Guild Wars

Hades gazed upon the abominations with a cold expression.

｢Name: Abominable Ghoul – Private Rank monster

Level: 25

HP: 4,000/4,000｣

The Ghouls screamed and rushed at God Serpent Inheritor, their eyes filled with malice, madness and sheer hunger. They did not care that his aura was menacing nor did they bother to use logic to guess why he approached them with such confidence.

Like a man to a Z-grade booty, all they considered was that food had appeared before them, and it was the heaven's will that they ate it up!!

Hades sneered and placed his arms in his pockets. Like the other God Serpent Inheritors, he was  given a great allowance by Umbra that was suffering from success.

As such, he had gotten himself better equipment and had customized it to look like his daily wear outside, a black biker jacket with a hood, a blue inner shirt and a pair of leather pants and boots. Hades looked a mix of a dangerous hooligan and person of interest.

With his arms pocketed into his jacket, he seemed even more so. He simply leapt forward, matching the charge of the ghouls who also stretched out their claws and teeth to catch a bite of this meal.

BAM!

When they collided, nothing went like how one would expect. Rather than Hades getting clawed and gutted, he simply performed a spin kick that sent all the ghouls flying in all directions, crashing through tables, chairs and whatnot.

-2,500!

The ghouls suffered great damage from this, struggling to get up from where they lay. There was, for the first time, a look of confusion in their eyes. They had low intelligence and instable hunger, but there was some IQ hidden beneath all that ugly.

And that IQ was currently questioning the meaning of life.

Homeboy, do you not understand how things work? You are supposed to struggle futilely while we enjoy our meal in the end. What is the meaning of this rebellion? Are you trying to reject heaven's will? Are you trying to… seal the heavens?

Preposterous!

Hades simply landed, denting the charred and dirty tiles beneath his feet. He had never removed his hands once, only using his legs to attack. He smiled widely as he flexed his body, cracking his joints.

"You lot must be confused. Assuming you can even understand speech, you probably will not be able to fathom why I have so much power." Hades began as he kicked a nearby table over, crashing into a downed ghoul and ending its life.

"I have immense physical strength, speed and stamina because of my bloodline's devouring ability. This is different from my Class's devouring ability, which only sucks in energy." Hades added as he kicked another table over.

"If I use my Class, I get energy that can be used to power spells and skills of the Darkness element, and I can freely convert energies of any element other into Darkness energy. If I gather enough Worldly Energy, I can easily create endless Darkness energy to manipulate. That is the power of the Heaven's Devourer Class." Hades continued to explain as he dissolved into a black mist and slowly wafted over to the last three ghouls.

"But naturally, I prefer using my bloodline because while the energy claiming aspect is mediocre, it converts all that energy into physical power for my body, buffing my base stats endlessly. In reality, this is so, and it also works in this game. The only problem is that the physical power I acquire from bloodline devouring does not show on my character sheet, so it's hard to gauge my physical strength using that."

Hades stomped on the head of one of the ghouls, splattering its nasty 'brain' juices all over. The final two sensed the threat of death and forcibly rose to their feet, roaring unsteadily and with fear as they backed away.

Hades did not seem bothered. Rather, for the first time, he removed one hand from his pocket, which was his right hand. He then calmly stretched it forward and a strange black light enveloped his body like a mixture of an aura and miasma.

A beam of black light was fired from his palm, tearing through one of the last two ghouls, leaving only a smoking pair of legs that were cut off from the knees. The ghouls were quadrupedal, so that meant its entire body was gone.

The last ghoul was stunned, then turned to flee. However, it fell into despair when it realized its steps were not taking it forward, rather making it stay in the same spot.

To its horror, it was now being dragged back despite running forward, looking back to see that a black vortex had appeared in Hades' palm, and a great suction force was emerging from it.

The ghoul instinctively knew that if it fell into this vortex, it would experience a fate far worse than its brethren. Alas, it simply did not have the power nor capital to resist.

It screamed as it flew into Hades' grasp, and struggled as best as it could. Unfortunately, this struggle became weaker and weaker as a black light was pulled from its body in torrents, entering Hades' forearm like a gas.

As for the ghoul, it shriveled up in real time, turning into a sack of skin, and then ashes that dissipated with the wind.

"Mm, not much value in this one. Let's keep going. I need to reach Rank 4 ASAP and build up a solid foundation." Hades murmured to himself.

He turned into a wisp of black light and disappeared into the depths of the dungeon.

.........….

Essence Stalker was currently relaxed, seated on a barge that was floating down a large river. It was nighttime and the moon was out, shining upon the dark waters and reflecting itself upon it.

This created a beautiful sight, only enhanced by the little motes of light that hovered around the surface of the river, which were some form of fireflies. The barge was well lit and silent, with only a single passenger.

"Hmm?" Essence mumbled as he was roused from his calming nap, noticing that his ride had suddenly stopped.

"Ah, I'm here."

He was at a small dock that was partially ruined. Moss grew over the wood, and the other boats here were aged and broken. There was a gloomy atmosphere here, but Essence did not feek bothered in the least.

He jumped onto the dock and waved his hand. The barge he had used to get here deconstructed itself into a mixture of pale green and pinkish light cubes that returned to Essence's hands after compressing itself. After all, the entire barge had been made by him with Aurora Energy.

Done, Essence moved through the ruins ahead of him, angling towards his target for today, the Black Castle. He had been given a Special Quest to hunt down the powerful Rank 3 Vampire who lived there and harassed the various humans of the nearest Area Zones.

The path leading to the castle was dark and dimly lit, giving the feeling of dismay and eeriness. Coupled with the occasional screeching of bats and the multitude of reds eyes watching Essence on his climb, anyone would feel a chill in their bones.

Essence simply smiled and raised his palm to his chest. A cube of Aurora Energy manifested and exploded, resembling a sonic wave. Everywhere it passed, the dark miasma dissipated, revealing hundreds of bats on various crooked trees that were glaring at Essence with hunger and killing intent.

Seeing that they had been exposed, they decided to tear down all pretenses as many of the creatures launched themselves at Essence, their fangs outstretched to get a taste of that sweet blood!

Essence manifested Aurora Energy once more, which transformed into his halberd. He had lost his ability to manipulate space upon becoming an Aurora Lord, yet that didn't bother him.

After all, space was far below Aurora on the ranking scale. Besides, he had never been able to use spatial abilities with his bloodline, something which had puzzled him since the moment his affiliation had been revealed to him. All his spatial abilities had originated from his class and without it, he would not have been able to dominate unless he used his Dark Angel abilities.

However, after unlocking the Aurora Lord class, Essence finally felt complete. He could also use Aurora in the real world, but whew, the one time he had tried, he had nearly collapsed from exhaustion. He could easily create cubes of them in Boundless thanks to his class and how stable the universe was, but on earth, he could barely create a marble sized ball of it.

Aurora Energy was not meant to be present in a universe that had shifted to Origin Energy. It was like pouring diesel into your car's petrol tank, it would damage the engine. That was why he only freely used it in Boundless where the AI had perfect control over the world.

Not to mention, his utility of Aurora Energy was small. He only create gimmicks, tools to help himself and some spells/skills were mimicked. He never summoned giants, armies, or Rank 7 Masters though he could, because Essence was not a fool.

Essence waved his halberd with a roar, swinging it in a 360° angle. The powerful wind force slashed at the incoming bats, splitting almost all of them in half as they screamed in agony. The few who made it through could not even bite through Essence' red armor, which was hand made by Draco.

Essence simply grabbed the ones that were close and squashed them brutally, smiling slightly as he did. The few surviving bats felt a chill, but in their eyes, they had the advantage of numbers! How could they run from this filthy human?!

More charged at Essence, and he was much obliged to meet them head on. The slaughter continued without them making any progress, until Essence noticed that the corpses of the bats he had slain had melted into a puddle of blood and slunk over to the castle in the distance.

He suddenly understood why the bats were fearless and chuckled.

"I don't want to play with you anymore." Saying that, he released a cube of Aurora Energy onto the ground, which spread over the battle area. All the bats within were dragged to the ground and burst into bloody corpses, since Essence had raised the gravity by 50 times.

He allocated his points from his various Level Ups as he walked to the castle calmly, the blood of all the bats he had slain sloshing along with him as it headed towards the castle.

What a calm but eerie scene…

.........….

"Man, this game sure is brutal." Pedro Sousa whispered to himself as he saw the prices of the various classes in the Rank 7 Guild Hall's Training Room. He could only sigh and look through, grateful that he had a sponsor willing to foot this outrageous bill.

His options were quite interesting as well.

｢Nephilim – Class

Rank: Divine

Success Chance: 85%

Price: 10,000,000 platinum per attempt｣

｢Maverick – Class

Rank: Legendary

Success Chance: 30%

Price: 1,000,000 platinum｣

｢Devil Lord – Class

Rank: Legendary

Success Chance: 0.01%

Price: 1,000,000 platinum｣

｢Demon Emperor – Class

Rank: Legendary

Success Chance: 0.01%

Price: 1,000,000 platinum per attempt｣

｢Devil Enforcer – Class

Rank: Epic

Success Chance: 1%

Price: 100,000 platinum per attempt｣

｢Demon Slayer – Class

Rank: Epic

Success Chance: 1%

Price: 100,000 platinum per attempt｣

｢Demonic Berserker – Class

Rank: Semi-Epic

Success Chance: 60%

Price: 10,000 platinum per attempt｣

With the options given, even if he wanted to be conservative, he would still obviously have to choose the Divine Class, if only because it had the highest success rate. As for the logic behind that, Pedro could not fathom it.

Was that thing scaled based on common sense and actual difficulty?

Was it based on love and friendship?!

Perhaps it was based on compatibility with the user?

Or could it be that there was some truth behind the rumors he had overheard in the guild, about the AI handing out Divine Classes to core members of Umbra?