Ghostly wails and surging sinister light for ten thousand miles, deep within the Sanguine Ruins...
BANG!
Effortlessly slaying the instance boss, a creature resembling a Devimon from "Digimon" that had struggled through her blade qi, Seraphine stretched, looking bored out of her mind:
"How tedious. I'm sick of these instances."
DING... DING... DING... DING...
Amidst the relentless level-up notifications, Seraphine looted the equipment and currency. She opened her interface, swapped her gear, and tossed the old items onto the ground, not even bothered to sell them.
She dumped all her Free Attribute Points into Strength and spent her Skill Points to max out [Aura Condensation] once more.
[Aura Condensation] 〔7〕(Level 60 Class Skill): Killing intent enters the body, slaughtering all foes.
Reduces Max HP by 38,400, increases Damage attribute by +19200. Costs 3200 MP per second.
Name: Great Demon King Seraphine
HP: 999999999999999
MP: 999999999999999
Strength: 2,980
Agility: 280
Constitution: 280
Spirit: 280
Level: 70 (Ascension 2)
Experience: 38,908 / 4,946,757
Class: Slaughter Ascetic - Frenzied Intent - Solitary Blade
Damage: 2,935 + 19,200
Defense: 325
Speed: 280
Weight Capacity: 280
Evasion: 27.0%
Critical Hit: 27.0%
Free Attribute Points: 0
Skill Points: 8
Equipment: Great Blade of the Alien God (King) / Super-power Alloy Gauntlets (Radiant) / Radiant Star-Energy Diadem (King) / Sanguine Noble Raiment (King) / Night-Shadow Field Cloak (Radiant) / Malice Gemstone (Radiant)
Items: Speedrun Strategy Guide (Player-made) ×1 / Malignant Potion ×3 / Flash Talisman ×3 / Teleportation Stone ×2 / Six-legged Flying Car ×1 / Power Stimulant ×5 / Demonic Skin Explosive Talisman ×8 / Demonic Soul Poison ×6 / Molten Crystal Burst ×5 / Corpse-Demon Black Blood ×8
Currency: 18,303,875
Class Skills: [Blade Intent] / [Slash] / [Full Moon Slash] / [Spiral Slash] / [Piercing Blade] / [Aura Condensation] 〔7〕/ [Ruthless Blade Qi] / [Startling Thunder Blade-Armor] / [Abstruse Truth of the Blade]
Extra Skills: [Hellfire Crash]
Mystic Skills: None
Great Blade of the Alien God (King): Damage +1635, Skill: [Echo of the Alien God's Crippling].
[Echo of the Alien God's Crippling]: Striking an enemy inflicts the Alien God's curse, causing acid corrosion, dizziness, tinnitus, and soul-shattering trauma. (The target suffers Damage per second = Player's Base Damage × 2%).
Super-power Alloy Gauntlets (Radiant): Damage +590, Defense +60.
Night-Shadow Field Cloak (Radiant): Damage +525, Defense +120.
Radiant Star-Energy Diadem (King): Damage +920, Defense +460, Skill: [Photonic Wings].
[Photonic Wings]: Converges photonic energy to condense a pair of sky-traversing wings (Speed ×3). No flight altitude limit. Costs 100 MP per second.
Sanguine Noble Raiment (King): Damage +935, Defense +320, Skill: [Elegant Void-Step].
[Elegant Void-Step]: Ignores gravity, allowing free movement on walls or even in the sky. Costs 50 MP per second.
Malice Gemstone (Radiant): Damage +790.
Seraphine's current player interface was nothing short of extravagant.
Equipment, skills, and items were all fully loaded.
Perhaps this was one of the true joys of the game.
"This should be enough to slaughter the Royal Guild players."
...
Royal Galaxy, Sector Seventeen, Twenty-Fifth Star System.
Tanslation, a rocky planet orbiting a binary star system, its surface blanketed by vast, ancient forests.
Due to its high forest coverage, Tanslation resembles a lush green gemstone when viewed from the dark void of space.
Piercing through its thick atmosphere reveals sparkling rivers winding beneath the canopy of ancient forests.
These murmuring streams flow toward fertile black plains, towering mountain ranges, and vast emerald grasslands, providing life to the dense wilderness and verdant meadows.
On this picturesque planet sits the Royal Guild's military stronghold, the Pixiu Base.
Carved into the bedrock of a ten-thousand-meter peak rising from the plains, the base is a massive, bio-mechanical structure that climbs and envelops half the mountain.
Within this mechanical colossus, 30,000 Royal Guild players are stationed alongside ten times as many intelligent guild NPCs.
Guild military personnel conduct skill and tactical training here to enhance group synergy. Maintenance crews repair and service the guild's diverse arsenal of weapons, equipment, and spacecraft.
Beyond them, intelligence officers, strategic stockpilers, resource miners, and administrative staff all fulfill their respective duties.
Located near an ancient Stargate, this base serves as a critical transportation hub within the Royal Guild's territory, managing fleet traffic, refueling, and ship repairs.
Due to its strategic location and efficient logistics, it also serves as a vital warehouse for the Royal Guild, storing vast quantities of high-level equipment and items.
A few daring space pirates once set their sights on this place. However, the dozen heavily armed satellite defense outposts surrounding Pixiu Base on the plains ensured their attempts ended in absolute failure.
These outposts resemble mechanical trees standing five to six thousand meters tall. Their silver-grey alloy trunks feature three circular mechanical canopies, each a thousand meters in diameter.
These canopies are combat platforms bristling with ballistic, electromagnetic, and energy weaponry. Coupled with long-range sensor arrays atop these trees, the entire space, air, and atmospheric zones centered on Pixiu Base are under constant surveillance and strike coverage.
Even a target the size of a fist would be pinpointed by the sensor array and disintegrated by the combined fire from the outposts below.
Thanks to this multi-layered defense system, Pixiu Base has never suffered a single successful hit. Unless a major rival guild launched a massive, coordinated assault to overwhelm the system with a deluge of firepower, the base was theoretically secure forever.
Unfortunately, today was the day the exception occurred.
...
Seraphine floated quietly in Tanslation's upper atmosphere.
Buzz...
Suddenly, hundreds of brilliant photons coalesced behind her, forming a pair of massive golden wings.
WHOOSH!
A single flap generated a violent, inexplicable current. At Seraphine's will, this invisible torrent enveloped her as she dived toward the thick atmosphere of the green planet below.
SWOOSH...
As she crossed the Kármán line between the vacuum of space and Tanslation's atmosphere, she instantly activated [Hellfire Crash] and [Startling Thunder Blade-Armor].
WHOOSH...
In an instant, her speed increased tenfold. Like a gold-and-crimson meteor burning through the atmosphere, she plummeted toward the verdant ground below.
Far below on the vast plains, the defense outposts simultaneously detected Seraphine's solo atmospheric entry. After their initial shock, the players stationed at the base immediately launched a long-range interception.
Thousands of missiles, high-energy lasers, and railgun slugs erupted from the combat platforms, streaking toward the edge of the sky.
SWOOSH SWOOSH SWOOSH...
The first wave of lasers instantly crossed dozens of kilometers, blanketing the descending Seraphine from below. In an instant, hundreds of brilliant white bursts bloomed across her body.
CLANG CLANG CLANG...
In a single second, Seraphine endured thousands of high-energy laser strikes. But after that single volley, the laser fire ceased entirely.
Looking down at the outposts on the ground, every combat platform was now billowing with thick black smoke.
The source of the smoke was the laser cannons that had just fired; they were now nothing more than piles of radioactive scrap metal.
This was the result of the [Startling Thunder Blade-Armor]'s ranged counter-attack.
Although a single laser cannon fires dozens or hundreds of beams, every single beam Seraphine absorbed triggered an invisible counter-strike carrying 50% of her Base Damage. Each counter-strike, exceeding 10,000 damage, obliterated the cannons instantly upon their first volley.
A causality-based counter-attack skill like [Startling Thunder Blade-Armor], when paired with high damage attributes, is truly terrifying.
WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH...
Seraphine's descent continued to accelerate, piercing through layers of clouds as the ground below became increasingly clear.
ZIP! ZIP! CHIRP! CHIRP!
Suddenly, railgun slugs, much slower than lasers but still traveling at dozens of Mach, roared upward from below, completely blanketing Seraphine. This impact was even more violent than the high-energy lasers.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
A relentless series of sonic booms vibrated through the sky, shredding the thick clouds around Seraphine into wisps.
If the periphery was this chaotic, Seraphine at the center of the bombardment was like falling into a fiery hell, her health bar flashing non-stop. Yet, she remained completely indifferent, bracing against the deluge of railgun fire as she plummeted even faster toward the earth.
As the cost of their aggression, the massive canopy combat platforms on the outposts below were now dancing with sparks and thick smoke, screaming with electrical discharges and explosions. In a short span of time, every railgun battery was obliterated in a series of violent blasts.
Next, the slowest but most destructive volleys, the high-explosive armor-piercing missiles, roared upward toward the flaming, meteor-like Seraphine.
In less than a second, they collided.
BOOM BOOM BOOM! ROAR!
In an instant, thousands of artificial suns bloomed in the azure sky. Boundless, scorching white light spread across the infinite firmament. The sheer intensity of the light and heat began to parch the lush, emerald-green plains below.
Simultaneously, the missile launch arrays on every combat platform were struck by the invisible counter-attacks of Seraphine's [Startling Thunder Blade-Armor], causing their ammunition magazines to catastrophically detonate.
Amidst continuous explosions, billowing black smoke, and towering flames, the thousand-meter-diameter combat platforms disintegrated one by one. The tree-like structural foundations and the entire architectural frames of the outposts began to buckle and dissolve. With a thunderous roar and the screams of countless players, they collapsed onto the earth.
CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!
Each defense outpost weighed hundreds of millions of tons. These sky-blocking giants slammed down in succession, sending massive waves of soil and tremors across the plains, radiating from all directions toward the Pixiu Base at the center of the perimeter.
BOOM! BOOM!
In this artificial cataclysm of earth, stone, and shockwaves, only the sturdiest structures remained. The numerous buildings surrounding Pixiu Base, whether soaring skyscrapers or squat, dense blocks, collapsed without resistance, reduced to piles of scrap metal and rubble.
At that moment, Seraphine finally bridged the vast distance from the edge of the sky. Clad in blazing golden light and roaring flames, she struck toward Pixiu Base like a true meteor.
WHOOSH WHOOSH...
Trailing concentric rings of grey sonic clouds, Seraphine's descent grew even faster. The intricate structures and massive framework of Pixiu Base below sharpened in her vision. Finally, a diamond-shaped plaza glowing with electronic lights caught her eye.
There, she saw a Royal Guild player standing with his mouth agape, staring up in dazed confusion.
SWOOSH...
A golden-crimson blur flashed.
In a split second, Seraphine, carrying terrifying speed and power, slammed her feet directly onto that player's face.
"DING! You have killed player 『Royal I'm Proud, What Can You Do』."
CRASH!!!
The impact mirrored a true meteor strike, sending a violent tremor through half of Pixiu Base. A crater dozens of meters wide was gouged out where Seraphine landed, the surrounding ground heaving into a five-meter-high wave of soil that crushed everything within a thousand-meter radius.
The air, forced outward by the explosion of the impact, whipped up a massive sandstorm that engulfed all the surrounding structures.
"『I'm Proud, What Can You Do』? What was he doing here?"
Seraphine stood quietly in the molten crater, momentarily feeling somewhere between amusement and disbelief. After a journey of over a billion light-years, this guy had managed to die by her hand yet again.
"Truly... fate."
Seraphine shook her head with a laugh and prepared to leap out of the crater.
At that moment, dozens of half-sized drones zipped over the crater, dropping thousands of sticky black orbs emblazoned with skulls. These orbs, resembling solid latex, instantly disintegrated, banging and bursting into thick clouds of incredibly adhesive, semi-liquid black mist.
Enveloped by this smoke, Seraphine's vision and hearing were instantly scrambled, rendering her unable to perceive the outside world.
Outside the shroud of smoke, hundreds of heavily armed mechanical soldiers, wielding laser cannons resembling rotary machine guns, rushed in from all directions. They formed multiple perimeters, surrounding the crater.
Further out, over a hundred all-terrain combat vehicles equipped with large-caliber particle cannons roared into position, encircling the mechanical soldiers.
Further away, dozens of sleek, shuttle-shaped anti-gravity star-tanks descended from the sky, their molecular-disruption cannon barrels aimed directly at the smoke-filled crater.
Beyond these ground-based forces, dozens of star-shuttles resembling fighter jets hovered in the air, their beehive-like missile pods pointed straight at the crater.
Finally, over a kilometer away, a male player sat calmly in an anti-gravity vehicle. He wore an ancient robe-style, soft-metal mechanical armor, and half his face was covered by an intricate mechanical mask with whirring gears.
His ID read: 『Royal Sodium-Magnesium-Aluminum-Silicon-Phosphorus』. He held a thick, black-covered book adorned with a golden gear, flipped it open, and began reciting an incantation with somber intensity:
"Toll the Great Bell once! Push the lever, start the piston; Toll the Great Bell twice! Press the button, ignite the turbine, infuse with life; Toll the Great Bell three times! Sing in unison, praise the Machine Soul!"
As he chanted, floating, rotating phantom bronze gears appeared above every combat unit on the field.
Admech Magos - Forbidden Knowledge - Gear Sage: Level 70 Class Skill [Blessing of the Machine Soul].
Buzz,
Under the light of these bronze gears, every robot, all-terrain vehicle, star-tank, and star-shuttle erupted with bursts of illusory light. These lights, seemingly alive, spiraled around each unit, causing their armor to thicken, their cannon barrels to expand, and their internal engines to surge with doubled power.
Only then did 『Royal Sodium-Magnesium-Aluminum-Silicon-Phosphorus』 pick up his comms and issue the command to all units:
"All units, fire!"
At the order, every armed unit surrounding the crater in multiple layers opened fire simultaneously.
Instantly, a dense, multicolored barrage of projectiles pierced through the air like a myriad of needles, trailing thousands of streaks as they blanketed the crater.
ZIP! ZIP! CHIRP! CHIRP!
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
SWOOSH! SWOOSH! SWOOSH!
The pitch-black fog boiled like a violent sea under the onslaught. The sheer intensity of the firepower and the deafening roar caused the eardrums of Royal Guild players watching from several kilometers away to throb with pain, forcing them to gape and cover their ears.
"Hmph, I don't care where you came from," 『Royal Sodium-Magnesium-Aluminum-Silicon-Phosphorus』 sneered from afar. "This much firepower is enough to blow you to pieces,"
Before he could finish his sentence, just a second into the assault, the hundreds of mechanical soldiers, the hundred all-terrain vehicles, the dozens of star-tanks, and the dozens of star-shuttles all shuddered simultaneously as if struck by an invisible force, then abruptly exploded.
BOOM BOOM BOOM! ROAR!
Violent explosions clad in crimson flames roared, flipping over nearby domed buildings and shattering massive alloy frameworks into flying shrapnel. The thunderous blasts and billowing smoke left the distant Admech Magos stunned and speechless.
"What, what is this? What just happened?!"
In his confusion, the thinning black mist a kilometer away suddenly expanded, and a brilliant white orb of light, dozens of meters in diameter, shot out like a lightning bolt, thundering toward his position.
It moved with such terrifying speed that in the blink of an eye, the orb had crossed the thousand-meter gap, consumed him, vaporized him into nothingness, and then instantly streaked toward an even more distant target.
"DING... DING... DING..."
A relentless stream of player-kill notifications flooded Seraphine's ears. She paid them no mind, leisurely streaking through the base and toppling towering buildings.
No matter how reinforced a skyscraper or alloy floor was, if it stood in Seraphine's path, it was sliced through like cheese, collapsing in her wake.
The millions of blade-qi strands from [Abstruse Truth of the Blade] were so sharp that even a glancing touch gouged deep, jagged trenches into the surfaces of the soaring structures.
In the Novice Square, the game officials had stated: everything in "Brilliant Games" is destructible. Living beings have HP and Defense; inanimate objects have Durability. Once an object's durability is depleted, it is completely destroyed.
BOOM!
Following a massive blast, Seraphine pierced through a hundred-meter-thick mechanical alloy wall, leaving behind a fifty-meter-diameter hole with edges dripping with molten red metal.
As if moving through an empty field, Seraphine, now a sphere of blade-qi, charged toward the next structure: a thousand-meter-tall palace built in an ancient style.
CRASH!
The wall collapsed, and the massive orb of light invaded the palace. A dozen base high-ranking officers, varied in appearance and dress, stared in slack-jawed horror.
The bearded man seated at the head of the hall roared in fury: "Who gave you the gall,"
BOOM!
A brilliant white blade-qi streak cut him off.
"[Ruthless Blade Qi]? Hmph!"
The man sneered, drawing a massive blade and swinging back with his own streak of white blade-qi.
SWISH,
SWISH,
CLANG!
The two streaks collided in the center of the hall with a thunderous roar. The bearded man's [Ruthless Blade Qi] was instantly shattered by Seraphine's attack, flickering out of existence.
"What?! Impossible!!" the man gasped in terror.
In the next heartbeat, the blade-qi reduced him and his seat to splinters, continuing on to obliterate everything behind him, gear, furniture, windows, and the palace wall.
"What the hell! Is [Ruthless Blade Qi] supposed to be that strong?!" the remaining officers cried out in shock.
Their faces paled as they scrambled to dodge, their forms flickering desperately. Seraphine had just unleashed several more streaks of blade-qi toward them.
Once the officers had retreated to a safer distance, they began to use their diverse skills to counter-attack Seraphine.
"ROAR!!"
A Royal Guild player's body ballooned, transforming into a monster dozens of meters tall. Covered in slimy tentacles with the head of a shark, the creature, an R'lyeh Guardian, trampled the floor, charging forward with a low howl amidst a dense green glow.
Exotic Abyss Demon - Terror Legend - R'lyeh Guardian: Level 70 Class Skill [Eldritch Aura].
Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!,
The air vibrated as a solid field crackling with deep blue lightning suddenly clamped down onto the spot where Seraphine stood.
Helical Lightning - Civilization's Light - Nuclear Power Domain: Level 90 Class Skill [Ultra-High Voltage Incineration Field].
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!,
A refined-looking white player with glasses roared as he summoned a blurred but ferocious phantom of a bald giant. The divine shadow descended from above, enveloping him. Trembling, he gripped a pair of jagged blades and charged, his footsteps BANGING and shattering the palace floor.
Historian - Ancient Religion - Fictional Theology: Level 80 Class Skill [Divine Descent - God's Wrath].
"HEE-HEE-HEE-HEE!"
Hundreds of wooden mechanical puppets wearing clown masks giggled, exhaling deadly green mist as they rushed Seraphine with knives and spears.
Variety Toy Merchant - Mysterious Circus - Joyful Chaser: Level 70 Class Skill [The Clown's Jest].
BOOM!
CRACKLE! CRUNCH,
High above the palace, a massive cluster of dark clouds manifested out of thin air. Amidst a fierce crackling and the sudden onset of a violent gale, hundreds of brilliant white lightning pillars, each as thick as a man's thigh, erupted instantly, striking ruthlessly toward Seraphine.
Helical Lightning - Cult of Antiquity - Golden Gate Dancer: Level 90 Class Skill [Howling Fate Wind-Thunder].
"HYAH!!"
With a series of piercing shrieks, thousands of pale spectral figures materialized, their wailing forms trailing wisps of ghostly mist and Yin winds. They coalesced into a twisting, purple-white cyclone, roaring as it swirled toward Seraphine.
Giant Cloud Beast - Old World Occultism - Secret Records of the Grave: Level 90 Class Skill [Mystic Yin Ghost-Slaying].
"HAHAHAHA! USELESS! USELESS! USELESS! USELESS!"
Facing the combined assault of so many Ascended players, Seraphine simply laughed. Bracing against the myriad of skill attacks, she charged forward, her body still wreathed in the Blade Domain.
The shark monster was physically shattered by the impact; the high-voltage field was shredded into chaos by the blade-qi; the Divine Descendant was countered to death.
The lightning, the puppets, and the ghost-slaying mists were completely ignored by Seraphine.
[Ruthless Blade Qi], [Ruthless Blade Qi], [Ruthless Blade Qi], [Ruthless Blade Qi], [Ruthless Blade Qi], [Ruthless Blade Qi]...
Seraphine's form blurred as her arms danced wildly, relentlessly swinging the Great Blade of the Alien God. She unleashed hundreds of brilliant, door-sized blade-qi streaks, slicing through the palace with unstoppable force.
CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!,
In a mere two seconds, the sprawling, majestic palace was reduced to ruins. The high-ranking Royal Base players who had rushed in were all annihilated on the spot.
"DING! You killed player 『Royal Village Entrance Lime War-God』."
"DING! You killed player 『Royal Red Apricot Over the Wall』."
"DING! You killed player 『Royal Bring a Pack』."
"DING! You killed player 『Royal Hand-Spinning Helicopter』."
"DING! You killed player 『Royal Taking All the Bamboo Shoots in the World』."
"DING! You killed player 『Royal Time to Hunt』."
"DING! You killed player 『Royal Lewd Milk-Brother Thruster』."
"DING! You killed player 『Royal Pushing the Stone』."
"DING! You killed player 『Royal I Exploded the Silence』."
After slaughtering the high-ranking players, Seraphine walked toward a circular gate of light revealed beneath the collapsed palace.
"Where does this lead? The base warehouse?"
Buzz,
As she reached out and touched the gate, a virtual interface appeared before her:
[Please enter the password]
[Input box: __________________________________________________________________]
Seraphine tilted her head slightly. "Fifty-six blank spaces. That means a fifty-six-character password, which could be a combination of numbers and letters."
What did that imply?
If a supercomputer were checking millions of passwords every second, it would take countless billions of years to exhaust all possibilities. If special characters were included, the search might not finish even by the end of the universe. In other words, the security level was incredibly high.
Of course, that was only for ordinary people.
For Seraphine, calculation wasn't even necessary.
Buzz,
Transcendental Perception leaped into action.
She bypassed the countless layers of exhaustive calculations, forcibly dragging the hidden string of characters from the vast ocean of data and placing it within her own mind.
"18 letters, 19 numbers, and 19 special characters. Ah, careful enough."
Seraphine laughed softly as she input the password.
BANG!!
With a crisp sound, the gate of light slowly opened.
Seraphine strode inside.
Suddenly, a massive warehouse, a hundred meters high, two hundred and fifty meters wide, and four hundred meters deep, appeared before her. Despite the enormous space, the overlapping rows of storage cabinets were packed with items.
She picked a random cabinet at her side and scanned it. It was filled with various models of personal equipment, some mechanical and some biological.
War Blade, Galaxy Wings, Dark Annihilator, Ethereal Shadow, Heart of Flame, Mysterious Radiance, Illusion Shifter, Alpha Hunter, Lost Gravity, Eye of Medusa... and so on.
Though she didn't need them, Seraphine began pocketing these spoils of war.
As she wandered, she noticed that beyond the armor suits, mechs, equipment, and weapons, there were also vast quantities of strengthening gems, skill books, money bags, and, a small number of golden bottles, totaling only about twenty.
"These are..."
Picking up a bottle, Seraphine activated her system's scanning function.
"BEEP! Points Aquarius, containing Rare Skill Points."
"Hmm?"
Seraphine's brow arched as she reached out and unscrewed the bottle's cap.