Chapter 248. Ain (3)

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Boooom!

Kuudududuk!

Loud noises continued to fill up the area one after the other.

Along with the screams of the players.

“Uaaak! This bastard! A scam?! You’re going on the Redlist!”

“That retard! They’re already on the Blacklist… Uaak!”

Booom!

In a fight where they would still lose if they were on equal grounds, they were outnumbered and were getting attacked by surprise.

And the levels of those adventurers were rising very fast as well.

Unlike Hansoo, they weren’t that low-leveled but the players they had killed so far was in tens of thousands.

Crunch!

Ibanoph sent a head flying at a speed and with a strength that wasn’t comparable to the one he had in the past with a strange expression.

The him of now at level 240 was a completely different person from when he was at level 215 in the past.

But it was hard to actually sense how powerful he had become.

Due to another person going crazy right next to him.

Boooom!

Crunch!

“Aaaahh! What the hell is this!”

“Bug? This is a bug?!”

Ibanoph made a terrified expression as he looked at Hansoo who was sweeping off heads left and right.

‘… He’s a real monster now, huh.’

The skill which turned him into a dragonoid before didn’t seemed to be something he could maintain for long as it had long worn out during the fight.

But he was even stronger now than when he had been in his dragonoid form before.

Most people couldn’t block the flail anymore and they became skewered two to three at a time from his spear.

He alone killed dozens of times more than them combined.

Of course he also devoured a tremendous amount of experience as well.

Hansoo, who had almost leveled to 250 all the way from 200, was now truly a monster compared to what he had been before.

Everytime Hansoo swept by them, the players disappeared into golden light.

Dropping an artifact every time.

Clank.

Clang.

‘Look at the sheer amount that’s dropping…’

Ibanoph mumbled as he looked at the large amount of artifacts that were scattered throughout the battlefield.

Usually, the chances of an artifact being dropped from getting PKed was not very high.

Of course the higher grade artifacts had a lower chance while the lower level grade ones had higher chances to drop.

It was similar to how the monsters in games rarely dropped items.

This is why the players didn’t like to PK and instead swarmed towards bug players in a mad manner.

Unlike the players who only had a bit of chance to drop one of the low grade items they had, the bug players left behind everything.

But of course that was only true when considering small numbers.

He had killed tens of thousands.

Of course the artifacts that had dropped had accumulated to a frightening amount.

Then.

Boooom!

The final player left behind had his head blown apart and disappeared into golden light.

The place with crosses which had been filled with noise was swept clean.

And with that silence the adventurers started to move out.

To pick up the dropped artifacts.

‘Why is he asking us to gather these…’

Ibanoph picked up a gauntlet on the ground, looked at it a bit and then threw it into the storage on his back.

The artifacts he himself had were of much better quality.

They say artifacts were important but with the tremendous amount of artifacts on the ground, it was more than enough to fully equip all the adventurers here.

Since they couldn’t equip like five gauntlets or swing nine swords and axes, the remaining ones were all surplus.

In a place like Exodus where there wasn’t an inventory system, artifacts like these weren’t precious treasures but rather baggage.

Especially in a situation like this where they had to run away.

‘Run… Running away, huh.’

Ibanoph felt down as he thought about the reality.

Hansoo and them had become enormously powerful.

But that was it.

The reality did not change.

Since the maze would disappear soon, they had no more places to hide or take shelter in.

The only thing that was left to do was a head-on collision.

And their opponents were millions of immortal players and the extremely powerful residents of the kingdoms and empires.

‘… They’re really outside the standards, huh.’

Ibanoph gulped as he thought of the 15 great clans of the players, Arthus Krancheska and the Great General Cykrus.

He then pondered for a bit and then spoke to Hansoo.

In order to confirm what he had heard before.

“… Weren’t we going to contact the Ains?”

He thought the reason why they had broke the seal was to contact the Ains.

With their strength, it seems more than possible to fight against the Kingdoms, Empires and even the players.

But Hansoo shook his head.

“We can’t yet.”.

An alliance with the Ains was indeed his final goal and releasing the seal as quick as possible for them to have freedom was correct as well.

Since the seal had been broken, everyone’s eyes will be on the Ains now.

But an alliance was something that would happen when both parties were at similar strengths.

‘Though they haven’t fully recovered from the seal breaking yet… They are still much more powerful than us.’

An alliance was not something done in kindness but something very pragmatic.

Something like an alliance would only be maintained when both parties needed each other and were a bit afraid of each other.

But what about now?

The Ains had the power to tie down the kingdoms and empires and even make them tremble in fear.

An enormous amount of might.

And another thing.

They had a prophet.

They could see into the future to a degree.

Hansoo’s superior position came from his knowledge of the future and him being able to utilize this to a degree.

But here it was likely that these things won’t work of these guys.

Since they might know part of the things he knew.

And there was a chance that they knew something that he didn’t.

He had no clue as to how the Ains, who had both a large amount of strength and future knowledge, would act in the future, so he couldn’t just go charging down rashly.

It would be like putting one’s head into a tiger’s den.

He needed the Ain’s alliance for his plan in the future but there was no need to charge in while they were weak and give the other side a change to devour them.

Ibanoph groaned and backed away from Hansoo’s words.

Since his words were all correct.

He didn’t know much about the Ains but if they were humans like them, they had a similar goal.

Not living in harmony but rather the survival of their race.

Though it was a indeed a negative train of thought, even they would destroy the other side if that side was relatively weaker and they needed to do it.

Their opponents weren’t nice enough for them to play around amiably.

No, their opponents were powerful.

As Ibanoph backed away, Hansoo checked his level and then odded.

His current level was 248.

Just short of reaching the max level.

‘I guess I could go up now. The rest… I can fill it up on the way up.’

Hansoo thought about the situation as he looked around.

Everyone else had hit max level already and had sufficiently armed themselves.

Since they took all the artifacts on the ground as well, there was no reason to waste any more time in this place.

“Let’s go up then.”

The people chattered but still nodded and prepared to set off.

Einchel stared at Kamiyou on the ground who had received first aid but had still yet to wake up.

‘Leader. Let’s live for a bit longer. You said there’s a lot more to do.’

Einchel moved her bag to her hand, lifted Kamiyou on her back, tightly grasped her weapon and followed after Hansoo.

***

Hooong! Oooong! Booooom!

A red meteor flew across the maze and blew apart the head of a player.

“Waaaak!”

<Kanukanu>, one of the hunting group of the Hydros clan, barely dodged the attack and shouted out in rage.

Both lower and upper floors were in a rage.

“Fucking hell! What the hell’s going on!”

It was a normal day like the usual.

He was hunting Ains in the territory designated as his clan’s and was extracting Protection Elixirs from them.

Though the average level of the Ains was at 245, there was a huge difference in numbers to begin with.

These guys roamed around alone or in small numbers of two or three, these guys couldn’t handle groups of 50 people at level 230-240.

And even more so when the hunting group belonged to the Hydros clan, one of the 15 great clans.

‘I heard that they were extremely strong before they got sealed but that’s just the legend.’

They were extremely powerful back in those days, but these kinds of sayings no longer made any sense.

The important thing was that they were now killable and were worth killing.

That was it.

This was why they had continued to hunt the Ains despite the upper floors having gone into havoc.

They wouldn’t be disturbed from some things from the 4th floor going crazy and he would be punished by his senior if he didn’t fill up today’s quota.

Well, that would be the best case scenario.

Ignoring the chaos above was a huge mistake.

‘The fuck… Just the release of a seal made them this strong?’

Their levels, which were around 245 to 250, exploded upwards.

The members of the hunting group got retaliated against and got massacred in an instant.

By estimating from the rate which the hunting group was getting massacred at, their levels were at least at 290.

At least this much, it was clear that numbers wouldn’t work against them anymore.

‘Fuck. I need to live at least, the Immortality Stone is too expensive for me to waste it here.’

Maybe if he was at the level of the Scarlet Demons of the Anteater clans, another one of the 15 Great Clans, the story would’ve been different. But he, who wasn’t even in the elite group of his own clan, was not at a level where he could just waste the Immortality Stone randomly like this.

So he ran away.

Even the Ains would feel pressured from the the tens of thousands of people in the entire maze.

And he had succeeded at running away.

He thought that he would be fine back then.

That when he got to the 4th floor, there wouldn’t be any more dangers.

But what was this.

The upper levels had long become hell.

‘Fuck… This is what the bug players have done?’

Weren’t the bug players just some prey?

For the entire player population which filled up this place to have been destroyed by the bug players.

KanuKanu, clenched his teeth and tried to resist the flail but there wasn’t really a need to.

Since he would get logged out before that.

Kwaaaaaaa!

From the darkness.

An arm extended out from the darkness in front of him and smashed his heart.

Though he had been attacked in surprise, he wasn’t that shocked.

He didn’t know why he was here but he knew who it was.

“What the. When did he get here…”

As KanuKanu disappeared.

Hoooooong!

The flail that had been chasing him couldn’t stop its momentum, flew through the gold powder and into the mysterious person.

All this happened in an instant.

But the mysterious figure wasn’t surprised as he quietly raised his hand and deflected away the flail.

As if he was swatting away a fly.

Tooooong!

A loud sound rang out through the maze.

The flail that had been deflected stopped for a moment and then flew back the way it came from.

Towards the owner, Hansoo.

Though he hadn’t thrown it at full force, it was still the God’s Flail.

Hansoo frowned as he looked at the person who simply deflected it away.

There was a dark aura floating around that person’s body.

A translucent body that looked like shadows.

There were no other existence that had a look like this.

The Ains.

The sealed existences of the maze below.

‘They already came up here?’

Because the seal had broken, them coming up to the 4th floor from the 5th floor was obvious but this was too fast.

And from the expression of the mysterious person which told him that they were waiting, it wasn’t a coincidence that they met.

How did they know that he would come this way?

Hansoo thought of something after considering it.

‘Prophecy.’

The power to see the future.

‘If something happens then I’ll use the power.’

Hansoo clenched the flail in his hand as he looked at the Ain who was looking at him.