Chapter 79: Fair Game
Point out any errors I made in the chapters, as I'm very lazy and sometimes can't be bothered to reread them. Also give your opinions on something I should change or add.
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Seeing that all the information was the same, Feng didn't dilly-dally any longer, unequipping the Blood Emperor's Armor and spreading his wings as he began flying up towards the Epic Shrines at high speeds.
The moment Feng had set foot on the World Summit, the time he had obtained through the test began to count down.
Since he had 10,000 minutes at the moment, Feng first planned on using up all his Epic Shrine challenges, before spending the rest of what time he had remaining on the Divine Staircase.
While flying, Feng leveled himself up to Level 99 once again in order to boost his flying speed, resulting in his ascend up the World Summit skyrocketing to a record pace, while Feng even activated Wind Rider whenever it was off cooldown to increase his flying speed even further.
Unfortunately, the rules of the World Summit were thoroughly exasperating, forbidding any forms of teleportation, while even Spatial Liberation couldn't offset this restriction. If Feng could use Space Movement and Spatial Shift here, he could travel a distance of over a million yards in just one second, saving him some travel time.
Nevertheless, with his current speed, Feng rapidly soared past the Shrines of various ranks.
One could determine the rank of a Shrine based on its location on the World Summit. The higher the rank of a Shrine, the closer to the pinnacle it lay. The distance between Shrines also grew wider the further up he went.
However, the World Summit was quite massive. Despite continuously flying at a high speed and activating Wind Rider, it still took Feng nearly twenty minutes to finally arrive before a Shrine that was over 300 meters in height. The Shrines around this area were completely different from the ones he had seen before. On the other hand, the Shrines at the foot of the mountain were now no longer within view.
The Shrines one encountered below were all inanimate objects. On the other hand, the Epic Shrines here had frightening auras that would even cause adventurers to begin to wonder whether terrifying monsters lived in these Shrines.
However, Feng didn't stop after encountering the mountain-like Shrine.
From the way Serena had looked at him while leaving, Feng could tell she was planning on something, so he had decided to first visit two different Epic Shrines before going to where the Bible of Darkness is.
Even if he had enough time, it was only possible to enter three Epic Shrines per visit.
In addition, there was a 10-day Cooldown after someone used their three challenges, which would only decrease while they were in the World Summit and included all Epic Shrines.
Preferably, Feng would also like to visit the Inferior Legendary Shrines and use up his two challenge opportunities on them, but he didn't really have the time to do so on this visit to the World Summit.
After the Dark-Gold Shrine region, if players went high enough to the upper parts of the Epic Shrine area, they'd discover that the minutes required to enter a Shrine would increase the higher one goes, along with the possible goodies once could acquire from these Shrines becoming more valuable.
Some of the Epic Shrines near the edge of the Epic Shrine area could even need over two thousand minutes to open, double the usual necessary amount of one thousand minutes.
Meanwhile, even the lower most of the Inferior Legendary Shrines require 5,000 minutes to open. But naturally, pretty much anything that would be of value to Feng from the Inferior Legendary Shrine area couldn't be found in these low-ranking Inferior Legendary Shrines, and he'd need to spend at least 10,000 minutes to obtain something worth his time.
Considering that ten thousand minutes is the most he could get as a Tier 1 player without taking on a Party Test, there was no way for Feng to benefit from the Inferior Legendary Shrines without wasting his two challenges.
This situation applied to the few Legendary Shrines at the top of the mountain, which all required 25,000 minutes to enter at the very least, even more so.
Hence, Feng's options on the treasures he could currently acquire were fairly limited.
Thankfully, in his previous life, after reaching Tier 6 and no longer having to fear being devoured by the Moloch's Ring, Feng had sent his guild members in droves to the World Summit to claim as many of the Shrines' resources as possible.
By that point, though, Demon Players had already raided most of the Epic ranked and below Shrines, taking most of the World Summit's treasures at those ranks, with only the top most Inferior Legendary Shrines and Legendary Shrines being nearly untouched by them.
Nevertheless, through his search for pages from the Bible of Darkness, several of which resided within the Shrines on the World Summit, Feng had obtained much information about most of the Epic Shrines and what could be found in them from the Demon Players who had explored the World Summit.
Thus, he wasn't lacking when it came to knowledge of what a large amount of Epic Shrines contained, and Feng already had a target in mind for the most valuable item he could obtain from the Epic Shrines; aside from the Bible of Darkness, of course.
The Shrines on the World Summit were similar to Treasure Chests in the way that the items which could be obtained from them varied in rank, with a person's Luck being the main factor in how valuable of an item they get from a Treasure Chest, while the key factor to how much a person can benefit from the World Summit's Shrines was skill.
And similarly to how one can get a Fragmented Legendary item from an Epic Treasure Chest if they were lucky enough, it was possible for a person who had a certain amount of skill to obtain a Fragmented Legendary item or something of equal value from an Epic Shrine.
However, Epic Shrines that contain Fragmented Legendary items or those of a similar value were many times harder to clear than other Epic Shrines, and are more challenging than even some regular Inferior Legendary Shrines.
Meanwhile, the Epic Shrine Feng was currently headed to was one such Shrine.
The World Summit had a large number of Shrines, and the same held true even for Epic Shrines. One could usually see nine Epic Shrines just within their range of vision even at the start of the Epic Shrine area, while there were many more up above.
These Shrines were different from each other. There was a huge difference just in terms of the elemental mana surrounding these Shrines. Some Shrines released bright and dazzling elemental mana, and others released flaming elemental mana. Even Shrines that released the same type of mana would have different images engraved on their doors—images of Angels, Demons, and many other races. Some Shrine doors even depicted Gods.
After flying for another thirty or so minutes, consuming a large amount of Stamina along the way and zooming past all kinds of Epic Shrines, Feng, who was absentmindedly flying while eating a Chocolate Stick, in the process of training his brain's motor control functions to automatically flap his wings and keep him flying through the air as if he was normally commencing automatic walking, was suddenly assaulted by a powerful pressure coming from the area in front of him.
Encountering the unexpected turn of events, Feng nearly fell from the air after losing his balance, barely managing to steady himself by flapping his large wings repeatedly.
Only then did Feng look forward, from where the pressure was coming from, and discovered that he had already reached the Inferior Legendary Shrine area and accidently entered it when he saw a Shrine over five hundred meters tall a ways away from him.
The difficulty of obtaining rewards from Inferior Legendary Shrines didn't just lay in the Shrine's challenge itself. Aside from a regular person needing around half a day to arrive at the Inferior Legendary Shrine area and the minutes required to enter the Shrines, players also needed to endure the oppressive environment there.
Gravity increases by several g to the point that even the current Feng found himself being drawn to the ground by it and was forced to exert much more effort and Stamina in order to remain flying in the air, while a powerful mental pressure assaulted players as they attempted to ascend.
Normally, one would need to reach Tier 3 at very least in order to be capable of resisting this pressure, with the requirement growing as one climbed further up the World Summit, with the pressure at the Legendary Shrine area being something only Tier 6 players could possibly resist.
Of course, that didn't apply to Feng, and he was only slightly uncomfortable within the beginning area of the Inferior Legendary Shrine region.
Though, even he'd have trouble going up to the peak of the World Summit where the Legendary Shrines were, with utilizing special means such as some Legendary items or the Divine Change Combat Technique that he had invented during his previous life being the only way he could scale up to that point.
Doing his best to maneuver through the air with his wings as the suddenly increased gravity threw off his entire aerial movement capabilities, Feng soon managed to mostly adapt to the change and turn around, flying back to the upper most Epic Shrine region.
Going by his memories, Feng soon arrived before a three hundred meter shrine with powerful and violent Mana around it, that had no particular element as everything seemed mashed together, and landed at its gates. When Feng touched the stone doors, the sound of a system notification reached his ears.
System: Legendary Shrine Key detected. You are qualified to open the doors of the Epic Shrine. Do you wish to spend 2,500 minutes to open them?
Feng confirmed his decision to enter the Shrine without any hesitation, and the heavy stone doors slowly parted.
A vast amount of violent Mana gushed out as the gates opened, nearly causing Feng to stumble back. Steadying himself, Feng walked into the Epic Shrine.
The environment here was even more unstable with Mana going berserk at random intervals, making it incredibly difficult for players to manipulate even their own Mana, let alone the ambient Mana around them. If a Tier 3 player were to stand within this Shrine's environment, even their Mana Body might be at risk of being affected by the berserk Mana.
Meanwhile, the inside of the Shrine wasn't anything special, being a small ten by ten room with little lighting illuminating it. In the center of the room sat a Magic Array barrier, within which there was a small wooden box.
Approaching the Magic Array and placing a hand on it, Feng confirmed the info he had on this Shrine, before starting to work on the Magic Array.
Although every Shrine in the World Summit offered its own rewards, they differed in the methods required to obtain their reward. Some Shrines granted players a reward upon entry, while some required players to pass certain tests or fulfill some special requirements.
This Shrine was among the latter, and one would need to complete its test, there being an Advanced Magic Array here that needed to be decoded, in order to obtain the Shrine's treasure; while attempting to use brute force would result in the player failing and being sent out of the Shrine.
There's a certain amount of difficulty in the test that needed to be completed within the Epic Shrine Feng was currently conquering, as this Magic Array was at the Peak standard among Advanced Magic Arrays, and one would need to be at least around the Half-step Master Magician standard in order to be capable of decoding it.
However, due to the environment in this Shrine and the extremely unstable Mana which made proper control nearly impossible, even a Basic Master Magician wouldn't be able to decode an Advanced Magic Array like this one unless they had some special tools for stabilizing Mana, while an Intermediate Master Magician would struggle to decode the Magic Array in these conditions.
Feng, who had been an Advanced Grandmaster Magician only a step away from becoming a Great Grandmaster Magician, on the other hand, had no problem dealing with this Advanced Magic Array despite his current tier and the berserk Mana environment after equipping the Great Magician Title.
Within three minutes, the Magic Array was shut down, allowing passage through to the wooden box. As soon as Feng picked up the box, he was teleported out of the Epic Shrine and once again found himself in front of the large stone door.
Opening the wooden box, Feng immediately put its contents to use.
The item inside the Epic Shrine's wooden box is called the Sacred Stone.
The Sacred Stone has a variety of uses. It's greatest purpose is reinforcing a weapon or piece of equipment. With only one stone, the highest-rank it can upgrade an item to is Fragmented Legendary rank. Moreover, the item's base materials must be of sufficiently high quality. Otherwise, the upgrade will fail.
If one wishes to reinforce the item further, they'd need to collect more Sacred Stones. Unfortunately, Sacred Stones were even difficult to come by in ancient times, much less now. The Sacred Stone was even rarer than your average Fragmented Legendary item.
God's Domain had few Fragmented Legendary items players could obtain if they didn't have an incredible item like Icarus's Heart. As a result, obtaining just one was excruciatingly difficult, not to mention finding an item that was suitable for oneself.
Meanwhile, the Sacred Stone could upgrade a suitable item to Fragmented Legendary rank.
It was common knowledge in God's Domain that the more compatible one was with a weapon or piece of equipment, the more benefits one would gain from said item. Hence, rather than using a weapon or piece of equipment with powerful Attributes, expert players preferred to use items that they were compatible with. This was also why after reaching the later stages of the game, many experts would turn down weapons and equipment from Dungeons, searching for customized items instead.
In the past, one Sacred Stone had been worth two Fragmented Legendary items, thus obtaining it from an Epic Shrine on the World Summit was quite the steal.
Normally, as the Sacred Stone is somewhat special and will vanish if it's not used within three hours once the container it is in has been opened, players would carefully think over what item they wished to upgrade before retrieving the Sacred Stone.
However, there was no need for Feng to waste any time considering his options, as he already knew how he would use the Sacred Stone. He would upgrade the Seven Luminaries Ring.
The Seven Luminaries Ring was, by far, one of the very best Epic items Feng had ever seen. Unfortunately, this Seven Luminaries Ring was only a Replica, and couldn't be repaired to a higher rank like many other items could. The Sacred Stone was one of the few options for upgrading the ring.
Meanwhile, the Seven Luminaries Ring was such an item that it would be top-tier among items of the same rank no matter to which point it was upgraded.
In fact, the original Seven Luminaries Ring had been hailed as one of the most powerful Divine Artifacts to ever exist, as, unlike most other Divine Artifacts which wielded one Law, some few that had two, the extremely rare that could use three, and the legendary Divine Artifacts recorded in libraries that had been capable of granting their wielder to control even four or five Laws, the original Seven Luminaries Ring had abilities that could manipulate all seven of the main Laws.
Creating a Divine Artifact was exceptionally difficult due to the requirement of not only needing extremely rare and powerful materials for the item's build, as well as a Divine Artifact rank material that was specialized to a certain element only and had a concentrated enough Law of it within itself at the standard of Full Mastery, but also required the person making the item to have at least Basic Mastery over the Law that they wished for the Divine Artifact to possess.
Of course, the most basic requirement to create Divine Artifacts was to know how to forge and use the materials to a sufficient standard.
Unfortunately, the means to create brand new Divine Artifacts from scratch had been lost during the passage of time, with the only option being to upgrade items through special methods like infusing Laws into some items with potential for that element if one wanted to get new Fragmented Divine Artifacts and Divine artifacts; which was not much easier than creating a completely new Divine Artifact.
And while there were some special ways and means to get around some of the requirements, it had still been an unfathomable feat for the Space Goddess to create the Divine Artifact ranked Seven Luminaries Ring on her own.
Following her example, Feng had attempted to upgrade his Seven Luminaries Ring Replica, which he had already upgraded to Legendary rank in the meantime, to Divine Artifact rank after finding out that he could use the Seven Luminaries Ring's structure that had been mostly replicated from the original and its potential with the elements to add the power of Laws into it.
Although Feng himself didn't have Basic Mastery over all of the seven main Laws, thanks to a certain Forging Technique he had come across during his journey in the Universal God's Domain, he was capable of involving someone with Mastery over a Law into the process and gaining their aid into infusing the Law into an item.
However, the requirement of the person's Mastery over their Law was much higher than if Feng himself was doing the job, with even Advanced Mastery not having a high success rate, meaning he'd need players with Full Mastery over one of the seven Laws, along with the materials and a powerful enough source of said Law, in order to upgrade the Seven Luminaries Ring's auras.
Among Zero Wing's guild members, Aqua had possessed Full Mastery over the Law of Water, reaching the pinnacle of her main element and even getting close to grasping the Half-step Rule of Water;
Yueru had mastered the Fire Law to the Full Mastery standard and had excellent proficiency with both it and manipulating all forms of flames;
Cola had gained Mastery over the Law of Earth to a sufficient enough standard to add it into the Seven Luminaries Ring's roster;
Ruoxi[1] had invested a lot of her efforts into the illusion element due to her fascination with it during her career in God's Domain, resulting in his class monitor having a pretty in depth Mastery over the Law of Illusion, reaching far into the Full Mastery standard and greatly boosting her combat power to be among Zero Wing's top experts even though she was a bit lacking in other departments.
Violet had managed to obtain Mastery over plenty of Laws thanks to her immense talent, among which she had reached the Full Mastery standard with the Law of Space, and had the greatest proficiency with it in all of Zero Wing;
While Feng himself had grasped the Wind Law at the Full Mastery standard during the previous timeline; allowing him to infuse six of the seven main Laws into the Seven Luminaries Ring and make it one of the strongest Fragmented Divine Artifacts throughout all of the Universal God's Domain thanks to the assistance of his guild members.
Feng hadn't been able to fully upgrade the Seven Luminaries Ring into a Divine Artifact, though, as aside from a Divine Artifact ranked material with a powerful enough source of the Time Law within it that could be comparable to the Full Mastery standard being impossibly rare, so much so that Feng had never managed to obtain even one such item, neither he nor any of his guild members had Mastery over the Law of Time at even the complete Basic Mastery standard.
The difficulty of mastering anything time related was much higher than most elements, with the Law of Time[2] being the hardest to grasp even among other Advanced Laws.
Of course, with how complex it was, the power that the Law of Time could provide to players was even more extraordinary, as, while it couldn't directly increase a person's destructive power or damage dealing capabilities like the Law of Destruction or the Law of Death could, or even enhance their abilities like the Law of Space, the unique capabilities one would have and could use with the Time Law would make them the nightmare of any creature who doesn't have a higher standard of Mastery with another Advanced Law or some Mastery with a Peak Law.
This was the reason Feng had been so shocked and excited when he obtained the Destroyed Yog-Sothoth.
Nevertheless, although it didn't reach the ranks of Divine Artifacts without all seven of the main Laws infused into it, greatly hampering its potential power, the Seven Luminaries Ring had provided Feng unimaginable benefits as a top-tier Fragmented Divine Artifact, with its abilities surpassing even a large portion of actual Divine Artifacts; and being one of the main reasons he had been able to contend with people far stronger than himself which he'd normally be at a massive disadvantage against.
Naturally, Feng was planning to once again wield the heaven-defying Seven Luminaries Ring, and possibly even upgrade it into a Divine Artifact this time around, and since he currently didn't have any Epic item that was more valuable at the moment, the Seven Luminaries Ring was the perfect choice to use the Sacred Stone one.
He already knew from his previous life that the quality of the materials used in the production of this Seven Luminaries Ring Replica was quite sufficient for the Sacred Stone to upgrade it to Fragmented Legendary rank, as the Replica's creator had attempted to craft a Fragmented Legendary ring. Unfortunately, the ring had been Epic rank. In fact, enough Sacred Stones should even be able to upgrade the ring to Legendary rank.
However, Feng didn't bother with the thought of upgrading the Seven Luminaries Ring to Legendary rank using Sacred Stones.
Quite a few God-rank players had attempted to upgrade their weapons and equipment to Legendary rank with Sacred stones, but from what Feng knew, not one of these players had succeeded.
The reason for their failure was simple. Upgrading an item to Legendary rank required far too many Sacred Stones. Even God-ranked experts with Super Guilds' support hadn't been able to gather enough. As for exactly how many Sacred Stones were required, no one knew. However, there was a rumor that one God-ranked expert had failed to upgrade their item to Legendary rank even after investing over a dozen Sacred Stones.
Considering that he had several other avenues that he could turn to for the purpose of upgrading the Seven Luminaries Ring to Legendary rank, Feng naturally didn't even entertain the idea of using such a wasteful method.
Feng then opened the wooden box and picked up the white, palm-sized Sacred Stone. He then chose to use it on the Seven Luminaries Ring.
Suddenly, the Sacred Stone radiated an incomparably intense power. Golden energy streamed from the stone, flowing into the Seven Luminaries Ring on Feng's other hand.
A moment later, the Sacred Stone turned to dust while the Seven Luminaries Ring underwent an earth-shattering transformation. Seven different streams of light flowed out of the ring, giving it a mesmerizing look. Moreover, the ring now emitted a faint trace of pressure. It was hard to imagine that this item was only a ring, not a weapon.
Calling up the System Panel, Feng saw that after he had upgraded the Seven Luminaries Ring to Fragmented Legendary rank, not only had its physical appearance undergone a massive transformation, but its Attributes had as well.
[Seven Luminaries Ring (Replica)] (Ring, Fragmented Legendary Rank)
Equipment Requirement: Strength 1,200, Agility 1,000
Attributes will be adjusted according to user's level. (Level 99)
Strength +480, Agility +461, Intelligence +433, Endurance +440, Vitality +446
When equipped:
Strength increased by 40%
Agility increased by 40%
Intelligence increased by 40%
Endurance increased by 30%
Vitality increased by 30%
All negative environmental effects weakened by 50%
Ignore Levels +15
All item level requirements reduced by 10 Levels.
Additional Skill: Seven Luminaries Aura
There are seven different Auras: earth, water, wind, fire, time, illusion, and space. Only one Aura can be used each time, and there will be a Cooldown of 20 seconds when changing between Auras.
[Aura of Earth]
(Requires 2,000,000,000 EXP to level up)
Defense increased by 100%;
Damage taken reduced by 50%.
Activatable Skill: Absolute Domain
Become immune to all damage for 10 seconds. All allies within a 50-yard-radius become immune to all damage for 5 seconds.
Cooldown: 2 minutes
[Aura of Water]
(Requires 2,000,000,000 EXP to level up)
Healing effects increased by 100%;
Cast Consumption reduced by 50%.
Activatable Skill: Life Domain
Heals all allies within a 50-yard radius for 10% of their HP every second for 30 seconds.
Cooldown: 3 minutes
[Aura of Wind]
(Requires 2,000,000,000 EXP to level up)
Movement Speed increased by 80%;
Attack Speed increased by 60%;
Reaction speed increased by 20%.
Activatable Skill: Gale Domain
Enables temporary flight and Movement Speed increase of 300% and reduces the Movement Speed of all enemies within a 100-yard radius by 50% for 30 seconds.
Cooldown: 3 minutes
[Aura of Fire]
(Requires 2,000,000,000 EXP to level up)
Damage increased by 50%;
Target's Defense reduced by 80%.
Activatable Skill: Flame Domain
Inflicts 1,500% damage within a 60-yard radius for 7 seconds. Damage upscales by 20% every second.
Cooldown: 5 minutes
[Aura of Time]
(Requires 3,000,000,000 EXP to level up)
Cooldown of all Skills reduced by 50%;
Enemies within a 200-yard radius will have their Movement Speed and Attack Speed reduced by 40%, and Cooldown of Skills increased by 50%.
Activatable Skill: Forbidden Domain
Prevents enemies within a 500-yard radius from using any skills or tools for 30 seconds.
Cooldown: 3 minutes
[Aura of Illusion]
(Requires 3,000,000,000 EXP to level up)
All Attributes increased by 40%;
Enemies within a 200-yard radius will have all their Attributes reduced by 40%.
Activatable Skill: Fantasy Domain
Immunity to all Magic Damage and 20% of Magic Damage received will be converted to healing to recover player's HP for 20 seconds. For 180 seconds, all negative effects within a 100-yard radius will be removed.
Cooldown: 3 minutes
[Aura of Space]
(Requires 3,000,000,000 EXP to level up)
Immunity to all control and restricting effects.
Activatable Skill 1: Space Movement
Instantly move to any location within a radius of 600,000 yards.
Cooldown: 3 minutes
Activatable Skill 2: Spatial Gate
Opens a Spatial Gate that allows players to go through it. Spatial Gate can be connected to any location within a 300,000-yard radius. Spatial Gate will stay open for 1 minute.
Cooldown: 20 minutes
Seeing that the upgrade process was fully successful, Feng flapped his wings once more and started flying lower down the Epic Shrine region.
Unfortunately, there was only one Sacred Stone within the Epic Shrine area, so Feng won't be able to upgrade any more of his items until he goes to the Inferior Legendary Shrines, which limited his options. After pondering for a while, Feng had gone through all of the items that were of some value to him which could be obtained from the Epic Shrines.
Although there were some few Fragmented Legendary items such as equipment and weapons, they were all of the lower quality within their rank, while Feng had plenty of better gear. As for the Epic items, they were even more worthless.
Considering this, he was only left with some items that didn't directly increase his strength, such as tools, Magic Arrays, Magic Scrolls, God Crystals and such, but Feng wasn't interested in those things, since he was currently trying to increase his strength as much as possible, while all those items could be left to get looted by his guild members once he starts sending them in droves here.
Only the items in Inferior Legendary Shrines could interest him at this point, though, so Feng decided to just resign to getting a somewhat useful Fragmented Legendary Tool from the upper most Epic Shrines.
That's when Feng was suddenly reminded of one particular Epic Shrine which could potentially have something that would greatly benefit him. And that's the Shrine Feng was currently heading to.
It didn't take long to arrive there with his current speed, with Feng landing in front of a three hundred meter shrine with dense elemental Mana around it, comprised of all the elements, and placing a hand on the Shrine's stone doors.
System: Legendary Shrine Key detected. You are qualified to open the doors of the Epic Shrine. Do you wish to spend 1,000 minutes to open them?
Confirming, 1,000 minutes were subtracted from Feng's remaining time, leaving him with around 6,400 minutes remaining, while the Epic Shrine's gates slowly opened.
When Feng walked into the Shrine with well-placed steps, he was greeted by several different environments that were all fairly divided, with a fiery volcano on one side and a calm lake on the other, raging winds in one place and an area full of stony mountains in another. There was an environment for nearly every element.
System: You have entered the Elementals Domain. As long as you survive for one minute, you will pass the test and be rewarded according to your performance. If you fail to complete the requirements, you will be teleported out of the Shrine automatically.
As soon as the sound of the system notifications died down, magical attacks started flying towards Feng from all directions, the attacks of a variety surpassing that of the surrounding environments. If one were to look carefully, they'd discover Elementals hidden within their natural surroundings as they launched attacks at Feng.
Although these Elementals were fairly weak, being merely Rare Special Elites with only one hundred thousand HP, physical attacks were useless against them and only magic will have any effect. Then again, with hundreds of attacks flying towards the test taker, players will find it difficult to even survive the onslaught, let alone fight back.
Being suddenly thrown into this predicament was within Feng's expectations, though, and he merely unsheathed his two swords.
According to his information, this Shrine had a test for any player that enters it, with the player being ranked and obtaining a reward corresponding to how well they did on the test.
Originally a couple of Demon Players tried on the Shrine and gained rewards that were only comparable to a Dark-Gold Shrine's, resulting in many players calling it a scam as even those players who scored a high rank didn't obtain anything too shocking, their rewards pretty in line with what they'd expect from an Epic Shrine even though the difficulty was grater; all of them deciding it wasn't worth the effort.
But that was when an expert entered the Shrine and surpassed the Shine's requirements by fighting back and slaying several Fire Elementals within the test's duration, resulting in him earning a Source of Fire crystal aside from the rewards players normally received by passing the test.
Elemental Sources were incredibly valuable items, even more than two or three Epic items. Thus, the Demon Player who had obtained this reward earned a large profit. Afterwards, plenty of players flocked towards this Shrine in hopes of obtaining an Elemental Source or two for themselves.
Unfortunately for all those who didn't get there fast enough, the Epic Shrine's hidden visit limit was reached, and no player was able to take on its test ever again. The players thought it was too bad to lose such a valuable chance, but to Feng, this Shrine now presented a whole different opportunity.
After all, that player had killed some Fire Elementals and obtained a Source of Fire Elemental Source, so what would happened if Feng were to kill all of them?
Of course, this would be difficult for even Feng to achieve within a limited duration, as all the Elementals were fairly spread out, while using a singular large-scale attack wouldn't work due to some of these Elementals being immune to some elements, while others were to other elements.
Unless he had an entire arsenal of magical-type skills for every Elemental's weakness, it wouldn't be possible to kill all of them.
Thankfully, though, that arsenal consisting of all types of magic attacks was now getting directly delivered to Feng.
With the Great Magician Title still equipped, Feng coated his swords with the surrounding Mana, before creating a galaxy of stars around him.
Bronze Combat Technique, Sword's Transmigration!
In the next moment, as the Elementals' magical attacks collided with the galaxy of stars, they were all redirected towards other Elementals. A Water Elemental's water-type attack was thrown towards a Fire Elemental, a Fire Elemental's fire-type attack was deflected towards an Ice Elemental, a Light Elemental's light-type attack was flung at a Dark Elemental, and so on...
Silence returned to the Elementals Domain around three seconds after the Elementals started hurling their attacks at Feng, not expecting an immediate counterattack and getting eradicated by their fellow comrades' attacks bounced at them while powered by Feng's immense strength and Mana control.
System: Congratulations! You have created a Bronze Combat Technique. Please name your Combat Technique.
System: Congratulations! You have passed the Elementals Domain test with a SSS-rank score. Rewarding +50% to current experience bar, 30 Free Mastery Points, three Elemental Treasure Boxes, 1 Seven Luminaries Bible and the "Elemental Lord" title.
The rewards he gained were far more abundant than Feng had expected, originally thinking there was only a chance that he might obtain an Elemental Treasure Box, which would drop one to three Elemental Source Stones when opened, if he killed several types of Elementals.
But getting an SSS-rank score proved to be a lot more lucrative than one would think the rewards from an Epic Shrine in the middle section could be, as, setting aside the three Elemental Treasure Boxes from which he could potentially obtain nine Elemental Sources, among which might be the Source of Time crystals that Feng needed to repair Yog-Sothoth, as well as the valuable Mastery Points, the Seven Luminaries Bible was definitely worth the effort.
[Seven Luminaries Bible] (Epic Rank Item)
Contains the records of magic arrays the Gods had left behind. Sacrifice a sufficient amount of Mana to activate the recorded magic arrays.
The Seven Luminaries Bible would, at most, amount to some Epic tool or Magic Array with indefinite uses to other large Guilds. Moreover, even the strongest Magic Array within the bible was Intermediate rank. It could barely suppress a Grand Lord, yet it required a tremendous amount of Mana to activate.
Activating one of the Seven Luminaries Bible's Intermediate Magic Arrays cost 2,000 Magic Crystals. The Basic Magic Arrays cost 500 Magic Crystals to activate.
Honestly, one could easily purchase a stronger array with so many Magic Crystals. The only benefit of the Seven Luminaries Bible was its variety. Players wouldn't need to search high and low for a specific kind of magic array. There was nothing else special about the item.
What everyone didn't know was that the Seven Luminaries Bible didn't consist of a single volume. Rather, there were a total of seven books. Only after gathering all seven volumes could one display the Seven Luminaries Bible's true power.
The various superpowers had clashed often to obtain more of the bible's volumes in the past. They had discovered that one could use Advanced Magic Arrays once they had collected two volumes.
While Intermediate Magic Arrays were rare, players could find them if they put in a little effort.
However, the same could not be said for Advanced Magic Arrays and above. In addition, the materials needed to craft Advanced Magic Array Scrolls were exceedingly expensive. Meanwhile, these arrays could even suppress Mythic monsters, which would, in turn, increase players' chance of obtaining precious items.
One could just imagine how valuable an Advanced Magic Array could be if they could use it indefinitely for the cost of Magic Crystals.
Meanwhile, during his previous life, Feng had collected a total of five Seven Luminaries Bible volumes, allowing for the constant use of Advanced Master Magic Arrays at the price of some Magic Crystals.
Even though there was no lack of Master Magic Arrays in Zero Wing, with it even having many Advanced Master Magic Arrays in store due to a large number of Zero Wing's experts reaching the Advanced Master Magician standard, the Seven Luminaries Bible was still extremely valued due to how cheap it is to use Advanced Master Magic Arrays from it compared to the price of making one by hand.
This volume was one Feng had never obtained, however, most likely because the Epic Shrine with the Elementals Domain was already out of commission by the time he had revisited the World Summit or because it had already been obtained through some other way.
In any case, now that he had this volume and knew how to obtain five others, it will be possible to piece together the Seven Luminaries Bible to the point it could use Grandmaster Magic Arrays all the time at the cost of Magic Crystals; while if he could locate the final volume, Feng would have the full Seven Luminaries Bible.
As for his final reward, the Elemental Lord Title, it was of great quality as well.
[Elemental Lord] (Title)
Mana control improved by 25% and effects of all elemental skills increased by 60%.
While Feng was looking over his rewards, the system reminded him to name the technique he had just invented, which is the same Bronze Combat Technique that he had first created during his previous life, Sword's Transmigration.
Once Feng had entered the technique's name, the system rang with another notification.
System: Congratulations! You are the first player to create a Bronze Combat Technique. Rewarding one Bronze Legacy Orb and the title 'Bronze Legatee.'
As the system notification ended, a green orb appeared before Feng.
[Bronze Legacy Orb] (Epic Rank Item)
Can record up to three created Bronze Combat Techniques. Players may learn the combat techniques in immersive environments. Each attempt will cost 100 Magic Crystals.
Cooldown: 1 hour after each use.
[Bronze Legatee] (Advanced Title)
When using combat techniques, expenditure is reduced by 20%. Enjoy the status of Baron in any city, kingdom, or empire.
Although the Bronze Legatee Title would normally be amazing and extremely valuable, to Feng, who was a worldwide Marquise, it could only be used to reduce the Stamina and Concentration he consumed when using Combat Techniques.
Done with looking through his rewards' information, Feng took out the three Elemental Treasure Boxes he got for clearing the Epic Shrine with an SSS-rank score and activated Divine Providence while sacrificing five hundred Life Force units to increase its effects.
With his Luck nearly reaching the five hundred threshold, Feng cleared his mind and focused his concentration on obtaining Source of Time Elemental Sources in order to get the best possible effect out of Probability Manipulation, before opening the three Elemental Treasure Boxes one after another.
Elemental Mana gushed out of the three boxes as they got opened while a colorful brilliance escaped from their confinements. Moments later, the light died down and the surrounding's Mana calmed.
Feng carefully retrieved all of the Elemental Sources from the three boxes and inspected them, finding that all three had dropped their maximum number of three Elemental Sources, gathering up to a total of nine, thanks to his high Luck. Moreover, there were even multiple Source of Time crystals among them as Feng had hoped there would be.
The first Elemental Treasure Box had gained Feng two Source of Time and one Source of Water Elemental Sources. The second Elemental Treasure Box added one more Source of Time Elemental Source to Feng's stock along with one Source of Fire and one Source of Illusion Elemental Source. The third Elemental Treasure Box's opening had the most valuable drops among the three, with two Source of Time and one Source of Space Elemental Sources.
An extremely profitable outcome from the various possible Elemental Sources that could have appeared in the three Elemental Treasure Boxes, and Feng couldn't help but wish to go another round in the Epic Shrine with the Elementals Domain or have one of his guild members do it so that they could obtain even more Elemental Sources; while Yog-Sothoth would be upgraded to Fragmented Divine Artifact rank in no time at all.
However, when he turned around to check on the Epic Shrine, the system notified him that this Shrine was out of commission and can no longer be entered, causing Feng to click his tongue in annoyance; knowing him wiping out the Elementals in the Epic Shrine resulted in accessing it now not being possible anymore.
Nevertheless, these five Source of Time Elemental Sources were already quite a gain, as they could fill up 25% of Yog-Sothoth's necessary Elemental Sources for repairment, or more like 50%.
Taking out a blood red stone, Feng infused a large number of Magic Crystals into the Philosopher's Stone and selected one of the Source of Time Elemental Sources, before duplicating it using Elemental Cloning.
Normally, Feng wouldn't risk bringing along items which would drop upon his death when going to extremely dangerous areas where he might die for obvious reasons, unwilling to risk precious items when he could leave them in the safety of his Private Warehouse.
Going to a place where there was a Level 200 Tier 5 Fallen Angel which would definitely attempt to kill him naturally counted as a major hazard location, but Feng had chosen to bring along items like the Philosopher's Stone and the Destroyed Yog-Sothoth that would drop from him if he got killed anyway.
Aside from the items being useful to Feng in this excursion, especially the destroyed weapon without which he might not have been able to survive the encounter with Serena, and his confidence that he would manage to survive, Feng was also certain that, even in the case Serena does kill him, he'd be capable of getting the two treasures back from the Fallen Angel later on.
Hence, Feng had readily kept those two important items on him even with the possibility of losing them, which was definitely paying off now as he duplicated the Elemental Sources.
Although cloning Elemental Sources took a lot of Magic Crystals, especially for Elemental Sources with one of the Three Supreme Elements, the expenditure was more than worth it.
After duplicating all nine of the Elemental Sources, Feng stored eight of them, keeping only the ten Source of Time crystals in his hands. He then retrieved the Destroyed Yog-Sothoth from his back and held it next to the ten Elemental Sources.
As Feng chose to fuse Yog-Sothoth and the Source of Time crystals, all ten of the Elemental Sources simultaneously shattered, while a powerful amount of energy gushed into the Destroyed Yog-Sothoth.
Within only a few seconds, the pressure around Yog-Sothoth increased exponentially and caused Feng, who was standing right next to it, to slow down in his entirety; all the while noticeable changes occurred on the broken sword.
Almost as if the time on the sword was getting reversed, some of Yog-Sothoth's cracks started magically mending themselves, making the one-handed sword now appear more like a tattered and overused weapon than its previous broken antique look, while a faint shade of green now colored the originally pale blade.
Several minutes later, the process finally ended and Feng felt himself moving at his normal speed again. He then picked up the broken sword and checked its new statistics.
[Destroyed Yog-Sothoth]
A weapons once wielded by the God of Time, but ended up being destroyed and disappearing during the war between Primordial Gods after falling into a Space-Time Storm. Despite being damaged completely beyond repair with all of its parts unusable, Yog-Sothoth still possesses remnants of the power of time and can harness it to recover. Any player holding Yog-Sothoth will have their Reaction Speed decreased by 40%.
Yog-Sothoth can restore itself to Fragmented Divine Artifact rank by absorbing 10 Source of Time crystals and 10 God Crystals. (Current restoration: 10/30)
Passive Effect 1: Temporal Siphon
All creatures within a 60-yard radius of Yog-Sothoth's holder will have their Agility decreased by 1.5%, Movements Speed decreased by 2.5%, Attack Speed decreased by 2.5% and Reaction Speed decreased by 2.5%, all transferred to the holder. (Up to a maximum of 75 creatures can be affected)
Passive Effect 2: Chrono Ensnare
Any creatures or attacks that enter within a 6-yard radius of Yog-Sothoth's holder will have their speed reduced by 5%, the reduction increasing by 5% for every yard within the holder's proximity.
Active Effect 1: Thought Acceleration[3]
Increases Reaction Speed of the holder by 200% and Attack Sped by 30% while increasing consumption of Concentration by 500% for thirty seconds.
Cooldown: 20 minutes
Active Effect 2: Timekeeper's Weave
Reduces the cooldown of all of the holder's learnt skills or all of an item's skills by 10%.
Cooldown: 5 days
Drops upon death.
Seeing the new skills of his destroyed sword, Feng was pleasantly surprised, not expecting such powerful and useful abilities to become available to him before he had even repaired the Destroyed Yog-Sothoth.
Thought Acceleration would be incredibly useful when dealing with powerful enemies who were much faster than him, while Timekeeper's Weave was a skill of an especially high value to someone like Feng.
To regular players, Timekeeper's Weave would merely serve as a trump card that would allow them to reduce the cooldowns of their skills at a critical time, while guilds would find more use in it due to the skill allowing them to reduce the time they needed to wait on things with longer cooldowns like raid and siege tools; increasing their efficiency by some amount.
However, in Feng's hands, the benefit of having Timekeeper's Weave skyrockets exponentially. With skills that possessed long cooldowns of many days like Icarus's Heart, the Lunar Packheart and the Holy Grail, being able to reduce their cooldowns by a tenth every few days was akin to cutting down on the items' skills' main flaw.
Feng immediately chose to use Timekeeper's Weave on Icarus's Heart, and while most of its skills weren't changed due to already being off cooldown, Kismet Cascade, which originally needed around 91 days to be used again, now only had 81 days left before its long cooldown of one hundred days ends.
As long as Feng continuously used Timekeeper's Weave on the necklace every five days, the previous over three months of waiting to make use of the incredible skill which was capable of bringing Feng unimaginable benefits could be decreased to just one month or so.
Placing the Destroyed Yog-Sothoth on his back once again after he was finished with fulfilling half of the difficult requirement for repairing the destroyed sword, Feng rose from the ground and finally headed for the Epic Shrine that contained the Bible of Darkness.
As the Bible of Darkness is a treasure of the Demon race, it was easy to assume that it would be stored in one of the Demonic Shrines of the darkness element. Hence, so long as one had sufficient time, there would not be much difficulty in looking for the Shrine that contained the Bible of Darkness.
Feng soon arrived in front of an Epic ranked Darkness Shrines that belonged to the Lord of Destruction.
The Bible of Darkness was a descriptive record of all Demons written by the Lord of Destruction. Rumor had it that as long as one managed to control the Bible of Darkness, they would become the Lord of Demons with all Demons obedient to their commands.
Considering that it was such a treasure, it made no sense that the Bible of Darkness would appear in such a low ranking Epic Shrine, and it would even be fitting to put it in one of the Legendary Shrines.
In reality, that was indeed the case according to some information that Feng had learned about during his previous life, as the Bible of Darkness's original placement was in one of the top Legendary Shrines that the World Summit's administrator, the Tier 5 Fallen Angel Serena, guarded, while the one Feng was currently standing before merely housed a replica of the real Bible of Darkness.
It was only due to Feng's Quest that the situation had changed, becoming possible for even the real Bible of Darkness to be obtained from this Epic Shrine which should only have a replica.
Having retracted his wings and reequipped the Blood Emperor's Armor, Feng waited for some time for his weakened state to end and for Heavenly Dragon's Power to come off cooldown, before opening the Lord of Destruction's Shrine without hesitation.
When the black stone doors parted, an ancient aura washed over him. Feng could feel the origin of destruction contained within this aura. The pressure he felt coming from within the Shrine was far more powerful than what he had felt from the Tier 5 Fallen Angel that had attempted to kill him before.
Despite the immense pressure of the Shrine that would make even walking a difficult task for most players, Feng seemed completely unaffected by it as he casually strolled in.
The moment Feng stepped into the Shrine, it was as if he had arrived in another world.
He could hear the chirping of birds and smell the fragrance of flowers. Verdant trees and grass filled his vision. Instead of a Shrine, this place looked more like a garden.
Feng payed no attention to any of the beautiful scenery, however, as his gaze immediately got locked onto the Fallen Angel in the air above him that radiated a powerful killing intent as she looked down on him with a cold expression.
Two pairs of pitch-black wings, a perfect, enchanting body, long and slender legs, as well as that jade-white skin and flawless face. If not for the faint scowl on her face and murderous intent in the Fallen Angel's beautiful eyes, this scene would have been perfect.
Unlike how relaxed and merry Serena had acted while Feng had faced her in the previous timeline when he was attempting to obtain the Bible of Darkness, her current attitude was entirely different.
Her laid-back disposition was nowhere to be seen, while there was no glee on her face, a hint of gravity weighing down on the Fallen Angel's expression instead.
"Human, you sure took your time took your time getting here after previously saying such bold words." The Tier 5 Fallen Angel pinned Feng in place with her aquamarine eyes as she looked down at him, the wish of turning the human before her into dust being conveyed through her gaze.
Even Feng couldn't help but be slightly on guard in front of the pissed Serena. If he had not known that only rewards—and no punishments—awaited him inside these Shrines, he would have long since fled this Shrine.
"My name is Serena. Come over. Since you've entered the World Summit normally this time and are already here, I won't kill you," Serena tried to speak casually as she beckoned Feng with her hand. "Since you've managed to make it to this place, it shows that you indeed possess some ability. I can give you two options."
"What are the options?" Feng asked curiously, knowing there was no way Serena had given up on exacting a punishment on him for previously using the Moloch's Ring to arrive at the World Summit, but him getting away and passing the test to enter normally now made it impossible for her to just kill him.
Yet, as she had to fulfil her duty in the World Summit lest she pays the price for allowing Feng to go unpunished, the Fallen Angel had to have come up with a different method to do the job without breaking any more of the World Summit's rules.
"Though I say options, in reality, they are just two reward methods." Serena nodded lightly. "Under normal circumstances, the first option would be obtaining the Bible of Darkness that is stored in this place directly. However, due to your former illegal entry of the World Summit, you'll have to pass a small test first in order to obtain the Bible of Darkness. The second option is going through a slightly more difficult test. Through the second option, you will not only obtain the Bible of Darkness but also have a chance to win these items."
Serena waved her hand lightly.
Suddenly, three Rainbow Treasure Chests appeared in midair.
The first Rainbow Treasure Chest contained a large number of Soul Crystals. A simple glance told Feng that there were over a hundred crystals at the very minimum.
In the Dark Den, the Soul Crystal was the foundation of all development. A sudden infusion of more than a hundred Soul Crystals would definitely increase a Shelter's strength significantly.
The second Rainbow Treasure Chest contained a black stone tablet that looked similar to the Chapter of Darkness. However, the name displayed was Chapter of Shelter. It could be used to immediately promote a Shelter by a single rank, up to a maximum of Large Shelter.
Promoting the Shelters found inside the Dark Den was extremely difficult. Besides the astronomical number of Soul Crystals required, players also needed to complete a series of quests in order to promote a Shelter. The manpower and resources necessary to do so were extremely daunting. Even the Shelter at District One had yet to be promoted to a Large Shelter until now. One could just imagine how difficult a feat it was. Only a Shelter supported by a large Guild was capable of becoming a Large Shelter after amassing all the resources collected by the multiple Shelters controlled by said Guild.
Once he obtained the Chapter of Shelter, he could immediately upgrade a Medium Shelter to a Large Shelter. This would be of immense help for District One's Shelter, which was under Zero Wing's control.
The third Rainbow Treasure Chest which Serena opened last contained an item far more valuable than the the previous two's contents, being a Magic Device Forging Design.
A product of God's Domain's magical civilization when it was at its peak, the Magic Device represented the pinnacle of alchemy, forging, and engineering combined—as well as the end of the era of the gods. Even the lowest ranked Bronze Magic Device boosted a player's strength to a whole new level, not to mention a Magic Device Forging Design.
Even the lowest ranked Bronze Magic Device Forging Design could provoke a war between Guilds.
In Feng's first life, when a Mysterious-Iron Magic Device Forging Design had appeared, over a dozen countries and more than a hundred Guilds had fought over it. Multiple Super Guilds had also participated. The death toll for that war was innumerable. A rough estimation had pegged it at five million. In the end, a Super Guild had emerged victorious.
Magic Devices were similar to the Mana Armor Kits. In the Magic Device's case, however, it did not increase any Basic Attributes. Instead, it was mounted on a weapon to increase the weapon's strength. Every weapon could only mount one Magic Device.
After God's Domain underwent its third evolution, whether it was a battle against players or against monsters, an injury would reduce a player's combat power. And while players could rely on heals to recover from their injuries, the deterioration of their weapons was inevitable. It was especially true when players fought against high-ranking monsters. Unless one's weapon was of high quality, players would have great difficulty injuring a Lord and reducing its combat power since Lords had skin that was as hard as steel.
Meanwhile, a Magic Device could be used to strengthen a weapon. Not only could it make a weapon sharper, but it could also bestow special effects such as Reduced Weight, Increased Weight, Hardness, Mirage, Paralysis, and other effects that could improve a player's combat power significantly.
Most importantly, Magic Devices were not Consumable items. Like inlaid Gemstones, they could be taken off the weapons they were mounted on. Whether it was a Level 1 Common Weapon or a Level 200 Epic Weapon, players could freely transfer their Magic Devices between them.
This was the reason why players were so attracted to Magic Devices.
However, Magic Devices were extremely difficult to produce; hence, production volumes were very low. Even after reaching Level 100, most players still did not have their own Magic Devices.
Even for Feng, a high-ranking enough Magic Device could be quite valuable, so the Design was definitely something he wished to obtain. Nevertheless, there was a problem with the current situation, so Feng didn't immediately agree to the second option.
Serena couldn't help but grow slightly anxious after seeing Feng's lack of reaction, needing him to pick the second option quite badly, but she still remained composed, asking "Say it, then. Which reward do you choose?"
At these words, Feng fell silent.
He couldn't risk choosing the first option as that would most likely only get him a replica of the Bible of Darkness, but considering the change to the options proposed by Serena, an unknown and dangerous factor was added to the mix, which Feng wanted to first figure out the details of before agreeing to anything.
"I thought you said that, since I entered the World Summit normally this time around, there were no problems. In that case, why do I still have to suffer through extra challenges?" Feng asked, deciding that requesting answers straightforwardly would be the most effective in this unprecedented situation.
A frown appeared on Serena's breathtaking face upon being questioned by Feng, not believing that a mere Tier 1 ant would dare to bring up other matters in front of a Tier 5 Fallen Angel like herself. Then again, this human had seemed overly brazen from the moment they had met.
Narrowing her eyes slightly, Serena gave an explanation "While it is true that you're currently in the World Summit after having used the proper entrance process, it's still a fact that you had previously arrived here through an illegitimate method without receiving a punishment. Thus, the need for a different form of repercussion had to be implemented."
"Isn't that your fault, though?" Feng chuckled, feeling that he somewhat understood the plan Serena had come up with "You previously didn't manage to kill me when I teleported in here with the Moloch's Ring, and even chased me outside after I ran away, so now the rules are apparently getting changed to make up for you not killing me?
"Not to mention, I wasn't notified of any increased difficulty when visiting two other Epic Shrines, and only here is the case different. Considering that you appear to be the guardian of the Bile of Darkness, I suppose fighting you is necessary to pass the test in order to obtain it. Don't tell me you're planning on taking advantage of this situation to try and kill me like you did before?" A faint smile appeared on Feng's face as he looked at the hovering Fallen Angel "That's why you suddenly changed the rules, right?"
Silence filled the Epic Shrine when Feng was done talking, while Serena's slightly widened eyes were enough to tell Feng that his assumption was correct.
At this point, the Fallen Angel was completely stunned, never having expected that her ploy would be so easily seen through and exposed by the human adventurer.
As Feng had guessed, she had aimed at tempting Feng into accepting the second option before mercilessly killing him with overwhelming strength, but now that her intentions had been revealed, Serena would no longer be able to trick Feng into agreeing with the test for the second option.
This development caused the Tier 5 Fallen Angel to begin panicking as she hurriedly, yet calmly, attempted to make the situation seem like it wasn't a plot for Feng to get killed.
"Although there's some truth to your words, you would have to face me in battle regardless if you wish to obtain the Bible of Darkness, while the second option's test is fairly similar in nature to the first one's, except a bit more difficult. Meanwhile, no one is forcing you to pick the second option. It is completely up to you what reward method you pick."
"And what are the tests for each option?" Feng pried further, not believing Serena's nonspecific claim for a second.
The Fallen Angel's slender eyebrows twitched from Feng's incessant questioning, but she had no choice but to oblige and inform him of the tests' details.
She technically had no obligation to tell the test takers anything about the options until they've already made a choice, but as she had changed the Shrine's requirements for obtaining the Bible of Darkness on her own, if Feng insisted on knowing what the additional challenge was about, Serena would have to tell him.
Moreover, if he had already figured out what her intentions were but didn't know what kind of danger he was getting himself into, the human might not even consider the second option and decide to just fight for the Bible of Darkness.
"Well, the rules are very simple. If you were to pick the first option, you will not die while inside this area, and both our strengths will also be suppressed to Tier 1. While for the second option, only my level will be brought down to yours. It will be your win as long as you are able to defeat me in the remaining time you possess." Slightly awkward, the Tier 5 Fallen Angel explained both options which Feng could pick.
'A bit more difficult my ass!' Feng inwardly rolled his eyes at Serena. If he picked the second option, then he'd have to fight the Fallen Angel while she was still at Tier 5.
Four tiers weren't at all a small increase.
The difference between a Tier 1 Fallen Angel and a Tier 5 Fallen Angel was like heaven and earth.
Even if Feng were to go all out, he'd only be capable of enduring the strength of a Tier 5 Fallen Angel of the same level for a short while. As for actually defeating a Tier 5 Serena? That was completely impossible to accomplish using regular means.
...However, it could still be manageable to complete the second option's requirements if Feng used a few of the tricks up his sleeve.
Serena mistook Feng's silence for hesitation, and her building up anxiety only increased.
Although she had said that it was fully up to Feng what he picks, pretending like it didn't matter, she desperately needed him to choose the second option, as, going by what she had seen in their brief exchange, the Fallen Angel wasn't confident of defeating this weird human while only at Tier 1.
If he were to go with the first option, then she'd no longer have a chance to exact the punishment on him, and Serena would truly be screwed.
"I never thought that Miss Serena, a mighty Fallen Angel, would have such a low opinion of herself." Feng's words pulled Serena out of her thoughts, but only aspired into confusion by his sudden comment.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Well, by my understanding, the rewards you have offered for completing the second option's test were what I'd normally get for defeating you as a Tier 1 Fallen Angel. Yet, despite the requirement increasing exponentially, all of the rewards remain the same. I just never expected that Miss Serena would think her strength as a Tier 5 Fallen Angel getting surpassed only amounts to such measly rewards." Since he had to fight the Tier 5 Serena in order to obtain the original Bible of Darkness, Feng felt that he might as well squeeze out as many benefits as possible.
After all, even if the rewards offered for completing the second option's original test were very valuable and befitting of defeating a Tier 1 Fallen Angel, the situation now was completely different.
God's Domain worked on the rule of high-risk high-reward.
There was no way some Soul Crystals, a Chapter of Shelter and a Magic Device Forging Device were in any way a good enough reward for defeating a Tier 5 Fallen Angel as a Tier 1 human. So, Feng intended to have Serena compensate him with something at least close to what his achievement would entail.
"Although these rewards are indeed insufficient for the test's difficulty, I'm afraid there's nothing else valuable in this Shrine that I could offer you as an added bonus." Serena immediately understood what Feng was trying to say, but she was helpless about this as well.
This Epic Shrine was designed so that as long as one entered, they could leave with the Bible of Darkness's replica, while the three other rewards were something meant for the possible passing of the second option's test for the person who triggered the Darkness Descends Quest.
The Shrine had literally nothing else in it, let alone something that would equal as compensation for defeating a Tier 5 Fallen Angel. Even if such a scenario was impossible to happen, there still needed to be a suitable reward for the unlikely success of the test taker.
Otherwise, from Feng's perspective, those three items wouldn't be worth dying for when he could obtain the Bible of Darkness all the same by picking the first option.
Of course, being a Tier 5 Fallen Angel, Serena had plenty of incredible treasures that she could make use of pretty much as she pleases. However, all those things technically belonged to the World Summit, and while it was possible for Serena to give them away under some special circumstances, it was impossible for her to offer any to Feng in this situation while she was trying to correct her own mistake.
Resulting in the immensely powerful Tier 5 Fallen Angel having nothing of her own that she could place as a reward for completing the second option's test.
Hearing Serena's words, a possible line that he could use appeared in Feng's head, and before he could restrain the impulse, his mouth was already at work.
"I'd have to disagree with that statement, Miss Serena. After all, I'm currently looking at something far more valuable than any item in the world." A suggestive smile spread across Feng's lips as he gave Serena a cheeky wink.
"Huh?" It took a moment for Feng's words to sink in, and the Fallen Angel couldn't help being both enraged and amused at the same time.
She could naturally tell that the human's words, despite their suggestive tone, were merely a jest, and that he was simply looking to get something from her or earn a favor from a being such as herself.
Nevertheless, to simply imply something of that nature in this situation made Serena wonder just how bold this human truly was.
It did give her an idea, though, and a way to make this work.
Giggling as she flapped her wings and descended, Serena replied with an amused look on her face "You truly know how to surprise someone, human. In spite of such a massive gap in strength existing between us, you actually dare to have designs on the beauty before you."
Even with her attempt to sound coquettish, the Fallen Angel's concealed intentions and malice were fairly obvious to a man like Feng. However, it was just the structure of Serena's reply that caused Feng's mind to stagnate.
'Wait, she's fair game?' This was an incredible revelation to Feng.
Indeed, as she had guessed, Feng had no actual thoughts of rizzing up the Fallen Angel, the possibility never even occurring in his mind, and he had merely wished to persuade Serena into offering a certain item to him as a part of the reward for defeating the Tier 5 Fallen Angel.
With this item, Feng's business in the World Summit would become much easier.
Now, however, there seemed to be an option to achieve something else.
According to his knowledge and experience, Feng knew that when faced with suggestive comments about anything sexual, the responses from NPCs were either getting offended and pissed, cold indifference, rejection, completely ignoring the matter, or sometimes straight up violence.
But there was no obvious hint of any of that in Serena's reply, which could only mean one thing.
A predatory look flashed in Feng's eyes as he internally grinned, but his entire demeanor switched a moment later, a gentlemanly smile appearing on his face.
"Me? I'm simply looking out to not make a huge loss in this unfair test set by Miss Serena. Otherwise, it would be far more worthwhile to simply choose the first reward method and obtain only the Bible of Darkness." The response Feng gave was a simple one saying that he wouldn't agree to pick the death trap set up by Serena if she wasn't willing to fork out a sufficient price.
This placed a sense of relief in the Fallen Angel, as although it was disgraceful to offer herself as the bargaining chip, this was the only viable choice she had considering the circumstances. She also couldn't allow the human to use her unwillingness to cooperate as an excuse for not picking the second option.
"Very well, then. If you choose to undertake the second option's test and manage to defeat me, you can do with me as you so please." A seductive smile appeared on the Fallen Angel's blood-red lips as she confidently offered herself as a reward to Feng.
Of course, Serena never entertained the thought of her possibly losing to a mere Tier 1 human as a Tier 5 Fallen Angel, so she saw no problem with this arrangement that allowed her to place a reward suitable enough for the successful passing of the test.
Even though she had seen that Feng was quite capable, the winged woman saw no possibility of her losing even with their levels equalized. After all, Feng had only managed to survive her attack the first time due to it being a simple piercing motion, while she had faced multiple restrictions on the altar of the World Summit upon leaving and had been unable to use her full power.
There was nothing holding her back this time, though, and Serena wasn't planning on going easy on Feng this time around.
'Hook, line, and sinker.' Feng almost couldn't stop himself from grinning upon hearing the Tier 5 Fallen Angel agree to such an arrangement, already mapping out his following moves and the path to complete victory.
"Have you come to a decision?" Serena asked, smiling as she distanced herself a bit from Feng. "Time waits for no one. You only have three minutes to decide. If you do not give me an answer, I will take it as you picking the first option, and you may leave once you obtain the Bible of Darkness."
"Naturally, I choose the second option."
An opportunity like this might be something Feng never comes across again, so he naturally had to take it.
"Good. I knew you were a smart man. Let's begin, then." Serena smiled in satisfaction.
She then waved her hand. The entire garden promptly vanished, and replacing it was a volcanic hell. Molten magma surrounded a 40-yard area of solid ground. The ambient temperature was scorching hot; any ordinary player would most likely broil to death slowly. Only someone like Feng, who possessed high Fire Resistance, could stay in this place for long periods of time. Meanwhile, the gravity here had also increased to 3 g, which would greatly affect a player's mobility.
At the same time, Serena's level started rapidly decreasing to match Feng's. However, the man wasn't planning on facing a Level 99 Tier 5 Fallen Angel, so he took out multiple Levellume Capsules and started pouring his EXP into them, dropping all the way down to Level 20.
Although he had plenty of amazing equipment that greatly increased his attributes with levels, the increases a Fallen Angel would get with each level was much higher, so Feng had chosen Level 20 as the optimal level to even things out as much as possible.
Not paying any mind or caring about Feng's actions, seeing no difference between her being at Level 99 or Level 20, Serena simply focused as she waited for the fight to be recognized by the Shrine and officially start.
The moment it did, and before Feng could move, the Fallen Angel immediately spread out her Mana Domain, greatly suppressing Feng, while chanting an incantation.
A second later, she finished preparing her attack, a giant magic circle releasing a powerful pressure appearing behind her as she pointed her flawless hand towards Feng.
'She can't be for real.' Feng stared with a blank expression as he recognized the spell Serena was about to hurl at him.
Tier 5 Curse, Seven Hell Redemption!
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1. Just realized that I'd normally refer to both Thoughtful Rain and Phoenix Rain as just Rain, but since that could get confusing, while it didn't sound quite right if I called them just Thoughtful or Phoenix, from now on when I write just Rain outside of dialog I'll be referring to Phoenix Rain while Thoughtful Rain will be referred to as Ruoxi unless characters are talking to each other, in which case I'll either use their full God's Domain IDs or just call them both Rain if I feel like the context makes it clear enough who is being talked about.
2. I think there was mention of some character from the Holy Race having mastered the Law of Time in the SS, or something like that as far as I've read and still remember, but don't consider that as cannon for my fanfic.
In fact, although I don't remember if I've ever mentioned this, don't consider anything from the SS chapters as necessarily cannon for my work, especially nothing after SF went to that city in the Eternal Realm where he met Aqua again, Seven Luminaries City or something like that iirc, and treat everything after that point as if it didn't exist when reading my fanfic.
3. Idea for skill came from the anime "That time I got reincarnated as a slime".
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