“Yes, we did it! Record!!!” - The guild leader wouldn't stop.

Flaming Justice was the obvious 'spiritual leader' of his small guild and skillfully kept them in check, timely bringing them into a state of religious ecstasy. None of this concerned me, though. I gathered my loot, exited the dungeon, and left the raid without hesitation. The important thing was that I got my record. The rest was pink snot.

However, this story had an unexpected sequel. Some raids began to invite me to 'help' set records. And I did not think to refuse, because as part of raids I could set records in the dungeons, where I could not even pass alone. As a result, I got the record, the players got the loot and completed quests, and everyone was happy. Everyone except the guilds whose records I was breaking. And after just a few days, one of those guilds decided to 'get revenge'.

At first, nothing foretold any problems. One of the players approached me and offered to lead a raid against the strong boss of the Rotten Ent. Unlike the other bosses, this one lived in an open area, and not everyone could even get to it. The boss lived in the center of the Ent Forest. A peculiarity of this location was that all elite monsters in it were 'roaming', that is, they had no permanent places of habitation and clear routes of movement. Because of this, the raid in the forest constantly had to fight with enemies, not being able to stand idly by and rest. Meanwhile, the final boss would periodically summon regular Ents to help him during the battle, so the battle had to be hard and unpredictable.

I received the rights to manage the raid, because of which all the players in it immediately received all my bonuses. Not least of all, I was invited to the raid precisely because of them. After all, I now had more bonuses than any guild. At the same time, the real organizers of the raid were giving me their final 'instructions'.

“The loot from the regular Ents will be taken by the one who strikes the last blow, but the loot from the boss will all go to you. To avoid problems with that, when the boss has a couple percent of health left, we'll retreat and let you kill it. It shouldn't affect the time it takes to kill the boss too much, so you'll have the record most likely.”

I looked at the leader of the 'Lotus of Fire Phoenix' guild and frowned. There was something unusual about his words that made me tense. But since he didn't really want to kill me, I decided to ignore it for now. Many of the people around me really hated me, but they were ready to cooperate with the Incarnation of Chaos itself, that is, with me, to kill the boss.

From there, everything went according to plan. The raid literally cut through the forest of Ents and attacked the boss. It was a tense battle, but we finished the boss in about fifteen minutes. I was constantly on guard, but didn't find anything suspicious in the area. Finally, Boss had a cropper of life left, and everyone in the raid stopped beating him in an organized manner. I set my pet on the boss, while I looked around carefully. And then... nothing happened. The Fox just killed the boss, picked up the loot that had fallen out of it, and a few seconds later I received a notification that a new record had been set.

I do not understand... Then why did I have this oppressive premonition of something bad that was about to happen? And then another system message appeared in front of me.

***The Forest of Ents is angry about the murder of the Ents Patriarch. A curse has fallen on the killer's head.***

And... again nothing happened. I do not understand...

I looked around carefully, and noticed the triumphant expression on the faces of the raid leaders.

“Ha ha! We got you!” - One of them finally burst through. – “Now your pet is useless. Jackanapes like you should know their place. The Union of Ten Guilds promised to pay us a lot of money to eliminate you. You won't be able to set any more records...”

“Shut up!” - His neighbor kicked his spy treasure.

My pet? I looked at the Fox's characteristics and noticed the curse icon hanging on it. The description to this badge read:

*Curse of the Ent Forest. Unremovable. Deals damage equal to 5% of his current health every second until his health drops to 10% of his maximum HP.*

Okay, I'll deal with that later. Right now, I've got to punish the bastards.

“You'll regret that you dared to stand in my way.” - I proclaimed, and then excluded the blabbermouth from the raid. A moment later my pet's cheeks sliced him in half, killing him instantly.

“What is happening?” - Regular players whispered, apparently unaware of what was going on. But I didn't enlighten them, and began to exclude one by one all of the secret raid leaders and kill them instantly.

As long as the player was in my raid, they could not harm me. But after I excluded another victim from the group and attacked him, the raid members lost any chance to help his former comrade-in-arms. By the time players started leaving the raid to attack me massively, I had managed to kill eight of them. In general, despite the debuff that afflicted my pet, I managed to take out all the players and then rushed away, maneuvering between the wandering Ents. An ordinary player wouldn't have passed, but I was immune to the control effects, and the speed of the scolopendra was such that no other Ent could catch up with me.

Once I got to safety, I began to investigate the curse on my pet. I couldn't anticipate such consequences beforehand, because the curse was part of the game logic of the forest, not the boss I was beating. Alas, the connections between the information blocks in the game were weak, so sometimes I couldn't find information that seemed to lie on the surface.

The Forest of Ents curse was an unbreakable curse, meaning that it could not be broken by any spells or skills. As a rule, such curses were lifted by completing quests. That was the case here as well, except that the NPC who was in charge of breaking curses could only take them off from players. Pets, on the other hand, were considered permanently cursed. The only way to break a curse in such situation was to get rid of the pet and tame a new one. Moreover, it was a 'budget-friendly' way of circumventing the curse. Passing the quest to remove the debuff was a painful and expensive experience. So sometimes players would get a pet on purpose, force it to deal a finishing blow, and then get rid of it.

In my case, I wasn't even considering getting rid of the Fox. It wasn't because I had a fiery love affair with him. It's just that after I tamed him, the game's AI blocked any possibility of getting the Deadly Chaos Scolopendra as a pet in this manner.

I could, of course, simply hack the game, but that would definitely reveal my abilities to the artificial intelligence. I'd been 'encrypting' as much as I could these days, so as not to give him even a hint that the good fortune surrounding me was the result of my interference. In terms of evidence, it might not have been a blessing, but a curse to which I am subjected against my will. So the problem with this debuff had to be solved in some other way.

I turned around and looked at my pet's body. The curse had affected its appearance. Along the body of the scolopendra appeared twenty circles, gathered in pairs, on which now grew some red mold of a very unhealthy kind. I began to 'decipher' the program code of this curse and was surprised to find out that in fact it was not a curse at all, but... a modification of the organism.

On the body of the scolopendra appeared twenty zones where plants could now grow. As a druid I had encountered a bit of this direction of the game, though I hadn't immersed myself in it. In short, there were not only 'battle' plants like my bushes in the game, but also 'peaceful' plants that had their own unique characteristics. Such plants required specially prepared soil, to grow them the druids had to use their magic, then they had to wait until they reached maturity, and at the end these plants could be 'harvested', gaining some valuable resource.

Usually this kind of 'gardening' was done by Earth wizards, so I did not delve into the study of this subject. But now this question became urgent for me, so I had to understand this subject thoroughly. And since I no longer believed in my ability to obtain the necessary information, I decided to return to the capital and read the guides on gardening so that I could then use that information for my own research.

After a few hours, I was more or less aware of the problem. As a result of this curse, zones where 'peaceful' plants could grow appeared on the Fox's body. But there was one thing: these zones could not be 'lifeless. Something had to grow in them. The second point was exactly the same health absorption. To grow, the plants needed nutrients, which they took from the scolopendra's body while doing damage. But that circumstance gave only half of the damage from the 'curse'. And the other half came from the 'Blood Moss' plant, which was essentially poisonous. The exact same plant was growing on Rotten Ent, so I could say that my pet had picked up the contagion from it.

But there was a silver lining to this situation. There were ways to grow a different type of plant in the 'seedbeds' that would be beneficial rather than harmful. Then it would be possible to compensate for the health they absorbed. However, there was one problem. Blood Moss was not only poisonous, but also a very unpretentious plant. And most importantly, it actively fought against all other plants, simply by not letting them sprout in all the territory available to it.

In general, the situation might have seemed hopeless, but I'd already found a way to turn a curse into a blessing. The point was that Blood Moss had a 'critical vulnerability' to the Horned Lichen plant, so I could replace one plant species with another. However, the Horned Lichen was even more poisonous, so the damage from the curse would only increase, but that plant had a vulnerability to the other. So a complex chain of substitutions was formed, with which I could achieve the result I wanted.

To pull off this whole scam, I had to run around the mainland collecting seeds of the plants I needed. In some places I even had to get off my 'warhorse' and sneak under the invisibility to get past strong monsters to be able to gather the resources I needed. But eventually, after a couple of days, I was able to gather everything I needed and began the 'healing' process. It was not quick, because I had to grow plants on twenty beds at the same time, plus wait for them to mature. Only then could I guarantee that the previous 'occupant' would be completely superseded by the new plant.

Finally, I was able to catch my breath and inspect my pet with pride. Out of twenty 'beds' ten were planted with elite flowers 'Angel's Tri-colored Orchid'. These flowers healed the nearest living organisms on their own, and the closest to them was, of course, the scolopendra itself. As a result, my pet could regenerate... 100% health every 0.25 seconds.

To be honest, I didn't expect that to happen. The fact that the scolopendra was big and long in size played a role here, and the game mechanics stuck too many beds on its body. Each bed could restore 10% health in one 'tick'. After all, it was the most powerful healing plant in the game. So it didn't even make sense to plant more than ten beds of these flowers, because it was impossible to restore more than a hundred percent of health.

Instead, I planted plants that removed all sorts of statuses and curses, gave full immunity to poisoning, and increased my pet's health reserves. Now it really turned out to be Completely Holy Fucking Fox, not a pet. Full instant healing meant it could only be killed in one hit. And his health was no longer ten million, but fifty million. And that was where the game limit came into play, which in principle didn't allow for more than forty million damage in a quarter of a second. So, in effect, my Fox was now completely immortal.

However, his damage didn't change, but that didn't matter. With this cheat, I could brazenly assault all of the most difficult dungeons and kill the strongest bosses. Of course, that's if you don't take into account the fact that some bosses could heal themselves, and my damage even now couldn't be called top-notch. In the near future I was going to take care of this problem, but now it was time for revenge.

I hadn't forgotten which guild members had decided to set me up. What's more, I also knew exactly who had 'ordered' the scheme. But now I was only going to punish the direct performers. I had to show everyone that quarreling with me was the worst idea ever.

Guilds were associations of players that allowed them to communicate, get bonuses from playing together, and made them fight other guilds, again getting their bonuses from this fight. But the very existence of the guild was possible in two modes, which were very different from each other.

Initially, the guild was just a group of players, and therefore existed only due to the presence of these players. In other words, if the number of guild members fell below 5% of the maximum for three days, the guild was simply disbanded. At the same time, the real threshold for 'destroying' a guild was five people. Guilds of the most basic class could hold only 100 people. By upgrading this class you could get up to 250, 500 and 1,000 people. The threshold for a Diamond-class guild was 50 people, but if this threshold was reached you could simply lower the guild's class and let it live.

In the first mode, the guild was just a group of players, and it was really almost impossible to destroy it. But there was a second mode. If a guild decided to build a Guild Castle, its existence began to depend on the intactness of that castle. The Castle provided not only a place for guild members to meet, rooms for living, crafting and training. The guild also received a steady income from 'taxes' from the surrounding territory. The better the territory was developed, the more money and resources the guild received 'out of air'.

Naturally, guilds with a castle were stronger than guilds without it. But with this advantage came a great danger. If a guild's castle was captured and its central crystal was destroyed, the guild would cease to exist along with it. That's why all members of the guild sought to protect their castle at any cost. After all, seizing the castle was equivalent to losing all of the savings, all of the guild's bonuses, all of its glory. So the essence of the upcoming revenge was that the 'Lotus of Fire Phoenix' guild had its own castle.

I had prepared for the war and unloaded everything valuable from my backpack into the warehouse just in case, so I headed for the castle of the guild that had dared to encroach the sacred, i.e., me. When I reached the place, I set up a scanner nearby, so that I could quickly move to the place. Then I didn't think much, but went straight to the main gate of the castle.

The gate was closed, but that didn't stop me for a second. My movement skill allowed me to 'jump' fifty meters, so I simply jumped to the fortress wall of the castle, and then started killing all the players whom I met.

At first, no one thought anything serious was going on. Yes, someone had attacked guild members, but the guards would deal with him, and then the management would blacklist the brat and figure out how to punish him. However, after a minute or five or ten, no one was able to deal with me. I was brazenly and impudently moving around the castle grounds, killing everyone I met, and in the process destroying all of the castle buildings that had less than a million points of HP.

At the tenth minute, the guild management finally realized that this was no joke, and took me seriously. A full mobilization of all guild members was urgently carried out. Nearly a thousand people dropped everything and returned to the castle to confront the evil me. But even after that, there was no sign that I could be stopped in any way.

Crowds of people were swarming around me, attacking me in every way possible, but... It was useless, because all of the damage was instantly healed. The more players piled around me, the easier it was for me to destroy them. My 'Infernal Insidious Mushrooms' dealt venom damage over an area. The area was small, but with people literally standing on each other's heads, even one mushroom could hit a dozen victims. And since the poison was effective for five minutes, the players had no chance to survive after this infection. After all, truly strong players in the guild were few, and most of its ordinary members were so weak that even a simple 'sneeze of mushroom' guaranteed to kill them in a few seconds.

I not only slaughtered every player I could reach. I was also collecting all their loot, and destroying the castle buildings as well. Buildings that cost a lot of money. Buildings that had been built with the blood and sweat of the guild's members. And today all that 'splendor' had been ended.

After 20 minutes of the attack it was clear the guild couldn't take me on their own, so they called in their "roof" - the "Sacred Oath" guild. There were many players of level 13, and they came to punish me. Naive. After only a couple of minutes, they all went to the revival circle, which was right inside the castle walls, so I didn't even have to chase the players down to destroy them time after time.

After dying, the player was reborn in the nearest available sanctuary within a minute. There he was safe for another minute, and then he could be attacked, unless, of course, the area around him was peaceful. Inside the guild castle it obviously wasn't, so every two minutes the players were forced to fight me, only to... die.

Of course, mostly all sorts of 'rags' died. I didn't go after the tanks, because they were usually pretty hard to kill. Even with all my killing speed, I couldn't kill more than five people per second. And I only killed five because they were real meat that couldn't do any good. After death, the person lost 10 characteristic points. And when all 100 points were used up, time from death to resurrection began to be 'sacrificed'. The initial minute was increased to 5 minutes, then to 10, and with each subsequent death the time to resurrection doubled.

The top members of the 'Lotus of Fire Phoenix' guild fought me, literally throwing themselves on the firing line, but it was useless. After half an hour, they ran out of characteristics, and the players began to regenerate with delays, further aggravating their already miserable situation. In my pet's vault, I had tons of junk that I had beaten out of players. And the more they lost, the less chance they had of resisting.

Soon the guild leaders became so desperate that they began to write to the community chat room screaming for help, demanding that the evil me be punished. I responded by spamming messages into that chat with an offer to join in the destruction of the guild's castle. In fact, the defenders' resistance had already been suppressed, and the only thing left to do was to destroy the castle itself.

I needed the help of other players because the main fortifications of the castle had too many durability points, and I could only attack them with normal physical attacks. I alone could spend another week wreaking havoc on the castle. But when people heard that I was proposing to loot the treasury of a defenseless castle, they started swarming like flies to shit. Even the declarations in the chat that the Lotus of Fiery Phoenix Guild is protected by the alliance of the Ten Guilds didn't help. When a crowd of people want to profit from someone else's misfortune, their fear is completely turned off. While the guilds were pondering how they would assemble squads to protect their allies, the vultures of the regular players had already arrived to 'help' me divide up the looted goods.