And it fell to its knees, with a mighty, unwilling roar.
Huff! Huff! Huff!
Heavy breathing, gulping, and weapons clattering to the ground—beautiful music to the soul as the players who finally cleared the impossible Last Dungeon bathed in the light of experience points.
"Damn, this is the first time I received golden experience points, is this a special effect for the Last Dungeon?"
A teenaged assassin-class player examined his character profile, only to gasp in astonishment a moment later. "I leveled up! I went beyond the maximum level! I hit Lvl 120!"
Hearing the exclamation, the hundreds of players in the dungeon hurriedly checked their character profiles.
As he said, everyone had levelled up a solid level.
"It's not general experience points," Marvel, the guild leader, assessed. "Regardless of level, everyone levelled up once, just like an absolute rule. Just the thirteen of us who maxed up at Lvl 119 have ascended to the virtual Lvl 120, but our base stats didn't change much."
"Oh," the assassin player calmed down and did the math for his character. Indeed, it was just a virtual level up, nothing substantial.
"Hey, did everyone notice that only those with Lvl 120 received the extra drop? A key?"
A mature female voice joined the conversation. She was the guild's top mage and a healer, usually responsible for logistics and post-battle analysis.
As she was tallying the drops for the guild's warehouse, she noticed the discrepancy.
Hearing her, Marvel checked his loot and found it—a key. It's description says that it could open the gate to a new map.
"Could the virtual Lvl 120 be the minimum requirement to enter the new map?" As he wondered, he checked the location where the boss had fallen.
"I had my suspicion, but it seemed like the boss never left the spot the entire battle. If anything, he only summoned minions, as if it was guarding something."
As Marvel spoke, he headed in the direction of the beast. Flanked by the remaining twelve who reached Lvl 120, they soon arrived behind the boss' corpse.
There, they found a gate. After hesitating, he summoned the new item.
He immediately felt a connection with the gate, though it was subtle. As the others retrieved their keys, the connection grew stronger and stronger.
After debating with one another, they decided to try their luck and advance.
Simultaneously, they placed the keys on the gate. Golden lights spilled down, bathing the group in a holy feel.
You're qualified to enter the new world.
Connection secured to the dimensional channel.
An anchor point has been located.
Entering God's Ultimate Fantasy.
God has heard Humanity's plea for mercy, protection, and help—you are God's answer.
Good luck, Guardians of Humanity.
…
On a high altar behind the imperial palace.
The Human Emperor, a sage in his twilight years, kneeled to the heavens with his closest of kin by his side.
His wife, his siblings, his children, and their children—the whole royal bloodline acknowledged by the population of humans.
Beneath the altar, tens of thousands of humans stretched from the palace to the city walls in the distance, kneeling and trembling.
"Heavens above, please save my human race! We can no longer endure this fate of eternal servitude!
"Heavens above! We fear death not! But we fear for our children, their children, and the children who come after them to suffer our suffering!
"Heavens above! If humanity has no hope, no future, no path—let humanity end with this Sage, with this Emperor!"
Rumble…
As the old man kowtowed one last time, hard enough for his forehead to crack, the heavens too cracked open.
Golden light spilled down on the altar, and bits of what scattered with the wind bathed not only the human capital but stretched to the human domain.
A barren land situated between the territories of the Elf Kingdom, Vampire Castle, and the Dragon Nest.
These were few among the myriad races that cared little for humans. They didn't outright enslave them, but neither did they pity them.
This allowed humans to barely survive surrounded by three behemoths on all sides, with the occasional natural disasters caused by rampaging wild beasts.
Humans throughout God's Ultimate Fantasy world were mostly extinct by now. A remnant few, barely 2 billion, survived in the barren land.
On this day, billions of humans saw the sky split open and heard a melodious voice in their ears.
God heard your plea, and thus, God answered it.
As the voice faded, by instinct or intuition, everyone who heard it looked in the direction of the human capital.
There, a thick pillar of golden light fell from the sky.
…
The Human Emperor raised his head, face awashed in tears, and his blurry eyes caught sight of thirteen silhouettes in the golden light.
They moved.
Thirteen humans.
Men, women, and even young teenagers among them.
Most of all, the Human Emperor could feel it on them—the aura of the strong!
Authority! Invincibility! Confidence! Each and every last one of them was a powerhouse!
At the same time, as if by a divine decree, their image was imprinted in the minds of every human in the ultimate fantasy world.
Concurrently, a general briefing of God's Ultimate Fantasy streamed into Marevl's mind, together with his guildmates.
He frowned, fragmented images of humanity's legacy of suffering and slavery playing out in his mind's eye.
His grip on the lance in his hand tightened, a resonant dragon cry rumbling in his heart and mind at the injustice.
As a billionaire and a philanthropist in his previous life, although he wouldn't go out of his way to provide for every human that suffered, he never shyed away from helping when the injustice was bare before his eyes.
It could be said that other than being a massive pay-to-win whale in the gaming circle, all his revenue was spent on charity works.
Thus, he was rightfully angered at the history he witnessed. Too brutal to describe in words.
Heck, even the Human Emperor was clothed in rags, skin on bone, and his imperial palace was a two-story building.
It wasn't just Marvel, even the most childish and selfish of the guild's members was seething with anger. If for nothing else but the humiliation by association, as they were human too.
"The Heavens have eyes! The Heavens have eyes!"
The Human Emperor fell to his knees and wept, crying and laughing in joy.
Marvel frowned and said, "Reivera, cast Rejuvubation on the city!"
"Leave it to me," responded the guild's strongest mage and also it's strongest healer as she summoned her relic.
A floating orb of light in her hand rose to eye-level, and with a mental command, she cast a greater healing spell.
The moment they appeared, every human in God's Ultimate Fantasy had inexplicably joined their party.
Not a guild, just a temporary party.
Perhaps this was the mechanism to allow smooth transfer of information among the surviving humans.
However, their intuition told them that this link would soon be broken. Thus, Reivera took advantage of the temporary party to cast a party-wide healing ability.
Although the healing value was a meager 30 ability points, her large mana pool and base HP could guarantee complete recovery to the humans.
After all, according to the level statistics which she immediately memorized, the humans had an average level of 2, 3, and a maximum level of 5.
Their maximum HP was probably around 600 to 800 points, while her healing could average between 2,400 and 3,800 points, and a critical healing could scale up to 5,000 points.
Just like that, all hidden status ailments, debuffs, and injuries were healed.
After the party-wide healing ability, Reivera cast a status buff, giving everyone an average healthy status.
"Unlike the game where I must choose five equipped abilities, I feel like I have access to all my class abilities in this world," Reivera assessed and used the guild's telepathic link to comment.
"It's probably a trade off because we can't switch classes anymore, we can only switch equipments," Marvel inputted his opinion.
While Reivera was doing the healing, he and the rest of the players were experimenting and examining their character profiles.
"I have the authority to establish a guild hall and build branch guilds," Marvel said as he finished his exploration.
"This is probably a mechanism allowing humans to join as adventurous and farm experience points to level up. The basic perk of leveling up is granted to anyone who signs under us, but further perks rely on our discretion."
Marvel sighed. Luckily, they can provide a path of growth to the humans of this world.
Otherwise, just the twelve of them wouldn't be enough to guarantee prosperity for the human race.
Although their current strength seems to be the ceiling of this era, there seemed to be hundreds if not thousands of beings equally powerful.
At their level, their existence is more like a foundation for checks and balances, nothing more.
If humans wanted to survive, they needed to rely on their own strength and growth.
Thinking this, Marvel looked down at the Human Emperor and the humans who were in awe of Reivera's magic. They had yet to break out of their astonishment.
He smiled.