After mixing around for a while, he finally obtained a new superpower system. This wave of rebellion against the royal family was not a loss.
After completing their goal, the two of them did not stay in the mountains. They rested for the night and set off early in the morning.
The two of them had extraordinary physical fitness. Walking through the forest was like walking on flat ground. Without the burden of the guards, they could travel much greater distances than before.
After descending the mountain safely, the two of them simply disguised themselves and took the main road home.
On the way, he asked Roman about his experience in developing the Gale Spirit and began to learn from the other party’s experiences.
As the saying went, using one’s abilities frequently was the most efficient way to train. Meditation became Bill’s daily homework. Sorcery consumed his mental strength, while meditation worked for recovery. They complemented each other.
After testing for two to three days, Zhou Jing roughly understood the training efficiency of the elemental sorcerer system. Every four to five hours of accumulation of ability or meditation could give him a development point.
If he worked hard enough in a day, he could take out 15 to 16 hours of training to increase his development points by three.
According to this efficiency, in about a month, he would be able to obtain one sorcery point after accumulating 100 development points… However, the prerequisite was that he had to train for more than 10 hours every day.
When he returned to Roman’s base, he would have to fulfill his promise and create and research potions. It was impossible for him to take out so much time to train. He would only have a few hours a day at most. In that case, it might take two to three months to obtain one Sorcery Point to advance his Gale Spirit.
This was roughly the growth speed of ordinary sorcerers. It might take a few years for their combat strength to take shape.
However, Zhou Jing activated the Accelerated Learning for the “Elemental Sorcerer” system. After testing it out, he realized that the efficiency had increased greatly.
Originally, four to five hours of training could only increase 1 point of development. Under the Accelerated Learning function, he could increase 1 point of development after an hour at most, reducing the time by 80% to 90%.
This way, as long as he trained hard for a few days, he would be able to obtain one Sorcery Point. Even if he had work to do after returning to the base, he only needed to take a few hours out every day, and it would take only half a month before he got his sorcery point.
Zhou Jing did not know how other sorcerers added points to the “Skill Tree”, but because there was no interface, ordinary sorcerers should not be able to directly distribute the sorcery points, nor would they usually max out every ability.
This was because it was not easy to obtain Sorcery Points, so they would not max out all of their skills.
If an ordinary sorcerer wanted to unlock the three abilities of Tier 1 and increase all of them to Lv 3, they would need nine Sorcery Points. It would take two to three years for them to cultivate normally… According to the mechanism that would slowly increase the cost of Accelerated Learning, Zhou Jing had reason to judge that as the development deepened, the training time needed to obtain Sorcery Points would also increase.
However, to the Astral Apostles, accelerating their cultivation could save a lot of time. They had the ability to max out every level of the skill tree. This way, their combat strength would be stronger.
As long as he was given a few years, Zhou Jing estimated that Bill’s strength would be enough to crush most Mutant Blood Warriors. As for how strong he could be, it would depend on his aptitude.
On the other hand, apart from exchanging experience in sorcery cultivation, the two of them were also observing the changes in the towns along the way after the tribes became independent.
Currently, the Empire was still mobilizing its troops and had yet to take the next step. All the tribes were paying attention to the Empire’s movements. Even among the citizens, there was a tense atmosphere, knowing that war would erupt at any moment.
If the Empire was willing to accept its fate and accept the reality of the independence of the tribes, the flames of war would be extinguished. If they insisted on doing as they wished and wanted to use force to subdue the alliance of the independent tribes, civil war would immediately erupt.
The formal troops of the various tribes had basically been mobilized to camp around the town and train every day. The stronger tribal lords had about 3,000 troops, including a few Mutant Blood Warriors, while the weaker lords still had slightly less than 1,000 people.
The Empire’s regular army originally numbered in the tens of thousands, but it included many tribal troops. Now that the various tribes were independent, the actual number of troops that the Empire could mobilize quickly fell to only about 12,000.
In terms of superpower though, the Empire had a huge advantage. With 1,000 to 2,000 Imperial Hunters, it would be easy to deal with any tribal lord… But the problem was that Imperial Hunters were not soldiers. Most of them were unwilling to go against their principles and raise their blades at humans. Only a small number of them did not mind participating in the civil war.
In addition, the locations of the various tribes were scattered. Although the Empire had the strength to start a war with many tribes at the same time, they were afraid to act rashly. Once the war was dragged into the mud, the other tribes scattered everywhere could completely explode and attack the capital from the back and side.
At that moment, the Terra Empire’s territory was divided into more than ten pieces. The various tribes controlled different areas of the territory, causing the Empire capital to be unable to communicate with the outside world and lose most of its power.
On the way back, Zhou Jing realized that many of the towns that were usually bustling with people had become solemn and cold. Many people chose to hide in the wilderness to avoid the war and live in groups inside the villages.
From time to time, patrols formed by the villagers could be seen in the wilderness, guarding the main road and the wilderness to prevent mutant beasts from attacking.
As the town could not spare any manpower, many villages could only deal with the threat of the mutant beasts themselves. Therefore, they each pooled their money to hire mutant beast hunters, causing more mutant beast hunters to settle in the villages.
Under such circumstances, some villages had a population convergence effect. As more and more people came in, many fortifications were added. There was a trend of shoring up the defenses for every village.
As the saying went, wherever there was demand, there would be supply. Now, all kinds of merchants and mercenaries were unwilling to go to towns. They preferred to go to villages with more opportunities to do business and find jobs. Many large villages were as lively as the previous towns.
On this day, the two of them passed by a village called Yellow Wood Village. There were many people coming and going, and they had gradually built the outline of a fortress.
The two of them put on their hoods and entered an inn to eat and rest.
There were many customers in the shop, many of whom were passersby.
As they were eating and drinking, there was a commotion on the street. Many people had gathered, and the commotion came from afar, as if they were celebrating something.
The two of them looked out of the window and saw a few Mutant Beast Hunters pulling the corpse of a huge mutant beast past the street. A large group of excited passersby were gathered around them.
Zhou Jing suddenly stiffened.
Roman keenly noticed the change in his expression and asked curiously, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing much. I just bumped into two acquaintances.”
Zhou Jing’s gaze landed on the two hunters. One was a bald burly man with a huge axe on his back, and the other was a short-haired man with a spear on his back. It was Barong and Weiss, both of whom he had not seen for a long time.
Back then, when he “died” in White Plains Town, he did not know where the two of them had gone. However, he did not bother to ask around. Now that he had changed his appearance, he happened to meet the two of them.
Barong and the others were almost all injured, as if they had just gone on a hunt.
The hunters struggled to place the mutant beast’s corpse at the entrance of the inn. Then, they walked into the inn and shouted for food. They seemed to be very familiar with the shop owner.
Zhou Jing thought for a bit before patting the shoulder of the customer behind him. Under the other party’s puzzled gaze, he curiously asked,
“They’re hunters hired locally?”
This guest happened to be a local villager, and hearing the question, he nodded and said, “They were originally freelance hunters. When they passed by, the village chief asked everyone to pool their money and hire this group of people to temporarily guard the village. They have been here for two months now.”
This was the southern border area of the Northern Region, far from White Plains Town. It seemed that Barong had found a new place to stay.
Zhou Jing nodded to himself, but he did not intend to meet Barong. Now that his appearance was different, the other party would not recognize him.
At this moment, Barong and the other hunters sat down. As they waited for their food, they chatted. They did not deliberately lower their voices, and their words floated into Zhou Jing’s ears.
“There have been more and more mutant beasts wreaking havoc in the wilderness recently. This is the fourth one in the past few days.” Weiss took a sip of wine and complained.
Barong shook his head, his face full of disdain. He said angrily, “The current world is really too bad! More and more hunters don’t care about the principles of this profession. They’re actually being absorbed by the various tribes and are preparing to fight against other humans. They’ve all forgotten that mutant beasts are our greatest enemy!”
“What can we do? Now that a large number of workshops have stopped operating, not to mention earning money, we can’t even find anyone to deal with the corpses of the mutant beasts we hunt. We can’t turn them into weapons, equipment, or blood potions… It’s all the fault of those tribes that suddenly became independent.
They actually confiscated the resources of the workshops. Those craftsmen who were originally serving the hunters had no choice but to prioritize maintaining the equipment of the tribal army and now don’t have the energy to deal with the mutant beasts for us…
Even if there are still some towns that haven’t changed the purpose of the workshops and can convert the mutant beasts we’ve killed into equipment, the best part is reserved for their army to enjoy. We can only get the remaining scraps and equipment, and they can even send us off with some money. Do we lack that bit of money?”
The hunters complained one after another.
The situation had changed. In the past, the workshop only served the hunters, and the hunters enjoyed the highest priority. However, because of the stalemate between the empire and the independent tribes, the tribes had no time to care about anything else and urgently needed to increase their strength.
Therefore, they forced the workshop to accept many military orders, resulting in them not having time to work for the hunters.
Only the hunters who participated in the military could continue to enjoy preferential treatment. The various tribes could only choose to employ limited resources where they were needed most.
Therefore, the model of workshops creating mutant blood potions and equipment to repay the hunters for hunting the beasts and further nurturing them through battle was no longer feasible… At the moment, there were no hunters who still insisted on their principles after joining the army. What they lacked the most was the support of craftsmen. Otherwise, they would not be able to convert their prey into combat power.
Hearing this, Zhou Jing looked at Roman, who was buried deep in his bowl of meat.
“Why are you looking at me?” Roman was puzzled.
“I’m wondering if there’s a way to improve this situation.” Zhou Jing rubbed his chin and lowered his voice, “Don’t you want to spread the new blood potion? Are you interested in taking it a step further?”