted Night Moon from the Reigning The World Guild. He had offered her an alliance, and to his gratification, Night Moon had agreed.

Since they were from different camps, they could not form an official alliance on paper. All they had was a Secret Alliance that was built on the agreement from both sides. This alliance was not protected by the system, so it relied completely on the two parties to maintain it.

Night Moon was a decent person, so Li Yi decided to ally with her. Arthur, on the other hand, would not do. The grudge between Arthur and Li Yi was no longer possible to dissolve. After all, Li Yi had destroyed Arthur’s orange staff. Would Arthur ever forget that?

Even if they were clearly only using each other, he still had to find a reliable partner, instead of a ticking time bomb.

Li Yi ignored Arthur’s emails and focussed all his attention on assembling the Steel-armored Tank.

The Steel-armored Tank had many uses. Not only was it useful in sieges and national wars, it could even come in handy during usual quests, especially when players reached Level 100. At that stage, completing daily quests required players to head to opposing continents and perform actions like espionage, arson, or assassination. If the players went just like that, they were basically leaping to their own deaths. If they had a tank, however, it would be absolutely no problem.

Li Yi’s hands lit up with a red glow and after some rapid-fire assembly, he put together another brand new Steel-armored Tank.

The one he had created before had long since been driven out of the Smelting Workshop, filled with 20 people, and taken out for a spin.

The Steel-armored Tank had no passenger requirements, which meant that anyone could ride it, and anyone could drive it. There was one limitation, however, and that was the Steel-armored Tank belonged to the guild, so only guild members could use it.

The moment he checked the second Steel-armored Tank’s quality, Li Yi grew instantly deflated.

[Steel-armored Tank (white quality)]

[Accommodates 2 passengers]

[Base HP: 50,000 (for every passenger, the tank’s HP will gain an additional 1,000)]

[Cannon ATK: 1,000]

[P-DEF: 3,000]

[M-DEF: 3,000]

[Mobility: 12]

…

It was trash…

There could not be a trashier tank…

50 Mobility points meant that it was slightly slower than a person running. 12 Mobility points could not even be compared to a person’s running speed; this tank would take forever just to get out of the door.

Also, what was that pitiful amount of HP and DEF? How many hits could that tank? If the tank was shattered, they would need to spend another sum to fix it. It was not worth it, no matter how they sliced it.

“Where’s Big Bun? Get me One Big Bun!” Li Yi lost it.

“You were looking for me? Guild Master.” One Big Bun bumbled his way to Li Yi, but before he even got past the door, Li Yi stopped him with a yell.

“Don’t come in, just stay right there at the door!”

Li Yi had someone else drive the white tank to the Smelting Workshop’s door so that One Big Bun could decompose it.

That was right, he wanted One Big Bun to decompose it!

He was giving up on this tank!

With a wave or two of One Big Bun’s hands, the white tank was soon completely decomposed…

Setting aside the manpower used, simply the materials required to create a Steel-armored Tank were already quite expensive on their own. Decomposing a white tank would immediately cost the guild to lose over 100,000 Gold Coins…

Li Yi continued to assemble Steel-armored Tanks, making three at once. The results, however, brought him to his knees.

Without exception, they were all white elephants…

One Big Bun was overjoyed. He decomposed every tank that drove his way, and in the blink of an eye, three white tanks turned back into a pile of metal.

Li Yi took a break from assembling tanks and went out for a short walk before continuing to put together those Steel-armored Tanks.

Lady Luck was extremely fickle, but Li Yi believed that a current spell of bad luck meant eternal misfortune. There was no point in getting angry about this. If he just took a short break and tried again, perhaps he would be lucky this time around.

He crafted three more, and this time, he was indeed luckier. The Steel-armored Tanks were two blue and one green!

[Steel-armored Tank (green quality)]

[Accommodates 40 passengers]

[Base HP: 100,000 (for every passenger, the tank’s HP will gain an additional 20,000)]

[Cannon ATK: 20,000]

[P-DEF: 50,000]

[M-DEF: 50,000]

[Mobility: 97]

…

Li Yi slaved away from day to night before he could finally finish assembling the hundreds of pieces.

Setting aside the white tanks which had all been promptly decomposed, these were the results of his efforts.

They ended the day with 32 blue-quality Steel-armored Tanks, 10 green-quality Steel-armored Tanks, 5 gold-quality Steel-armored Tanks, and 1 purple-quality Steel-armored Tank.

A quick calculation of their material costs told them that they had lost more than 15,000,000 Gold Coins…

[Steel-armored Tank (gold quality)]

[Accommodates 90 passengers]

[Base HP: 2,000,000 (for every passenger, the tank’s HP will gain an additional 30,000)]

[Cannon ATK: 30,000]

[P-DEF: 70,000]

[M-DEF: 70,000]

[Mobility: 157]

…

[Steel-armored Tank (purple quality)]

[Accommodates 160 passengers]

[Base HP: 5,000,000 (for every passenger, the tank’s HP will gain an additional 50,000)]

[Cannon ATK: 80,000]

[P-DEF: 120,000]

[M-DEF: 120,000]

[Mobility: 225]

…

Although they all used the same ingredients, the difference in the quality of the final product made quite the difference!

In King of Pantheon, it was rare enough to forge a gold tank, whereas purple tanks were the rarest of the rare. Everyone knew that there was a chance of forging a purple tank, but only a handful of players had actually seen a purple tank’s attributes before.

The purple tank had 225 Mobility, which was 120% of a mount’s SPD. That was a considerable speed, and it would feel unbelievably gratifying to use this tank for regular camp quests.

Of course, the purple tank moved quickly and was of great quality, but that also meant that the maintenance costs were quite steep. Every little maintenance would cost over 30 Gold Coins, way beyond the budget of a regular player…

The Steel-armored Tank’s cannons had extremely high ATK as well, but those things had a weakness, and that was they could not deal any damage to players who were not riding tanks. These tanks could only attack other enemy tanks or destroy buildings.

It was understandable once one thought about it. If the cannons on that tank could kill players directly, what was the point of grinding for equipment? Each player just had to get a tank of their own and then fire on sight…

There was a limit to how many tanks a guild could hold, with the maximum being 50 tanks. In other words, a guild could only possess 50 tanks at any one time.

Now that the tanks were settled, Li Yi drove his purple tank around the Little Drunk Cat Guild’s Map, shooting off a few loads before he finally logged off to rest, still feeling dissatisfied.

The Throne-claiming battle lasted for three days and three nights. It was definitely one of King of Pantheon’s most difficult battles.

Li Yi had some shut-eye, but by the time he logged on again, the situation in King of Pantheon had once more changed drastically.

Arthur announced that he was allying with the Three Major Guild Alliance, and he was already leading his men in a charge through Abyssal Canyon, heading toward the Eastern Continent. He clearly meant to oppose Li Yi.

Defiantly Tyrannical kept making announcements on the World Channel, telling his friends from the Eastern Continent to make way for their ‘ally’.

“Brother Dark Wing, Arthur’s bringing at least 1,000,000 people over this time. Should we stop him?” Confused Fix grew anxious even before Li Yu did.

“Calm down and ignore him. There’ll be others to deal with him.”

“Gah, what do you mean by ‘others to deal with him’? If we just leave him like that, and those 1,000,000 people come rushing at us, our Throne-claiming’ll get that much harder. How about I send a group to stall them for a bit?”

“Brother Fox, relax. When have I ever boasted? Soon enough, someone else will help us deal with him.” Li Yi was brimming with confidence.

An hour later, Night Moon and her troops appeared at the Abyssal Canyon, launching into an intense battle with Arthur’s army.

“Brother Dark Wing, what… what’s the meaning of this?”

“Night Moon is our ally. We agreed a long time ago that if Arthur dared to make a move, she’d be the one to deal with him.

Confused Fox was stunned. “So this was why you went to the Western Continent a few days back?”

Li Yi smiled mysteriously “This isn’t all. I had one other thing to do, but for now… it’s a secret.”

“I’m in awe, man.” Confused Fox was completely convinced.

Even if they were just using each other, they still had to choose a reliable party. That was why Li Yu chose Night Moon.

If he had allied with Arthur and something like this happened again, Arthur would never offer assistance. Instead, Li Yi would only hope that he did not try to make things worse.

Night Moon successfully intercepted Arthur’s army, causing Defiantly Tyrannical to wail in fury. He sent Windcloud Brother Nine a message, but before he could even get through, he received word from Windcloud Overlord that Windcloud Brother Nine and Sister Nine had gone on a vacation and would only be logging on the next day.

“Overlord, since Brother Nine isn’t here, you can make the decision too. Can’t you just bring your troops to deal Night Moon a blow?”

“Tyrannical, I can’t decide on matters like that, lemme just Brother Nine a call for now.”

“You can’t decide? You’re the Guild Master, why can’t you decide?”

“I really can’t. Sigh, I’m really only a Guild Master in name, it’s not like you don’t know that. Lemme just give Brother Nine a call and ask him what to do.”

After some time, Windcloud Overlord replied to Defiantly Tyrannical, saying, “I can’t get through to Brother Nine’s cell, so I’ll give you his number and you can give it a shot yourself…”

“F*ck…”

Defiantly Tyrannical did not manage to bring in any reinforcements, but just then, another group of players came from the Western Continent and joined the melee.

There were not many of them, just a mere couple of thousands, but each fighter was fierce with high levels and good equipment. Each of these fighters could stand up to at least five opponents, and their leader was none other than God-Killing Gale.

Earlier, Li Yi had rescued God-Killing Gale from the Demoness Ruins twice, so the latter was here to pay his debt.

After an intense battle that lasted seven hours, Arthur caved and announced a retreat.

The next day, a pillar of light rose from the Celestial Capital. Every player and NPC in the Celestial Capital was transferred away, leaving the Celestial Capital completely empty!

The first Throne-claiming War in the history of King of Pantheon had officially begun!

…