"Hmm? Undead? Well yeah they are. Their entire existence is based on the fear that the dead do not stay dead and can corrupt the living." Essence responded casually as he weaved through waves of enemies with his conjured halberd.
"It's not strange though. People back then did not understand much about science, so superstition was prevalent. Not to mention much of people's concerns was life after death since death was so easy to come by due to sickness and war." Hades added as he threw a bunch of roundhouse kicks that caused terrible shockwaves, breaking the bodies of any undead within 5 meters of him.
He didn't even bother to remove his hands from the pockets of his hoodie, simply using the simplest and most effective method to deal with foes. Essence who was over in the midst of enemies simply swung in wide arcs.
Even though these undead were pretty strong, they could hardly match his valor. Most of the base undead they were fighting were Rank 3 Skeleton Warriors.
ï½¢Name: Skeleton Warrior – Captain Rank monster
Level: 105
HP: 8,000,000/8,000,000ï½£
Fitter Cleric simply stood at the back and spammed his auto-attack which manifested random effects based on his luck. Sometimes, it was the basic fireball of the Pyromancers, sometimes the basic ice attack of the Cryomancers, sometimes with was a glowing image of a sword which was the basic slash of a swordmaster.
While the damage done was not much, Fitter Cleric was not a damage dealer anyway. He was here to ensure that the group got good loot drops, and was the designated chest opener for all chest, even Common ones.
"Hey, you have Nidhogg, right? Why not absorb the darkness or death energy in these guys?" Ghostpro asked with curiosity as he watched a Skeleton Warrior crumble after trying to sneak attack him, its strike dealing no damage and even backlashing with twice the force.
Hades drop kicked a Major Rank monster that was leading squadrons of the Skeleton Warriors, the Skeleton Knight.
ï½¢Name: Skeleton Knight – Major Rank monster
Level: 120
HP: 13,000,000/13,000,000ï½£
The Skeleton knight flew off his horse and crashed into the ground, digging a deep trench in the wasted and blighted earth. It could barely get up to tis feet, and hades added insult to injury by stepping of its skull while he faced Ghostpro.
"I mean I could... but it's not really advisable." Hades replied with a bit of hesitation.
Essence waved his hand and transformed his halberd into a whip, which he used to bind a Skeleton Knight from its horse and drag it over. While it was in mid-air, he changed the whip to a greataxe and split the undead in two from the base of its spine.
It only twitched once or twice before turning into pixels.
"Why, does your absorption have any limitations?" he asked with interest.
Hades shook his head and brought out one of his concealed arms. Glowing around it was a blackish aura that was foreboding and encompassing, as if it wanted to devour anything that was not part of its fold.
"Nah, its just weird. When I directly devour stuff using my bloodline, I sort of... 'taste'... what I devour. And as you might have guessed, the 'flavor' of undead is pure shit."
Ghostpro and Essence winced, the former muttering: "Sheesh, I do not want to experience that, even as a joke."
Hades hid his hand once more into his hoodie and sighed. "Luckily, I never directly tried to absorb it. It's like how even though you can't tell how food would taste from its look alone, you can certainly be sure from how it smells."
"So you can smell these guys?" Fitter Cleric finally interjected from the side while giving Hades a strange look.
"Is that surprising?" Hades countered with a raised eyebrow.
Fitter was silent for a moment before shrugging. "You're right. Man can literally devour others people's essence and control minds, but what I'm bothered about is something like this."
"Man, this is so easy. Are you sure this dungeon really is at super hard mode?" Ghostpro asked boredly as he easily dispatched another Skeleton Knight.
Suddenly, the entire dungeon shook like a magnitude 10 earthquake was going on. The four Umbra members shared a look and supported themselves while this was ongoing.
"Look up!" Hades exclaimed with shock.
The group turned their eyes to the sky only to see that it had ruptured like a bad wound, with a big slit opening up wide.
There were many jokes one would make about such a thing, but it wasn't really funny when this black-colored slit began spitting out an endless amount of winged monsters that made a beeline to the four fighters.
ï½¢Name: Demonic Gargoyle – Major Rank monster
Level: 150
HP: 35,000,000/35,000,000ï½£
The four paled as they gazed at Ghostpro darkly. Ghostpro raised a hand and acceded peacefully. "I know, I know, I shouldn't have said it. Let's just deal with this first, okay?"
They took that in stride as Essence asked the important question. "So exactly how do we deal with this?"
Were they supposed to fight? Flee?
...
Fuck?
Ew! Hell no!
Well, maybe if they were sexy gargoyle girls...
ï½¢System to Local Area Announcement
An Emergency Quest has been created! The surrounding area has been locked down and for the duration of this event, it will be impossible to leave! One must cull the source of the emergency within the time limit, or only doom awaits!ï½£
ï½¢Dark Skies – Emergency Quest
Description: The Undead World dungeon has experienced a breach by the demonic race! This is a small prelude to the Great War that occurs every millennium, with many such small-scale invasions occurring around the world!
Task: Push back the thrall of the demons, the undead Gargoyles and reach the center of the dungeon, destroy its core, and escape before the dungeon collapses!
Rewards: 100,000% exp, 200,000,000 platinum, 4 Epic Treasure Chest, and 1 Legendary Treasure Chest.ï½£
Seeing the emergency quest pop up the faces of the four changed. They realized this was not a joke like before so they all stopped holding back. They had to anyway, given the scale of the enemy they were fighting.
Thousands upon thousands of the gargoyles launched towards them like raindrops from the sky, each at the pinnacle of Rank 3 and each of them with 35 million HP. None of the four could afford to engage them in a slow fight, so their attacks had to deal 35 million damage at once to KO each gargoyle.
If they relied on their currently Rank 2 Divine classes, this would be impossible. However, they were lucky to have bloodlines, and Fitter was lucky he had the Pandora's Box! Immediately, the ground charged forward, blasting through the blighted landscape of the dungeon to head towards the presumed core.
Before they could even travel 1 kilometer, the gargoyles were upon them, having met them halfway. It was like watching two armies charge down a hill at each other and suddenly clashing in the middle with such force that bodies and horses were thrown high into the sky.
This time, it was the gargoyles that were repelled despite their initial strike.
Essence created two glowing Aurora Shields and imbued them with hundreds of small enchantments to increase their power. As such, when they collided with him, they easily rebounded and shattered like pieces of crushed stone.
He then swung the shields on either side with a strange deftness, smashing every gargoyle that struck at him back and shattering them with ease. However, he was constantly burning up his store of Aurora Energy slowly, so he kept moving at a high speed while fighting.
Ghostpro was hovering over the ground and bolting forward. He spread out fire and ice on either side of his body at full power, either directly burning the gargoyles to ash or freezing them into black ash shattered due to the pressure of those behind them.
Ghostpro gave up hovering and flying when he felt the bloodline energy drain and proceeded to run on the ground like the others, he also toned down his elemental output to match his bloodline energy regen, and it was barely enough to maintain equilibrium while he moved.
For once, Ghost was thankful that Orochi was so strong, otherwise this would not be possible.
Hades released his full physical power, which was crushing to say the least. As Garrett Marshal had explained before, the devouring power of his class and the devouring power of his bloodline had different effects.
The one from his class drained essence and turned it into darkness energy for him to use infinitely as he wished, while the one from his bloodline drained essence and turned it into 'stat points' for his body. So his three physical stats of Strength, Agility, and Endurance would be augmented based on the quality and quantity of essence devoured as well as the state of his body.
Unfortunately, essence devoured in-game only affected his in-game body. It also did not show on his character panel, so his stat points looked like an average Rank 2 divine class but were actually way higher since he had devoured many powerful beings in Boundless that did not exist in real life.
In real life, hades also had powerful strength and abilities, but it paled to his in-game body even without the divine class.
And this power showed itself during his charge. Out of the four, Hades was the most eye-catching and rampant, because when he released his full strength, his every step caused the ground to crater and quake, like a raging god passing through.
The gargoyles he struck head-on directly shattered into millions of pieces, his punches causing shockwaves that blew up all other gargoyles behind his current target for up to 50 meters! Because of this, the gargoyles deemed him the biggest threat and charged at him en masse.
The split was currently 20% Essence, 20% Ghostpro, 5% Fitter, and 55% Hades!
Even with such a huge focus on himself, Hades still managed without even calling up his dark abilities. However, he soon began to tire due to the sheer number of gargoyles pressing down on him. He was throwing out his full force with each punch, and even with godly stamina, this was costly since he was using an equivalent godly strength and speed.
As such, he directly opened a devouring domain around his person, causing a black vortex that swirled around him to appear. This directly burned his bloodline energy crazily, but any gargoyle that entered was drained until it became dust on the ground, their essence powering up hades and allowing him to replenish himself.
By the time his bloodline energy ran out and the domain collapsed, hades was back in perfect shape and ready to go. By the time he would tire again, his bloodline energy would have long recharged to full.
This was exactly why the Lineages were such bullshit and were so OP that all the other factions had to pay respect despite having bigger numbers.
Essence and Ghostpro were the same. Both fellows were smirking slightly as they managed their bloodline energy carefully, feeling it regenerating with every picosecond even though it was in use. So in order to maintain their 'infinite bloodline energy' hack, they just kept their output to the same level as their input.
Not every bloodline user could do this, because it depended on one's bloodline power being strong enough that lowering it to the equilibrium still had enough raw damage to defeat one's foes. In a situation like this, Loving Aunt would not be able to do this.
However, who asked these retarded gargoyles - and the demons behind them controlling everything - to try and stunt on not one, not two, but three fucking God Serpents at once?!
