Relictus’s stamina finally emptied completely. In the pile of leaves in front of him, he fell. Around him were several piles of leaves, results of the Spriggans’ bodies. A light snoring could be heard, followed by a loud crash. Apparently, the leaves weren’t enough of a cushion, and his head smacked into the solid ground, hardly blocked by the leaves. However, he was too tired for this to have an effect. He simply slept. He couldn’t be bothered to notice the loud, annoying beeping that was so incessant.

“I’ll have to turn that off, later,” he thought. Right now, Relictus had 3 HP. A few seconds prior, he made an incredibly stupid decision, and halved his stats 10 times, all so that he could use Darkness Pulse. Quite effective it was, despite being fired while he was being blasted in the face by beams of pure energy.

As he was finally getting up, brushing dirt off of his face, he looked around, a groggy look in his bloodshot eyes.

“Everything’s… blurry?” He wondered. Had he been spirited away to some different dimension where everything was blurry? Surprised by this amazing development, he rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn’t just dreaming. Nope, he just had blurry eyesight. No spiriting away was happening. However, as he had slept it became nighttime, and his stat bars had returned to their full state. Elongated shadows lingered as the dim, pale light of the moon washed down, giving the forest around him an eerie glow. Crickets could be heard, chirping away in the background. It could be called a grinding chirp – a chirp that was grinding away at Relictus’s sanity. He grunted, not entertained, and turned, walking. He felt an odd pull towards a certain direction. He had felt it after leaving the Dungeon, but it was just a mild feeling, so he had put it aside.

In no way was Relictus a morning person. He hated going to sleep, dreaming of grand adventures and beautiful scenery, only to wake up and find that nothing had changed. He was still in his own little torture chamber, trapped in those uncomfortable cotton sheets, listening to that heart monitor’s beeping that still wouldn’t end.

However, this was different. He got to sleep and wake up tired, uncomfortable, and irritable, just like always, but this time, he was free. Thus, he got up and ran as fast as he could towards the direction he was being pulled to. The wind stirred, and he just ran faster. In this game, he had no limits.

Those Spriggans had levels between 38 and 45. Somehow, despite his basic gear, he managed to outclass them with sheer power. The base damage for Darkness Pulse was somehow broken. He laughed at how lucky he was. As he contemplated how lucky he was, he remembered what that EXP screen said:

Notification from 01/12/01 of New EraYou have gained 48712318 EXP!

Due to your boosts, EXP gain has quadrupled! Gain increased to 194849272.You have gained a level!x71

You have: 1,065 Stat Points to spend.

Just like last time he tried it, the screen gave him a timestamp and the notification. It was quite convenient, all you had to do was think about it, and an old screen would show up in front of you. He made a note to himself not to do this while running as his surprise caused him to trip on air. He did a magnificent triple forward flip, before turning it into a quintuple somersault as he rolled over the ground, kicking up a trail of leaves and cold, damp dirt, finally sticking the landing as he grandly dragged his face along the ground for 20 bonus points.

“Muh? Mun houham mohuh hoih?” He exclaimed, dirt flying out of his mouth. “Huh? 1,000 bonus points?!” He exclaimed, much more intelligibly. After all, most people didn’t get that kind of point sum at twice his level. It was possible nobody would ever get that many at once except for himself, thanks to his ridiculously overpowered gains. He checked his status block, and surely enough; he had 1065 bonus points, and had even gone up to 36 points in Overdrive. No wonder he was able to defeat all of those monsters, despite how far out of his league they were – Overdrive empowered abilities more the further he was pushed to his limits.

He zealously allocated points – dropping a good 300 in DEX, and another 300 in ATK. 200 in SPD later, he realized just how pathetically low his other 3 abilities were, and dropped 55 points into each. It was surprisingly anticlimactic – he didn’t feel some ‘great power’ welling up inside of him despite the crazy sum of points he had just gotten.

After some time, he had run himself across the entire forest, and reached his destination. He was being pulled towards… the exact same dungeon?

“Maybe M’arrzath has something for me,” Relictus thought. He wasn’t wrong. As he got down to the deepest parts of the dungeon, he found his way to that same chamber, and found 6 people he remembered quite vividly. They had seemed quite confident, probably noticing is drop in height, and how much weaker the pressure he gave off was. Upon hearing the footsteps and seeing him walk in, their smiles fell instantly. If Relictus didn’t know better, they seemed almost nervous. Rather angry, he looked their leader, Nix, straight in the eye.

“What… are you doing?” Relictus asked. A cloud of dust was kicked up by the force that he was exerting just in keeping himself calm, holding himself back. It looked almost like a cloud of darkness flowing freely behind him.

For a moment, Nix had a look of absolute horror on his face, but he straightened it out, attempting to gloss over the fact that his party had abandoned him, and completely forgotten about him after that. “Oh, Relictus! It’s nice to see you alive and kickin’! We thought we’d lost you, so we were… here… to take revenge…” Nix began to trail off towards the end, the grin on his face slowly fading.

“No need,” Relictus said, his face now blocked by a shadow. All that could be seen was the small bit of light in the room reflecting off of his teeth as he grinned. It was a wide grin, but more than that, an insane one. He looked up, a piercing gaze crossing the room, straight into Nix’s eyes. “What I need is to send a message.” Relictus finished, and his hand reached to his sword. It was chipped, and had completely lost the end of the blade, but it still had a wicked edge, one that could mutilate a body as it tore apart flesh.

Nix took a step back, a look of terror in his eyes. M’arrzath was grinning, but nobody saw it on his face as he directed his voice toward Relictus. “That’s a good face.” He said, simply. He wanted to say more, but stopped halfway through the last syllable as he felt the tension build. He simply sat back on his throne, waiting for the scene to unfold.

He didn’t have to wait long. Diablo overzealously rushed at Relictus, shouting, “Nobody threatens Boss and gets away with it!” And, as if dealing with a migraine, he lifted his hand to his forehead. He took his other hand to his hilt and dropped his waist. He pulled his blade from its scabbard, taking his sweet time. To the others, it was an otherworldly speed, but to him, it was a rather leisurely pace. Diablo was painstakingly slow to him, and Relictus even went so far as dropping him right there, just to save time. He brought his sabre up, and kicked the ground, aiming straight at Diablo’s chest. In an instant, he had arrived, leaving Diablo completely run through. The blade ran straight through the sternum, all the way to the hilt. Diablo’s body shattered into 0’s and 1’s, his fresh blood still remaining on the blade and hilt of Relictus’s sword. Relictus flicked his wrist, leaving a line of drops of blood along the floor. All of this happened in under a second, and all that was left now of Diablo was a brown sack of coins and its iconic jingle as it hit the ground. Nix was angry.

Nix rushed forward, taking small, but quick steps. Relictus was surprised by how fast he went, it was practically in a different realm from Diablo – but it was still nothing to Relictus. As the two daggers crossed, Nix looking ready to release a skill, Relictus just watched, curious at what was about to happen.

“Assassinate!” Nix shouted. It seemed like a dangerous skill, so Relictus stopped it right there – he stepped forward and slashed his sword, and exactly as it swung, Nix teleported straight into the swing’s area of effect.

“How… did you…” Nix, a surprised look in his eyes, gasped as he looked down at the hemorrhaging cavity that had been carved in his abdomen.

“Intuition.” Relictus responded, though in actuality, he had just tried to reposition himself. Nix was just very, very unlucky. He collapsed backward, the wound immediately destroying his HP bar, and just like that, Nix disappeared. A single hit.

Next, he turned his sights on Sentinel. Sentinel was already charging him, shield standing like a great wall of steel, glinting off of the flickering fire that shone throughout the room. Relictus jumped forward, flipping in a far more elegant fashion than that which he had when he tripped on the way back, landing on top of the shield immediately. He grinned, and muttered two words, “Game over.” Sentinel collapsed, a sabre piercing his shield and going straight into his neck, blood showering the ground to his left. Indifferently, Relictus moved to step off of the shield as it clattered to the ground, blasting the loud sound of a heavy block of metal hitting stone. As he was doing so, his HP fell to 13550/13800. He looked around, and his eyes locked on a semi-tall figure, their eyes full of fear, and of hatred. Larry.

“That hurt,” he spat, his mouth breaking into an even wider grin than before. His sabre was still in the shield, but he didn’t need it. In a fraction of a second, he was standing just a foot from Larry, much to Larry’s horror. He raised his hand, and balled it into a fist. Larry’s dread grew by the second. In that moment, his fist flew forward, knocking Larry to the wall – even making an indentation in the brick, as the black stones crumbled to the ground. Larry coughed, falling on his hands and knees, incapacitated by the impact. “I was hit far harder than you.” He said, simply, as he stepped over, arriving over Larry. “Say your prayers, God is dead anyway.” He spoke as he brought his hand down. In a fraction of a second, his hand was in the same position- but holding something – Larry’s heart, ripped out of his chest. Looking down, Larry’s body was nowhere to be seen. Relictus snickered, dropping the organ to the ground. It exploded, splattering crimson and black ochre across the dark stones of the floor. He turned, facing now his two final opponents – Hawk and Ash, holding each other and shivering out of pure terror. Back in Genaron, their party had been the top, even just days after release. However, in the face of this monster, they were executed in just seconds. One might argue that he was worse than the boss. Relictus laughed at the scene, and mercilessly executed the two.

“Well done, young one,” M’arrzath started. Relictus turned to him, bored, but silent. He simply leaned against the wall and waited for his next words, “But why didn’t you use that skill? I’m sure you could have dealt with them in a single second.”

Relictus had dealt with them in just about 20, but still responded in a cold, almost scathing tone. “They weren’t worthy of it.”

M’arrzath laughed. It was as if it was the funniest thing he had heard in a millennium. “True, human, but you definitely went for the impact, didn’t you?”

Relictus, having been found out, just sighed. “Got me on that one. Would you not do the same?”

Again, M’arrzath laughed. However, his tone immediately darkened, becoming far more serious. “Billions of those on such a level as them would not stand a chance on those you will face alone. However, you will not be alone like you were in this battle – you will have these.” M’arrzath spoke, and then mumbled a few words in a strange, deep, eerie rhythm. Upon the ground, purple light flowed freely, before it channeled itself into patterns, creating 7 circles, each intricate and unique in design. From the design, a body rose – a suit of armor and two weapons. They glowed black – it was as if they consumed the light, making the pieces more brilliant, darker, and more ominous simultaneously. The helm looked like an elegant knight’s helm – it was gilded with a deep, but light, purple color, and it was shaped like a regular knight’s helmet – however, the opening for the face was carved exactly in the shape of a skull. The full-body and leggings were elegantly forged, and made without a single structural flaw – the limbs were even able to move, somehow. When he tried it on, it was as if he was bending the metal itself without any resistance.

The sword was a different beast. Unlike the armor tagged by the Identification system as [UNKNOWN], this sword was tagged as [Wicked Blade of Forgotten Kings] and had a bonus ATK of not a flat number, but a formula – it was simply [2 ATK] – it added a bonus equal to double his attack. Nothing surprised Relictus anymore. It was definitely a sabre, but its hilt was like his face’s opening for the helm – it had a skull engraved in it. The blade was not the same as the armor. This black was able to reflect light, and it had streaks redder than blood travelling from the guard all the way down the curved edge, and to the wicked tip of the blade. The back of the blade came up in wicked spikes, as if a still image of a flame was superimposed on the blade itself.

After Relictus put it all on, approving of the armor’s fit, he gave the blade a few test swings. As he did so, the blade emitted a dark energy – it decreased Relictus’s own by a couple hundred, but it left behind a trail of pure black, and went an entire 2 meters further out than the 1 meter blade.

You have unlocked a new Skill!

Blade of Black (Active) [Beginner 1/10][0%]

With the use of a powerful dark weapon,

you are able to stretch its range and power to the limit.

Range: 3M

Damage at all ranges: 2/3 ATK

Cost: 100 Energy/sec

He grinned. This was definitely a useful skill. This gave him a good chance against ranged enemies.

“By the way, human, how many Stat Points did you acquire in your time gone?” M’arrzath asked, with absolutely no effort to time the question well.

“Oh, just around 1050,” Relictus said. It wasn’t that he didn’t think it notable and had forgotten already, he wanted to seem pretty cool for getting so many and brushing that much off as child’s play.

“Not a bad amount for your first attempt, young one, but far from good. With this, you can stand against most humans, but Contractors are a different thing altogether. Remember that, human – you have a long way to go.”

Author’s Notes

Spoiler : Gonna be making chapters closer to 3k-5k, which means less releases and more time writing and editing. One a day, probably, but they should be better!

So now MC is pretty badass. I’m not a huge fan of that Deus Ex Machina I set up, but don’t worry; he’ll still be limited. Power doesn’t come easily.

Tell me if I made a mistake in the comments. Thanks so much for reading! 'Til next time!