A few days passed.
Sam stayed desolate. He focused on teaching his students while working on his research and experimentation. He learned a lot of things in the past year.
Even though it is a bad thing that his body got stolen and he got stuck in a cripple’s body, he learned a lot from that too.
He had to utilize the spiritual energy in ways he couldn’t have thought of before. Even though Sam’s original body didn’t have the same level of affinity with neutral energy as Sivan’s original body, he could still utilize some of his learnings from the experience.
And that showed some really great results in the research and experiments he has been conducting.
While he was living his life in relative peace, something happened on a morning.
When he was in the middle of giving some close-combat lessons to the students, all of a sudden his wrist started glowing. Sam frowned at first and his cautiousness kicked in. He almost wanted to cut the arm off, but that thought didn’t even last for half a second.
Because the glow is from the spot where the wrist screen is supposed to be. The glow increased gradually as it enveloped his body.
“Go and tell the trio not to panic. Tell them that I left for something related to those gods.” Sam instructed his students on what to do as he felt some kind of force sucking him into the void.
After going through a weird feeling of transference, he opened his eyes in the middle of a large hall. It is a large hall with a small dais in the middle. But there are no walls. He could see the floor extended into the horizons and disappearing in the darkness.
As he was looking around, sensed something as he turned around.
It is a familiar face.
“Hello, long time no see.”
Sam greeted them lightly.
Kumar, who just arrived out of nowhere was still confused when he heard Sam’s greeting and almost shrieked in fright. Only after looking at Sam did he heave a sigh of relief.
“Damn. Why are you scaring me like this?”
“What can I do if you are such a scaredy-cat?”
“Who are you calling a scaredy-cat? Huh?” Kumar refuted weakly. Both of them exchanged a laugh before someone else arrived.
It is Noah and before long Arkiv also arrived followed by other players.
Dayus came last of the group and everyone looked at him with hostile gazes. Sam of course is included. He wanted to kill Dayus so badly for a while now, but this guy is like a slippery loach. He just couldn’t catch him.
He thought he would be able to deal with him when he dealt with the Mari clan, but Dayus was not there at that time. The three young masters managed to bail him out of Sivan’s grip in exchange for their services.
After getting as much information about Sam as possible, they let Dayus leave. If he was trapped there, Dayus would have been dead by now. Even that didn’t happen.
Sam is really tempted to deal with this guy right then and there.
But before that, he got curious.
“Why are you all being like this?”
He asked the other players.
“We were in the middle of dealing with the last organization and this asshole once again sold us out to the leader of the organization to infiltrate inside. They almost caught us. In fact, Noah and I got caught by a young master there and almost got imprisoned.
But during transport to the city, Arkiv intercepted and set us free. Otherwise, we would have been dead by now.
“Oh? A lot of exciting things happened in my absence then.”
“Not really that exciting. Anyway, how did your expedition go? Ours was a disaster. The Peak stage Consummate cultivator was not easy to deal with. We have to use all the resources we gathered in our last expedition to deal with this one guy.
The preparation itself exhausted us and took more than a month and executed everything to lead him into that perfect trap, we had to bust our asses.”
Sam thought back to his expedition to the Divine Formation Mountain and shook his head.
Except for using the Chessboard, they didn’t even do that much. The Mountain Master is fucking stupid that he made it even easier for Sam.
He didn’t want to say this though. He had a feeling that these people will hold a grudge against him.
“Almost same. It was very tough.”
That’s all he said.
As they were making small talk about killing people more powerful than them, they sensed something else in the room.
On the dais, someone’s projection appeared. It is a face that they are actually familiar with. But they are not exactly fond of it. Particularly, Sam.
It is none other than Hel. The Norse goddess of Hell.
Hel smiled coldly as she looked at all of the players.
“Long time no see, Players.”
None of the players greeted her back. They just stood there and looked at her coldly.
“Expected as much.
Anyway, even I am not that fond of you either. If not for the fact that I made an agreement prior to meeting your pathetic selves, I wouldn’t have come here.
I am here to announce the completion of your current tasks as well as the beginning of your next tasks.
Officially, you have destroyed all of the organizations that we listed out and you have procured enough resources from us. Ideally, you should have only finished this task when you were late-stages of Astral Plane Consummation.
At least that is what the initial estimate is. But for some reason, you finished this off way before reaching that level. Even I am a bit impressed.”
“Yeah, that’s what we wanted to do. Impress you.”
Arkiv spoke sarcastically from the side.
Hel threw him a glare which Arkiv didn’t give a damn about as she continued.
“As I said, it would have been ideal if you were in late-stage for the next task to be announced directly. But since you are in your current stage, we have to change things up a bit.
So, before the next task begins, you will have some free time to increase your cultivation level.
Reach the Peak-stage of Astral Plane Consummation and you can start your next task. You must have done something similar in the past, but this time some things changed.
One of them is that you don’t have a specific time limit and the next task is not going to start at the same time for everyone.
Whoever reaches the required cultivation level first, will get to start it as soon as they reached it.
But the deadline remains the same for every one of you. If you are failed to finish the task by the time of the deadline or meet some conditions that will make you fail in the middle, you are going to meet a fate that is very similar to death.
So, you better prepare yourself, and the sooner you start, the more time you will have to finish the task, and trust me, time is the most important resource that you could ask for in this task.”
“Can you get into the actual details of the task?”
Sam interrupted her and asked directly.
Hel looked at him with hatred. She didn’t let go of the grudge yet and she is not going to do that anytime soon.
“You won’t be told any details about this task before you meet the requirements. So, you better shut the fuck up and listen to whatever I have to say so that you won’t die in vain after you start the task.”
Sam looked at her with disdain and replied.
“So, all you wanted to say is that we need to reach the peak stage of Astral Plane Consummation to start the next task, and even though the finishing deadline is the same for everyone they can start as soon as they meet the requirements.
The details of the task will be revealed after we meet those requirements.”
“Yes, that is basically it.”
“Then why the fuck can’t you say it as I did. What is with all the fucking build-up? You might enjoy this game, but I don’t give two fucks about it.
So, if you are done with what you wanted to say, let us leave this place. Don’t waste my fucking time.”
The room turned silent for a moment and before they knew it. Everyone felt the energy surging from all sides.
Hel’s face turned red in anger as she lost control of her own energy.
All the players felt the pressure. They felt like they are being crushed by a supreme force. But none of them caved in. Most of them glared at Hel for doing this.
They have interacted with gods so much that they really lost all the awe and respect they had at the start.
And the times they fought with the god and managed to deal some serious blows now and then made them fear even less.
So, this show of strength only made them more disgusted instead of afraid.
