Edge of Mist. Reg, who hadn’t even finished his breakfast, approached a weapon stall with sparse business and spoke in a low voice:
“Hamster, right? Mole sent me to find you.”
The stall owner, Hamster, fell silent for a moment before giving a slight nod:
“If he’s sending you, it can’t be anything good. Keep it short— what do you want from me?”
“Money laundering. The first batch is around five hundred Gold Coins.”
Reg replied directly. Since Anderson said this Hamster was trustworthy, he decided to be straightforward— keep it short and simple.
Hamster froze on the spot, his breathing quickening:
“Hey, kid, what did you just say? I didn’t quite catch that!”
Reg leaned in and whispered in his ear, repeating:
“Money laundering. The first batch is about 500 Gold Coins.”
“Whoa, damn!”
Hamster jumped up in excitement, drawing the attention of everyone nearby.
“Haha, don’t mind me, folks! My grandma just gave birth to another dad for me, that’s all!” Hamster laughed boisterously, then pulled Reg behind the stall, giving him a look of utter shock and a big thumbs-up:
“Was that Deya Bank heist really your doing? You guys have guts, messing with the money of the big shots!”
“It’s a long story…”
Reg honestly didn’t know how to explain this. If he told the truth, probably no one would believe him— and he might even get punched:
“What, do I look like an idiot?”
After all, who would believe that a “frail” priest could sneak into a heavily guarded bank vault and walk away with over three thousand Gold Coins without anyone noticing…
No wonder all the coins I’ve been moving are crisp, new thousands— turns out it’s all public money! That guy dared to give it to me, but wouldn’t spend it himself. As expected, a devil’s candy always comes at a price!
“Don’t worry, I know the rules— I won’t ask more! I’ll just do my part. Come on, I’ll take you to meet the others from the Mist Gang right now.”
Five hundred Gold Coins! Hamster couldn’t even imagine how much he’d get after the job was done—and this was just the first batch! Truly, heroes emerge from the young.
After packing up his stall, Hamster immediately led Reg into the Mist.
Anderson, meanwhile, was also running around, looking for people to split up and launder this massive sum— otherwise, things would get messy fast.
Inside the Mist, Hamster darted through the tangled thickets, with Reg following behind for a full twenty minutes.
Reg was starting to feel a bit tired— seriously, do you guys hide this deep in the Mist?
“Huh? That’s weird as hell —where’s the path?”
Hamster muttered quietly, making Reg nearly curse out loud—so you’re lost too!
Money laundering was something Hamster was already adept at.
They had a secret smuggling route through the Mist leading to Southwatch Fort, often used to traffic rare antiques or magical items.
But now— where did the path go?
Pulling out his Compass, Hamster found the needle spinning wildly. Magnetic interference? Reg noticed too and took out his own guiding tool, but it was useless:
“Something’s off with the Mist today, and the fog is thicker than ever. Let’s try to find the main road first.”
The two of them squeezed out of the thicket, planning to follow the main road out of the Mist.
Instead, they walked deeper in the opposite direction, never finding the road— and they even got separated…
And the mastermind behind all this was none other than Truth, who was frantically tweaking the Mist’s mechanics inside the Mist Core.
Inside the Mist Core, as the Mist Lord, Truth watched the nervous Reg through God’s Perspective:
“Huh, why is Reg in the Mist today, and bringing someone else deep inside? Oh, right —I almost forgot, he’s lost his sense of direction too.”
Currently, there were 121 Adventurers in the Mist, all of them stumbling around, having lost all sense of direction.
As soon as Truth brought the Mist out of Mist Sleep Mode, she noticed the Mist Energy plummeting rapidly. Scared, she quickly got to work, muttering in some odd accent:
“Delete, delete, delete— anything that’s not good for the Mist’s development, delete it all!”
Truth immediately wiped out more than half of the Mist Monsters and reset their respawn areas, while also shrinking the Mist’s coverage from the back by a third, drastically cutting energy costs.
To keep Adventurers away from the Mist Core, once the group that escaped the wooden stockade and the Cat left the Mist, Truth reactivated the Mist’s Unique Feature: Lost.
“Lost” causes all players to lose their sense of direction— every guiding or positioning tool becomes useless, and they can only rely on weak hints from the map to find their way.
Combined with Truth’s deliberate map guidance design, this would make Adventurers unknowingly skirt around the core area.
Wahaha, now I’ll let you all taste the pain I suffered my first time in the Mist! Back then, I dropped over six hundred Rainbow Stones on the ground before finding the first BOSS!
Next came the Safe Zone setup. To make it obvious, Truth directly used Bonfires to mark areas where Monsters wouldn’t approach— these Safe Zones would help guide players out of the Mist, and Monsters wouldn’t spawn in clusters anymore, greatly improving the newbies’ adventure experience.
The only problem was, the Monster drops and Treasure Chests throughout the Mist were pitifully scarce—not even an Elite Monster, let alone a BOSS.
But Truth couldn’t help it. Her Divine Domain was dirt poor right now, not even a proper Dungeon. If she could just let Adventurers grind some experience, that was already pretty good.
Come to think of it, were the Divine Domains of those other gods like this too? Truth couldn’t recall any of their domains being challenge Dungeons. Or was it just her Mist that was like this?
The Mist, as one of the Five Great Cataclysms Dungeons, stood alongside Storm, Earthquake, Heavenly Fire, and Death Tide.
Each Cataclysm had its own unique mechanics, serving as a challenge ground for King-tier players.
And ever since rebooting the Mist, Truth vaguely sensed the presence of the other four Cataclysms— there seemed to be some special connection among the Five Great Cataclysms?
“I don’t get it. All I know is that Death Tide, like the Mist, possesses Divine Authority— maybe someone’s already become Death God there.
That Death God should be able to design Dungeons too, right? But since I transmigrated here, I’ve never heard of any famous ‘Death’-themed Dungeons. Maybe that guy just sucks at planning?
Heh, I’d like to see just how hard it is to run a Dungeon!”
Only after stabilizing the Mist Energy within a reasonable range did Truth leave the Core, satisfied, planning to leave her dragon egg here to hatch.
Just then, a golden light dot appeared in Truth’s mind— someone was sending her a message?
The golden light gave off a wild, violent feeling, totally at odds with the silent Mist.
Focusing on it, Truth sensed that the owner of the light was at least as powerful as she was— a fellow King-tier!
Activating the light, a ruined city battered by lightning and torrential rain appeared in Truth’s mind.
No doubt, this message came from one of the Five Great Cataclysms Dungeons— Storm!
The other Cataclysms found her so quickly— had they sensed the Mist’s awakening?
Truth couldn’t recall any Storm Dungeon being run by someone as strong as herself. What was this, a threat, or a friendly gesture?
Steeling herself, Truth prepared to respond— better to strike first than be struck a hundred times.
Then a short message popped out from the light:
“You there?”
Truth: “……”
Neither a threat nor a greeting…
For some reason, Truth really didn’t want to reply. She had a feeling the other party was a dumb, troublesome type.
But a powerful presence deserved some face, so she replied:
“Not here.”
Meanwhile, on a small island at the far eastern edge of the world, there was no sunlight—only endless storms.
As a bolt of lightning split the sky above the island’s ruined city, the silhouette of a giant dragon stood tall in the storm, its foul mouth spitting out human speech:
“You can relax. The Mist hasn’t awakened yet.”
“Are you sure? You’d better check again—I don’t have much faith in your intelligence.”
A clear, ethereal voice rang out through the storm, making the Storm Dragon bristle with irritation:
“Then check it yourself!”
The other party said they weren’t there, so obviously the Mist hadn’t awakened!
The Storm Dragon couldn’t understand it. The Mist was the weakest of the five Cataclysms, but for some reason, Heavenly Fire was terrified of the Mist. At the slightest sign of activity, she’d panic and send him to investigate.
That place was pure trash, honestly!
On the other side of the Storm, atop a floating island as red as a lava hell, a woman with fiery red curls and an explosively hot figure descended to the island’s center— none other than Heavenly Fire, one of the Five Great Cataclysms.
Her red dress shimmered with the deadly magma, her full, peach-blossom eyes filled with worry:
“What should I do? That guy’s about to awaken, but the other three don’t take the Mist seriously at all…”
Three hundred years ago, when she’d just reached ninth rank, Heavenly Fire wanted to know which Cataclysm would become the strongest in the future, so she could pick the right side early.
She went to consult a fairly famous Prophetess— now the Prophet Goddess.
The strongest in the future was probably Storm, given its overwhelming destructive power.
Then again, Death Tide was a contender, since it possessed some Divine Authority, and the human death toll had been rising for centuries, which boded well for it.
I’m not bad either— maybe I’ll awaken some hidden feature one day?
Earthquake… just doesn’t cut it.
But the Prophetess gave her a totally unexpected answer…
What, the Mist?!
“In fact, the Mist that’s been sleeping all along is the most dangerous, most terrifying existence among you from start to finish!”
That’s what the Prophetess said.
Heavenly Fire hurriedly asked why it was the Mist, but the Prophetess, true to her kind’s tradition, only gave half an answer…
Damn it!
Heavenly Fire grabbed the Prophetess by the neck, and only then did the latter hastily explain:
“There’s a terrifying being in the Mist that not even all four of you Cataclysms together could resist. Cough, cough…”
“Terrifying? How terrifying?”
What the Prophetess explained next put Heavenly Fire on high alert. She said that to oppose the Mist, one had to raise their strength as much as possible while the Mist slept!
Tenth rank might barely let you survive under that being’s hand. Eleventh rank, and you could maybe exchange a couple of moves…
The Prophetess was dead serious, and given her profession’s near inability to lie, Heavenly Fire finally began to fear the Mist and started desperately raising her strength.
The other three Cataclysms, seeing this, thought Heavenly Fire was trying to suppress them, and they all got competitive too.
Two hundred years later, all four had reached the peak of tenth rank, with Storm even breaking into eleventh— super arrogant, but not too bright.
During this time, Heavenly Fire had also told them about the Mist, but they basically ignored it.
What a joke! Three peak tenth ranks plus one eleventh— that’s a lineup even the Human True Gods have to respect! The Mist? Not worth fearing!
So Heavenly Fire went back to the Prophetess to ask if they could now defeat the Mist, only to find that the Prophetess had already sided with the Human True Gods and become the Prophet Goddess!
Faced with Heavenly Fire’s question, the Prophet Goddess just smiled and said, “I’m not sure,” then used a Divine Skill to teleport away.
Tsk tsk, can’t grab me by the neck now, can you?
Mainly, the Prophet Goddess just didn’t want to make an enemy of that being in the Mist— after all, she was just… too terrifying!
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