[Azela Floating City Outer Zone Exploration Progress: 91%]
[Legendary Series Task (First Ring): Outer Exploration Task Completed!]
[Task Reward: Experience Points 10 million, Azela Floating City Map]
[Second Circle Task Triggered!]
[Legendary Series Task (Second Circle): Inner City Sweep!]
[Task Introduction: Unlike the outer zone, the inner city area of Azela Floating City is still under the normal operation of the core Magic Intelligent Life, all important buildings have remained intact over countless years, many Elemental Magic Statues are still roaming the city roads, and more secrets await your exploration!]
[Task Requirements: Explore the inner city area of Azela Floating City, achieve an exploration completion of 60%; defeat 1000 Elemental Magic Statues]
[Task Reward: Experience Points 30 million, Special Skill [Arcane Favored], unlock the next phase of the task]
[Current Exploration Status: 15%]
[Number of Magic Statues Defeated: 18]
Lis looked at the newly appeared system prompt, somewhat smacking his lips.
According to the hints of the Legendary Series Task, did this Azela Floating City indeed have a core controller of a Magic Intelligent Life?
Then why hadn't it shown itself yet?
Starting from Lis's great-grandfather, more than a hundred years had passed, and there had been many explorations of this floating city, but no entity possessing intelligence and reason had ever been discovered.
The only things that could move were those Elemental Magic Statues, the entire floating city seemed like a long-silent wasteland.
Logically, if there really was such a Magic Intelligent Life, then the clan leaders, Uncle Joyce, and he himself would be considered invaders of the floating city.
Yet they had never encountered any deliberate targeting.
Even in the case of Lis's great-grandfather, who had died from severe injuries in the floating city, it was because he accidentally triggered a magic trap that alarmed several Elemental Magic Statues.
Moreover, Uncle Joyce was also of the Legendary level, already capable of inflicting significant damage on the floating city.
But so far, Lis had not discovered anything unusual.
Lis naturally would not doubt the system's introduction.
Could it be that this Magic Intelligent Life, like the Black Cat of old, was asleep?
That was actually quite good; at least for Lis, his goal was to take control of this floating city, and the less interference he encountered, the better.
The name of this second phase of the Legendary Series Task was [Inner City Sweep], with requirements to explore 60% of Azela Floating City's inner city area and also defeat 1000 Elemental Magic Statues.
Lis found this task quite daunting, far more difficult than the first ring.
The first ring task was just about exploring the outer zone of the floating city. Because parts of the floating island in Azela Floating City's outer zone were damaged, there were no Elemental Magic Statues guarding or patrolling, so the entire task was relatively easy for Lis.
Whenever he got tired of reading in the library, he would take a stroll outside.
There was no danger and not much difficulty.
But the second ring task for the inner city area was quite challenging.
The closer he got to the core area, the denser the patrols of Elemental Magic Statues became.
Lis had even reached the very bottom of that core tower previously, all because he was led by Uncle Joyce, a Legendary Assassin.
With the strength of the Shadow Power Uncle Joyce used, those Elemental Magic Statues couldn't detect his presence at all.
But for Lis, replicating Uncle Joyce's actions was far too difficult.
Even though the strength of those Gold-level Magic Statues wasn't strong among the Golden Rank, the trickiest part was that these Elemental Magic Statues had the ability to cooperate against enemies.
For Lis, he could handle up to two or three Elemental Magic Statues at the same time, but any more would mean he had to shift strategically.
There was no helping it, even though Lis possessed Transcendent Domain power, facing multiple opponents of the same level simultaneously was still quite strenuous.
Since those Gold-level Magic Statues were unlike normal Gold-level enemies, they had no emotion of fear and would not choose to flee even when there was no hope of victory.
Plus, these Elemental Magic Statues were extremely resilient; even with Lis's full power, he couldn't completely destroy a single Elemental Magic Statue.
Apart from these Elemental Magic Statues, many of the special buildings inside the city were simply not places Lis could enter.
Take, for example, the core tower guarded by a Legendary Magic Statue, the four Elemental Mage Towers, and the Magic Statue Factory.
These were places that Lis could not enter at the moment.
However, the inner city exploration requirement for the Second Circle was only 60%, so even if some areas remained unexplored, completing the task was still possible.
The Second Circle task also included another requirement, which was to defeat 1,000 Elemental Magic Statues.
Lis found the thought somewhat daunting—as to whether there were even a thousand operating Elemental Magic Statues in the entire Floating City was questionable.
However, with the existence of the Magic Statue Workshop, it should be possible to complete this.
But that would also mean sweeping through all the Elemental Magic Statues in the entire Floating City.
Previously, Lis attacked Elemental Magic Statues for two reasons: one was because the experience points they provided were similar to defeating a professional at the Gold Early Stage, and the other was to practice and test new spell concepts.
Initially, Lis had some leisure time, but now it had become a long and arduous task for him.
He could only prepare himself for several months of intense effort in this Floating City.
Although the difficulty of the task had increased significantly, the rewards had also improved substantially.
The reward of 30 million experience points was already generous, plus there was a special skill [Arcane Favored].
Although he did not yet know the specific effects of this skill, the name alone seemed quite impressive.
Lis remained quite eager to continue on with this Legendary Series Task, but he wondered if the final ring of the task would lead him to control the Azela Floating City.
Shaking his head, Lis didn't dwell on it but closed the task module and opened the map.
The first part of the series task had provided Lis with the Azela Floating City Map, and he was quite curious about the core areas of the floating city.
As Lis called out [Azela Floating City Map], a three-dimensional map appeared in front of him.
Lis scrutinized the unique map with interest, noting that unlike other regions that had flat maps, the map of Azela Floating City had some specialties.
Unlike the peripheral areas that Lis had mostly illuminated, most parts of the inner city were still in a grey state, indicating that Lis would have to explore them in person.
However, the good news was that the core locations that Uncle Joyce had taken Lis to had already been illuminated.
These were [Azela Tower], [Water Element Mage Tower], [Fire Element Mage Tower], [Wind Element Mage Tower], [Earth Element Mage Tower], and [McPherson's Magic Statue Workshop].
Looking at the vast shadows on the map, Lis felt a headache coming on.
Lis just noticed that many places on the map had faint glimmers of light flickering, like stars dotted across the map.
Lis grew curious, as anything marked on the map must certainly be a crucial spot.
He noticed that the Azela Great Library was also one of the marked points.
Was this a magic node?
Lis noticed that right in a spot he had just passed, there was also a flickering marker.
He remembered not spotting anything special there just moments ago.
Could he have missed something?
Lis furrowed his brows and pondered briefly before deciding to return and investigate once more.
Since he had already discovered it, he couldn't just ignore it.
What if it was something important?
Lis referred to the map and made his way back to where he had come from.
"Should be right here, right?"
Lis stood in front of what looked like an official building of the floating island; it was marked on the map as [Floating City Entrance Affairs Office].
However, now it was nothing but ruins: a massive slash had diagonally cleaved the small building in half, leaving only a small portion of the wall stubbornly standing while the rest was mere rubble and debris.
It appeared to not be inside the building.
Lis thought for a moment and spread out his spiritual power to investigate.