“Thunder Axe will take revenge for me. You will be put on a stake and burned to death, lowly traitor!”

Arthas glared at me angrily with bloodshot eyes, but he didn’t even have the courage to strike back at me with the broadsword in his hands. The warhorse beneath his legs was foaming from his weight and the strain of having to run away from its master’s enemies. Still trying to escape, the noble shouted on top of his lungs, “Just you wait, Karinshan, you immature and inexperienced child! The hammer of justice will smite you, and the council will pluck your crown from your head! History will prove the absurdity of dictatorship once more!”

……

Crack crack!

I ignored his drivel and continued hacking away at his body mercilessly. Arthas might have 200k HP, but there was no way he was surviving this. His HP had dropped to less than 25% in less than five minutes, and I was certain that this devilish lord would die by my hands if I had another minute or two!

It was at this moment I heard the rumbling of horse hooves from the distance. Thunder Axe had finally returned! Not only that, he was somehow running faster than all of the mounted knights behind him despite his short height!

Looks like I need to speed up even more!

But Thunder Axe reached me in just the blink of an eye. The shorty leaped into the air and landed right in front of me, hitting me on the shoulder three times in a row! A burning sensation seared my senses as sparks flew everywhere. Thunder Axe was no slouch, it seemed!

1585!

1492!

1594!

But a smile broke across my face when I saw the actual amount of damage he did to me. Ever since I gained the Obsidian Dragonscale Armor, my Defense became so much stronger that not even a Level 110 Dark Gold Rank boss like Thunder Axe could endanger me. The triple-strike skill was clearly meant to kill me, but all it managed to do was delete around 4600 HP from my health bar. Considering that I had over 7000 HP, the dwarf was still a long way from killing me!

Swhoosh!

Bloody energy gathered around my left hand before spreading throughout my whole body. Tenacity of the Dead!

+1835!

Then I chugged an enhanced Rank 8 Health Potion. Just like that, I was back to full health!

Thunder Axe’s eyes turned as wide as saucers for a moment. He probably wasn’t expecting an adventurer to recover this well in a 1v1 situation against him.

However, he also noticed the bloody energy that marked me as an Asura and an undead. Fury immediately burned in the hill dwarf’s eyes. “You’re a damned undead!? Come at me then. Don’t even think about killing our lord! I will drag you down to hell if it’s the last thing I do!”

But I denied his wishes and backed away from him consciously. After moving sneakily to Lord Arthas’s back, I raised my sword and fired a Thousand Mirage Slash!

Boom!

Sword auras rained on top of the group of red-named NPCs. Not only was Arthas hit, Thunder Axe and an unfortunate group of elite knights were hit as well. The powerful attack had deleted almost a third of their health pool instantly. Yeah, three strikes should be enough for me to disregard the Level 105 elite mobs’ harassment completely.

I never moved my sight away from Arthas. No matter how many times Thunder Axe attacked me, I simply ignored him and attacked Arthas with the Sky Obsidian Greedy Wolf. By controlling two characters at once, I was able to maintain my DPS and slow down Arthas’s running speed tremendously through positioning. Of course, a human being couldn’t actually split their mind in half. What people called “dual multitasking” was really just switching between my control interface and the Sky Obsidian Greedy Wolf’s control interface really, really quickly; about two or three times per second in fact. Moreover, this was no ordinary multitasking. I had to minimize the damage Thunder Axe could do to me, reposition myself constantly so that the knights would always get in the way of Thunder Axe, and use the Greedy Wolf to block Arthas from escaping!

The good news was that my mind felt as clear as the still water of an ancient well. I knew exactly where the NPCs were and how they were going to move, and I reacted perfectly as if we were all enacting a drama on a script. I was in a state of mind that only the absolute best players could reach, and I was glad that the skill had finally returned to me. It really had been a long time since I felt like this. I’m going to resurrect my peak form completely through this battle!

Chiang chiang chiang!

My sword tore apart the metal armor covering Arthas’s back. At the same time, I felt a chill when Thunder Axe struck me for almost 2000 damage. It didn’t matter though. Thunder Axe’s attacks were ultimately not fatal, and I could always maintain my health above 25% using Tenacity of the Dead, potions, and Regeneration of the Undead.

Arthas abruptly charged away from the crowd and raised his broadsword into the air. He shouted at the elite knights behind him, “Brave knights, now is the time to swear upon your noble honor and fulfill your promise! For the glory of the royals, protect me with your life and stop this damned undead in his tracks!”

An involuntary smile crossed my lips. My response to that was to lock onto Arthas and activate Thunderous Charge!

Whoosh!

I cut through the crowd and stunned Arthas for five seconds straight. Then, I swung my sword wildly while stomping the ground using War Crush. The skill hit him three times in a row and damaged him like crazy!

My excitement grew as Arthas’s HP dropped further and further—

19%!

14%!

9%!

5%!

1%!

Nice. Now is the time to deliver this sinful noble lord to his grave with the most appropriate skill I have, Pardon!

The Purgatory Sword glowed brightly as I cut Arthas twice with my signature combo, Pardon + Desperate Gambit. The sword pierced through Arthas’s chest armor and pierced his black heart!

MISS!

7804!

Arthas gripped the sword sticking out of his chest and glared at me with anger and frustration. In the end, he collapsed to his knees and gazed toward the direction of Floating Ice City in despair. He murmured, “The traitors have succeeded, the light has been devoured by darkness. Goodbye, my Floating Ice City. Goodbye, my imperial concubines and beautiful succubi. Amanda, Katie, Daisy, Emma… I, Arthas, will sing for all of you a hymn from heaven. I will never forget your warm lips and soft tongues…”

Goddamned motherfucking sonuvabitch! Even during his last moments, he couldn’t let go of his debauchery!

Speechless, I swung the Purgatory Sword and cut off Arthas’s neck. The next moment, his head appeared in my hand as a quest item, and I threw it into my bag without any hesitation. I wanted to check what equipment he had dropped, but there was still a boss and a horde of mobs breathing down my back, so I decided it could wait and threw everything into my bag first.

There was one item that caught my attention though. It was a shiny golden token with the words “appointment” on it. It looks pretty unique. I wonder what it is?

I took it out and gave it a closer look. What I saw immediately froze me like a statue—

Appointment Token: A lord token of the Silver Moon Alliance. Only players with the Appointment Token are granted a leasehold and the right to rent a shop no wider than 100 square meters in the major cities of the Silver Moon Alliance.

……

Fuck! It was only now I realized that leveling to 100 wasn’t the only requirement to rent a shop in a major city! If this Appointment Token hadn’t dropped, I would never have realized this until I visited the old king again and got laughed in the face! He almost got me, that bastard!

It wasn’t like I could search the internet for information either since Eternal Moon Corporation hadn’t given out any exact details, all in the name of encouraging exploration. Tsk tsk, I almost couldn’t believe how many steps there were to open one single shop!

At any rate, this was good luck for sure. If I had chosen not to accept this quest, I would never have had the chance to kill a noble lord like Arthas and loot an Appointment Token from his body. My plan to start a shop at Sky City would’ve been a complete failure!

Having checked the Appointment Token, I turned around just in time to see Thunder Axe charging me!

I smiled. “It’s your turn now!”

At my current strength, soloing a Level 110 Dark Gold Rank boss wasn’t a problem at all. As for the dozens of Level 105 elite knights helping Thunder Axe, I didn’t even bother to look at them!

Crack!

I hit Thunder Axe in the head and was lucky enough to proc a critical hit, dealing 9674 damage. That wasn’t all. The elite knights close to the boss also suffered splash damage and lost 1935 HP. The Purgatory Sword’s 20% splash damage was just way too good. All I needed to do was focus on Thunder Axe, and it was only a matter of time before the rest of the mobs were killed by the splash damage!

The War Holy Temple buffed my attack power by 10%, and Bloodlust my attack speed by 35%, pushing my power to a whole new Level of height. Moreover, I was assisted by the Epic-rank boss Sky Obsidian Greedy Wolf, which made fighting a Level 110 Dark Gold Rank boss even easier than before! Previously, I couldn’t solo a Level 100 Dark Gold Rank boss without considerable effort, but now I was positively toying with Thunder Axe!

It wasn’t difficult to dodge Thunder Axe’s attacks because his movement speed and attack speed were only so-so at best. At least 50% of his attacks missed me thanks to good maneuvering. Naturally, it made my job even easier, and soon after, Thunder Axe was the only NPC still standing on the battlefield.

Thunder Axe attacked me like a madman, so I used the Sky Obsidian Greedy Wolf as cover and kept wandering around the edges. I still couldn’t fight the boss directly because my HP regeneration speed wasn’t fast enough. Thunder Axe attacked one per 2 or 3 seconds, and that was almost 30 attacks in a minute. Even if every attack only hit me for 500 damage, that was still almost 15000 damage if I allowed every attack to land on me. I would still survive, but the fight would be a lot more dangerous than it should be, and that was before counting the boss’s offensive skills. I might even die if I didn’t dodge all the attacks I could.

Fighting a boss head-on didn’t mean fighting like a brainless idiot, and it was especially true in a large-scale game like this. A high-rank boss would almost always have better stats than you even if you were at the same level, not to mention that they could easily have over 100k HP while you slaved away in quadruple digits. Unless you had a priest healing you constantly, it was almost always unwise to bear the full might of a boss.

Time trickled little by little. Soon, I deleted the last drop of HP from his health bar and ended his life of blind loyalty once and for all. To me, his death proved that Dark Gold Rank bosses were now officially a thing of the past, that they couldn’t drop Purple Gold–grade equipment, and they weren’t much of a threat to me any longer. In the future, I should challenge Purple Gold Rank bosses to grow even stronger!

I bent down and picked up all the equipment Thunder Axe dropped, as usual. One of them was a battle axe crawling with thunderous energy. Hmm, this looks… pretty good actually. Let’s see...

Its stat screen didn’t disappoint me. Just like Arthas and Dren the Law Controller, Thunder Axe dropped me a pretty good weapon—

Purple Thunder Battle Axe (Dark Gold-grade, Outstanding★★)

Attack: 275~575

Strength: +65

Stamina: +60

Passive: Increases user’s Attack by 14%

Outstanding Property: When attacking a target, 10% chance to trigger a purple lightning that deals 1000 damage and stuns for 3 seconds

Level: 95

……

I shuddered. Holy shit, this weapon was good, and its Attack was almost as good as my Purgatory Sword’s. Its Outstanding Property was nothing to scoff at either!

I fell into deep thought for a time. What should I do with this Purple Thunder Battle Axe?