Chapter 2105: The Best Loot Isn’t Combat Loot

At midnight, the dancing ended, and the spectators at the theatre broke off to either go to bed, or find some late night entertainment.

There were also some who believed that doing the dungeon just after midnight was the best time, on a theory that the loot drops were reset daily. There was no actual proof of that, but there was also no proof that it wasn’t true. So, they simply continued, secure in the belief that they were right.

The dungeon, with its variable difficulty, was pulling in more of the ranking Elders of the region with every passing day, but every day became more lively, with the tensions bubbling beneath the surface, and every Elder looking for a drop that would let them get an advantage over their rivals.

So, alliances worked with each other, everyone worked with the Paladins and the Darklight Host, and the wandering cultivators, the Immortals who didn’t belong to a Clan, were making a killing selling their services as neutral parties to anyone who needed a member.

In a way, the saying that "War was good for business" had never been more true.

But there were only a few days left before the tournament started, and that was on everyone’s mind. Proving themselves at the tournament would give them an edge on recruiting new members, as well as learning what their enemies were capable of.

Naturally, it also meant that the core combat assets of every Clan would not be entering.

But that was true of any tournament.

The ones who were entering were the Clan Leaders, or any Supreme Ranked muscle that the Clans had. They might not be the deciding factor, when most Clan Leaders didn’t’ fight to the death. But they would be able to solidify alliances, and encourage others to back down, if they performed well.

That was as important as their actual positioning for the upcoming battles would be.

Individually, they might not be stronger than the members of other alliances, but together, their Alliance may prevail. That was the position that the Darklight Host was assumed to be in.

With their wealth of Supreme Ranked talents, it didn’t matter if they were actually strong fighters. There were half a dozen of them, and that was enough to stand without a large alliance. Though, that strength did make them wonder if the Darklight Host was going to send a member to fight in the tournament.

It was possible, but many assumed that they would not, as they were the hosts, and keeping the prizes for themselves, when they made it themselves, just seemed unnecessary.

If it was just for the disciples, and not for Elders, it would be a different story.

Everyone entered their disciples to see how the next generation was doing, and to prove that they were doing a good job training them. But when it came to the higher level competitions, the host usually didn’t participate, or there was an additional challenge at the end, for the winner to get an extra prize by beating the designated member of the hosting faction.

Never the strongest, that would be cruel and unnecessary, as well as potentially embarrassing if they lost. But one of their stronger members.

While the talk of the town was all about the war, there was a growing excitement about the tournament that Eryman couldn’t ignore as he reviewed the reports that his people had sent that morning.

The Paladins were again in the dungeon, hoping for better results with a more carefully crafted team.

They had grabbed a few from the Darklight Host, as well as a Clan Leader from on of the east coast Clans, who was unaffiliated with any of the alliances involved in the chaos. They were all powerful, and the hope was that they now had the chance to do a difficulty four dungeon at the Supreme Rank, which would almost certainly give them multiple Epic Grade items.

The agreement was simple. An item best suited to a certain class went to that class first. No matter who it was.

Only if that member passed on it would they choose who got it among the group.

The Paladins weren’t starving for gear, and they knew that they had spears waiting for them to pick up as soon as they were finished the run. But not being desperate for an item and not needing it at all were very different things.

They definitely needed some of the Epic Grade items that would come out of the dungeon, just not parts of their base gear, which was already in a very good position. It was the accessories, and the noncombat items that they were hoping for.

The dungeon rewarded participants at the highest levels with many of those.

If you could do the difficulty four dungeon, you didn’t really need combat gear, and the dungeon knew that. So, it gave you mostly items that you would need. Things that supported your daily life, or simply made it easier to survive when things went wrong.

Most of the life saving devices came from instances like that.

Out of everything that they could get from a dungeon run, an item that could help them escape before death was the single most valuable, even if it was single use, or had a long cooldown.

What did it matter if the item could only be used once a year?

If you weren’t dead, you just had to remain that way for another year, and that was the goal anyhow. It wasn’t like most people were routinely putting themselves in situations where they were likely to face true death.

But Difficulty Four and Five dungeons were also a great source of Skill Books.

And those were a massive win for any Clan, even the Holy Light Church could never have enough skill books, and they had literally thousands of inscriptionists. No matter how many copies you made, you could only copy the books you had, and the books were incredibly rare.

Only a few of the Clans had a Library as vast as the New Home Merchant Clan, who had been hoarding them for centuries. But that was largely due to the fact that most clans lacked craftsmen that could duplicate them, so they treated them as consumable resources.

Used up once someone needed them.