Chapter 77: A Mortal’s Wisdom
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
The deepest area of the Syndicate's hideout.
…
No one could determine the origin of the voice. It seemed to be directly transferred to their minds. What was more terrifying was the content.
Mortals? Blatant disregard? Holy Land? Only a God would speak of those words.
Amongst the warriors, Anderson had the most experience in battle and so he took a few steps backward and shouted, "It's not looking good, we seem to have unknowingly stepped into the forbidden grounds of a dark evil god's sacrificial altar!"
A secluded cave, eerie undead, strange cursed magic formations, what else could it be other than an evil god?
Captain Jacques' body began trembling and he screamed in a high pitched voice, "Oh my god!"
Following which, he spun around and ran back to where they came from, cowering in fear.
Alright, that was one man down.
To the common man, a god was mysterious, strong and as intangible as the stars in the night sky—an existence that they could never hope to understand, much less stand up against.
The only way to fight against a god was to render the assistance of another.
Jacker and Gildern also froze upon hearing those words. If not for their adventures with Link and their pledge to the God of Light to protect Link, they would most probably have run off together with Jacques.
"My lord, what do we do now?" He asked. In his eyes, Link was as collected as ever, as though he was just dealing with an ordinary opponent.
He had no idea how Link could stay so calm, but based on his past experiences, he knew that Link definitely had a way to get them out of this mess.
Apart from Link, one other person was exceptionally calm, and that person was Lucy.
The moment she heard the sinister voice, she unsheathed her sword and prepared herself for battle. She smirked when she saw Jacques running away in fear.
"To think that such cowards are protecting River Cove Town. What a joke."
Naturally, she also felt terrified, but after her close shave from death while escaping from the Syndicate, her attitude towards life had changed. To her, now death was but a destination that everyone would finally arrive at.
If Link lived, there would be hope. However, if Link was met with misfortune, she would accompany him to the lands of the dead.
Before Link could answer Jacker's question, sounds of hurried footsteps could be heard, and a disheveled Jacques once again emerged from the corridors.
Looking at Link and the others, Jacques had an incredulous expression. This was way out of his expectations. He collapsed to the ground and mumbled, "How can this possible? How…?"
Link immediately knew the reason. "This corridor has also been sealed. It's pointless to run, the only way out now is to fight!"
"But how?" Anderson softly whispered.
"Destroy the sacrificial altar!" Link spoke without hesitation. At the same time, he pointed his wand at the statue on the altar and fired a glass orb in that direction.
Boom! The shockwaves from the explosion flung centuries-old dirt from the ground and extinguished the candles, causing the hall to descend into darkness. But almost immediately after, the hall was illuminated by another source of light.
A blood-red light surrounded the sacrificial altar, forming a dome of light. From the visibility brought by this faint light, Link could tell that his attack had completely no effect on the altar.
Even stranger things started taking place. The eyes of the statue started glowing in an eerie black light and slowly began to move like a sentient being.
That wasn't all.
The 50-odd undead in the hall started moving towards the statue as though they were summoned by a higher being. As they moved closer, white balls of light started to emerge from their bodies. When they made contact with the blood-red light dome, these balls of white light transformed into a black sinister cloud of gas and was absorbed by the statue.
Once the white light was absorbed, the undead collapsed onto the floor as though they lost all energy, before rapidly decomposing into piles of ashes.
The speed of the statue increased with every absorption of the sinister black cloud of gas.
"Oh my, the god has revived and is here to eliminate us!" Jacques screamed and ran into the corridor once again. It seemed like they would have to make do with one less person for this fight.
"Link, please think of something!" Anderson was also on the verge of a breakdown, there were probably not many things more terrifying than an evil god statue reviving right in front of your eyes.
In folklore, a god would not only destroy your physical body, but would also torment your soul until your existence was completely destroyed for all eternity. For many Warriors, the death of their physical bodies was not something to be feared, but the destruction of their soul struck fear in their hearts.
Jacker, Lucy, and Gildern held their weapons tightly while chanting the holy name of the God of Light, hoping for his divine protection.
Link, on the other hand, frowned and carefully observed the changes that were happening to the statue.
The statue was extremely sturdy, as evidenced by the ineffectiveness of Link's attack. However, the absorption of the energy of the undead exposed a clear weakness.
It was that Shadow Stalker Morpheus could not freely control his powers in this space, in fact, he was heavily restricted, so much so that he had to make use of the powers only available in this space. His power here was most likely only enough to sustain the Legendary spell, Dimensional Mirror.
In other words, their only opponent was the statue in front of them.
At this thought, Link commanded in a deep voice, "There is nothing to fear, it's just a stone statue. In the name of the God of Light, purify it!"
Link pointed his wand at Jacker and released Might of a Giant, the spell stored inside his wand. A beam of runes was immediately projected onto Jacker and absorbed by his body.
In an instant, the muscles of Jacker's body shined with a golden glow and became more defined. However, he was already a Level-4 Warrior, thus reducing the effectiveness of the spell. Instead of tripling his strength, it increased his strength by a multiplier of 2.5.
The final result was a strength comparable to that of a Level-5 Warrior.
But that was hardly all the tricks Link had up his sleeve.
Jacker was the strongest Warrior in their squad and was thus tasked to face the statue head on, absorbing the damage. Despite the strengthening spell and the use of a shield, Jacker still struggled to match up with the statue. Link then cast a Level-2 Guarding Barrier spell to further enhance his capabilities.
At the same time, Link took out all the magic scrolls he prepared and released the magic contained within them, giving all members of the squad a Level-1 Cat's Agility buff.
Link hollered, "Don't hesitate, first destroy the undead and stop the statue from absorbing more power!"
The strength of the statue was directly proportional to the number undead it absorbed. The fewer the number of undead who reached the blood-red light dome, the weaker its battle power. Link wasted no time and bombarded the undead army with his Whistle spell.
Holding a handful of iron dust in his left hand, he raised his wand in the direction of the undead. He felt magical energy surge into the wand before it was compressed and manipulated to make up the accurate spell structure. Fire and earth element particles were then concentrated to the tip of the wand, causing the fire crystal to glow. After 0.2 seconds, a whirling, high-pitched whistle was created at the tip of the wand.
Fwooshh! The spell was launched towards the blood-red dome. Link was testing the strength of the dome.
The attack caused a giant explosion and created airborne metallic pieces that scattered everywhere. However, the blood-red light dome was barely scratched—not even a ripple was generated. This dome was extremely sturdy, way above the power of the Whistle spell.
Link immediately gave up on his assault on the light dome, with another whistle formed at the tip of his wand, he aimed and fired it at the legs of an undead. The whistle penetrated deep into the limbs and was blown apart by the explosion that followed soon after. The undead subsequently lost its balance and fell to the ground.
It was unsurprising that the undead continued crawling towards the statue, albeit at a slower pace.
"Hey!" Anderson understood what Link was doing and dashed forward. His weapon was a two-handed heavy sword, and while it prevented him from defending against attacks, it's destructive force was top notch.
A Level-4 Warrior wielding a heavy sword 5'4'' in length and 15 inches in width dashing headlong into a group of undead was akin to a tiger entering a herd of sheep. The undead had no chance to even defend themselves before they were brutally dismembered.
Jacker remained vigilant and defensive besides Link, while Lucy and Gildern began their assault.
Lucy's weapon was the Gale sword. The sword was extremely light and that allowed Lucy to attack at an insane speed, like a strong gust of wind, both sharp and lethal. She weaved among the undead like a dancing butterfly, severing their limbs along the way. Her speed was, in fact, comparable to Anderson's, dismembering ten undead in a matter of seconds.
Gildern on the other hand, was an archer who specialized in one-on-one combat. His attacks had a high penetrating power but were not suited to fight against large groups. In fact, even though his arrows hit his targets, it could not sever their limbs, after a few arrows, he stopped attacking knowing it was futile.
There were only about 50 undead in total. With Lucy and Anderson clearing the undead at such a fast pace, most of the undead were unable to move at all after 15 seconds, lying lifelessly on the floor, tumbling around.
The statue only managed to absorb the energy of 10 undead.
"Hurry, pile up all the undead, we need to burn them!" Link hurried the rest along. They had only prevented the undead from moving, but to fully stop the absorption of power, they needed to burn the undead into charred pieces of flesh.
Anderson, Lucy, and Gildern rushed to move the undead, while Jacker stayed faithfully beside Link in the event of an emergency.
Soon, the undead, with their respective limbs, were piled up into a veritable mountain of corpses.
This whole time, the statue simply looked silently at their attempts to sabotage his power absorption process. Link knew, that the statue had a final trump card he hadn't revealed.
But what exactly was it?
A thought flashed through his mind, he remembered that this place used to be a story map and that this underground statue was a hidden boss.
It was extremely difficult to summon this boss, at least Link never had the chance to fight against it. However, he had read comments on the forum that it took extremely gory and inhumane tactics to summon this hidden boss.
However, this boss was quickly removed from the game due to many players reporting it to be too cruel. Link had a hazy memory of the forum as he did not pay much attention to it while he was reading. He desperately searched his mind for a clearer version of the guide to fight this boss. As his eidetic memory slowly kicked it, the content became clearer to him, combining his knowledge with the current situation, Link smiled.
Hehe, luckily I still have 20 Omni Points.
He already thought of a plan, but was waiting for the statue's next move to decide whether he would put it into action.
When Link was preparing to ignite the fire, the sinister voice once again reverberated through the cavern.
"What a brilliant Magician, but it is still merely the wisdom of a mortal!"
The statue released a beam of red light onto the pile of undead, causing little white balls of light to float in the air. They then slowly started converging into a brighter and larger sphere of light.
The rest of the squad was at an utter loss for words when this situation unfolded in front of them. Their efforts had been in vain! Link, on the other hand, jumped in excitement.
As expected!
Morpheus' reaction was exactly the same as that of the hidden boss in the game!
