Chapter 430 — Not Playing by the Rules Again

It had no intention of fighting a prolonged war of attrition, no concern at all for stamina consumption, no careful allocation of energy—as though it meant to settle victory or defeat within a few minutes.

If the opponent could endure, the opponent won; if the opponent could not, then the opponent naturally lost.

And the Thunder Dragon Marshal clearly had not endured—or rather, it could still fight, but its contracted Beast Tamer could not, and had collapsed unconscious. For the safety of its contractor, the Thunder Dragon Marshal had no choice but to concede at once.

After all, if the contractor died, it would be eliminated outright. Finding another contractor with a matching attribute and bloodline—even at level six—was no easy matter. By conceding, it would still have a chance to challenge again.

This battle made the level-six Beast Tamers of every faction understand that these guardian Overlords were truly formidable. Even against top-tier Overlords of the same rank, reinforced by Beast Tamers, they were not the slightest bit outmatched. No one should ever think of fighting against a type disadvantage.

At the same time, for contestants whose contracted Overlords were above their own rank, the Beast Tamer was very likely the greatest liability. If they could keep them out of the battle, they should; and the contracted Overlord must also protect these level-six Beast Tamers and keep them from coming to harm.

After all, these Beast Tamers were the ticket that let them compete at all.

"Damn it, it's even stronger than I imagined." Watching the Earthbound Bear tear apart and flatten the Thunder Dragon in just a few rounds, Zou Yun, the Heavenly King, fell silent on the spot.

He had barely made it into the top ten of the sequence—surely he wasn't going to be stopped in the preliminaries?

Gao Xuan and Zou Yun both wore grim expressions. A top-tier Overlord that went all out from the very start, drawing on natural power to burst forth?

After watching this battle, even Lin Shuo could not help saying, "Forget about the preliminaries' rewards. Just get through. In battle, be sure to go all out, and pick the attribute matchup you're most confident of."

"Yes," Gao Xuan and the others nodded.

The real prize, of course, would still be the rewards of the Mythic Trial.

But.

Seeing how hard even the preliminaries were, Jiang Tianyang, Zhou Ming, and the others found it hard to imagine what difficulty the Mythic Trial to come would hold.

Could they really compete for a fortuitous opportunity?

If they couldn't, and their strength couldn't be raised, then the final contest for the World Championship was even less worth thinking about—their results would certainly not rank at the top.

"Shi Jin, do you want to make preparations?" In the end, Lin Shuo looked toward Cen Yu.

In his view, there was little suspense about Shi Jin passing the preliminaries.

With that panda of his, he could probably instakill these guardians at will.

But he believed Shi Jin surely wouldn't want to expose a quasi-divine technique so early; he would definitely save that kind of trump card for the Mythic Trial.

He judged that Shi Jin would most likely rely on a Monarch-level beast to fight above its rank against a top-tier Overlord.

After all, Shi Jin had said that several of his Monarch-level beasts already possessed top-tier Overlord strength.

Lin Shuo naturally believed it—after all, the vast majority of the legendary resources Donghuang had allocated this year had gone to Shi Jin. How could those beasts not be strong?

Shi Jin would probably use a Monarch-level beast to fight the guardian Overlord above its rank!

Lin Shuo was already looking forward to the expressions of the other factions when they saw how ferocious Donghuang's level-six Beast Tamer was.

"Let me get ready for it." Shi Li said, "I'm not too sure about my chances just yet."

Lin Shuo said, "All right."

After that, on Inatel Island, with the Thunder Dragon General leading the charge, the challenges began unfolding one after another.

At present, there were roughly over six hundred World Championship contestants.

Among them, more than four hundred were Tier-Six Beast Tamers, and over a hundred were Legendary Beast Tamers.

As for the totem nations that could send contestants, though few had anyone under thirty who had reached Legendary, almost all of them had scraped together at least one for the World Championship's sake.

With over a hundred totem-nation factions, the number of Legendary prodigies they had assembled was hardly small either.

And of the Tier-Six Beast Tamers, most had contracted Overlords above their level; those with outstanding talent who had contracted top-tier Overlords above their level were precisely the first round of challengers now.

Having seen what happened to the Thunder Dragon General, these people dared not attempt any high-difficulty maneuvers. Convinced they could not improve much within seven days, they all picked gatekeeping Overlords whose attributes they countered, hoping to win the World Tree's attention through sheer speed.

Soon, battles had broken out on essentially all ten arenas.

The fire-attribute arena near Donghuang also saw challengers—pirates from the Endless Sea.

The pirates of that region were far more ferocious than those in the chaotic waters near Donghuang and the Seven Isles. All of them served under one deep-sea totem or another, burning, killing, and plundering, fighting over territory like emperors of the sea. No order existed among them whatsoever.

After a round of fighting that lasted until nightfall, the various factions had largely assessed the situation of the ten gatekeeping Overlords—metal, wood, water, fire, earth, light, dark, wind, thunder, and ice.

They fought mainly by drawing on the power of nature.

That meant challenging the dark-attribute Overlord by day and the light-attribute Overlord by night could, to some extent, weaken the opponent's strength.

Still, some were harder to exploit—the water, earth, and wind Overlords, for instance. After all, on Inatel, the elemental power of these types was so dense that it did not shift with the passage of time.

And the light and dark Overlords, easy to exploit as they were, had inherently stronger attributes, so in truth they were not much weaker.

Within a single time cycle, quite a few Tier-Six Beast Tamers were left numb with despair.

Even the Tier-Six Beast Tamers from totem nations who had contracted top-tier Overlords above their level were not winning easily, despite fighting with an attribute advantage.

Half a day passed, and only six had cleared the gate.

By then, Shi Jue had seen enough of the ten Overlords' fighting styles and returned to his own legend relic to prepare for battle.

On Inatel, nearly every faction carried a relic with them as a place to rest and prepare, maximizing their privacy.

As for Shi Tan's side, since he had a relic of his own, he had no need to join the crowds in the relic Donghuang had prepared in advance for contestants and spectators.

Shi Jin intended to prepare seriously.

He wanted to see—if he defeated a gatekeeper without using his beasts... what reward the World Tree would give him!

Why were Beast Tamers strong? Because the attributes their beasts fed back to them were many, which indirectly proved the beasts were stronger!

This was clearly the path through the preliminaries with the greatest potential!

Far better than using a single Monarch-class beast to defeat a top-tier Overlord above its level.

Still, Shi Yu was under no small pressure. Though a beast like the Earth Desolate Bear's combat power, in Shi Qi's eyes, was inferior even to Doudou Bear's, that depended on who you compared it to...

At the very least, strong as he was now, he still could not beat Doudou Bear.

So preparing properly was absolutely necessary.