Chapter 229 - Let The Grind Begin!

With Talon as his ride, it only took Liam 10 seconds to reach the town and he immediately dived right in. 

He had already taken a lot of detours and he couldn't afford to waste any more time. 

He hurried to the central square and saw the bunch of familiar faces who were almost as eager as him.

Liam waved his hand and called forth all of them. The number of demons waiting for him had now doubled.

It looked like everybody had survived the last invasion, so there were now ten of them waiting in front of him.

All of them had big smiles on their faces, clearly very happy to see Liam.

However, when they rushed over to Liam, they saw him smiling as well and for some unknown reason, they started subconsciously sweating.

"Let's start an invasion first." 

Liam continued smiling and tore open the first portal scroll without explaining much.

And thus began the never-ending grind…

Liam wore the black mask on his face and he and his team of demons started invading Xion without any break.

Since these were the special war missions, every single one of them landed the group in places filled with at least a few players.

And this time, Liam did not hold back. 

He used Talon, his golems, the grenades, every single thing in his disposition, and massacred all the living breathing beings in his sight.

It did not matter if they were players, beasts, monsters, or other races, everyone was killed without any prejudice.

All the demon beasts in his team as well gained a new type of respect for him. 

Liam recruited the two groups of demons alternatingly and continued doing the invasion missions without any rest. 

So while his demon lackeys at least got some downtime, he continued tirelessly cutting down the enemies and engaging in battles.

Everyone couldn't help but appreciate his battle prowess and mental strength. To fight continuously like this also required a certain type of willpower.

And their squad leader definitely had that talent. Inspired by his actions, they also fought to the best of their capabilities.

They continued grinding out one mission after another and slowly but steadily, loots, gold, experience points, and contribution points began piling up.

Soon, their squad began to slowly rise to the top. 

Their ranking continuously kept on increasing as they cleared missions back to back with resounding success.

And to the dismay of the envious demon beast at the token counter, Liam as well donated the maximum loot to the war chest every single time.

He was never lacking gold to begin with and now that he had all the gold he had earned from the PVP arena betting, the progress was very smooth.

In just a couple of days, the entire Thol city came to know about this new terrifying squad.

And Liam as well successfully managed to fill out his required million contribution points for the next upgrade, finally stepping out of the squad leader rank.

[Ding. Your rank has been upgraded]

[Rank: Platoon Leader] (0/100,000,000)

[Ding. You are now able to recruit up to 30 soldiers]

"100 million contribution points?" Liam coldly gazed at the notifications. 

They had to run about twenty invasion missions just to gather 1 million contribution points. So a 100 million contribution points was an astronomically high number.

But this was to be expected since a platoon leader can command a huge group of 30 demon soldiers.

The next rank might have an even more terrifying amount of power and a lot of demon soldiers' lives would inevitably depend on the commander.

So a promotion from the platoon leader rank would not be easy.

But Liam wasn't all the concerned about these ranks. His main goal was to power level using these missions. 

Every single level after 30 required a lot of experience points. Not to mention that Liam was at Level 40. So the experience points required for leveling up were even higher.

After grinding for 96 hours straight, he only managed to bring his current level to 42.

"Hmmm… So each level is taking about 48 hours…" Liam silently pondered. 

"48 hours is one day, and considering that higher levels should be taking a bit more time… so to reach Level 50, I will need about 2 to 3 weeks."

Liam closed his eyes and sighed inwardly. That amount of time was not acceptable. That was not something he could afford right now.

"I can't waste 3 weeks in just running these invasions back to back." Liam shook his head. "Also, I don't think I will have the chance to do that."

"The main assault should be starting soon. What should I do now?" He then facepalmed, realizing that he had completely overlooked something very obvious.

"I almost missed this. Maybe I should take a break soon."

It took him 48 hours to level up once when he was a squad leader, so now that he was a platoon leader, shouldn't they be getting more experience points and also higher contribution points?

Liam closed his eyes, meditating silently to clear his mind a bit, and then made a decision.

"Ok. I should first activate another invasion mission as a platoon leader and then evaluate everything again after getting a full detailed idea about the rewards."

He went to his anti-fan who was still manning the counter and asked for the platoon invasion missions. 

Since they involved teleporting more soldiers, these scrolls were different than the ones that squad leaders typically used.

"What? Why do you need these?" The demon gruffly blurted out and the next second, he abruptly stood up, almost falling down from his wooden stool.

"You already became a platoon leader?" He muttered in complete shock.

"You?" Liam cocked his head to the side.

The demon immediately stiffened up and cleared his throat. "Forgive me for my lack of manners, Sire." He muttered, his words laced with a hint of sarcasm.

He then took out some scrolls from under the desk and handed them over to Liam. "These are the platoon invasion mission scrolls."

"And each of them cost 100 gold." The demon replied with a visible glint in his eyes as if he was challenging Liam to buy dozens of these as he did before.

But Liam neither paid attention to his taunts nor his behavior. He grabbed a couple of scrolls and paid the required amount of gold.

He then returned back to the corner of the square where his 10 squad members were standing obediently.

And behind these 10 squad members, there were 20 other demons also lined up. Their team alone seemed to occupy this entire section of the central square.

When Liam walked over to them, all the demons roared together, greeting him in unison. Their voice and their faces looked like they had a lot of spirit and energy. 

Liam was definitely impressed and he asked his personal team. "Did you guys recruit them?"

Hiruyu, the demon who had voluntarily taken up the task of acting like a leader stepped forward and reported to Liam. 

"Yes, leader. We recruited these soldiers and I can personally vouch for their capabilities."

"Ok." Liam nodded and patted him. 

He only needed more headcounts for the platoon. 

It was impossible for him to pick and choose when there were these many demons so he didn't exactly mind who was selected and who wasn't.

In fact, the demon had just saved him some time and made his life easier so he gave him a silver coin and rewarded him.

"Alright. We will prepare to attack now. But before that…" Liam shouted. "Stand in groups according to what equipment you are comfortable using."

After doing multiple rounds of invasions, his bag was brimming fully with all sorts of equipment. So he wanted to distribute some to improve his team's overall strength.

While this might be an excessive expenditure, Liam did not plan on underestimating the difficulty of a platoon invasion.

As the size of his demon army increased, he was sure that the danger and difficulty would also increase accordingly.

So he did not hold back and generously distributed the several items that he had managed to collect. Many among these were rare-grade and some even unique-grade.

But Liam still did not hold back and distributed it all.

If the stormtroopers guild leader came to know about this, he would definitely want to murder Liam even if he did not know that he was the one who swindled him out of thousands of gold coins. 

The equipment he considered so precious was simply being tossed over to random underlings.

The demons also were equally surprised. Most of them were close friends and acquaintances of Liam's personal team so they all exchanged knowing glances.

They had heard a lot about this new young platoon leader and it looked like everything that they heard was true.

After these preparations were completed and the weapons were distributed to different groups, Liam also noticed that this time they had managed to recruit some casters.