Half of the chapter proofreaded by Avenue and xetora, credit to them. Avenue said he will do the other half later, read it later if you care about grammar.

*update* Avenue have proofread the rest of the chapter, credit to him.

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“What?! Both of our siege weapons suddenly exploded?”

The sudden explosion of the two siege weapons confused Kangil. The siege weapons existence was supposed to be a secret, since it was their main weapon to break the checkpoint wall.

Kangil, the beastly warrior user in the form of a monkey, frowned his face as he heard the news. Unlike any normal monkey, instead of a brown colour, he had blue-fur covering his entire body, and he had the average asian male body structure.

He was the third generation leader of ‘Frozen Tooth’; the main clan that lead the night raid. Folding his arms while closing his eyes, Kangil waited for his subordinates answer.

“Yes, it seems someone had planted explosives before we logged in.”

“Interesting, whoever did this knew about tonight raid. Any idea on who is it?”

“Nothing is confirmed yet, but there is small party battling our men, east of here.”

“Hmm…. Tell the commander of each division to proceed with the plan. And you, bring me to that party.”

Escorted by his subordinates, Kangil and his four personal guards embark to Chrono’s location.

*******

‘Starhill Checkpoint’

“The battle will begin anytime soon, prepare yourselves! Double check your equipment and make sure you are positioned in the defensive formation.”

Thankfully, the caravan’s troops had prepared their defensive lineup, before the raid time. The sudden march of the caravan’s troops outside the checkpoint gate had surprised the chaotic users.

Outside of the north, east, south, and west gate of the ‘Starhill checkpoint’: was filled to the brim with the defensive lineup of the caravan troops.

Since the explosion sounded awhile back, the troops had assumed that the raid would begin anytime soon. They were tense, especially those on the front row. To ease up their tension and raised their morale, the commander of each gate ordered the standard routine before the battle.

“Everyone! The War song!”

As they heard their commander, every soldiers took their spear and hammered it to their own shield.

clang! clang! clang!

clang! clang! clang!

clang! ClAnG! CLANG!

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

“””HYAAAARGHH!”””

As everyone was doing the same thing, the sound echoed throughout the entire forest, and intimidated their enemies. The caravan’s troops aren’t accustomed to night battle, but since their enemies were losing the crucial element of surprise, and they now only needed to defend. The chance of winning has been equaled.

In the darkness of the forest, and out of the thousand glimmering red eyes. There were four chaotic commanders, assigned by Kangil to attack the checkpoint, from all four directions.

Since they have lost both the siege weapons, and the element of surprise, they hesitated to continue the plan. Instead, they waited for Kangil’s instruction.

“The boss said that we should continue the raid!”

“Really? I wonder if it is a wise decision, but I guess I’ll just follow the order.”

As ordered, the chaotic users quickly got ready for the attack. They had no flashy routine like the caravan’s troop. Since they always kill in dead silence.

The attack team consisted of: ‘Frozen Tooth’ members, and other various small chaotic clan joint alliances. Things like ‘battle formations’ were foreign to them, as they had only recently joined forces for the night raid. They were scattered and disorganized, but they had the darkness of the night, and since fighting in the dark was their specialty; they were able to make up for the lack of control. They also had ten times the caravan’s fighting force.

Both sides felt it: the battle was drawing to a closure. The defending troops readied themselves, while the number of red, bloodthirsty,eyes lurking behind the darkness of the night, increased.

As the chaotic users held their bloodlust, each attacking commander had finally unleashed their commands.

“”CHARGE!!””

“Finally!”

“Hahaha!!”

“Fun time!”

All of the chaotic users moved at the same time, as soon as they heard the command. Using different weapons, and different fighting styles, they charged the more disciplined caravan troops.

“Turtle formation! Archers, at the ready!”

And thus, the battle between the caravan troops and the chaotic users had begun.

*******

The sight of Chrono , the Skull Mask, made the chaotic users stop their attack. The lower level chaotic users couldn’t move due to Chrono’s tremendous infamy points, which struck fear to those lower level than him.

Higher level chaotic users, were bewildered by the ‘Skull Mask’ appearance. Chrono knew they would resume their attack once they regained their composure, since the chaotic users held the advantage in numbers.

Chrono, taking full advantage of the ‘break time’, opened the ‘portal’ to bring his goblin slaves.

“””What is thy bidding, my master?”””

Then, he used the portal to replace Jason’s, James’, and his slave’s weapon’s with ones of higher quality.

“Equip it.”

For Jason, he gave ‘Harbinger’; a greataxe with attack power far beyond that of his current weapon. ‘Harbinger also had a ‘Vampiric effect’; that worked great when combined with the ‘Blood Warriors’ innate trait.

James, received the ‘Dragon Shield’, an artifact level shield that could fend off heavy attacks, while having near-zero weight. He had also received ‘Van Helsing’, which is a high quality crossbow, with tremendously high piercing power.

Goblin Kai, received the ‘Short Chaotic Blade’; a sword Chrono’s had crafted from the Chaos Knight’s sword. Chrono crafted the sword ⅓ from its original size, since Goblin Kai has a short stature.

The rest of his slaves, received the ‘Elven Short Bow’. As he had needed them to aid the party with their long range attacks. Their fighting prowess was still lacking, and direct confrontation would only bring casualties to the slaves, which Chrono wanted to avoid.

Chrono also gave ‘Jerky Beef’ to all the allied attackers, so they could restore their stamina.

“Nice! Using this weapon, I can fight better! but...are you sure about this? I may use this weapon to haunt you later.”

“Huh, as if I need to worry about that. Just shut up and fight.”

“Pfft! This brat. Fine, we will see.”

“I-I will cast the enchantment spells on you.”

“Eh?! You can do that?”

“Y-Yes.”

As Esca began to cast enchanting spells on Chrono. Chrono couldn’t help but be amazed, because instead of a near to useless enchantment spell, that could be learned by anyone, Esca had cast high level spells that were specific for enchanter class.

Chrono thought it was impossible to gain skills outside one’s class. But as he saw Esca, he can’t help but rethink about the possibilities.

“(Did she complete some hidden quest? Or is this the real potential of the ‘Research Skill’ that Yoblin Fai learned?)”

While Chrono was in deep thought, chaotic users begun to move again. Putting aside his interest in Esca, Chrono to give orders.

“Thorin, Jason and Goblin Kai, take care of the approaching enemies but don’t go outside of Esca’s ‘Slow Field’...”

“O-Okay”

“AS YOU WISH, MASTER.”

“ROAR!”

“... James, protect Esca and the archers with your shield whilst you support the frontline with your crossbow. Archers, support us with your bow, unleashes as many arrows as you can but try to not hit our allies. And Esca, recast your enchantment spells before the spells effect fade away.”

“Okay”

“””Yes, Master.”””

“Y-Yes.”

Once he gave his orders, Chrono charged towards the incoming chaotic users. The chaotic users that just logged in were the main forces and their level were higher.As it was the raid hour, the chaotic users number was greatly increased and naturally, they were harder to fight.

Thankfully, the ‘Slow Field’ cast by Esca somewhat decreased the chaotic users speed. With manageable speed, Chrono that was only relying on speed while having little defense could dodge and countered relentless attack from the chaotic users.

“Hey, this guys health decreased a lot with only one attack!”

“I guess we can kill him with just four clean strike!”

“Surround him!”

As they thought Chrono was the easier target, the chaotic users attention was shifted on him.Although he was surround, Chrono manages to dodges every attack while unleashed a great number of attack and counter . In the way, he received one more clean attack.

“Two more attack and he’s finish!”

By the time the crowd get excited, instead of panicking, Chrono got more aggressive with his attacks and managed to kill one enemy with his dazzling sword skill. With ‘Soul Eater’ from ‘Grave’, 25% of his health and stamina restored leaving his health to 75% again.

“Continue to attack! We just need three clean attack to finish this bastard off.”

Again, Chrono received one clean attack that made the crowd get excited again. As his enemies got excited once more, Chrono managed to slay one more enemy with a counter.

Using his own weakness, Chrono lured his enemies with his low defense as bait. And the experienced users should play it safe and back-off as their health turned critical.

Seeing as how easy it seemed to kill Chrono, the chaotic users couldn’t help but keep on attacking even when their own health had reached a critical point. It was because they tried to gain credit in slaying Chrono.

Chrono health has went down as low as 25% and his enemies only need one more attack to finish him off. Despite that, Chrono came on top again by slaying two more enemies in succession.

With his tactic, Chrono had slain ten chaotic users in less than ten minutes. As he always gave the chaotic users a sliver chance of hope in defeating him, the chaotics kept on repeating the same mistakes without realising Chrono’s trap.

Using his new weapon, ‘Harbinger’, Jason’s fighting capabilities have greatly increased. Beside having higher damages, ‘Harbingers’ vampiric abilities match nicely with the ‘Blood Warrior’ signature ability, ‘Blood Fury’.

‘Blood Fury’ was a passive skill exclusive for ‘Blood Warrior’. The skill gave its user bonus speed and damage as the users health decreased. With the ‘Harbingers’ vampiric abilities, Jason could easily refill his health once his health decreased.

With the support archer squad unleashing their arrows here and there, this time the frontliner had room to breath. Excluding James. The archer squads arrows didn’t give much damage, but they were doing a great job in disturbing the enemies flow.

Acting as support squad protector, James role was crucial as he needed to deflect any incoming projectile with his ‘Dragon Shield’. James also play a supporting role by shooting armor piercing arrows with his new crossbow, ‘Van Helsing’.

The formation was perfect and they were doing great as a party. But they had no idea on how long they need to fight. Their enemies kept on coming and no one saw the battle would end anytime soon.

Jason and James thought Chrono have a plan to sneak past the chaotic users and escape. Surprisingly, instead of escaping, Chrono asked the party to keep on fighting and play defensively.

It was no doubt they were doing great, but their stamina was limited, once they ran out of stamina it was game over. Even with Chrono’s stamina recovering foods, long repetitive battle would eventually take a toll on their mental strength.

As the battle got longer, like before, the party will most likely drop their guard and commit a mistake. Unlike Chrono’s slaves that follow his order blindly and Esca who can’t voice her own opinion, following order blindly was not Jason and James style.

“Kid, how long do we need to do this?”

“Don’t tell me playing defense here is your great plan”

“One hour, and if we still survive after one hour we can win this battle.”

********

It's been awhile since the battle between the caravan and the chaotic users took place. The ‘turtle formation’ used by the caravan’s troops was effective initially.

Sticking out their shield and spear at the frontline, the caravan’s troops made a defensive formation that stopped chaotic users advance.

Flurry of arrows from the back row archers has taken out considerable amount of chaotic users. But the battle didn’t stay in their favor for long. The chaotics countered that by using their agility to jump pass the man made wall.

The non-conventional war tactics had shocked the troops and it tooks many soldiers lives. Chaos broke in between the ranks, the soldiers took sometime before they could recover but they paid a heavy price in the process.

As battle hardened troops that participated in many battles, the troops managed to slay many. Unfortunately, the massive amount of chaotic users made things harder.

Still, as an experienced top class unit, they somehow managed to stop the enemies advance. Although the caravan’s troops may get annihilated soon as the chaotic users kept on coming non-stop.

********

Casually stalking Chrono’s party battle from the depth of darkness, Kangil smirk as he saw the party.

He didn’t recognize anyone else other than the infamous ‘Skull Mask’. He didn’t know why ‘Skull Mask’ take the merchant side, but with ‘Skull Mask’ involvement, he need to take things seriously or it will ruin the raid.

Because of his high sense stats, Chrono quickly realized the top dog behind the raid had arrived. As he felt the one stalking his party in the darkness was max level user, Chrono deduct it was a high rank member in the ‘Frozen Tooth’.

“(Is it the leader?)”

“Heh, as expect of the infamous ‘Skull Mask’, he quickly noticed me.”

“Boss, shall we attack?”

“......No, if we charge them blindly we may annihilate them, but not without casualties. I don't want to die now and lose my shares in this raid.”

One of the unspoken rule between chaotic users was, anyone who died while raiding would lose their share when splitting the loots. Even the leader of the clan would lose their share if they died while raiding.

Sometime, a battle royal occurred and it’s completely normal for chaotic users to kill each other to get more loots. Kangil plan to preserve his strength, he felt a battle royal would occur soon after they successfully massacred the caravan’s members.

As he saw the situation,Kangil knew Chrono’s party couldn't avoid their demise. But with their current battle tactic, defeating Chrono’s party would take hours and they might take dozens of chaotic users with them before they were defeated.

The life of his comrades was not a concern to Kangil, only he needed his men to focus more on attacking the caravan. The little skirmishes needed to end quickly which he would do just that by directing the attack from then on.

“Fool! Don’t you guys get it? Surrounding and attacking Skull Mask like that only lead you to his trap, only attack him with four users while the rest observe him from the back and wait for a chance for sneak attack.”

“...Although that goblin act like a big shot, he’s just a low level creature, don’t be flustered and attack him with everything you got.”

“...That pet just a mindless beast, lure him further from the party and attack him after he got out of the ‘Slow Field’. Than, we could enter the inner part of the party from the gap that beast created. Except for that shield guy, the rest of that party support unit seems easy to be dealt with.”

“(Shit!)”

Realizing Kangil had found his party the weakness of the formation, Chrono couldn’t help but worry. If the chaotics managed to break their defensive formation, he couldn’t tell how long his party would hold.

If the party couldn’t hold for at least an hour, executing his plan was impossible. To avoid that, Chrono made emergency changes.

“Archers, back up goblin Kai with all you’ve got. James, keep an eye on any incoming enemies, prepare your sword for close range battle. And Esca, did you have magic shield spell?”

“Y-Yes.”

“This will exhausted your mana faster, but I need you to protect archers from long range projectile while James dealing with incoming enemies.”

“O-Okay.”

As the party changed their formation, James was positioned in-between frontliner and support squad. While shielding the support party with incoming projectiles and supporting the frontliner with his crossbow, James also readied his sword to battle any chaotic users that managed to slip in.

Whenever James was handling the chaotic users with his sword, Esca stepped in and helped with shielding the archers. Any long range attack was perfectly blocked by Esca with the ‘magic shield’.

‘Magic Shield!’

A shield appeared from thin air and deflected an attack from a direction. It was a rather sturdy shield but it would disappear after five seconds. Like a normal shield, it only protected the shield area and Esca need to recast the shield every time the attacks came from a different direction.

Keeping tab on enchanting ten goblins, one pet and three users had decreased Esca’s mana pool significantly. As she was not from magician class, her mana regeneration couldn’t kept up with her mana usage. With the new workload, her mana exhausted further.

Thankfully, Thorin didn’t go too far from the party when the chaotics lured him away. Once Thorin was out of the ‘Slow Field’ he quickly turned back to the party. Thorin’s surprising intelligence had shocked Kangil and ruined half of his plan.

The new attacking strategy from the chaotic users have made it difficult for Chrono. He couldn’t be as aggressive anymore since the assassins observing him would instantly ‘Backstab’ him.

Chrono’s situation was the worst since he didn’t have support arrows from the archers and one moment carelessness would bring him to his death. Chrono tried to focus as much as possible although he realized as a normal human being there would be a moment of weakness.

Looking from the sideline, Kangil smirked. The party somehow managed to defend themselves but the situation had improved for the chaotic users. At this rate, the party would be annihilated shortly. And he, Kangil would have gained fame from defeating the infamous ‘Skull Mask.

“Heh, a low life is just a low life. Trying to destroy my plan with that low level party, they were crackheads. Let’s go, I would like to see the situation at the ‘Starhill Checkpoint’. Compared to this little party, they were far more important.”

As Kangil was about to leave, Chrono immediately realized it. He has his hand full but he never lose sight of Kangil as he felt that killing Kangil was the best way to decrease the chaotics moral.

“(That bastard is trying to leave!)”

The darkness of the night never allowed him to see Kangil face. Regardless, he knew Kangil was the leader behind this raid. Chrono’s high amount of sense combined with ‘Fear Death’ skill allowed him to roughly determine each users level.

The max level in Emperor Saga was level 600, but only few could achieve it. Normal player usually had level ranging from 300 to 400. They were unable to increase their level further mainly because the amount of effort needed to achieve it was tremendous.

Chrono knew Kangil was the only max level users around. He felt it, his sense and his skill never lied. Kangil was influential enough to command the chaotic users attacking his party to change their tactic. These factors made Chrono ninety percent sure that Kangil was the chaotics leader.

To turn things around, killing Kangil was crucial. Chrono doesn’t want to let go off Kangil. The brief moment when Kangil was turning his back as he about to leave, Chrono thought ,

“(Perhaps this is the best chance!)”

Suddenly, Chrono put out ‘Grave’ to the portal leaving him weaponless. Then, he slipped through the weapon swing from his attackers with a dazzling acrobatic moves.

As he dashed towards outside of the ‘Slow Field’, his attacker was confused but they continue to chase after him.

While he charged towards Kangil, he immediately readied his favorite assassins weapon, ‘Deadly Fangs’. When Chrono was about three steps away from Kangil, the four Kangil’s guards realized the situation and immediately formed a line to block Chrono.

Kangil knew Chrono charged, but he just smirked as he thought his guards were enough to deal with Chrono. But instead of confronting the four guards, Chrono kept on charging to Kangil.

‘Shadow Ghost!’

In a ghost form, Chrono moved past through Kangil’s guards and immediately stabbed the ‘Deadly Fangs’ into Kangil’s neck, the small bare place in between Kangil’s helmet and body armor.

“Kgguh!”

“You were underestimating me”

The poison from the ‘Deadly Fangs’ only work once a day, it was useless against monsters but work great against users. Once stabbed the victim only have ten second to live as the poison take away 10% health every second.

The four guards and Chrono’s chaser tried to attack Chrono almost simultaneously, they were a step away from Chrono.

Dropped to the ground, waiting for his death, Kangil look at Chrono like a dead fish.’You too will die soon’ Kangil’s thought. But in that instant, as Kangil saw the light on Chrono’s eyes, he felt something.

Chrono abnormally composed attitude made Kangil restless. Kangil doesn’t felt Chrono execute the attack out of impulse, killing him was not the last part of his plan. Kangil felt the man in front of him had one last trick, he has something else up his sleeve.

Looking at his comrades swinging their weapons towards Chrono, Kangil tried to warn them. On his last moment, Kangil tried to utter a word to his comrades. Unfortunately, his dying voice doesn’t seem to reach his comrades.

“St-Sto….”

BOOOOMMM!!!

Chrono’s body suddenly exploded damaging everyone around him. The explosion was not as big as before, but it was enough to critically injured those around him

His chaser and the four guards knocked back a few meters away from the recoil, their armor were smashed to smithereens and they were critically injured. Chaotic users that sustain injuries before, died from the explosion.

Shocked and confused, the chaotics tried to regain their composure while grasping what just happened. They casually trying to stand up as they thought the source of danger should have died from that explosion.

“Crazy asshole, did he plant a bomb on his own body?”

Cheat Death activated, instead of dying your health decreases to one

His upper half body cloth destroyed, his gauntlet cracked, only half of his mask remain and his health reduced to one. Regardless, Chrono doesn’t hide or run, without giving his enemies a moment to rest, Chrono took out heavy spears and threw em’ at his enemies.

‘Spear Barrage!’

Woosh!

Woosh!

Woosh!

Woosh!

Without any armor protecting them, multiple spears easily impaled them while their bodies flung a few meters away. When the chaotic users bodies entered the ‘Slow Field’ as the result from the heavy spears knocking back effect, Chrono immediately charged towards the helpless chaotic group with ‘Grave’.

‘Soul Blade!’

With the ‘Slow Field’ and heavy spears impairing their movement, they were completely helpless with Chrono’s relentless assault.

Chrono skillful swordsmanship brought critical strike on every attack he made. in less then thirty second, Chrono completely obliterated his enemies.

The battlefield went silent, everyone foes and friends alike was shocked with Chrono sudden rampages.’Soul Eater’ had filled his health after his carnage. While holding ‘Grave’, with his bare upper body, a cracked gauntlet and half top mask remained, he cried fiercely while looking at the remaining chaotic users.

“Come ‘ere if you dare!”

******

“K-Kill him!”

“Get him!”

The aggravated chaotic users charge on the party with half of them targeting Chrono. Thankfully most of the chaotic users were greedy, the numbers of chaotic users attacking them reduced greatly after the raid hour.

Most of the chaotic users just went away so they could participate in the raid. The leftover chaotic users were users that held grudges.

The party was still greatly outnumbered,they somehow could defend themselves after Chrono slayed ⅓ of them while butchering Kangil as a bonus.

Since half of the chaotics forces focused on Chrono, the archers focused their arrows on supporting Chrono. Occasionally James cast ‘taunt’ on the chaotic users to force them to attacked him instead of Chrono.

“Just give up! Sooner or later you guys will be annihilated, stop wasting our time.”

Hearing those remarks from the chaotic users, Chrono can’t help but laugh. He still fighting fiercely, only he was laughing when doing it.

“Hehehahaha!”

“What’s so funny?”

“Wasting time? Yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing. My party will be annihilated? I don’t think so!”

Baffled from Chrono’s words, the chaotic users started feeling uneasy. Chrono spoke with such confidence as if the result of the battle was predetermined and he would have definitely won.

The more sensitive chaotic users felt that Chrono confident was not unfounded. They start to wonder whether they should just leave or continue with the attack.

While some of the chaotic users were in deep thought, suddenly something smashed a chaotic user with a force so great that the user flew to the nearest tree like a baseball ball.

Bam!

“W-What?!”

Bam!

Bam!

Bam!

A three meter tall giant ogre suddenly appeared swinging his club to the chaotic users around him as if he swatting flies. At the ogre back, a user from a cat race casting ‘Stun’ and ‘Sleep’ to prevent the chaotics escaped from the ogre wrath.

Another user backing up the ogre was someone from a draconian race. He kept a close distance with the ogre as he cast various enchantment spell to the ogre.

Because it seems like the fight was a child play for the ogre, a user just casually followed the ogre in case the giant being need a healing. This final user seems from the elf race, but few people knew that he has mixed vampire blood.

They were a little late from the promised time, regardless, they came. Jurek, the max level users and his three henchmen, also max level users, officially enter the battle.

Instead of helping, Chrono just stopped fighting all together, in fact, everyone from his party already stopped fighting because they knew how strong Jurek and his three henchmen were.

“You are late.”

“...........”

Jurek, whose quite talkative while fighting, didn’t say a word. The feeling around him was different this time, as if it was a different person. To clear things up, Grandin, the cat race debuffer spoke.

“Huhuhu, this time the one playing Jurek is Ryan, her husband, the ‘true’ Jurek.”

At various other ‘Safe Spots’ around ‘Starhill Checkpoint’, the ‘BloodBrothers’ members had logged in around the same time as Jurek.

*******