Walking out of the mall, William had gained over 7.3 million Divine Power.
Adding the 62 million from the championship reward, plus the leftover 2.7 million from before,
William now held over 72 million Divine Power and was feeling unstoppable again.
With a flash of light, William once again arrived at the Bloodline Card Trading Market.
Familiar with the place, he began navigating the market with practiced ease.
In his mind, although he now had enough Divine Power to purchase two more Thunder Drake bloodline cards,
the Spine Serpent, as the main ranged unit of the swarm,
needed more urgent attention.
As a core unit, looking cool was enough—who cared about combat performance?
The first issue was its fireball range, which maxed out at just under 500 meters—
increasingly inadequate for the evolving demands of the battlefield.
Then came their mobility.
Compared to other swarm units, they were embarrassingly slow,
making it hard for them to keep up with the main forces.
After all, even the second-slowest unit—the Mutated Leaping Bug—
could use Wind Veil and its winged veins to glide considerable distances during high-speed sprints.
No problem at all.
Only the Spine Serpents, being pure ground units,
had to crawl painstakingly across the ground,
dragging down the swarm’s overall movement speed.
Next came their lack of defense.
The extraordinary genes in Spine Serpents only granted them the ability to shoot fireballs.
Their physical strength still remained within the realm of ordinary creatures.
They were fine against normal-level enemies,
but William’s opponents had steadily grown stronger.
Facing transcendent-level foes, their defenses just couldn’t keep up.
If not for the fact that the Spine Serpents’ extraordinary genes were already occupying 15 slots in the swarm's Transcendent Incubation Nest,
William would’ve considered benching them from the combat roster like the Beast of Thunder,
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and diverting all production to the Leaping Bugs.
After all, Thunder Drakes, also long-range attackers with a 20-meter body size,
overlapped heavily in functionality.
But when compared side by side,
the gap was clear—and painful.
Attack range, power, defense, speed, energy capacity, melee combat—
every stat outclassed the Spine Serpent by miles.
Yeah… Thunder Drakes were pretty much perfect—
except they were expensive and ate a lot.
So, for someone strapped for resources, practicality had to come first.
Fix the Spine Serpents first.
If there was Divine Power left, then think about buying the Thunder Drake bloodline cards.
William sped through the massive bloodline card market,
darting through shop after shop,
searching for cards that could synergize with the current Spine Serpents.
After browsing for half a day,
he finally selected two carefully chosen transcendent bloodline cards.
The first was the Azure-Winged Serpent bloodline card,
whose innate ability was very similar to the Leaping Bug’s Wind Veil.
As a flying serpent capable of using wind-element buff spells,
William—who had already deciphered much of serpent-type genes—
quickly pinpointed the location of its transcendent gene tumors through process of elimination.
They were concentrated mainly in the wings.
William speculated that if this bloodline ability were fused into the Spine Serpent incubation nest,
the gene tumors would likely manifest physically as a pair of Azure-Winged Serpent wings on the Spine Serpents.
With minor adjustments and optimization,
William could easily create a new gene template in a short time,
without needing to build one from scratch.
Plus, the card was cheap—just over 300,000 Divine Power each.
Buying more than 10 gave a 1% discount. Absolute bargain.
The second card was also a serpent-type transcendent beast: the Stonehide Python,
with a gift similar to the Leaping Bug’s Tough Skin.
Having already seen how effective the combo of Tough Skin and Wind Veil was,
William felt the synergy was unbeatable.
The combo boosted both defense and mobility,
and would even grant flying capability.
If the Spine Serpents could throw fireballs from the sky,
that would also solve the range issue.
It would cover all of the Spine Serpents' current shortcomings.
Most importantly, the Stonehide Python card was also affordable,
with the same pricing and discount as the first.
With his mind made up, William thought to himself:
“These two abilities are the best choices for the Spine Serpents at this stage.”
“Yeah… it’s not like I’m trying to save Divine Power by not buying the Thunder Drake cards—
this is purely about cost-effectiveness.”
And so, William decisively made his move,
buying 15 cards each of Stonehide Python and Azure-Winged Serpent.
Without even blinking, he spent over 9 million Divine Power.
