As the hordes of rats run forward, we do too.
I aim for the weaker rats, at 5th and 4th Class, while Ava attacks the 3rd and 2nd Class beasts.
Some of them are even triple-ranked up, growing in size to 7 or 8 meters long.
Their teeth, claws, and tails are as sharp as blades, acting as soul weapons, dense with ether commands inside their basic-grade avatars.
I activate my fire summoning skill over and over on its lowest setting, even using the simulated commands of my avatar shell to limit its power. I infuse small amounts of ether into my attacks with the basic [Imbue] avatar command, using up 0.005–0.01 Low Quality Ether per fireball to follow out.
—
The rolling hills covered in rats light up with fire and white ether as the two of us kill all of the Rat Lords coming our way.
I ball up the flames and stack the basic-grade ether commands to create powerful attacks that a 5th Class Lord shouldn’t be able to throw, but that are physically possible for someone with enough mana control and divine threads to pull off.
This allows me to fry rats left and right, out in the open, without a care for who is watching.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Ava punching through the skulls of 2nd and 3rd Class Rat Lords, finding their weak points precisely, using the minimum necessary power to secure the kills.
The dissolving avatars lay in piles behind us, scattered across the hills. Yet, as I look further into the distance, there are only more rats coming my way.
Though, as more of the flaming and screeching rats die behind me, a strange string of notifications rings in my inner ear.
[Threshold Met!]
[100 Lords Killed!]
[New Title: Rat Killer!]
[Avatar Buff: Additional 10% Damage on Rat Lords.]
I recognize the style from a list of avatar achievements I keep seeing when entering the safe zones. The moment it activates, I feel my avatar shell strengthen with an additional avatar command, emerging from the small sequence of commands the demonic servant at the edge of the Grand Citadel edited.
When I send my next fireball in an approaching rat’s direction, I feel it activate, and I get up close to watch the ether imbued in my attack break through the rat avatar’s defense commands slightly faster.
I think about the scalability of this for a normal Lord—if they hunt in a certain region all their life, they could get quite strong. However, any piece of enchanted gear or custom soul weapons could do far more for them…
That would require filling their crowns and submitting to this strange system, but considering all items except for soul weapons usually are destroyed by the pressure when moving up to the Upper Realm, any extra buffs are helpful to survive.
“Interesting…” is all I whisper while traveling deeper, closer to where, when I touched the outer layer of this black zone, I saw all of the exit commands leading to a single spot.
I send a link of telepathy to Ava, pinpointing the exact location we need to go, and begin using multiple fireballs per rat. Where we’re going, I have to fight off 3rd Class Rats too, just because of the sheer volume.
The poison mist gets much denser, and it’s clear that the weaker Lords are staying away, as they cannot withstand it…
[Threshold Met!]
[1000 Lords Killed!]
[New Title: Rat Exterminator!]
[Avatar Buff: Additional 20% Damage on Rat Lords.]
[Threshold Met!]
[1000 Skill Uses!]
[New Title: Fire Wielder!]
[Avatar Buff: 10% Increased Damage using Fire Summoning.]
More notifications ring in my ear, giving small boosts in power to my fake avatar that mean nothing to me…
All I focus on is the enormous rat, towering over a pile of its dead fellow Lords, eating the avatar flesh of Second Class rats. Beady black eyes, long white teeth, and massive claws—just big enough to explain the destruction in the zones around this place.
Its fur is tinted purple with poison, and a bright white crown slowly spins around its head.
Other than the servant at the edge of the Citadel, this is the first 1st Class Lord I’ve seen in this system. From tail to nose, it’s almost 20 meters long, and the moment we’re spotted approaching, it opens its mouth to screech while releasing a dense wave of purple fog into its surroundings.
The piles of dead rats, and the ones hardly clinging to life, slowly dying from poison, topple to the side as it claws the soil beneath its feet, moving our way, charging up bright white premium-grade ether commands.
Neither Ava nor I move much, arms crossed, watching the terror come our way.
“Same approach as usual?” she whispers. I nod back.
Then, two glowing avatars of an unlikely pairing—a 3rd and a 5th Class Lesser Race Lord—begin to fight against this 1st Class threat, one that was soon to take over many large surrounding territories and cause massive blackouts.
—
The clouds of dense purple mist leaking from its pores are enough to kill 2nd Class beasts in seconds. As Ava begins landing kicks and punches on its hide, tearing holes in its flesh, the monstrosity screeches out in pain like it’s never felt before.
Ava doesn’t even need to borrow any stats—all she relies on is her avatar upgrade and brute strength.
The Divine Grade Self-Regeneration flowing through her body makes the thick poison gas in the air as pure as normal air by the time it enters her lungs—something this beast has never seen before in its enemies.
I’d love to say it was an exciting and close battle, but it is not even close. The 1st Class Rat King is torn to shreds, outmaneuvered, and its flesh scattered across the mountains of its underlings’ corpses.
Many of the barely living rats in the surroundings feed on its avatar mass, dense with ether and nutrients, but many scurry away as an even more dangerous, green-glowing Goblin Queen scares them off with her destructive power.
The pure force being produced by her blows is extremely questionable for a 3rd Class Lord, yet all of the commands and layers of protection I’ve programmed onto her are holding strong.
It is all within the confines of the system.
I smirk while running forward, seeing the white rib bones of a dying King of the Rats exposed beneath its clouds of poison. I release over three dozen fireballs I’ve been storing up for the last half a minute while watching this battle from the sidelines.
A blast of fire, flesh, ether, and divine threads follows.
[Use Absorption]
Upgrade: Divine
Skill: Poison Mist
[Kill confirmed!]
[Reward: 9123.8055 Low Quality Ether]
[Add to Crown Pool]
[YES] [NO]
“So the 1st Class crowns hold ten thousand…” I whisper under my breath while collecting one of its claws—twice the size of my body but still glowing hot with ether like a soul weapon.
Though, as I stand in the center of the blast, I feel the ether commands connecting this beast to the dome around me fade away.
—
Outside the mirrored dome, Ren watches in silence, as the environment doesn’t change at all, and the faint sounds of roaming Wild Lords echo through the desert behind them.
The barrier begins to show holes in its surface, letting the dark outlines of maroon hills peek through. Like paper burning from candle fire, the gaps behind it grow larger and larger until the entire barrier disintegrates.
Very few rats are left, and the majority of them are lower class—4th and 5th—that never even followed the waves of rats to begin with.
Ava and I walk out of the mess, with the fire residue from our trek to the center of the zone still burning, sending smoke up into the air.
Ren is wide-eyed as I stop and take a breath of fresh air that no longer carries any sour poison.
“Well, that was easier than I thought it’d be… That means we have a long way to go…”
—
Another full 12 hours pass, making it over a full day within the Grand Citadel.
My curiosity for what lies behind the black zones is satisfied, so I do not take the risk of entering any more of them as we continue trekking through the Wilderness. If I were to accidentally enter one created after an admin’s departure, I would certainly have to expose myself to get out.
Though, as we hike through over a hundred more terrains, the strength of beasts grows again, and the size of each territory expands—some spanning larger than a hundred kilometers.
Even the safe zones are more spaced out.
This layout was definitely designed to keep weaker Lords away from whatever lies at the center.
Even if everything that demonic servant at the edge of the Citadel told me was a lie, I’m certain there is some kind of inner city or ether command center at its center.
Not only that, but it has taken over half a day for the trackers in the two wolfmen’s avatars to finally stop moving downward…
I can feel them over a hundred thousand kilometers below our feet. The only logical explanation is that this Citadel must be a sphere.
I’ve upgraded [Water Summoning] and [Wind Summoning] to [Supreme Grade], and received a new skill called [Clairvoyance] from a Premium Quest, found in a forest region full of owl monsters.
It allows the caster to increase their mana output directly toward brain activity but only to perceive a small area around them with faster reaction time.
I’m itching to try it out, but I have a feeling it will affect my environment too much… So, I refrain.
The imagery in the back of my mind, of Ember’s surveillance of the Ellipsia Citadel, keeps me patient.
I lightly remind myself and Ava through our link, “Just six more days… We have to find the core of this place sooner rather than later…” while we scout out which zone to move to next, having just collected a few hundred new maps from the safe zone.
—
Meanwhile, Ember calmly waits on the top floor of the High Orc Tower, watching as the generals all start to get serious, activating their Greater Forms once they surpass the 250th floor of the Ascension Chamber.
His facial expressions are unreadable, and his crimson eyes stare into the center of the tower with far more perception than what is being transmitted to the Grand Citadel.
‘It’s happening again… finally. I do not know how long it has been since new paths have been created…’ he thinks to himself while watching the strange hot waves of soul energy from the four generals mutate their bodies and minds, adapting them to the new limits of the Upper Realm.
By his side, an extremely old path—one used by the Scarlet Clan of Berserkers—lies sleeping, yet ready to be used one last time.
Though, Ember’s nostalgia is interrupted by another wave of vibrations—ones he hasn’t felt in tens of thousands of years—hitting his consciousness. His calm eyes widen, and instantly turn to ones ready for battle…
The High Noble Vibrations of a Blue Wyvern subtly ripple through the Ellipsia Citadel after a massive breakthrough, as he is stabilizing and consolidating his physique beneath the sea of corruption.
While it is not enough for any other Lord here to feel it, Ember knows the Mensa Citadel has a Noble Demon of their own stationed there from the Vermillion Family.
Their energy detection systems may have picked up on this new fluctuation too… and it is far too early to reveal the fact that Seraphel has broken his seal, and that there is an enemy of the Demons powerful enough to do so in the Green Zone of the Upper Realm.
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