Start With Contracting Sprites

There was dead silence on the beach. Only the sound of Tyrant Bear falling to the ground echoed in everyone's ears.

They all recalled the scene just now. Why did Tyrant Bear suddenly fall?

The Sprite Trainer of the silly bear kept shouting, "Stand up, quickly stand up for me!"

"I'll give you 10 bags of snacks! 50 bags! 100 bags!"

Be it shouting or "Sprite Commandeering: Persist", Tyrant Bear didn't respond.

It fainted very peacefully.

The brawny man and the Sprite Trainers from the other nations couldn't understand. But neither could the Sprite Trainers from Dragon Nation.

Mentor Ma nodded thoughtfully.

A certain Dragon City University instructor next door also looked thoughtful.

The two of them turned and made eye contact. From meeting eyes, they could tell… that they were both only pretending to understand.

...

"Gurgle~!"

Butterfly flew back to the throne above Su Hao's head under everyone's gaze.

Like a slightly heavier hat (scratch that), like a doll covering his head.

Then, he glanced at the interface. Turns out Butterfly didn't consume much energy.

"That's normal. That Tyrant Bear wasn't very strong to begin with, and its mental resistance was very weak."

In terms of physical defense, the Tyrant Bear was very outstanding. In comparison, its intelligence… Cough, its resistance towards certain directions wasn't very good, and it didn't have any special training.

Therefore, Su Hao came up with the strategy of "not exposing information".

From the beginning to the end, the Butterfly only used a single unique skill—Spiritual Explosion.

Half a second after Su Hao snapped his fingers, he had ignited the mental imprint that had been stacking on Tyrant Bear's body since the start of the battle!

There were more than a hundred of them!

Tyrant Bear, whose mental strength was so weak, didn't even realize that a bomb had already been planted in its head.

Even if there were sprites with strong mental power and good perception around, they could only detect some fleeting fluctuations. It was very difficult for anyone to understand the reason for Tyrant Bear's death… Cough, the reason for its fall.

"Even if they did manage to discover it, Butterfly still had other hidden trump cards."

Su Hao believed that there was no other way. There were many foreign Sprite Trainers around. In the context of ruin exploration, they were competitors, or even enemies.

It was very necessary to conceal information from the enemy.

...

The 24 battles quickly ended.

Dragon Nation won twelve rounds, lost twelve rounds, 50 to 50.

"The nations came to an agreement that the first batch of exploration slots will contain 36 people from Dragon Nation, 15 from Peacock Nation, 9 from the Korean Nation, 8 from Stone Elephant Nation, and 5 from the other five small nations. Overall…"

Mentor Ma paused and said, "The second batch, which will depart either half a day or a day after the first, will probably still have the same limit on the number of people. But there probably won't be a limit starting from the third batch."

In reality, however, there was no actual limit placed by the entrance.

The restriction was simply to give the first batch of people half a day of head start. It gave Dragon, Peacock, and the few other leading nations an advantage over the others.

Mentor Ma continued, "I've discussed with the others. The first batch of people from our Whale Island University is…"

He chose Wang Qi, Jiang Xiuqi, and Qin Ya, and two other seniors who didn't deserve to be named.

And Su Hao.

Then, he looked at the others and said, "All of you wait patiently for the next batch. When the time comes, you'll enter under Instructor Wang's lead. Any objections?"

The group of people expressed their compliance.

It made Su Hao, who originally wanted to say that he could give up the slot and wait for the second batch, completely unable to find an opportunity to interrupt.

"Forget it, forget it. I'm too outstanding after all. I'm bound to be in the first batch of explorers no matter what."

"Based on the discussion between Mentor Ma and the others, that ruin is also relatively safe."

There wasn't much of a problem.

...

The sun had yet to fall.

The Heavenly Kings who were evaluating the security level opposite the entrance returned.

"Senior Wu."

When he saw that Senior Wu was present among the big bosses, Su Hao was immediately relieved.

No wonder there was no news from the replies he sent to Senior Wu previously.

So he had crossed over and didn't have access to the Internet.

At this moment, Senior Wu was still wearing a suit and tie. His hair was neatly combed and shiny black.

With one look, one could tell he had not been in any battles.

"The situation over there is already clear," said Senior Wu. "There are no traces of any alien tribes within a radius of thousands of miles, nor are there any high-risk sprites. That area is even very desolate. We only located a dead ancient city in the Gobi Desert."

"The ancient city has been abandoned, but surprisingly, part of the facilities are still operational."

Heavenly King Wu had given out the information quickly. After all, there was no point in stalling since the other Heavenly King Sprite Trainers would announce it anyway.

"Outside the ancient city, there's a huge barrier. The barrier doesn't stop us humans, but… all sprites above monarch rank will be blocked outside the barrier. According to speculation, it should be the city's automatic defense system. It probably determined that monarch rank is a threat, so it blocked them outside."

"Even if you use Sprite Commandeering from within the city, sprites will still not be able to enter from outside the barrier."

A barrier that could block summoning!

None of the people present were fools. Just by hearing it, they realized the value of this barrier and technology!

Because right now, the Union's barrier couldn't stop the summoning.

"No, maybe there is. Maybe I just don't know about it." Su Hao thought.

But his curiosity and Butterfly's money-mindedness were indeed stirred up by Senior Wu.

Before long, the first batch of members of the Union's exploration team gathered.

The entrance was in a forest at the center of the island.

At a glance, it was easy to tell that the bald spot in the lush greenery was the entrance. It was like an old man's balding hair, especially eye-catching.

Some of the trees around the entrance were pushed away, and modern weapons were installed. There were also Sprite Trainers stationed around.

The first batch of Sprite Trainers and sprites lined up.

They entered in the following order: One from Dragon Nation, one from Japanese Nation, another from Dragon Nation, one from Peacock Nation, and so on.

Before long, Su Hao arrived at the opposite side of the entrance.

What welcomed him was a field of desolation. Sand danced in the air, and some hills and ravines could be seen in the distance.

But the most eye-catching was still the huge city not far away.

The city wall stood tall, but some weeds could be seen growing out of the cracks in the bricks, full of traces of time.

...

"Is this the ruins of the ancient city? Why does it feel a little gloomy?"

In the group of more than ten people, Senior Qin Ya hugged her Holy Spirit Bird and kept looking around. "I keep feeling that something is staring at us."

Su Hao glanced around. Tall buildings… For the time being, they were tall black monolith-shaped buildings. They seemed to have absorbed the sunlight around them, causing the sky to become much darker. In addition to the dead silence of the ancient city, in an environment where only the footsteps of the people could be heard, they indeed gave off an uncomfortable feeling…

"No need to rely on feeling, I can tell you with certainty that something is staring at us," Su Hao said, glancing at the interface.

"What, what is it?"

"Ghost…"

Senior Qin Ya hugged the Holy Spirit Bird tightly, making the bird constantly gurgle as it was being suffocated.

The other two seniors also hugged each other nervously.

… It felt a little strange.

"It's a ghost-element sprite."

Su Hao looked at a broken wall covered in vines. After asking Mentor Ma for his opinion, he let Butterfly's mental power spread out and vibrate violently in that direction.

Buzz--

As if the strings of a zither were plucked, circles of invisible power spread out.

A few shapeless black shadows suddenly appeared and made "Jejeje" sounds. They sounded like they came from the clouds and kept echoing in his ears.

But the next moment…

"Gurgle~!"

Butterfly's mental power shook again. A few ghost-element sprites, who were clearly not strong but especially fond of courting death, finally sensed that there was a big boss in front of them that they couldn't afford to offend and scattered.

But right after, more ghost-element sprites sensed their lively aura and approached.