Guild Wars

"Di-di-di pa di-di dow-doe, di-di-di pa di-di doee, di-di pa di pa di-di dow, di-da-di-doee…"

A strange but pleasant whistling tune came from the side of a lake in the middle of a forest clearing. There, a young handsome young man with shoulder-length curly brown hair, two light brown eyes, a wide nose, a defined jaw, and pink lips that had bits of purple on them, sat at the edge, holding a fishing rod in his hands.

Unbeknownst to him, a large panther was creeping up behind him. It found his whistling to be pleasant, and was even feeling slightly sorry that it would have to hunt him and devour his flesh in the next few seconds.

Once the panther was in position, it leaped forth quietly and manifested its claws, slapping the back of the young man's head with all its accumulated force.

However, the panther could only yowl in pain as all four of its limbs snapped like twigs, and it was blown back a few meters. It shakily rose to its feet - as best as it could - and gazed at the young man to see he was still whistling idly without a scratch on his body.

The panther simply stood there, dumbfounded, lost, and aggrieved, like a certain beautiful senator who had seen her husband kill kids, then that same husband tried to choke her to death. Just like her the panther lost its will to live and collapsed in a heap.

Cyrus Blood, aka Ghostpro, paused his whistling as he saw his exp bar suddenly climb a bit and then speechlessly turned back. When he saw the dead panther, he sighed and shook his head before continuing his leisure.

Since he noticed that he had accumulated enough to go up a level, he decided to open his Character menu.

｢Name: Ghostprotokill

Class: Stalker

Rank: Adventurer (1)

Level: 32

Exp: 0%

Str: 1

Dex: 1

End: 1

Int: 1

Spr: 1

Cha: 1

Lck: 1

Free Stat Points; 116

Combat Skills: None

Non-Combat Skills: None

Tradeskills: None｣

"Oh? That's right, I never spent any of my points when I leveled up." Ghostpro mumbled as he scratched the back of his head.

Actually, that was because he had never consciously leveled up. He was what the playerbase had dubbed a lifestyle player, someone who primarily traversed various Field Zones in search of different ways to relax and enjoy himself.

As you can imagine, he got this far just from monsters killing themselves on him, something which Orochi had thoroughly enjoyed. Ghost had never really taken this game seriously, as he did not have a sense of belonging.

What did you expect? He had been thrust into here right after suffering intense mental trauma from killing his entire family. Before that, his life might not have been perfect, but at least he had been happy.

However, after going out this time, he had understood some things and had gained a new goal. So it was time to stop lazing about and enjoying himself and actually work.

"I never thought I'd actually say this to myself…" Ghostpro murmured with amusement.

Circa just about four IRL years ago, when he had yet to awaken Orochi and had slaughtered his family through inaction, he had been a proud young master. Not the kind who used his family name to bully everyone, but the kind who was accomplished enough to use his own name.

His accomplishments were due to his insane ability to memorize, something which according to Orochi stemmed from the ability of its sixth head. He had awesome grades at school, but what he loved doing was showing off his obscure knowledge to others, even joining popular TV quizzes and easily claiming the prizes.

There was nothing random that Cyrus did not know. If he was captured by the God of Knowledge and refined into a tome, he would probably smash the fellow to death with his first volume alone.

Thinking like this, Ghost smiled. Right up until Orochi manifested from his back and slinked forward to whisper in his ears.

"Well, what are ya waiting for? It's time to go find the bossman." Orochi prompted with a wide smile.

Ghostpro sighed sadly and reeled in his fishing rod. "Damn, every time you appear, I remember that I'm no longer Cyrus Blood, an obscure rich kid in someone else's story, but Ghostprotokill, Inheritor of one of the God Serpents, making me pretty much a huge side character to that prodigy fellow I should be looking for..."

Orochi paused and pondered this, before nodding. "I would call you the General to the reincarnation of the most powerful beings that have ever lived upon this planet, but sure, your interpretation isn't wrong, either. However, isn't it good to be important? Why do you seem so sad?"

Ghostpro smiled weakly. "Firstly, it is a lot of work to be a side character close in power to the main character. Secondly, side characters, in general, do not have the greatest survival rates. It depends on the whim of the storyteller whether they survive or not. Only the really crazy storytellers kill off their own MCs for real."

Orochi was left speechless by this logic. "You should be fine, you have me."

Ghost nodded. "That's one of the reasons I'm confident, but we are not invincible. As you showed me, we run based on Bloodline Energy. The moment I run out, I'm no longer invincible."

Ghost rose from his sitting place and packed up before leaving this Field Zone. As he walked across a general road that linked this area to another, he remembered something.

"Say, you, the first head allows us to fly through the air and the fifth head allows us to teleport through space. Which would be more cost-effective for getting to Cario City?"

"Cario City? Why there?" Orochi asked with puzzlement. Since he knew all which Ghost did, he knew that city was some obscure place in a third-rate kingdom, so why start his search for the Progenitor there?

"Because that's where the number 1 guild, Umbra, does their recruitments." Ghost stated matter of factly, as he jumped into the air and focused, envisioning the first head of Orochi.

He felt gravity suddenly loosen on him, going from trying desperately to drag him down to just barely enough to keep him from rising like a balloon out of the atmosphere.

"Do you intend to make use of their intelligence system?" Orochi asked, clearly lost.

Ghost paused his marvel at hovering over the ground and gazed at Orochi's manifestation with a strange look. "We just discussed how the Progenitor's reincarnation is likely a protagonist. If he is in this game, where else would he be but the top power for players?"

Orochi was dazed by this answer. He felt it made a lot of sense, but at the same time, something about it seemed really flawed. It was this contradiction that left him feeling so uncomfortable deep down, like he had a fishbone stuck in his throat.

Ghostpro ignored the defeated God Serpent and rose higher into the air slowly, trying to familiarize himself with this feeling. To do this, he needed to envision the flight method of someone similar.

The first thing that came to mind was Superman, of course, but his flight was far too fast and monotonous for Ghost to really feel a connection to. Luckily, the Inheritor realized that he could borrow the method of flight from an old anime his grandpa loved when he was a kid and made him watch.

Ghost rose until he was around the same height as the tops of very tall trees before moving forward. He noticed that thanks to his visualization, this was easier than he thought.

He then slowly flew forward with his whole body, feeling the wind pass him by. He noticed that as he flew a small barrier formed around him that prevented the wind from entering his eyes or nose, which would harm those organs.

Even when he increased his speed, the wind pressure that actually reached his body remained the same. As such, he prompted himself to go faster and faster.

Soon he reached a whopping 150km/h!

When he looked down, all he saw was grass that was like a blur to his eyes, passing him by with ease. Ghost quickly became intoxicated with this feeling as he pushed himself even more.

Go faster! Even faster!

200km/h… 250km/h… 300km/h… 350km/h… 400km/h…

Ghost kept accelerating and accelerating, feeling the drain on his bloodline energy subtly increasing, but not enough for him to be alarmed. He noticed that even at 400km/h, he would only drain the equivalent of 1% of his Bloodline Energy every 5 minutes.

Which meant that if he stopped his speed here, he could fly for 8.3 hours nonstop. However, Ghost did not stop, as he kept accelerating and accelerating until he reached 700km/h, the speed of some slower private jets!

He could barely see where he was going or what was around him as he had entered a speed tunnel. Everything from top, down, left and right was a blur, and looked like some poorly rendered map to his eyes.

As such, Ghost was not ready when he suddenly crashed into the side of a mountain at full speed.

WHA-KOOM!

The entire area of 30 kilometers around the point of impact trembled like there was a magnitude 5 earthquake. While the point of impact itself was dented greatly, showing a crater of around 500 meters.

Right in the center of that crater, smoking all over, was the dazed Ghostpro who had no damage to his body apart from some dirt. And his armor which had been destroyed.

Luckily, he had enough Bloodline Energy to maintain his invincibility, and the damage feedback from this drained nearly 20% of his entire stock. If he had tried this when he had less than 20% bloodline energy, he would have suffered varying degrees of damage depending on how little he had.

Ghost shook off his daze and slowly pulled himself out of that hole groggily. He noticed he was still floating in mid-air thanks to the fact that he was still visualizing the first head.

Seeing his handiwork, Ghost was a bit surprised. "They never show Superman and co making such mistakes… Hm, I guess it's to be expected since they fly on earth where it's mostly urban."

However, he groaned. "Great, my favorite armor is destroyed. I'll now have to get a new one from the city, but I only have like 3 silver left."

He removed the armor that was smoldering off his body and used the Eighth head's control of darkness energy to envelop himself in the same set of armor, but made of energy rather than material.

It did not have the same stats or set effects, only being slightly better than cloth, but at least it covered his nakedness.

After doing this, he rose higher into the sky, until he was on par with the clouds. He then resumed his flight but stabilized at 150km/h, which was enough for him to see his environs respectably.

Ghost was surprised though, when he heard a shriek and saw a flying monster blaze towards him with killing intent.

｢Name: Giant Eagle - Private Rank monster

Level: 20

HP: 1900/1900｣

It opened its talons to capture Ghost and take him back to its nest so it could rip his abdomen with its beak and feed his entrails to its cute little chicks. Just thinking about how happy its babies would be, the Giant Eagle was even more ferocious as it flapped its wings to catch up.

Ghost frowned. He did not have any skills within the game and his stats were unallocated. As such, he could only waste Bloodline Energy to deal with this freak.

He breathed in deeply and cocked his head back before blowing outward. However, instead of some light wind, what came from his mouth was the potent flame breath of the third head that streaked across the entire sky.

The excited giant eagle which was long imagining the scene of feeding its kids, already assuming that capturing Ghost was in the bag, changed greatly in the face of this attack, but there was nothing to be done for it.

It entered the wave of fire, shrieking and screeching utter pain and agony as all its feathers were burned off, and its flesh was roasted while it was alive. Eventually, its limp body plummeted to the earth as it had been one-shot.

Ghost sniffed and rubbed his chin.. "Hey, that kinda smells like chicken."