The next moment, Huang Yi smashed his club onto the boss’s head, sending him flying more than ten meters away and dragging a long trail across the ground.
Now that the Boss had lost Flower Vine, its trump card, it was no more threatening than a slightly higher-health minor monster.
One minute later, Huang Yi had beaten the Great Gardener into a pulp.
Afterward, Huang Yi walked over to where the Great Gardener had died to see if any good equipment had dropped, but all he saw were two pieces of Plain White Gear, nothing else.
The Boss had dropped nothing of value, a complete waste of time.
Huang Yi shook his head and continued forward. The fourth and fifth bosses didn’t pose much of a threat either, and it took only a little effort for him to kill them. However, they also didn’t drop anything good, just a few pieces of Plain White Gear.
Finally, Huang Yi reached the tenth floor, a very special level.
In the Tower of Pantheons, every ten levels would bring a new scene. The previous floors Huang Yi had fought through were all the same garden, with every NPC in the same location, just with purely stronger abilities.
But starting from the eleventh floor, the scene would change, with new minor monsters and new bosses to figure out, essentially a brand-new stage.
Thus, the tenth floor became the ultimate challenge of the garden scene. Clearing this level meant complete conquest of the garden. This made the fastest clearance time of the tenth floor incredibly important, a prestigious honor contended for by players all around the world.
However, clearance speed had very strict requirements — players’ levels couldn’t be more than 15 levels above the floor number! That is to say, players over level 25 tackling the tenth floor would not be eligible for the record.
Currently, the world record for the fastest clearance of the tenth floor was set by the Japanese player Heavenly Dao with a time of 52 minutes and 56 seconds when he was precisely level 25, the optimal level for setting the record.
Huang Yi was only level 21 and not yet at the optimal level for breaking the record. His current focus was still on grinding levels, aiming to catch up in levels as soon as possible.
The tenth floor was the garden’s ultimate challenge, and the monsters here were extremely tough. If it weren’t for Huang Yi’s recent evolution, he’d probably need to meditate and rest to recover his Health Points after each wave of monsters. But now, relying on his robust Half-Beastmen form, he could barely manage to sustain without limits. More importantly, he had a Class Talent called Life Reap, which allowed all his attacks to come with a 3% Bloodsuck effect. Once he activated Judgment, he’d spin rapidly with his weapon, attacking more than ten monsters around him at once, resulting in a significant amount of Bloodsuck.
Gradually, Huang Yi arrived in front of the third boss, the same Great Gardener. His appearance hadn’t changed, but his strength had increased significantly.
Huang Yi charged forward, and the Great Gardener immediately swung his Flower Vine, striking Huang Yi harshly, but still failing to inflict any damage!
At that moment, Huang Yi also reached the front of the Great Gardener and swung down his club!
The increased strength of the Great Gardener finally showed as he threw his Flower Vine onto a nearby tree, hooking a branch and pulling himself up with a forceful tug, swiftly moving up the tree to dodge Huang Yi’s attack.
The Great Gardener’s series of movements were as fluid as flowing water, extremely swift—Huang Yi at his current Attack Speed found it very, very hard to hit him.
But Huang Yi had a plan. He activated the Eye of Time to predict the boss’s evasive direction in advance!
Suddenly, his body trembled, and he stopped attacking!
He stood motionless, staring at the gardener in the tree, like a statue!
His eyes were filled with shock!
The Eye of Time allowed him to see a very shocking scene—
The loot each BOSS would drop upon this death!
Why do people kill BOSSes? It’s to obtain the dropped items!
Many people fight in the Tower of Pantheons every day, knowing that it’s hard to get good items, but they still waste time and energy, hoping to get lucky and see if the BOSS will drop something great!
And now, without even killing the gardener, Huang Yi had already seen in advance what this BOSS was to drop! Not only that, but he had also seen the drops of the fourth and fifth BOSS upon their deaths!
That is to say, Huang Yi could decide whether to fight these BOSSes based on their drops. If these BOSSes dropped trash, then he didn’t need to waste time fighting them. If they dropped top-notch gear, then even if it cost a fortune, he would buy a bunch of Buff Potions and use every means possible to kill the BOSS!
With the Eye of Time, Huang Yi had shifted from passively waiting for BOSS drops to actively selecting them.
This also revealed the system logic behind The Second World. What items a BOSS would drop upon its death had already been designated by the system at the moment of entering the secret realm, not decided at the time of death.
Many players who were engineers and learned in programming logic had already figured this out. From a programming perspective, each room is essentially an instance. The Tower of Pantheons, seemingly having countless rooms, is simply a different expression. If Huang Yi did not enter this room, then it would simply not exist—it exists because he entered, prompting the system to create this instance. What the BOSS of this instance would drop had already been randomly preselected from the drop pool at the moment of entry. As long as the player meets the criteria for killing the BOSS, those prearranged items would drop. However, to the player at the front end, it all seems to be randomized on the spot, when in fact, the backend program had already sorted it out.
Even if other players knew about this system setting, there’s no way for them to exploit it because they don’t have the Eye of Time like Huang Yi, who can see the system’s calculations!
Currently, in Huang Yi’s Eye of Time, this Great Gardener will drop two pieces of White Gear upon death; the fourth BOSS will drop one piece of White Gear and a Green Gear hat for mages upon death; the fifth BOSS will drop a Plain White Ring and a common material called "Orchid Seeds."
None of these three BOSSes were to drop anything good, so Huang Yi directly exited this secret realm, returned to Thornbush City, and reset the secret realm, entering a new room.
In this new room, the drops from the five BOSSes were just Whiteboard Green Gear, nothing worth fighting for, so Huang Yi exited once again.
In this way, Huang Yi repeatedly exited, reset, and entered new rooms, checking over and over what the BOSSes would drop upon their death.
Finally, on his seventh entry, Huang Yi saw a piece of Blue Gear that the third BOSS would drop!
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A big thank you to Yun Sihai, Dragon Dominates The Worldcai, Dong Huang, Pitiful Nameless, shengchenyi, and Little Riddler for their generous rewards on the 15th!