Pillar of Yita

A light click.

Fang Hong carefully closed the rear cover of the Walker III model—he had checked and found the construction of this walker was quite excellent. The seams of the shell fit tightly together, which seemed like the work of the Emerald Bird Workshop rather than a small workshop. Unfortunately, the serial number on the production plate had been removed, probably to prevent tracing through the purchase channels.

The attention to detail also showed the caution of the Dragon Worshippers in concealing their identities. No wonder these people seldom slipped up unless they chose to reveal themselves.

As a young man who had grown up in a stable society, Fang Hong found it hard to switch identities to guess the actions of Cultists. The Dragon Worshippers fanatically worshipped the Dark Giant Dragon, but Nikopolas seemed not to care about their fate at all. Was their relationship as close as imagined?

He remembered Nikopolas’s behavior at the Traveler’s Rest and how it differed from now. The incarnation of the Dragon’s Golden Eyes in the Phantom Realm was just a shadow Nikopolas had left here thirty years ago. Could such a significant change occur in a giant dragon over thirty years?

For a creature with a lifespan of over a thousand years like a dragon, thirty years was merely a fleeting moment.

After closing the cover, he switched perspectives and surveyed the surroundings through the Clockwork Fairy. The forest was dense with ancient trees, silent, with the silver moonlight melting between the mists, brightly falling on the gnarly roots of strange trees.

This direction no longer showed the lights of the Lower City Area.

The surroundings were straight out of a fantasy novel scene, with claw-like dry branches and the eerie cries of the Night Owl under a cold silver moon.

Fang Hong was a bit cautious as he looked around.

In this team, he was probably the worst at stealth, not having a Combat Profession and having a lower level than Red Leaf.

He could only deploy the Clockwork Fairy to fly around him as the center, trying to detect enemies in advance. However, ultimately, the fairy still relied on the controller to identify targets, which could be a bit awkward when he was distracted with other tasks.

Fortunately, luck was on his side. Although tuning the walker and replacing the Core Crystal had taken some time, it seemed there were fewer Dragon Worshippers in this direction.

Fang Hong breathed a sigh of relief after ensuring no one else was approaching.

He carefully retreated into the bushes and tuned the walker’s menu, looking at it. After opening the system panel, the data for the ”Sword Bearer” filled an entire page:

’Walker 355 model (Sword Bearer) [Quadruped System]—(Equipment Level, D grade)’

’Basic Attributes—Attack: 32-47 (+16), Strength Modifier +42%; Melee Hit: 61 (+30), Strength Modifier +51%; Balance: 42 (+7), Agility Modifier +17%; Burst Strength: 21, Output Modifier +54%’

’Protection Attributes—Armor: 8 (Shell part), Durability: 110/110, Shield: 0/0, Evasion Value: 167/167, Block Value: 125/125’

These attributes essentially crushed the Type I and Type II walkers, with the most direct Attack Power alone improved by over seventy percent more than ”Sword Hong”.

It was only slightly inferior in Agility, as each subsequent model of the walker was heavier than the last, with the Walker IV model being about the size of an actual person, qualifying as a medium-sized Construct.

Nevertheless, the Sword Bearer remained an Agility Type Construct, with a combat weight of just twenty-nine kilograms at nearly one meter tall, which was quite telling.

Its form was also slender and agile, vastly different from the Type I and II walkers, with a humanoid construct forming its upper body quite distinct from the earlier two, besides the common quadruped structure.

This humanoid construct wielded a sword in each hand, thus earning the name ”Sword Bearer”.

Each of the sword-wielding hands had four omnidirectional joints, controlling each hand individually required almost as much control as handling a full ”Sword Hong”.

Fang Hong looked at the device, his control gauntlets making a slight movement.

The Walker III model Construct slid forward silently under his control.

This was the ”Stealth Action” capability of the Sword Bearer, similar to the abilities of Night Thieves and Rangers, but somewhat weaker and without growth potential—also a common issue with flexible constructs.

Fortunately, the Combat Artisans were not focused on specialization.

However, he found it unusually challenging to control it, its complexity surpassing any other flexible construct he had handled before—even including Hilveld’s Fairy Doll, Meimei.

Of course, this was not to say that the Fairy Master was undeserving of his title.

Although a Fairy Construct requires higher computational power compared to typical flexible constructs, it doesn’t disregard the level completely.

In Eteliria, a universal rule was—the higher the required level of a flexible construct, the more complex its operation. A Fairy Construct was a very special type of Construct, having no level of its own and the complexity of its operation depending on the ’number of links’ and ’level of targets’ it connected with during combat.

This was like saying the computational power needed to link a Clockwork Fairy through a Fairy Construct was naturally much lower than what was required to link an Annihilator.

At that time, Fang Hong used Meimei to assist only Red Leaf, controlling just the Flame Ray unit of the Annihilator, which involved quite a bit of cunning.