Volume 9: The End of the Trial

Start: 4Y 9M

The group gets a message from Eden that they are to help with a certain task of his. Worried for the most part, even though they had just saved Lyndis...kinda a few minutes ago, Sain asks what is to be done since other than getting to level 300 to which everyone aside from Lyndis who was still level 240 was level 260 now; they still needed to get through one order from Eden to stay in the guild. The order was simple, kill every last fucking Warrior King copy you can find to which they even got a quest for it...and so did every last player in an Independent Guild and even more in Guilds as well.

Due to the fact that they are partly tasked to help out in wiping out these Warrior King clones that numbered to a million, Sain took it up to himself to make sure they were strong enough to deal with them and had a goal of them killing at least a dozen of them in 3 months time. Eden hearing this was slightly pleased enough that he gave them a device that allowed them to track where each of these Warrior King clones were. Much to Sain's delight in fighting one so soon and much to everyone else's dismay, there was one nearby in a level 300 dungeon. The group led by Sain with everyone else somewhat unwilling since this was a foe that caused trouble for Eden, went into the dungeon and spent a few days re familiarising themselves with each other as well as making sure Lyndis levelled up a bit more than everyone else to catch up faced the first Warrior King Clone they would meet.

The group tense up feeling that this Warrior King Clone was strong, stronger than the average boss at least, Raven and Lyndis immediately charged up to attack the Warrior King Clone and see it's strength as fast as possible to avoid any wide spread attacks on the rest of them immediately. Dodging the blows from the two, the Warrior King takes out a sword and swings and slams both of them away easily. Sain and Miriel cast supporting spells on everyone while Serena heals Raven and Lyndis. Shadow reappears to backstab the Warrior King clone but fails barely dodging a one hit kill decapitation strike in that moment. Serena cases Root Bind but it fails since they are all cut up easily before they even get close. Sain then notices that the Warrior King Clone was using some sort of extended wind blade move to attack further than they could see. Due to this, Sain and Miriel try to bombard the Warrior King Clone using Mana Bolts in bulk to try and wear him down. Shadow and Raven both activate Boost and use their powers to slow down the Warrior King clone while Shadow attacks with clones on all sides. They cause some damage but is pushed back with a burst of air. Lyndis activates Boost at that time and spams her napan bomb trap skill using boost to power it up even more. With an explosion, the Warrior King is at half health just like that. Sain realises that the clone is weak against wide area destructive attacks and cooperates with Serena using Root Bind with Astral Bind to stop the Clone's movement for a few seconds while everyone else uses their strongest moves with boost to deal as much damage as they can. They succeeded and the clone dies with everyone gaining a lot of experience at once.

Among the items that they gain, one of them peaks Sain's interest. It is a rare magic passive skill that can either cause the body to gather mana from an external source causing the user to have much more mana than what is contained inside the body or to restrict the amount of mana in the body to the point that magic spells are near worthless except when released to be multiple times stronger. Sain thinks of the second option as what is happening to him currently but is more inclined to the first option since his magic would be stronger than before due to it being restricted currently though losing the temporary boost in power when released which wasn't that much of a bad thing when he considered to be able to use higher costing magic spells more than others. He learns the first option and loses [Compressed Magic Mastery] for it to be turned into [Free Flow Magic Mastery].

A week passes and the group killed another two of those Clones causing them to be around level 265 with Lyndis at level 255 with her gaining more experience than normal due to Sain's party scan skill letting her gain half of all the experience the others gain from them. There were no skills or spells dropped from these two clones this time but the group decided to visit Lily City since they are nearby and want to see Alena again. They spend a couple of days to get to the city and meet with a surprised Alena who was with her son, Ares and sister Risene. Miriel, Lyndis and Serena were immediately taken by the sisters for some shopping while Sain, Shadow and Raven were left with Ares who wanted to explore more of the city causing the three to be on babysitting duty. The three soon found out of the Ares had the tendencies of getting into trouble and danger and the three spent most of the time making it up to others that Ares angered or saving him from dying right in front of them. In one case, Shadow had to take a nasty hit being impaled to save Ares. When the girls come back and find the three worn out and Shadow bleeding to death with the top of a fence in him, Alena and Risene immediately apologise to them wanting to make it up to them. Sain takes this chance to ask them to teach them a good defence skill.

Alena though surprised asks Sain on why he wants them to learn such a skill since other players aside from tanks didn't learn much defence skills. Sain comments that learning such a skill no matter what class it is would increase their survival rates against strong foes. Alena ponders a bit but Risene immediately tells they that their circulation skills could be adjusted to allow them increased defence or attack or speed depending on their preference. Surprised, Miriel asks on how they would do this and Risene tells them that this was a method that Eden used to attack, defence and move faster than others even though his body type wouldn't allow him to. As such, later that day, Serena and Sain's circulation skill now increased his attack, defence and speed by a further 10%, Miriel and Shadow with defence and speed by 15% each, Shadow and Lyndis and Raven with attack and defence increased by 15% each. Thanking them, the group leaves to hunt down more of those clones.

A month in total passed since that order and the group killed a total of 5 Warrior King Clones leaving them at the level 270 point and 4Y 10M point. Seeing that they have another 2 months in game to kill another 7 Warrior King Clones, they check the quest that most players got on how many are left. Though it was not that surprising with so many players working together as one, there are less than less of the clones left though for some reason, Sain felt that certain players, otherwise known as their Guild caused at least a tenth of the kills on their own. However due to the decreased number of clones to kill, the weaker ones were more or less wiped out leaving ones that were on average level 500 or 600 and above in areas that most people would not like to travel to. Locating one such place, the group went to the mountain range north of Lily City where there are rumours of an ancient city made by dark dwarves, dwarves that had turned their back on everything but themselves for power. It took a few days but with the group's pace which they did not realise but was becoming more and more inhuman compared to other players, they entered the ancient city to find that the dark dwarves are still alive...though enslaved by that particular Warrior King clone.

Upon seeing this, the group is ambushed by falling dwarves where Lyndis and Miriel are instantly killed by fatal blows. The others are low on health due to this and activate Boost at the same time before destroying the floor and dropping to safety. Shadow causes decoys to make sure less dark dwarves are on them, Serena set up vines to stall those who came, Raven uses his gravity to blast any that get close away and Sain tries to find a safe spot to hide in. After some hours of constant battle, and Raven were out of mana with Serena and Sain close to it. However they managed to find a place to stay low and recover hiding from the dark dwarves which Sain estimated to be level 400 on average. Trying to figure out how to get through this in one piece, Sain develops a skill that allows him to grind through the mountain side to the outside world. The skill is called [Material Grind] which allows him with contact with his hands, turn things into dust. Due to his [Free Flow Magic Mastery] skill which allows him to passively absorb mana from around him in the air to rapidly accelerate his mana regeneration to a near extreme level. It took him a couple of days but he managed to make a hole in which they could come in and out from. Rejoined with a revived Miriel and Lyndis, Sain commanded them to get some people to help them out to get rid of the controlled Dark Dwarves. Upon the posting of the help, along with the fact that one of the Warrior King's clones being there, 3 parties appeared in time to be of help. Two of the parties were level 300 on average while the other was level 400 on average.

Seeing that the group was lower levelled than them, the level 400 party decides to go on their own with one of the other parties joining them. One party of level 300 joins with the group to balance things out to hunt down the dark dwarves. The two separate joined groups worked on different ends of the same path, cutting through a way to the clone in question that needed to be slain. During these series of battles which resulted in several deaths, the group barely managed to keep everyone including the other party alive when they faced the clone. The other group of 12 were wiped out despite them being high level on average. Seeing the clone, the group immediately used Boost and their various skills to set up the battlefield to their advantage. The level 300 party went to charge at the clone while the group supported them at the beginning. Sain, Miriel and Serena along with 2 priests from the other party set up multiple buffs on everyone. When two members of the other group were slain via mind control making them attack each other, the group stepped in showing they were not affected by the skill since it was simply prompting the targeted to attack. The group with the torture Eden put them through would rather die than to have Eden find out that they were controlled so easily. With it's main power ineffective against the group, the clone targeted the other party and brought in more dark dwarves to attack the group. Surrounded, Sain shouts to use their strongest attacks at the clone to kill him quickly. Using their Art skills, they all execute their strongest attacks with Sain causing debuffs, Miriel placing the strongest barrier around Serena, Serena using her Wyvern body to block most of the attacks to the group and Lyndis, Raven and Shadow using their final moves at the clone.

The result of the three fatal attacks at the same time caused the clone to be half destroyed though still alive. However before it could command the enemy to attack again, Sain throws his spear which head shots the clone thus killing it. Sain unknowingly activated [Awakening] which is the third stage of the Marks Eden gave them in a split moment in one attack. Eden on the other side feels that Sain had achieved this and laughs thinking of how similar he and Sain are for him to progress this quickly. Seeing this, Eden decides to reward Sain in particular with the rest of the group later. Due to killing the clone which was level 500, the group gained 10 levels each. With a month left and level 290 each, the group decides to continue hunting down the dark dwarves since they were still attacking them to get to level 300. The battles continue with the group completing quests to help those in need along the way. Eventually when all of the fakes are destroyed it is revealed that those fakes were his seals and that they had released him. Smiling at this Eden along with 500 of the top players attack the real warrior king and his servants together. Eventually Weed gets the final hit in killing the warrior king and the trail ends giving him a special item that can restore anything as long as you pour enough mana into it, even the entire Kingdom. Eden is forced to take up this role and is trapped until the entire kingdom is restored perfectly which may take years to finish.

End: 5Y

Author's Notes:

There actually isn't that much development in this volume. Most of it is just the group hunting, growing in level as well as Sain getting a new skill replacing his old mastery skill which was kinda either overpowered or underpowered depending which was kind annoying to write. As for the ending...writing it would have been fun seeing how Weed basically is using Eden as a literal mana battery now due to all the damage he and his guild had caused for a long time. Muhahahahaha, Weed would probably have obtained a way to seal off Eden's magic and skill before he did this of course while Alexandra and Viv would have immediately abandoned him on basis of entertainment and fear of Weed doing something horrible to them as well.