Because they set out early, the sky was just beginning to brighten when the group from Cliffside Camp arrived at Underwoods Camp.
Given their large numbers, they did not enter the camp itself, opting instead to wait near the woods outside.
Lu Shi was leading the team this time, so Li Ban did not even have to stand up front to look intimidating. He and Zhu Yao simply hung back behind the crowd to watch how things unfolded.
It was not long before the group from Blue Sea Camp arrived.
Li Ban swept his gaze over them and quickly noted that, not counting the drivers, they had brought over thirty people.
It was a slightly smaller force than Cliffside Camp's, but the vast majority were warriors bulging with explosive muscle. Only three among them looked on the leaner side.
Relations between Blue Sea Camp and Cliffside Camp had never been good. The two groups did not even bother greeting each other.
The leader of Blue Sea Camp was an elderly man.
But only his face showed his age; his body was packed with the same comically exaggerated muscle as the rest of his warriors.
"Maybe for some older folks, a world like the Recycling Station—where you don't die naturally and can swap for a younger body—isn't so bad?" Li Ban said to Zhu Yao.
"They might think so at first," Zhu Yao said mildly. "But give it a few years, and they'll grow tired of it all the same."
She shook her head. "Of course, those who truly can't endure this world gave up long ago, choosing death or turning into monsters."
In truth, there were not many who managed to hold on.
Whenever Li Ban went out, he almost never saw anyone wandering around outside.
It was no wonder Underwoods Camp had invented so many twisted forms of entertainment.
A moment later, the Underwoods Camp contingent emerged alongside the leaders of the other two camps.
Underwoods Camp had fielded a larger force, bringing nearly fifty people.
Shu Yu from Red Fruit Camp was the last to step out, with nine people trailing behind her.
Red Fruit Camp had provided the fewest combatants.
However, since they were the furthest away and were providing most of the rewards, no one minded their small numbers.
"Alright, I will go over the mission assignments. Clearing out these monster nests is no small risk. Even with our numbers, there will likely be casualties. If you don't want to end up on the casualty list, everyone must follow the plan and obey all orders uniformly—"
Li Ban listened from the sidelines. Although they had over a hundred people joining the battle, having seen a nest up close, he knew these numbers were not a sure bet.
The monsters at the nest locations were numerous.
Some could fly, some excelled at climbing, and others were built for frontal assaults.
To deal with these all-around enemies, the three leaders had laid out a meticulous plan.
They designated who would lure the enemies and who would pin down the flying monsters, before finally bringing up the sprayers on the ceiling.
"—There are a lot of sprayers, but they can only attack from a distance. Their black nets are not highly corrosive, but they are incredibly disruptive. The team intercepting the nets will mainly be responsible for pinning them down and drawing their fire, which requires great agility."
Hearing the Underwoods Camp contingent mention the sprayers, Lu Shi looked up and gave Li Ban and Zhu Yao a nod.
Only then did Li Ban and Zhu Yao, who had been standing at the back of the crowd, walk over to Lu Shi's side.
They were joined simultaneously by two lean men from Blue Sea Camp.
Underwoods Camp had not assigned anyone to this task.
They had committed more of their men to luring away the flying monsters.
The Underwoods Camp leader looked at the four of them and nodded.
"I have prepared plastic-coated steel chains for the four of you. The black nets cannot corrode plastic quickly, so it should keep you relatively safe. If you notice the chains starting to break, retreat immediately. However, before leaving, you must blow your whistles three times to warn the people below."
He handed each of them a metal whistle as he spoke.
The four of them gave the whistles two test blows, verifying that the sound was sharp and clear, while also ensuring the rest of the group knew exactly what signal meant an attack from above was imminent.
With all the tasks assigned, the three leaders began to rally the crowd.
The primary incentives were wheat flatbread, along with a promise that the camps would replace any limbs lost in battle free of charge.
Naturally, the replacements would not be nearly as powerful as their current bodies.
Even so, it alleviated the fighters' worst fears.
As long as their brains remained intact, they would not lose much. The rewards were tempting, which was why so many had turned out this time.
With their roles clearly defined, the group formed up again, boarded their manual Tricycles, and set off toward the Building Graveyard.
Just before they boarded, Lu Shi pulled Zhu Yao aside for a private word.
When Zhu Yao took her seat next to Li Ban again, she discreetly opened her palm to give him a peek.
Nestled in her hand was a White Seed.
Li Ban raised an eyebrow, looking at her silently.
Zhu Yao looked pleased, though she kept her smile in check. "Ah, they finally handed it over right before we set off," she murmured lightly.
Li Ban understood instantly.
Zhu Yao had demanded a White Seed capable of storing spiritual rhinoceros as her payment.
Cliffside Camp was likely worried she might run off, so they had held onto the White Seed until the very last second.
At the end of the day, Zhu Yao was not one of their trusted subordinates.
Ever since she arrived at Cliffside Camp, she had never shown any inclination to align herself with them.
As powerful as she was, her lack of allegiance made her a volatile factor in the eyes of Gu Sa and the others.
The greater her strength, the higher the risk she posed.
Living on the fringes of the continent where monster density was low and threats were manageable, all these camp leaders truly sought was stability.
They did not necessarily need overwhelmingly powerful members; they just needed everyone to follow orders and fall in line.
The only reason Zhu Yao received the White Seed this time was because she was teaming up with Li Ban to handle the ceiling sprayers. With a small reserve of spiritual rhinoceros, she could manage short bursts of flight, drastically improving her combat efficiency.
Still, the amount of spiritual rhinoceros a White Seed could hold was limited. After clearing out multiple monster nests, there was no telling how much she would have left.
If Zhu Yao had not already acquired a nearly intact Spiritual Rhinoceros Fruit from Li Ban, she would not have been nearly this composed upon receiving the White Seed.
"Once we get back, ask them for some empty White Seeds," Li Ban said.
Li Ban no longer needed to worry about his own spiritual rhinoceros reserves. If he had empty White Seeds, he could stockpile some more for Zhu Yao.
While he could technically condense Spiritual Rhinoceros Fruits himself now, the process took too long, and he could not use any spiritual rhinoceros while doing so. The efficiency was simply too low.
These peculiar White Seeds from the Recycling Station were a far more practical medium for transferring spiritual rhinoceros.
"Empty seeds?" Zhu Yao nodded. "As long as there's no spiritual rhinoceros involved, I should be able to buy them."
The Tricycles rattled and swayed along until they finally reached the Building Graveyard.
Underwoods Camp had spent the last three days sending scouts to survey the monster nests.
Excluding the building with the monster nest that had mysteriously collapsed earlier, they had pinpointed the exact locations of three other nests among the remaining structures.
There were almost certainly more than three nests out here, but they had not dared to probe any deeper, likely fearing the overwhelming monster density and high risks further inside.
Shu Yu from Red Fruit Camp, however, looked visibly dissatisfied with the plan to attack only three monster nests.
The Underwoods Camp leader was doing his best to placate her.
"We do not have enough manpower. Hitting three nests is going to cost us heavy casualties as it is, and we might not succeed if we try to force a fourth. We can just head back, wait a few days until everyone heals, and hit them again."
Shu Yu gave a perfunctory nod. She clearly was not entirely satisfied, but she had no better alternative.
"Red Fruit Camp seems to be in a hurry," Li Ban noted as he and Zhu Yao peeled off in another direction.
Their plan was to scale the adjacent building, cross over to the roof of the target structure, and suspend themselves on steel cables to draw the fire of the ceiling sprayers.
Li Ban and Zhu Yao took one route while the two men from Blue Sea Camp scaled a separate building. The two teams approached the target from different directions without exchanging a single word.
Once they slipped inside the adjacent high-rise, Zhu Yao frowned. "We haven't coordinated our tactics with them at all."
Gripping a long-handled axe, Li Ban casually cleaved through a small monster that had lunged at them from the architectural ruins.
"It doesn't matter. We already agreed each duo takes half the ceiling." In truth, Li Ban could easily handle the entire ceiling himself, but since he planned to get distracted with his own side objective, letting them take half was for the best.
"Most of the monsters in this building are small."
Glancing at the corpse he had just created, Li Ban resumed his trek up the stairs.
Because this building did not host a nest, the local monsters were all fairly small.
The creature he had just killed looked like a gibbon with only half a body.
It relied entirely on its one-and-a-half-meter-long arms to move and attack. A head-like organ connected its shoulders, but below that, it had nothing at all.
"The rest of it got eaten. Monsters generally don't eat each other's brains. Their leftover bodies mutate again to adapt to their new forms."
"That makes sense."
Li Ban thought back to the hand-monsters and Rib Birds he had seen before. None of them had been very large.
They were all just food scraps that had mutated into miniature monsters.
It seemed that while monsters ruthlessly slaughtered and cannibalized one another, they usually left enough of their prey intact, never wiping each other out entirely.
The burden of actually exterminating the monsters fell solely on ordinary humans and other intelligent life.
Hoping the monsters would simply cull themselves into extinction was impossible.
Their infighting only served to breed more powerful and adaptive monsters.
"The rules of this world really don't leave a way out for anyone."
He could not help but wonder which Great Wizard had specifically engineered this world, seemingly for no other reason than to slowly torture these entities whose progress had been deleted.
While the other teams were standing at full readiness, Li Ban and Zhu Yao were completely relaxed.
To Priests wielding spiritual rhinoceros, a nest of this caliber posed no real threat.
The only real constraint was having to calculate their spiritual rhinoceros expenditure, saving as much of it as possible while maintaining their combat effectiveness.
The duo reached the roof. Across the gap, separated by the target building, they spotted the men from Blue Sea Camp.
Both teams had crested their respective rooftops at almost the exact same second.
Carefully avoiding shattered windows and crumbling walls, they swiftly advanced toward the target building.
Treating it like a race, the Blue Sea men reached their roof's edge and fired their grappling hooks before they had even fully planted their feet.
Once they confirmed the hooks had caught the opposite ledge, they quickly and nimbly dashed across the ropes toward the target building.
The two men crossed the gap in seconds. Bending down to retrieve their hooks, they cast a somewhat smug look over at Li Ban and Zhu Yao.
To their absolute bewilderment, Li Ban and Zhu Yao were already there. They had crossed over without making a sound and were already securing their steel cables on the roof to rappel down.
"How... how are they so fast?" one of them stammered.
"Hmph. I bet Zhu Yao used a Priest's technique."
They were well aware of Zhu Yao's past as a Priest.
Back when she had first fallen from grace, the people of the various camps had done their fair share of mocking her behind her back.
"Looks like Cliffside Camp gave her a White Seed."
"I bet they gave her exactly one. Hmph. Burning through techniques before the fighting even starts... let's see how many nests her spiritual rhinoceros actually lasts through."
The two men conveniently forgot that they were the ones who had childishly initiated the silent footrace to begin with.
The irony was that Zhu Yao had not used a technique at all—Li Ban had.
The moment the two men bent down to retrieve their hooks, Li Ban had grabbed Zhu Yao's arm and flashed straight across the gap, teleporting directly onto the target roof.
Zhu Yao gave a wry, suppressed smile. "I can't believe you actually raced them."
Li Ban was already finishing up the knots on their steel cables.
"It's completely different. They were racing; I was just saving time."
Who knew how quickly the ground team would knock down the monster nest?
The sooner he started harvesting the sprayers, the more waste elements he could gather.
Zhu Yao nodded, tightening the harnesses around her waist and shoulders. She and Li Ban ran to the ledge and threw themselves into a dive.
They did not spare a single glance for the two men from Blue Sea Camp.
Free-falling toward a window sealed tight with black slime, Li Ban swung his axe, tearing the muck wide open.
Using his momentum, he swung hard on his cable and launched himself straight through the window.
Zhu Yao followed close on his heels.
The moment they breached the room, they were spotted by the sprayers clinging to the ceiling less than two meters above their heads.
Several of the sea-anemone-like sprayers instantly twisted their nozzles toward them, spitting out a barrage of black nets.
Li Ban flourished his axe. Its broad blade easily swatted the moderately sized black nets out of the air.
To his strength, the heavy weapon practically weighed nothing.
Dropping in beside him, Zhu Yao thrust her wooden spear, deflecting the nets lunging at Li Ban from other directions.
At that moment, the opposite windows shattered as the Blue Sea men kicked their way in, immediately drawing the fire of the sprayers on their side.
"I will tear apart these sprayers," Li Ban said. "If you see anything drop, catch it for me."
Zhu Yao nodded.
They had already agreed to scavenge for waste elements before leaving camp.
Li Ban went to work. He used his axe to parry the spitting nets while covertly casting the Rending Technique to rip the sprayers apart, quietly snatching the waste elements as they fell.
This nest was situated much deeper than the one he had raided previously. Almost every single sprayer contained a waste element.
Whoever had a free hand snatched the falling loot. Masked by the dim lighting and the chaotic flurry of black nets, their actions were incredibly well-hidden.
At first, the two men from Blue Sea Camp had tried to keep an eye on Li Ban and Zhu Yao's technique. But as the sprayers ramped up their assault, they were thrown into a frantic scramble, leaving them with no spare attention to spy on anyone else.
After all, their only real objective was suppression. None of the four camps actually expected them to eradicate the entire ceiling array.
While the four of them occupied the ceiling defenses, the main assault kicked off below.
Strike teams peeled off to lure away the surrounding hordes of monsters, large and small.
A handful of the strongest fighters formed a spearhead behind Shu Yu, charging straight into the center of the battlefield to shatter the massive, honeycomb-like nest.
Li Ban easily slaughtered the sprayers overhead, occasionally finding time to glance down at the carnage unfolding below.
Between the distance and the abysmal lighting, he could barely make out the blurry silhouettes swarming around the central nest.
He occasionally saw climbers being violently hurled off the walls by defending monsters, but despite the casualties, more and more people closed in on the nest.
"Splat!"
The sudden sound of rushing wind echoed through the chamber, immediately followed by the heavy splatter of liquid.
The first nest had fallen!