The room was filled with the stench of death, the walls were splattered with dried blood and the cold stone floor was caked in it along with piles of broken weapons.

The others went over to the throne itself to investigate, as an armoured figure stepped out.

He was a striking figure, clad in pure black with a blade in his hands that looked incredibly well made even from a distance.

It took only a second for Ben and Callum to charge at him, thrusting their spears to try and land a hit as he stared stoically.

Their spears missed their mark and his blade cut their spear arms free before landing in the gut of each, the knight taking just a moment to reach Xara who attempted to shoot some sort of magic arrow attack at him.

The knight batted away the magic shot at him and slashed Xara's arms away, the pain and bloodloss quickly making her lose consciousness along with the other two.

The knight glanced in my direction for a brief moment before moving towards me, sword raised.

I knew as his absurdly fast approach came that landing a hit would be impossible, I drew my daggers from each side of my cloak and guarded against his swords swing barely.

The force of his strike disarmed me and knocked me to the ground, the monstrous knight in front of me possessed strength such that I wouldn't be wrong to mistake him for the orc leader in power alone.

His sword almost instantly found itself thrusting towards me, I barely avoided him with a roll and jumped to my feet.

I drew my lone dagger and threw it at him in an attempt to catch him off guard, before using degeneration.

His armour prevented me from assessing the damage but his pained movements told me that it was at least somewhat effective, I tried to focus on evasion as he caught up to me and made a wide and powerful swing.

My level 15 self was just barely enough to avoid his swings, I couldn't have imagined the me that fought Barba would have stood much of a chance.

He kicked my stomach harshly, forcing me onto my back as a few meters were put between us.

I used heal to fix the pain his kick had caused before rising to my feet and running towards him.

The knight prepared one final overhead swing as I drew closer.

His last swing was beyond a pistol, his swing was like a rifle bullet moving towards me.

I managed to avoid losing my head at the cost of my left arm, but landing my few proper hit against him made me feel good as I deteriorated his heart.

He kicked me away and into a wall, giving me only a few moments to heal my arm before I got up to find him stumbling around.

The knight had just about died, luckily before he managed to kill me himself.

Killing a monster like him had allowed me to climb two levels in an instant, and a status check revealed that my strength was slowly approaching monstrous levels once I invested the stats properly

Name: Rem Gallant Lvl: 17 Race: God Class: Healer, God of Dark & Light Class skills:

Healer: Heal, regeneration.

God: Shadow conscription. Magic eye creation.

Skills: None Unique Skills: Role Reversal Blessings: Twistars Blessing Titles: Heir of Light, Heir of dark, Shadow lord, Light prince Str: 17 Dex: 17 Vit: 17 Int: 36 Res: 17 Men: 17 Wis: 36 Stat points: 0

Killing people nearly ten levels higher than me seemed like an effective strategy for leveling fast, but the danger would only grow as higher levelled enemies got more overwhelming skills that would make fighting them difficult.

Holding his head allowed me for the first time to use conscription to a decent level.

A thin mist emerged from his corpse, condensing into a figure which perfectly mimicked the knight.

"You can enter my shadow to rest, I'll call you when needed 'Mars'."

His strength certainly seemed appropriate for such a renaming and he was far from unskilled with his weapons either.

The others needed immediate healing, I approached them one by one and recovered them to their previous condition but they still looked completely exhausted.

Healing couldn't heal mental fatigue or replenish lost blood, which meant that I would have to leave them to wake up and recover after looking around the throne room for a bit.

There wasn't much in terms of treasure in the rest of the ruins but there were sets of armour, fancy gems, spell books and plenty of gold in the throne room.

There was also an ornate crown left on the throne, an invitation most likely to the person who had the strength to best Mars.

I placed the crown atop my head and memories flooded into my mind.

The king had once been a kind man who ruled fairly over the citizenry and had already abolished things like slavery and discrimination of non-humans.

However, one day a foreign dictator called Alan used necromancy to curse the kings troops. He was pushed back into his last fortress and had only his loyal knight Tyrian to defend him against the outside world.

Over the years, Tyrian became obsessed with protecting the room. Even as the old king died, Tyrian's loyalty never faded.

The memories of the old king simply reinforced the fact that Alan needed to die, it was simply a matter of getting past his guards and S tier heroes.

The crown was a gift to me, an official transfer of the rightful kingship unto me. It meant nothing officially, but the sentiment was appreciated.

Mars's strength had faded from the lack of sleep, food and the curse eating away at him. I dreaded what would have happened if I had stumbled into the room of the prime, level two hundred Tyrian with my feeble body.

The crown fit nicely, and was aesthetically pleasing to me as I returned to the others and filled the bags of each with some of the riches I had gained.

I waited for them to wake up, preparing a simple story of how my healing magic seemed to hurt him since he was undead. It was assuming they didn't learn much more about healing, but it was a decent enough ploy since they lacked anyone to compare me against.

They eventually woke up, still weak and disoriented which gave me an advantage when convincing them of my victory over Tyrian.

"We're extremely lucky, I was about to die but I managed to use healing magic on the bastard. I figured it might at least do something since he was an undead instead of a human, and it killed him."

They were confused, but they couldn't deny that I had won.

"We got plenty of treasure, rest up and get ready to return to camp."

True enough to their warrior and knight classes, they managed to recover from the blood loss relatively quickly.

Xara even managed to walk around properly after about twenty minutes, once we were all recovered we started walking back to camp.

The others seemed more thankful and respectful towards me, it made sense to me since I had just saved the three of them.

Callum and Ben were more talkative, treating me more like a friend than a work colleague.

We eventually arrived back at camp, but Xara stopped us from entering and pointed to the armoured figures holding everyone in camp hostage.

The other two spoke quietly.

"Listen, figure out what's happening and then run. Me and Callum will attempt to save as many as we can."

I didn't think arguing was the best idea at that moment, I hid behind a tree and paid attention to the knights conversation.

"You little brats said the others would be back more than an hour ago, do you want us to start killing you already or will you admit that this is the last of you?"

There seemed to be some sort of head knight who spoke up.

"Our king may have not wished you killed directly, he has a merciful heart, but we have no qualms about disposing of you stubborn bastards."

Out of the frying pan into the fire, the knight seemed intent on killing all of E tier and there didn't seem to be much the others could do.

I couldn't act openly without being ousted as someone abnormal.

Ben and Callum snuck their way towards the camp, Xara staying close to me in some attempt to protect the 'weak' healer.

The two eventually were spotted and tried to fight the knights as best as they could, but they were no match for fully armed and armored knights.

I was stuck, I didn't want to act openly.

But I had no choice.

I asked Xara to provide covering fire once I started fighting, I was going to have to fight and kill no less than fifteen other humans

The knights were on guard.

I gave Xara my daggers and equipment and walked over with just the clothes I came with, the knights spotted me and I put my hands in the air as instructed as I was dragged over to camp.

Once I was brought into the middle of camp, I got a good look at the knights who were doing it.

The leader was covered in heavy iron armour from head to toe and looked quite intimidating.

The others were wearing gambesons and layers of chainmail, it would be extremely difficult for them to be injured by the E tier group.

I waited for the perfect moment, the second that I was let go of and forced to walk towards the rest of the group I struck.

The first knight fell in a single hit, his body was deteriorated completely in one shot. It was my first kill against another, live human and it disturbed me slightly.

The remaining knights were shocked, so I used the opportunity to turn the situation around a bit.

I killed three more of the knights and shouted out for Xara to start firing, her magic arrow attacks were weak but provided enough of a distraction for me to land hits on even more of the knights.

By the time the leader had processed his situation, eight of the fifteen knights were gone.

"He's got some lethal magic, keep him at a distance so that he can't touch you. Ignore the magic arrows, they can't pierce through our armour at that level."

The knights began throwing loose rocks and sticks towards me, trying to injure me from a distance.

I didn't particularly want to play all of my cards but I let out Mars to fight them in my stead.

He emerged faithfully from my shadow, standing tall before the knights who had once participated in destroying the kingdom he called home.

I didn't know why, but he seemed excited to fight.

The knights became even more shocked, both from the horror of seeing an unknown magic and because they recognized the shade I had summoned.

"It's him! Kill him right now! We can't afford to do anything else! Eliminate them all!"

Without his self inflincted exhaustion and undead form, Mars was a complete monster who easily tore through the lesser knights.

His only problem was the chief knight who seemed to be able to match him in his weakened state.

"You've lost a lot of your strength you bastard, I'll get revenge for the men that you struck down!"

He started applying pressure onto Mars with his fierce and unending chains of attacks, supported by the two remaining knights alive on his side.

The battle wasn't going well for us anymore, I prepared to rush in before the rest of the students jumped up and started attacking the knights.

They were quickly overwhelmed, no matter your level of skill and equipment fifty people attacking at once will bring you down unless you're a god.

The students managed to knock them down but the chief knight still had the strength left to fight, knocking as many of them away as he could before I got in close and landed a single touch against his chest.

He threw a punch that managed to knock me away, Mars catching me before kicking at his head.

The knight had lost several organs from my attack, he collapsed from Mars' kick and died soon after.

I heard rustling from the foliage, as some sort of scout ran back towards the city.

The leader student who looked thankful stood up after seeing the scout run away.

"SHIT! We need to leave now! They have horses! We won't be able to pack much stuff away, only take what you can't afford to lose!"

The situation was escalating the longer we took, more and more knights would appear and I didn't believe in our ability to fight them off.