Three days passed by in the blink of an eye. After grinding with everything I got, a golden beam landed on my head and increased my level to 180. At that moment, I felt like I was ascending to the heavens!

……

It was time to complete my seventh class promotion quest, so I returned to Sky City and went through the teleportation formation, teleporting directly to my mentor’s home, the lair of the Bone Soul Rinser. It had been quite some days since I visited my bony mentor. I wondered how he was doing right now.

Swhoosh!

When my vision cleared up, I saw Rinser standing motionlessly in the middle of the snowfield. His head and shoulders were covered in snow, and he seemed to be deep in meditation.

I was a good man who respected his teacher, so I waited for him to finish his meditation instead of disturbing him. However, ten long and boring minutes later, I suddenly heard a snore from the skeleton. Blind rage immediately overtook my brain. Goddamn motherfucking sonuvabitch! He was sleeping, not meditating! What a complete waste of my time!

"Mentor!"

I immediately shouted at a pitch of 80 decibels, "Coldblade is coming to us with his undead army!"

"What? Watch this—"

Swhoosh! Bone Soul Rinser immediately used Blink and teleported a hundred meters away from his original location. Even I was impressed by how quick-footed he was. He truly deserved to be my mentor!

After I rode up to him, Rinser finally realized what was going on and berated me, "You fucking brat!"

"Mentor, I think I’m strong enough to reach the next realm now!!"

I raised my arm and flexed my awesome biceps. "See these strong and well-shaped muscles? Surely I’m the most awesome warrior you’ve ever seen, right?"

Rinser glared at me for a moment before saying, "You want to promote your class this badly? Very well! I shall fulfill your wish!"

Ding~!

System Notice: Congratulations, you have been offered the chance to promote your class. You need to pay 500k gold to promote your class!

What the fuck!?

I raged at the scammer, "What the hell is this, old man? I’m not a lamb for you to slaughter!"

Rinser replied emotionlessly, "You can choose not to promote your class if you don’t want to."

"So, it’s a take-it-or-leave-it deal, huh? Fine. I’m a sucker like that."

I teleported back to the city and ran all the way to Air Force One before saying, "White Fox, withdraw 500k gold for me right now!"

White Fox blinked her eyes in surprise before asking, "Master, that’s half of our current savings. Are you sure?"

"Mn. I need the money urgently!"

"Okay!"

After I got the gold, I ran back to the teleportation formation and teleported back to Rinser once more. After the greedy skeleton finished counting his gold, he smiled in satisfaction and said, "Alright, you’ve proven your courage and sincerity, my proudest disciple. Now come! True honor belongs to you and you only!"

Ding~!

System Notice: You have completed your seventh class promotion quest and obtained the title, "Martial God of the Abyss" (Title Stats: Attack +10%, Defense +15%). As the seventh player in the world to complete their seventh class promotion quest, you have been rewarded with Luck +1, Level +1!

……

God dammit, fighter classes are so disadvantaged in this department! For all my speed, I was still the seventh player to complete my class promotion quest. Everyone else before me was either a mage or an archer.

That being said, this new title I obtained sounded pretty cool, and unlike the previous time, this one actually gave me a stat boost. Also, I finally hit 60 Luck with this promotion, tsk tsk!

I brought up Sky City’s Heavenly Ranking and noted that I was the third player in Sky City—or seventh in the world—to complete the seventh promotion quest. The first two spots belonged to Beiming Xue and Lian Xin.

Now, time to check out my new class skills!

I spoke with Rinser, and two new skills immediately appeared in front of me—

Undead Shield: Summon a shield of death and protect oneself from danger. Shield durability scales with user’s Magic Attack. Level Requirement: Level 180.

Wind of the Coiling Dragon: Summon an undead dragon and deal a tremendous amount of damage to all targets within a 10x10 yard area. Skill damage scales with user’s Magic Attack. Level Requirement: 180.

……

God dammit. Both skills were useless to me because they were mage skills—which would be awesome if I was a mage, but I wasn’t—and none of my equipment added Intelligence. Even if they did, I was still a warrior with lousy Magic Attack scaling.

So I merged them into my existing skills instead. Undead Shield was a defensive skill, so I chose to merge it with my Ghost Deity Armor!

Ding~!

System Notice: Congratulations, your skill "Ghost Deity Armor" has successfully merged with the skill "Undead Shield”. You have gained a new skill: "Ghost Deity Shield!"

Ghost Deity Shield I: Summon the power of domains to manifest the Ghost Deity on your shield. Defensive effects are greatly increased, and Defense of user's shield will now reduce damage of magic attacks like Magic Knight’s Holy Shield. Skill effect: Defense is increased by 15%.

……

"Ghost Deity Shield…"

I was stunned to say the least. The skill already boosted Defense by 15% at Rank 1, so at Rank 10 I imagine that this number will be 150% at least, right? Also, it could be used like a Holy Shield, meaning that mages would no longer be able to destroy me as easily as they did before. For the longest time, mages were the terror of all mounted players because magic attacks dealt extra damage to metal-armor classes. Even with a shield, it wasn’t guaranteed that a mounted player could survive concentrated bombardment. However, Ghost Deity Shield changed that completely because it functioned the same as Holy Shield and also reduced magic damage taken. Not even Lian Xin and her insane Magic Attack would be able to threaten me too much anymore.

Hell yeah! I made up my mind to grind my Ghost Deity Shield to max rank as soon as possible. It would be very useful in the upcoming WEL competition.

……

But before that, I still needed to merge one more skill, the Wind of Coiling Dragon. What should I merge with you, I wonder? Burning Blade Slash was already top-tier, and I wasn’t willing to risk losing its current effects for something worse. Universe Break was the same, and Thousand Ice Slash had a Freeze CC that I valued greatly. After some consideration, I ultimately decided to merge it with Sword Boomerang!

Ding~!

System Notice: Congratulations, your skill "Sword Boomerang" has successfully merged with the skill "Wind of the Coiling Dragon”. You have gained a new skill: "Coiling Dragon Revolution!"

Coiling Dragon Revolution I: Summon the coiling dragon and deal a tremendous amount of damage in a wide area to all enemies on a curved line. Skill damage scales with user’s attack power, and penetrates 33% of mages’ Magic Shield. Skill effect: Current skill power is 110%.

……

I couldn’t believe that I got another broken skill out of this. Sword Boomerang’s biggest flaw was its area of effect because it only damaged enemy targets in a straight line. As a result, it wasn’t as effective as it could’ve been when used against a mage or archer party. Now though, its area of effect was greatly increased, and it could penetrate 33% of Magic Shield. Theoretically speaking, I could deal at least 100k damage to a shieldless mage with my Purple Ying Sword. If their shields were up, then 67% of that damage would be blocked instead of the usual 100%. At first glance it didn’t look like much, but in reality I was dishing out at least 30k damage to the mage! At the current stage, even the best mages in the game such as Lian Xin and Stranger of Three Lifetimes only had a health pool of 40k or so. This meant that I would be one-shotting most of the mages out there!

I could hardly contain my excitement at this point. I immediately started testing out my new skills.

"Ghost Deity Shield!" I cried.

Buzz!

The power of the Ghost Deity churned inside of me. My Ghost Deity Armor then vanished and turned into a blood-red energy shield around my Dragon God Shield. A skill durability bar appeared next to the shield, and the logs notified me that part of my Defense now resisted both physical and magic attacks, making me feel as solid as a rock! This was what an immovable tank should look like!

Gui Guzi was tanky, but that was only if in terms of physical damage. If he ran into mages at the level of Lian Xin, Luo River God of the Capital or Stranger of Three Lifetimes, he would run out of HP like a broken dam. I, on the other hand, no longer feared even my natural counter, mages!

I wasted no time in testing out my second skill. Aiming at a giant black rock in the distance, I abruptly threw my sword and used Coiling Dragon Revolution!

"Roar!"

A dragon roared, and the image of a dragon appeared around the Purple Ying Sword. It looked like a giant dragon was soaring toward my target in an uneven line!

Boom boom boom!

There was a massive explosion, and the rock the size of a small hill exploded into smithereens just like that. Even the mountain peaks of Dragonbone Mountain Range were shaking because the Mountain Crush passive of the Purple Ying Sword had taken effect as well. If I wasn’t sure before, I knew now that the skill could definitely destroy the environment!

……

"What the hell do you think you’re doing, brat?" Rinser stared at me.

I caught the returning Purple Ying Sword firmly and smiled innocently at him. "If there’s nothing else then I’m leaving, mentor. Bye…"

"Shoo! Pray that you’ll live to see me another day!" Rinser huffed. It almost sounded like he wanted me, his disciple, to get myself killed.

I took out a return scroll and teleported back to Sky City. Then, I contacted Murong Mingyue and asked her, "Sis, are you busy right now?"

Murong Mingyue: "Yep, I’m grinding to Level 180 right now. You got something for me?"

"Actually, yes. I’m going to help you grind, so come join me…"

Murong Mingyue sounded surprised. "What? Am I dreaming? Did Lu Chen just offer to carry me? You’re plotting to do something devious to me, aren’t you?"

"Er…"

I paused for a moment before replying, "No really, I just want to grind with you, that’s all…"

"Hmph hmph!"

……

It wasn’t like I was trying to hide my true intentions, so Murong Mingyue figured it out as soon as we reached Bloody Shield Domain. I wanted to grind the undead mobs Ovia the Bloody Finger left behind after his death because these mobs hit hard enough to rank up my new Ghost Deity Shield in no time. However, for that reason I would need a priest to keep me healthy, which was why I sought her out. Murong Mingyue would gain the experience she needed to hit Level 180 much faster, and I would be able to rank up my Ghost Deity Shield. Two birds with one stone!