Ashen God-Chapter 673 - 672: Increase in Movement Speed

"First came the mystery of prehistoric animal extinction, then the rise of mammals, all in preparation for the arrival of the Terrifying Upright Ape. So, the question arises, what’s the connection between the Terrifying Upright Ape and the Four-eyed Wild Boar? Could it be that in the process of evolution, they were also wiped out by Intelligent people? It’s indeed a possibility."

Although ordinary Intelligent people couldn’t deal with something like Four-eyed Wild Boars, if it were in the past era of Spiritual Energy that Zhang Yanhang imagined, dealing with Four-eyed Wild Boars would definitely be a piece of cake. Once Spiritual Energy was mastered, they were probably wiped out along with them.

"Speaking of which, did modern Intelligent people really appear so late? Only 10,000 years ago? But on second thought, it seems that the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors were just about 5,000 years ago, so 10,000 years ago does seem quite ancient."

Zhang Yanhang speculated that the Intelligent people of that time should have been in something like the late stage of Mountain Cave People. Afterwards, building houses gradually led to the formation of tribes, then to fixed dwellings, and then to primitive agriculture and the like. That’s the era when the You Chao, Suirenshi, and Shennong families emerged.

"This time, there’s no mention of any super life forms in the brief, but a significant extinction event is still essential, a prerequisite for the birth of humans..."

However, more than the content described in this part of the achievements, Zhang Yanhang was still more focused on the achievement rewards.

"The rewards for this achievement are still very good, directly providing a 20% Attack Speed Bonus, equivalent to me free-riding on a Light Golden Quality Demon Pig Bracelet +1.

With this 20% Attack Speed Bonus, it definitely won’t help me achieve my small goal of increasing the flight speed of the Machine gun bullets to Nine Mach. However, there should be no problem in making some progress towards that goal."

On the whole, Zhang Yanhang was quite satisfied with the three achievements this time; all were indeed related to the monsters in the Demonized Swamp Zone: Movement Speed Bonus, Attack Speed Bonus, and Physical Recovery Speed Bonus. These were the three main bonuses he obtained in the Demonized Swamp.

After checking the Attribute list of the three achievements in the Achievement Vending Machine, Zhang Yanhang immediately began to redeem the related achievements. After pressing the relevant buttons in sequence, three little orbs of light, each a different color, popped out from the bottom of the Achievement Vending Machine and instantly entered Zhang Yanhang’s body.

After redeeming the three achievements, Zhang Yanhang initially wanted to test them right there on Lake Heart Island, but he felt a bit constrained, so he returned to the nearby forest area to do some testing.

After the testing was completed, Zhang Yanhang found that his current Movement Speed had increased from the original 193 meters per second by another 200 meters per second. No rounding up or anything; it was an exact 200 meters, making his movement speed increase by seven meters per second.

"After going through a load of trouble (barely a week), I finally achieved my small goal of increasing my Movement Speed to 200 meters per second. With that done, my next small goal can be set at 300 meters per second."

Although Zhang Yanhang really wanted to set something like a 500 meters per second phased small goal, he still thought it would be better to be more cautious.

Of course, whether it’s 300 meters or 500 meters, his Rank as Second Tier right now definitely wouldn’t cut it. It’s only by later Rank promotions that his Movement Speed can be increased. Still, it’s better to be cautious when needed.

"Back then, my Movement Speed could reach 1.14 Mach with the blessings of the Spiritual Qi, and now it has improved to 1.18 Mach, an increase by 0.04 Mach. Although not as significant as the upgrade of Talent Quality, it’s still quite good.

Nonetheless, it is still quite far from the small goal of Two Mach I set before, and even with the increase of 0.04 Mach, I still fall short by 0.82 Mach to meet the small goal of Two Mach, or rather, the long-term goal."

If Zhang Yanhang’s Movement Speed were to be converted into kilometers, he could travel 722 kilometers per hour. If his speed was previously merely triple the conventional high-speed train, now it is roughly equivalent to three times the actual maximum speed of a high-speed train, though still a bit away from the theoretical maximum speed.

Qin Island City’s location, whether it’s from Beijing or the other big cities, is only about 550 kilometers away. If Zhang Yanhang were to go straight there, it would take roughly an hour and a half to make a round trip, an efficiency of committing crimes before the Spiritual Qi Recovery that would be unparalleled.

And if Zhang Yanhang were to empower himself a bit more, he could increase his hourly Movement Speed to 1444 kilometers, meaning it would take only about forty-five minutes to make a round trip from Qin Island to Beijing.

Although the Movement Speed was indeed fast, it still lagged a bit behind Zhang Yanhang’s previous reference, which was the Cold War-era bomber B-1 of the 1980s, which had a top speed of 1530 kilometers an hour. Zhang Yanhang was still 86 kilometers short, not much by his estimation, and he felt confident that with bit more effort, he should be able to surpass it easily.

In addition to finally achieving the small goal of 200 meters per second in Movement Speed, because he just received a 30% Physical Recovery Speed Bonus, Zhang Yanhang also achieved another small goal in this area.

Before, Zhang Yanhang, thanks to receiving a Light Golden Quality Demon Pig Leg Ring, could work continuously for twenty hours and nine minutes and then rest for ten hours.

Although that was already quite extraordinary, now that he has received another 30% Physical Recovery Speed Bonus from the Dark Purple Achievement, his work-rest ratio has become even more exaggerated, upgraded to working continuously for twenty-three hours and nine minutes but only needing ten hours of rest.

"I hardly believed it, but the small goal of a 2.25 work-rest ratio I set before, a nine to four ratio, was completed just minutes later, and even surpassed by an extra 0.05 times, reaching a 2.3 work-rest ratio.

With this, my next small goal related to work-rest ratio can be set at 2.5 times, which is a ten to four work- rest ratio."

However, Zhang Yanhang felt a bit regretful that everything that could enhance his Physical Recovery Speed in the Demonized Swamp Zone had already been acquired by him, and it would be very difficult for him to get more Physical Recovery Speed Bonus in the future. At most, he could barely manage a Fusion with the Dark Purple Quality Cloud Tiger Shoulder Armor +6.

But it could only grant a small increase to Physical Recovery Speed Bonus, and it would definitely still be far from achieving the minor goal of a work-to-rest ratio of ten to four.

"I can’t believe I can now work continuously for twenty-three hours. If I just push a little harder, improve my endurance by one more hour, wouldn’t I be able to hunt monsters at high intensity without rest for a full twenty-four hours a day?"

Zhang Yanhang fantasized about that wonderful future and felt genuinely excited about it as the idea gradually took hold.

"It’s just unfortunate that this estimate was before the promotion of Death Wave to Original LV.6. Now, the endurance for sustained activity has definitely decreased drastically to power the consumption of physical strength by Death Wave.

Thus, speaking realistically, I’m still far from being able to work non-stop for a full day, hunting monsters and collecting drop treasure boxes.

For the issue of estimating physical strength consumption time after the promotion of Death Wave, Zhang Yanhang, due to the absence of physical reference and the lack of sufficient monsters to hunt in the Demonized Swamp, was temporarily unable to calculate a rough answer.

Unlike the minor goals of Movement Speed and work-to-rest ratio, which were achieved smoothly, the 20% Attack Speed Bonus provided by the Light Golden Quality Achievement, despite being the most significant bonus, had not achieved Zhang Yanhang’s minor goals, not even by a long shot.

After receiving the 20% Attack Speed Bonus from the Light Golden Quality Achievement, the firing speed of the Six Roots Pure Soul Gun Cannon Bullets had successfully increased from the original 218 cannon bullets per second to 238 per second, with 20 more bullets being fired each second.

Moreover, with the increase in firing speed of the Six Roots Pure Soul Gun Cannon Bullets, Zhang Yanhang was also able to reload his gun magazine more quickly, successfully reducing the time needed from 2.3 seconds to just 2.1 seconds to empty a gun magazine, shortening the time by another 0.2 seconds.

"With this increase, the speed of emptying the gun magazine is only missing the final 0.1 second from the two-second goal I had set before.

Although it’s a long-term goal, it now seems quite easy to achieve, needing just the last 10% of progress. It seems reaching this minor goal should be manageable with just a little more effort."

Based on the current situation, Zhang Yanhang felt that his small dream of emptying the gun magazine within a single second after activating the Six Roots Pure Skill was nearly within reach.

After the 20% increase in Attack Speed Bonus, aside from an increase in the rate of fire, the velocity of Zhang Yanhang’s Six Roots Pure Soul Gun Cannon Bullets naturally improved as well, with the bullet speed successfully going from 6.5 Mach to 7.1 Mach, marking an increase of 0.6 Mach.

The 0.6 Mach is roughly equivalent to an increase in speed of about 204 meters per second when converted to meters per second flight speed.

Last time, Zhang Yanhang’s cannon bullets had about the same increase in Movement Speed, but frustratingly, even though his current Movement Speed had improved again, reaching 200 meters per second, it remained slower—still four meters slower.

"Now that the cannon bullets’ speed has increased to 7.1 Mach, I’ve moved one step closer to my minor goal of 9 Mach. The gap to reach it is now only 1.9 Mach. A long-term goal is truly long-term; it’s not something that can be achieved within the Second Tier."

Zhang Yanhang had previously completed 16.7% of the progress; now it is equivalent to 36.7% progress, still needing 63.3% more to achieve the long-term goal; roughly speaking, he was still lacking about sixty percent.

"Even though there’s still some time before I can achieve this long-term goal, flight speed not only increases the efficiency of landing hits, but also chiefly increases the physical damage of the cannon bullets themselves."

While Zhang Yanhang mostly paid attention to the flight speed, he was indeed very concerned about the damage of the cannon bullets, as simply hitting is useless; the important thing is to be able to break through defenses, to cause damage, as that is what is actually useful.

And according to the kinetic energy formula Ek=(mv^2)/2, the increase in flight speed does not equate to a one-to-one increase in the damage of the cannon bullets.

For instance, when Zhang Yanhang achieved a bullet flight speed of six Mach, the damage inflicted by the bullets was actually four times that of the original three Mach stage.

So with the current bullet speed of 7.1 Mach, the damage is even higher, approximately six times the damage of the original three Mach bullets. This means that an increase of just one Mach in speed actually augmented the damage by one and a half times compared to six Mach bullets.

This was why Zhang Yanhang always thought of increasing his Attack Speed Bonus to enhance the rate of fire and speed of the cannon bullets.

Of course, if a six-fold damage increase still seems low, Zhang Yanhang’s Gun Mastery LV.6 could also amplify by 210% the ranged damage, resulting in a total of 12.6 times the base damage.

Furthermore, Zhang Yanhang could also increase the damage by another 60% due to the Golden Body Effect, or even more if pressed, to 120% Attack Power Bonus. This meant that he could actually deal about 19.8 times, roughly a twenty-fold increase in damage.

Moreover, this was just the base figure; considering the additional 50 points of extra physical damage from the Attack Coin, plus the 15% Attack Power Bonus from the Divination Tarot Card and a 2.5% bonus from the White Ten-piece Set, his actual damage potential was around twenty-one times.

And if the attack power of the cannon bullets still wasn’t considered to be enough, Zhang Yanhang could refocus the Golden Body Effect on the cannon bullets, increasing the damage at least another fourfold, reaching about twenty-five times the damage, which certainly wouldn’t be too difficult.