Translator: HunterW
Editor: RED
Near Section 3…
“Is that it?”
“Yes sir.”
“I see they’re quite prepared,” Angel said as he scanned the thousands of soldiers patrolling the Section. “It looks like there are about five hundred thousand of them.”
“Yes sir, it would seem so.”
“That’s the perfect amount to be our first prey. At a glance, it also looks like many of them are elites,” Angel said as he licked his chops.
“So… about our strategy…”
“Hmph. You know how I fight, so we don’t need a strategy. Just wipe them all out.”
“Uh…yes sir,” the deity officer stammered a reply. He knew just how strong Angel was; in fact, all of Croot knew that Angel was one of the top five strongest deities of Croot. The only reason Angel didn’t belong to a faction was he believed that they were all unworthy of him. If Angel ever decided to join the rat race, there would be four factions, not three… or he could just knock Skyla out for good, so that it would just be him, Claudia, and Adora.
Angel pointed to a man standing out by the frontlines. “That’s him, isn’t it?”
“Yes sir. That’s the man the Section 79 survivors claim has immense combat abilities.”
“He’s the one who killed Ashio,” another deity officer added.
Angel chuckled. “How amusing to think there’s actually a deva that strong.” Angel stared at the man for a while before speaking again. “Leave him to me. I want to find out how much EXP and golden rings he’ll yield. And if I die, make sure to get as far away from me as possible. I don’t want to have to kill you all as well.”
“Yes sir!” all twelve deity officers replied in chorus.
—
“That’s a lot of them.” Seeing a million soldiers gathered in one place in formation made me realize just how big of an army it was. I and my Commandos may have killed a million soldiers a little while ago, but it was in sporadic fights, not at once.
“Yes, there are. They all look strong, too.”
“It’s their first expedition. Of course they brought their veterans.”
“I’m beginning to think that maybe we should have used the Section’s walls for defense instead,” Kylie said quietly.
It was as she said; we left the safety of the walls and brought our army out to the frontlines to meet the enemy. We did consider taking a defensive approach, but hunkering down against an all-out siege wouldn’t secure a victory. Sections 3, 6, and 7 were the only manned Sections; all of the other ones were abandoned. That meant that this was the only line of defense against the enemy; we had to win. We kept a close eye on their movements to predict which Section they were targeting, because we knew what would happen if we lost a Section.
We had to count ourselves lucky that they targeted Section 3, or we would have been stretched thin trying to cover all the frontline Sections. We even gave up on using the walls for defense to discourage the enemy from sieging us and then setting their sights on a different Section.
A lone man walked out from the enemy’s ranks. Through Jay’s Clairvoyance, we deduced that he was the enemy commander. He exuded confidence just from the way he walked, as if he knew nothing could ever kill him.
“He either knows no fear, or is strong enough to walk around with all that confidence. And somehow, I doubt think he’s going to stop.”
It really did look that way. If no one from our side was going to go out to meet him, he might just keep walking all the way up to us.
I walked out as well, slowly and as relaxed as possible.
“Thank you, Jiwon.”
“We apologize for making you do all the hard stuff.” Song Daechul and a few officers whispered to me as I walked out.
“Activate: Create Critical Weakness,” I whispered to myself.
==[Create Critical Weakness has been activated.
Increase all Stats by 30,000 points.
Increase CRIT rate by 15%, increase CRIT damage by 1500%
Time applied: 24 hours
After deactivation, Death’s Achilles Tendon cannot be Consumed for 30 days.]==
It was arguably stronger than Ripped Advance because of its sharp increase to my CRIT Stats. The only downside was that it had a cooldown of thirty days. It was why I just used Ripped Advance, which had a shorter cooldown by twenty days. I never thought of using both at the same time because I was always afraid that something might go wrong and didn’t want to be left up the creek without a paddle. But now, I could use Ripped Advance every day.
“Activate: Ripped Advance.”
==[Ripped Advance has been activated.
All Stats are now doubled for the next 24 hours. (Only base Stat points will be increased.)
Once this skill deactivates, you will lose 0-100 Stat points.]==
“Mana Conversion – Ice. Judge’s Gavel.” I opted to not activate Warrior’s Brave Spirit and Howl of the Wolf just yet, as I was sure this battle was going to last a while. I activated Judge’s Gavel to inflict critical damage from the start.
That was it to my preparations for now.
“Open Stats Menu.” I had to see for myself just how my Stats had changed this time.
==[Name: Lee Jiwon
Level: 1101 Death Count: 0
Title: Earth’s First Deva
HP: 73,591,200/73,591,200 MP: 7,399,600/7,399,600
Strength: 193,602 + 7,131 Agility: 136,802 Vitality: 139,002
Willpower: 73,936 Intelligence: 72,456]==
I was speechless. As I glanced over my Stats, I grew more and more confident with each slow footstep I took. Soon, I was face to face with the enemy commander.
“How interesting. You really are a deva.”
“Do you guys have more deities than devas or something? You all really can’t believe that I’m a deva.”
The enemy commander chuckled. “It’s only because none of the devas we’ve met were as strange as you.” He chuckled again before continuing. “Oh, that’s right. The name’s Angel. We might as well know each others’ names since we’re worth so much EXP and golden rings. I expect you to yield a lot of EXP and golden rings, for someone as special as you.”
“That’s a nice name. I guess I’ll tell you too. My name… you can find in Hell!” I was close enough so I relied on my 130,000 AGI instead of Blink to dash over to Angel while pulling out my Harrier from my inventory in an instant.
“Gah!” It took less than a second for my spear to stab Angel through the chest. It also took a single blow to kill him, who was supposed to be the enemy commander. I didn’t care if it was cheating. I just frowned at the strange message that appeared before me.
==[You have obtained 0 golden rings for killing a powerful enemy.]==
“What is this?” I didn’t even gain a single level. It also wasn’t a dummy or substitute since the message clearly stated that I had killed a powerful enemy. Not to mention the fact that it felt pretty real when my spear stabbed him through the heart. I had my answer pretty soon as Angel, who I had just killed, appeared before me again.
“Hah… the rumors were true about you! You really can kill us with one attack! You’re the first able to kill me so easily!” Angel was making a fuss, but he looked different this time. His eyes were glowing red. But from what I could tell by the way he was shouting, I really did kill him. He just somehow came back to life.
“Well, fuck,” I swore to myself. This always happens. Every time I finally think I’ve adapted to this crazy system, it drops another bomb on me. Whoever made this system was seriously out to get me. And I doubted that this was the end to Angel’s trickery.
“How many times does this make this?” I asked without outright regarding anything specific, but I was sure that Angel knew what I meant.
“I don’t know. I never really thought about keeping track,” he replied while cackling.
I heaved a sigh as I stuck my spear into the ground. “Fine. We’ll find out just how many lives you have today!” If there was something I knew for a fact about the system, it was that no matter how unfair of an advantage it gave to some people, there was always a limit to it. It would be no different for Angel.
“Fissure!” I cried as I charged at him.
This time, Angel countered. “Come forth! Heap of Enhanced Tentacles!”
Fissure quickly broke through the ground towards Angel, but some things suddenly slammed into the ground, stopping Fissure dead in its tracks. They were long, thick black tentacles protruding from Angel’s back. A few of tentacles fell off his body as they were destroyed by the force of Fissure, but more grew to take their place.
Even I skidded to a halt at the sight. “Ew.” The tentacles squirmed like snakes and even started to come out from his face. He was hideous, uglier than any monster I’ve ever seen.
He cackled. “What, you don’t like it? Then I’ll show you something even more disgusting. Transform! Heap of Suctioning Tentacles!”
The black tentacles turned red at his command. That was even more disgusting, to be honest. If his appearance could deal damage, I probably would have lost about a million HP.
I heaved another heavy sigh and tightened my hold on my spear. This wasn’t a fight I could avoid just because he was gross to look at. I made my decision. I would make it so that I didn’t ever have to see him like this again!
