“I’ll just see what skills you really have!”
Jialade’s massive lava body thundered as it charged at Truth, each step leaving scorched marks and flying sparks on the arena floor.
“Here it comes, here it comes! Finally starting!”
The original roars of the demons in the stands were still boiling, and the bets outside were also closed.
Except for a few demons who bet on Truth winning with a lottery mentality, most demons were betting on how many times Truth would beg for mercy and how many minutes she could hold out…..
But just as Jialade charged to about two hundred meters from Truth, in front of all spectators, his massive body inexplicably split in two!
His upper half continued flying forward due to inertia, while his lower half instinctively kept moving its legs, but soon fell down due to loss of balance.
“Boom!” Jialade crashed to the ground, with about three meters between upper and lower halves, his falling posture resembling a flower of hope.
“Huh?!”
This scene stunned everyone. The entire arena was boiling with noise one second, then fell into absolute silence the next……
What happened? What happened?!
They only saw Jialade talk trash before the battle, charge for victory after the start, then suddenly his body split in half mid-charge……
Even Jialade himself didn’t know what happened.
He only knew that after a flash of red light, he fell to the ground, and only when a sharp pain came from his lower body did he look back and find his lower half missing:
“Impossible?!”
Jialade’s originally arrogant expression gradually turned terrified.
He looked again at Truth, who was still pondering with lowered head, and the next second, several flashes of red light passed before his eyes!
Swoosh!
There was no earth-shattering energy collision, no gorgeous magical light, only countless thin, almost invisible blood-red threads continuously piercing through Jialade’s body.
These threads moved faster than the visual limit of everyone present. Just as the crowd was still bewildered, Jialade…
…broke apart.
The blood-red threads precisely pierced through Jialade’s lava arms, then his feet, knees, chest, shoulders, waist…
For dealing with small fry like this, just like everyone likes to use Divine Body as Sword on Platinum Children, Truth particularly liked using the highly concealed, low MP cost, AOE skill “Blood Slice” to clean up mobs. Very handy and stress-relieving.
Crash—!
Like a shattered glass craft, Jialade didn’t even have time to make a sound before shattering into dozens of lava rocks with mirror-smooth cuts, then crashing down!
Scorching magma gushed out from countless smooth cuts, quickly eroding the surrounding ground into a bubbling lava pool.
Jialade, a subordinate of the main leader of this demon gathering area— the fifth-rank Lava Demon, Great Demon Balisi— died so hastily.
Then the Air Wall around the arena fell, signifying the end of the battle and the winner.
“Wait, it’s… over?!”
“No, Lord Jialade just died like that? What the hell happened? That blood demon never even moved!”
“So does that mean the blood demon won? If so… then I’m rich?!”
After a long silence, the whole place became noisy again.
Some demons were still shocked by Jialade’s death, some started discussing whether Truth had help from a benefactor, and some rushed to claim the super high odds on Truth beating Jialade, only to be taken advantage of……
In the arena, amid the noise, a prompt appeared before Truth:
[“Blazing Sun: Lava Demon’s Cool Summer!” Challenge Successful! Time: 0:12 seconds, Rating: S. Due to unlimited challenge rules, this challenge will not be recorded on the leaderboard.
Obtained S-rank special reward: Flame Practitioner’s Cloak.
Flame Practitioner’s Cloak equipment effect: Fire damage reduction 20%, gains permanent fire resistance shield, recovery time after breaking is 30 minutes, set effect: Not unlocked.]
A small cloak with a dark red luster like flowing lava and an exceptionally tough texture appeared out of thin air before Truth.
Well, after more than five hundred years, it was still exactly as she remembered.
Without trying on the cloak, Truth directly activated her exclusive ability as a Mist Follower, “Call Mist Hermit,” and offered the fire resistance cloak in her hand to the Hermit.
The Hermit gladly agreed, accepted the fire resistance cloak, and placed it in the core area of the Mist.
Meanwhile, inside Truth’s small wooden house in the Mist Core, Ariel, who was humming and cooking in the kitchen, suddenly noticed some strange movement in the storage room next door:
“Little Mist?”
Ariel in an apron quickly pushed open the storage room door:
“Is it Little Mist?!”
Unfortunately, it wasn’t. Before Ariel, a slightly warm Flame Practitioner’s Cloak appeared out of thin air, then slowly fell to the ground like a feather, leaving her bewildered:
“Huh… what’s going on?”
“Heh, this feature is pretty handy. I won’t need to carry those storage items from now on.”
After storing the cloak in the Mist Core, Truth clapped her hands and prepared to leave the arena:
“Got something out of it. At least I understand that the arena can still exchange rewards. Next, I need to think about how to cash them out.”
However, just as Truth was about to vanish, a terrifying pressure so heavy it could crush the entire space suddenly appeared at the top of the arena, silencing the noisy demon audience like ducks with their necks pinched:
“This aura… it’s Lord Balisi!”
“Damn, are you telling me the big one comes after the small one?” Truth squinted at the sky: “Wasting time, huh? At this rate, I’ll really have to one-shot you, you know?”
In the air, a vortex of pure shadow and sulfur aura slowly emerged, finally condensing into a vortex mask with no facial features.
At the same time, pure shadow traced a pair of sinister eyes on the mask, staring straight at Truth:
“You actually killed Jialade. Interesting…”
“What? Want to come down and have a go?” Truth beckoned with a claw at Balisi, quickly seeing through his race and rank.
Although his appearance clearly said “I am a Shadow Demon,” that faint sulfur smell revealed he was also a Hell-type demon, not a Shadow-type. Plus that faceless mask and ethereal form…
Truth could confirm that he was an Eight-level Elemental Demon with low physical damage, long blue bar, fragile body, and a weak point at the head.
Tch, I thought these demons’ so-called “Great Demon” would be something, but it’s just an Eight-level Elemental Demon?
“No, no, no. Fighting would hurt the peace.” Balisi’s voice was completely emotionless: “Jialade was a waste. His position is vacant, and your strength proves you deserve a higher starting point.”
“You mean you want to recruit me? Didn’t I break the rules you follow? Why would you still want to recruit me?”
“Only the weak need to follow rules. I appreciate you. And you can see it, can’t you? The arena panel…”
The moment Balisi finished, Truth’s heart raced. He could also see the arena rankings… Could it be?!
“The odd changes, the even stays!” Truth shouted at Balisi.
Unfortunately, Balisi could not understand the meaning of these words:
“What are you saying?”
From beginning to end, Truth had always been the only Player in this world. She said with slight disappointment:
“Nothing. I can indeed see the arena rankings, so that’s your reason for wanting to recruit me?”
“That’s right. Follow me, let me show you the long-sealed secret of this ancient underground city!”
Under Balisi’s guidance, Truth followed him through several underground crevices to a very spacious area filled with torches.
This was Thousand Lakes Square, which had long lost its square appearance.
“I discovered this underground city one hundred and fifty years ago. After finding that this arena could still be used, I stayed and started running it. You should know, these days the most profitable thing is being a platform. So in just a hundred years, I advanced from Sixth Rank to Eight-level, becoming the strongest demon in the Southern Marshes. Later…”
“Stop, I don’t want to hear your rags-to-riches story. Time is tight and the task is heavy. Get to the point. Where’s the secret? I still need to get home before dawn.”
“Don’t rush, that’s what I’m getting to. Later, I discovered many complete ancient human scripts in many places in the underground city, a huge amount. Then the Original Demon Soros came to me, saying he was very interested in ancient human scripts.”
Balisi pointed to a dilapidated stone wall not far away. On the wall, a dense collection of Chinese characters was neatly arranged.
Beneath the wall, a dozen or so humans were using professional equipment to chip off the characters bit by bit and pack them up.
“There are humans here?” Truth asked curiously.
“Yes, they are Blasphemers cooperating with Soros. After Soros told the Blasphemers that the Gods seemed very wary of ancient human scripts, the Blasphemers voluntarily came to study these ancient human scripts. I’m certain that these ancient human scripts contain the greatest secret of this entire underground city!”
At this moment, a dozen Blasphemers were under the supervision of several low-level demons, carefully packaging the ancient human scripts to be sent back to Wangsheng City for scholars to study. Truth noticed that these people didn’t seem to know how to segment sentences…
For example, one of them was currently excavating the four characters “人炸”. He first removed “人”, then “the blank space”, and finally “炸”.
Honestly, if they could decipher the original meaning from that, it would be a miracle. Truth was a bit speechless, but this was only a minority.
Most Blasphemers would chip off a whole row of characters at once, afraid that changing the order or missing a character would alter the meaning of the entire sentence.
“Wouldn’t it be less troublesome for you to just bring the scholars here to study on-site instead of sending them to Wangsheng City?” Truth asked in confusion.
“It used to be possible, but recently the Goddess of Life has been crazy about hunting demons again. The border is very strict now. Don’t forget, Blasphemers are also on the Demon Hunters’ crackdown list. And Blasphemers are humans too; they’re afraid of dealing with us.”
The scholars of Wangsheng City have little combat power and dare not get close to demons, so they can only hire some fearless Adventurers at high prices to chip off the ancient human scripts and bring them back.
Then Truth leaned in a bit and glanced at the text on the wall, discovering it was just a message board from the square, things like [CPDD], [One-click sweep script stable without ban, +group 21 68034889], [Daily account boosting add me], etc.
Just then, a few lines of dialogue in the corner of the message board caught Truth’s attention:
[Five days until the Dual Class System goes live]
Then under that line were other players’ comments: [Already at version 12.0, it’s already live]. Further down was:
[Actually, the dev team has run out of ideas. Now they’re just using the gimmick of free switching between two classes to stretch the game’s lifespan a bit. Grinding equipment for one class is already tiring, and now we have to grind two! Dev team!]
[Just ask yourself if it’s replayable or not.]
[Don’t blindly criticize. Go check the unpacking I posted on the forum. Actually, the Dual Class System is just paving the way for the Fusion Class later.]
[Is that so? Please elaborate on the Fusion Class, senior.]
[It’s that as long as we can… the God from this version update…]
But just as she saw the word “God,” Truth suddenly found that there was no more text.
Instead, she saw the back of a third-rank Blasphemer’s head who was excavating the characters “Authority.”
He neatly placed “Authority” aside, then started chipping off the characters “God.”