Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

There were many changes to the game that Alex had to immediately get used to. His forces now consisted of people who had a Saint realm cultivation base, so spiritual sense was now a thing. Their strength also varied way more than previously.

Another important change was that Alex no longer knew who could do what. Aside from a small group of people he had prior knowledge about, everyone else was a blank slate. No matter how much he focused on anyone, he didn’t know who they were or what they could do at all.

“War God, a question. How come I don’t know anything about most of my own people?” he asked.

The War God shrugged. “How often do you know anything about the people around you without them telling you about it?” he asked.

Alex wondered for a moment. “Then what do I do now?”

“Ask them, and they will tell you.”

Alex quickly focused back on the surrounding dark shadows that were his people. He looked at one of them, who he knew nothing about, and asked him to tell Alex about himself.

The figure delayed a few seconds in answering, but it did answer. Alex now knew everything about this particular figure and was quite surprised to see that it had three different techniques—two for attacking and one for constricting people in one place.

Alex turned to another shadow and did the same. It took a few seconds to get the answer there too. That only led to him frowning.

‘I can’t keep asking them all myself. I can’t ask 5,000 people on my own. That will take hours,’ he thought. He needed help. Since this was trying to replicate reality as closely as possible, he wondered if he could have other people help him.

He asked the few dozen people to gather information about the others. The shadows immediately began surging around as his people began doing their work, but Alex got no information yet.

While the information was being gathered, he focused on everything else. People had multiple techniques now, so they could be put into multiple positions. The techniques were also quite unique now, not only relegated to attack, defense, and healing.

There were techniques that affected oneself or others in various ways, which made the way the battle was fought an entirely different deal.

Another new thing now was the fact that these fighters got tired and ran low on Qi. Unlike last time, he couldn’t get them moving all the time and needed to give them time to rest and conserve stamina.

It was a curious bit of change from the first two variants of games that added a whole new layer of complexity to the overall war.

The information he sought arrived a minute later. He now had a list of people with their information, such as their cultivation base, techniques, the range of their spiritual sense, and other minor but vital information like who could see better, who had any sort of body constitution, who had better reflexes, who had better stamina.

‘What? There are people who can go invisible now? There are people who can teleport? This is feeling less and less like a game,’ Alex thought. But then he supposed that was the point of the game.

After another few moments, he turned to the War God and nodded at him. “I am more or less ready, War God. We can begin our fighting whenever you wish.”

The War God smiled. “Very well, let us start.”

The game began, and Alex immediately spread out the people with the stronger spiritual senses to scout out the enemies. Because he wasn’t connected with the scouts like last time, he needed to wait for the people to send back messages before figuring out what was going on.

He made sure to send some archers with them to kill off any scouts and then immediately began separating his people into groups to move away.

Alex couldn’t see the map from the sky, so he needed to keep a mental map of where everyone was now. His own spiritual sense was only a few dozen meters wide, so he couldn’t tell what was going on without people telling him.

He moved around the forest, hiding from the enemies while waiting for the scouts to send any messages. He got his first message from the central area, saying there were a few people approaching.

Alex gave the command to stand by and observe or run if needed. He got more messages from the other scouts soon after, telling him there were a few men making their way toward the center as well.

He messaged the scouts in the center, asking if those coming had stopped. However, he never got a reply. He messaged the scouts again, and only those not at the center replied.

‘Shit!’ Alex thought. They had killed the scouts in the center before he had a chance to find out more.

He instantly sent replacement scouts to the location to get more information from them, but he never got any. Instead, he was sent a message from one of the groups he had separated from.

They were attacked and were close to being wiped out.

“Huh?” Alex was confused. “How are they all dead this quickly?”

He immediately put all of the other groups on alert and was soon sent another message that the War God had brought his entire army. No more messages came.

One by one, the different groups were being picked off, and by the end, his group was found. There was no place to even hide.

Alex went out to fight the enemy, and that was when someone teleported directly behind him. Alex’s defender, someone with a Saint Transformation 9th realm cultivation base, fought the man. And yet, the man couldn’t win.

He was much weaker than the enemy that had teleported in. Alex had no way of defending himself.

A few seconds later, he was dead.

The images vanished, and Alex was back on top of his pedestal, looking at the War God again. He realized what had happened this time.

The War God used the simple strategy of being a battering ram. He simply forced his way through the center, killing off his scouts when he found them, keeping Alex in the dark.

Alex realized he needed to do a better job with scouts this time around.

He understood more or less why he lost, and yet there was one thing that confused him still.

“War God, why was your man so much stronger than mine?” Alex asked. “The one I let protect me was the strongest I had. To defeat him so easily, yours had to be an Immortal.”

“Mine wasn’t Immortal, but had the power of one,” the War God said.

“Oh… a skill?” Alex asked. “I didn’t see anything about Battle Power, so that couldn’t be it.”

The War God chuckled a little. “I was in fact using a skill,” he answered. “I wanted to see how long it would take for you to notice that all of my soldiers are stronger than they should be. You caught on quite quickly.”

Alex frowned for a moment before realizing what the man was talking about.

“War God, were you using a Battle Array?”