I raised my sword and stood protectively in front of Uldan, saying in full confidence, “No need to get angry, Uldan. Just leave these scumbags to me.”
“Of course. You carry, and I’ll score the last hit…”
“Fuck…”
It looked like Uldan was slowly picking up some gamer lingo thanks to my bad influence.
……
First things first, I lowered my sword into a ready stance and scanned the mobs with Dark Pupils.
Purgatory Gravedigger (Deity)
Level: 328
Attack: 58,000~82,500
Defense: 104,000
HP: 10,000,000
Skills: Undead Energy, Brutal Gouge, Wild Dance
Introduction: The Purgatory Gravediggers are vagabonds living on the fifth floor of the Purgatory. They were once powerful experts discarded by their people. Now, they make a living by digging through experts’ graves and finding their valuables. One might say that the Purgatory Gravediggers themselves are walking treasure vaults, carrying all kinds of unimaginable reaches. Be warned though, the Purgatory Gravediggers are incredibly powerful, and even sovereign experts have to watch their backs in the presence of these Purgatory Gravediggers. If you wish to claim their treasure, make sure your strength is up to par.
……
My eyes narrowed. They were deity-rank mobs, and they possessed higher Attack than even the Swordguards. Although the battle was in our favor, I counted around a hundred Gravediggers in total. It would be a pain if they all rushed us at once.
“Be careful, Uldan,” I said.
“I know.” She smiled. “You be careful too. Don’t let the crazies hurt you.”
The Xuanyuan Sword buzzed, and I dashed toward the group of mobs like lightning. I executed Burning Blade Slash + War Crush combo in the middle of a group of Gravediggers that immediately caused them to attack me like crazy. They waved their blades and spades at my Scarlet Dragon Armor[1] dealt only 30k damage per hit. So far, it didn’t look like they were a particularly dangerous threat.
Swhoosh!
Before I could even begin to lower my guard, one of the Gravediggers’ blades abruptly glowed a red light. I immediately recognized it as the assassins’ Gorge. I would definitely be stunned if the mob managed to score a direct hit. I needed to dodge it!
Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to move out of the harm’s way in time. I was stunned for 1.5 seconds!
The 7 Purgatory Gravediggers around me immediately roared, “Now! Kill him now!”
They started spinning on their feet like some sort of human cyclones and dealt an incredible amount of damage. It was another skill, Wild Dance! Each hit dealt around 70k damage to me, and I fell to 40% or so HP during the 1.5 seconds I was stunned. These fuckers! I should’ve known that it wouldn’t be so easy to claim their pressure!
The moment I broke out of the stun, I immediately fired Xuanyuan Slash!
BOOM!
Dozens of Purgatory Gravediggers suffered over 2 million damage and restored me to full health. The power of a SSS Rank Ancient Divine Skill was truly unrivaled.
Not bothering to conserve my Divine Energy Points, I dropped three Ancient Seals that hit all 100+ Purgatory Gravediggers around me. Summon the Storm + Myriad Swords Obliteration combo later, and the tables were completely turned against the mobs. While I was casting Rise of the Guardian Dragon to delete their HP even faster, I made up my mind to focus down a mob and see what kind of priceless treasure it carried for me.
Swhoosh!
A bagua formation appeared beneath my feet as I pierced the throat of a Gravedigger with Universe Break, dealing 790k damage and killing it outright.
“Ahhh, my remaining life! May I be drowned in wealth and power in my next life!”
The fool couldn’t stop talking about wealth even when he died.
Worse still, the sonuvabitch only dropped a single Big Magic Stone. What kind of joke is this? You call this a “priceless treasure”?
I was slightly disappointed, but undeterred. Perhaps I should try a different method. Right before a Gravedigger was about to die, I abruptly wrapped his throat with the Chains of Freedom and slashed him twice. This time, a couple of equipment pieces and magic stones fell out of his bag!
I picked up the loot while knocking aside a couple of Gravediggers with Burning Blade Slash. What I saw delighted me greatly. The mob had dropped 3 Divine Crystals, and 2 of them were of perfect quality. It was amazing. Outside the Purgatory, countless players were battling each other to the death for a single Perfect Divine Crystal, now worth well over 300k RMB and rising. Meanwhile, I had gotten two Perfect Divine Crystals with just one Chains of Freedom. The equipment the Gravedigger dropped wasn’t bad either. Although they were only Immortal-grade, one of them reflected 7% of the damage received. It was a great piece of equipment that could sell for at least one thousand RMB on the market!
My confidence bolstered by the success, I began using the Chains of Freedom whenever it was off cooldown. Unfortunately, the skill had a cooldown of 6 minutes, so I only managed to afflict 3 Gravediggers with it and net four Perfect Divine Crystals in total. I wasn’t going to complain about my good fortune though. In a sense, I had literally earned enough money to become a millionaire in a single day. How happy was that?
……
We continued deeper into the forest after cleaning up the Gravediggers. Soon, countless long rotted corpses started appearing on both sides of the road. There was a giant altar at the center of a clearing. The severely eroded stones that made up its foundation made it obvious that the altar had been built for a very long time, and at the center of the altar was a tall, huge pillar. To my surprise, a living man was tied to the pillar with rusted chains. Goshawks could be seen circling the skies and waiting for an opportunity to feed on his rotten flesh.
There were four level 328 deity-rank Purgatory Guards around the altar. I took out all of them before looking at the bound man and asked Uldan, “Who is he?”
She blinked once before replying, “He is the seventh god of thunder, Tiras.”
“God of thunder…” I muttered, “The only one I know that goes by that title is Thor, and he’s a very handsome man…”
Uldan shot me a strange look. “Thor is the first god of thunder, and he’s been dead for many years…”
Me: “…”
Suddenly, the bound man opened his eyes and revealed a pair of blood-red pupils. He looked back and forth between be and Uldan before licking the rotten meat around his lips with his rotten tongue. “Oh, it’s been a while since I’ve seen a human in the Purgatory. A cute and delicate flower like you shouldn’t be here at all, girl. That being said, you may as well set me free since you’re already here. If you do so, I will teach you the world’s greatest ecstasy myself…”
“Holy shit, what kind of god of thunder is this?” I said in a dumbfounded tone.
Uldan let out a chuckle before continuing, “Tiras was infamous for his inability to control his lower half. It was why he was abandoned by Heaven Domain despite being a Chief God. He had been bound here for almost 30,000 years, and his Divinity is so damaged that he’s weaker than even a Basic God. Let’s just leave. There’s no point killing him and dirtying our own hands…”
Tiras let out a mad cackle. “Oh, now I remember! You are Uldan, the Twilight Wanderer! Once upon a time, you were shackled to this place just like me, but you submitted to Lin Na and Mingyu, and I never did. Hahaha! What can you do? I am a Chief God, and you a lowly, mixed bred Basic God. It is only natural your Divinity wasn’t able to hang on as long as mine. By the way, boy, I sense that you carry quite the evil Divinity. You wanna join me and be my lackey? I promise you I’ll treat you to all the pretty delicacies there are in this world. Save me now! Justice needs me, and daughters with strict fathers need me even more…”
My mouth twitched uncontrollably as I grabbed Uldan’s hand. “Let’s go. I’ve never seen such a shameless god in my life…”
Uldan replied with a blush, “Yeah…”
……
It wasn’t long before we were stopped by yet another group of Purgatory Gravediggers. After all, they were the true masters of this floor. We killed them all because it would take even longer to move around them. Thankfully, the deity-rank mobs weren’t too big of a threat. As long as the mobs didn’t get lucky and chain-stunned me, there was almost nothing they could do to me. Now that I had the Unusual Physique, the deity-rank mobs’ chances of stunning me with Gorge was very low. I would even say that it was less than 1%. It was the biggest reason I was able to utterly dominate the mobs. Of course, Divine Deterrence lowering their stats by 40% was also a main reason their CC skill barely took effect at all.
I checked the forums again while grinding the mobs. A huge title had appeared on the home page before I knew it—
[Newsflash] Once again, our players have shown off their prowess and retook Sky City in just 32 hours! Vanished God City, Wind City, Elephant City, Cyan Earth City, Hero City and more tier 1 cities have been retaken as well!
Nearly all of the tier 1 cities had been retaken within 48 hours. Moreover, Candlelight Shadow, Warsky, Wind Fantasy and Legendary Brave had worked together with Dragon Speaker Binglan, Karinshan and Sophie to grievously injure one of the Nine Purgatory Sovereigns, Linda the Whisperer, and drive her into the outer lands. Even better, Opero the Nightwalker was killed in the war to retake Hero City by none other than Vienna’s Sorrow himself, and the fruits of his labor was one of the Twelve Divine Armaments, the Dead Wind Blade!
……
My heart sank. Goddammit, Vienna’s Sorrow got the Dead Wind Blade from Opero the Nightwalker? I had to give the Americans credit for this. Killing a Purgatory Sovereign was hardly an easy feat, and the Divine Armament was going to make Vienna’s Sorrow even stronger. It was unfortunate that I couldn’t hear this news live. More reason to hate the Purgatory, I suppose. Dammit, it was such a good weapon too…
It was at this moment I saw that I had a private message: It was sent to me by He Yi 10 minutes ago—
“Lu Chen, we’re holding a birthday party for Yu Tong at 7 pm. I, Mingyue, Gui Guzi, Li Chengfeng, and the rest of the executive-level players will be attending. Are you coming? It’s fine if you’re not free. Sky City will be entering maintenance in 30 minutes, but I don’t think it’ll affect you since you’re in the Purgatory.”
……
Yu Tong’s birthday party? I should go. I was the one who dug her from Stranger of Three Lifetimes after all, and she was a core component of our Holy Mage Legion together with Moonlight Stone and Lian Xin. Yeah, I definitely should go.
So I sent her a private message saying, “Yeah. I’ll be done in a minute. Please wait for me.”
A few seconds later, He Yi replied, “Mn. We’ll wait.”
……
After Uldan and I took out the twelfth group of Purgatory Gravediggers, I was almost out of Divine Energy Points. So, I bade Uldan goodbye and logged out of the game in a hidden valley.
I took off the helmet and felt like I had just surfaced out of the water.
……
It was the second day I entered the Purgatory, and still Xinran was nowhere to be found…
1. T/N: author used a short form, and for once I agree. Armor of the Divine Oracle Scarlet Dragon really is too long ☜
