Alex held in her hand the head of something that looked abominable. It had a huge head, a pair of black venomous eyes, and two curved horns. Purple blood was still freshly dripping from the corpse's head.
"Ah! That demon is dead! That demon is really dead!" The priestess' eyes widened in shock. "Paladin, you have done a great service for the divine temple! The entire Gresh Kingdom is indebted to you."
Alex smiled and nodded. On her side, she finally received the notification that she had been waiting for so long.
<Ding. Quest Completed>
<Ding. You have learned the new skill [Blessings of the Land]>
"I will take my leave then, My Lady." Alex bowed and impatiently dashed out of the city. The priestess was shocked as she actually wanted to give her another quest.
In the end, she could only embarrassingly shout after the Paladin. "Meet me back at the Divine Temple!"
A few other players eavesdropped on this information and tried to talk to the priestess, volunteering to do the quest, but these pests were quickly shot down by the priestess, who floated up into the air and flew towards the Temple in the distance.
Meanwhile, Alex was already en route to the guild residence. More importantly, she arrived at the acres and acres of so-called plagued lands that surrounded the guild residence.
"Finally!" She looked at the aura of death and decay filling the air around her, her skin almost stinging because of it. She had spent so many hours of grueling reputation grind and repetitive quests to get here, but it was going to be worth it.
"Blessings of the Land!" She shouted out loud.
Her eyes widened, and she looked at the black lands around her, waiting for something drastic to happen. Weirdly, no such thing happened.
A couple of seconds passed, and soon an entire minute passed by and nothing at all happened. "Huh? What the hell?" Alex was now pissed.
This was the skill she found out, she even hounded the priestess for it and obtained the skill somehow, but now it was not working?
"Aaarrrggg! This is total bullshit!" Alex shouted. For once she wanted to be cool and save the day, why was it so difficult?
She waited for some more time, tried using the skill multiple times, cursed loudly a lot and seeing that absolutely nothing was happening at all, she could only kick the earth underneath her in frustration.
"Fuck it. Fine. I will visit that damn priestess again and see what the hell is wrong!" She angrily shouted and turned to leave when suddenly she noticed something strange from the corner of her eyes.
She hadn't noticed it before because it was small and very easy to overlook, but once her gaze locked onto the spot, she couldn't unsee it.
There it was! A few feet away from her… a small patch of land that wasn't as blackened as the rest of the land.
"Wait… don't tell me." Alex neared that spot and squatted down to observe it more closely. A part of her wished that this was true, but a part of her wished that she simply imagined this… because if it was indeed true…
"No. No. No." She cleared her throat and hesitantly activated the skill again. "Blessings of the Land." She mumbled under her breath.
And lo and behold, the space in front of her indeed changed.
Not all of it, not drastically.
Just the small patch of clean land grew a little bit. The square inch of cleansed land was now a square and a quarter inch of cleansed land.
Dread filled her face as the red headed beauty repeated the skill again. [Blessings of the Land]
And once again, the small patch of cleansed land grew a little bit.
"What the fuck is this?" Alex fell back on her butt, laughing out loud at her own misery. Sure, she had obtained the skill, and the skill had worked, but what the hell was this?
The speed of the damned thing was simply too much!
At this rate, she was going to have to spend an entire day on this damned thing, wasn't she? This was way worse than the reputation grind!
"You bastard!" Now she understood why Liam had pawned off this monstrously boring task onto her before running away to god knows where. "Motherfcker. I should have just left it to Rey."
Unfortunately, it was too late for all of it. The ball was in Alex's court, and she had to see it through.
It was not that she didn't understand the significance of what she was doing and how the world was changing, but hours of mindless grinding like this was enough to faze even the toughest ones.
The listless redhead stood up and sighed. She then started casting like a soulless zombie, the same skill, over and over, again and again.
"Blessings of the Land"
"Blessings of the Land"
"Blessings of the Land"
…
…
…
As the land around the guild residence was slowly being cleansed, all the players inside the guild residence could hear the frightening screams of the local mobs from time to time.
It almost felt like someone was torturing everything in that area. Perhaps a new field boss popped up?
This continued for the entirety of the day when finally, a terrifying figure stepped into the guild residence. She looked like a player, but she had red eyes and red hair resembling Medusa's hair.
A demoness?
Rey, who was casually chilling inside the massage parlor of the guild residence, was the only main member of the guild still left in the vicinity, so he came over to check it out.
"Hey ugly, where are you coming from? Guards. Guards." He lazily yawned and mumbled something while stretching his limbs.
And when he finally opened his eyes to take a proper look, a massive shield came flying at him at top speed, knocking him back several feet and breaking his head.
"Ah! Sorry! Sorry! Sorry! I really did not recognize you! What happened, sis!"
