The journey James and Iron were about to embark on was an extremely long one, it would take about 40 hours, without their stop included, and since every day in real life takes 48 hours in-game, the day would be almost over by the time the 2 of them arrived. At the end of the first day there would be a system update, this system update is the reason James was so desperate to reach Merlin's house before the end of the first day, it would implement a lot of extra hidden stats, but most importantly the stamina mechanic. Now any player could fight, run, and climb for as long as they wanted without even feeling it, but that would change in the first update, as [Tier 0] players they could at best run for 3km straight before having to take a break. This would double if not triple the time it would take to complete their journey, but this wasn't the most important thing, the most important thing was the Hidden quest in the middle of their journey located in a cave on the mountaintop, in this hidden quest you had to fight countless monsters of the same level as you, it also had a difficulty selector that went all the way up to the highest known difficulty, God, James had no hope of completing the God ranked difficulty if stamina was involved. He didn't know the reward of the God-ranked difficulty, but the hard one gave a [Tier 2] mystical flame, so the God one was sure to have good rewards.
For the first 20 hours of the journey nothing much happened, James was mostly focused on leveling his skills as much as possible before he would enter the challenge, his level could stagnate for all he cared, and the monsters would be the same level anyway.
After 20 hours of using his skills every time they came off cooldown, James had made considerable progress.
[Chop]|Active skill| Requirement: Sword| Additional 30 points of damage| Cooldown: 2 seconds| Skill Level:3 (Proficiency 200/1500)
[time absorbing slash]| Active skill| Requirement: Sword| absorbed the element of time around the Sword to power itself, slows down all targets around by 60%, and deals 175% damage.| Cooldown: 29 seconds| Skill Level: 2 (Proficiency 566/2000)
[Lightning discharge]| Action-type| rare| Requires: Sword| Charge your sword up with lighting, when you proceed to stick it in the ground the lightning will discharge in a radius of 30 yards around you, doing 185% damage and having a chance to stun every enemy hit.| Cooldown: 55 seconds| Skill Level:3 10/2000
His Chop skill, which was pretty useless could now be considered a pretty decent extra bit of damage. Time absorbing slash didn't improve that much, but the extra slow was nice. The lightning discharge also didn't get that much of a buff, but the extra damage was nice. James also manages to level up to level 4, but this time he disturbed it by not following his basic formula, but he catered it more towards the challenge, he put 6 in strength and 2 in Agility. Giving him a base damage of 86, and 1 extra point in Attack Speed. He decided to do it this way because he had enough combat sense and health potions to survive the battle, but dealing enough damage might be a problem.
Arriving before the cave, James told Iron to wait outside, he then proceeded to clean out the monsters in the cave without much difficulty. The second all the monsters were gone, James's vision began to fade, when it came back he was greeted by a system message.
System: you have been transported to the eternal lands, and you have triggered the hidden quest "all out bowel", please select your difficulty: normal, hard, hell, Asura, God.
James looked around and saw amazing landscapes, it was a floor made out of the clearest water ever as far as the eyes could see, with a clearer blue sky above.
After he was done admiring the scenery, James clicked the God mode option.
System: hidden quest "all-out brawl" accepted, at the God mode difficulty.
Quest Details: you have to prove yourself worthy of the God rank challenge, you have to battle against 1000 Lord rank monsters of your level, and within the time limit of 3 hours, you have to kill at least half of them.
Quest Rewards: 1 Ancient Treasures chest + extra based on contributions.
Quest failure penalties: All EXP gain will be decreased by 75%.
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James wasn't surprised by the harsh penalty, it was a God-rank challenge after all, if he didn't have the guts to take this challenge, then he didn't deserve to reach the apex of gods Domain in the first place.
And by the looks of the reward the penalty was well adjusted in his opinion, items from an Ancient treasure chest could go up to legendary, if we compared this to the failure penalty of something with similar rewards, such as an epic-legendary quest, then this is nothing.
James was already thinking about what he would get out of the ancient treasure chest, deep in thought he almost didn't notice the 1000 lords sprinting at him from a distance, all of them had way higher stats than him.
[Ogre (Lord) LVL 4]
2000/2000
All monsters had an absurdly high amount of HP for their level, and from the looks of it they all seemed to be at the Refinement Realm as well, it was safe to say that if James was still in the Domain Realm, he wouldn't stand a chance.
But that wasn't the case anymore, as soon as he saw them approaching he rushed forward, weaving between them and using the next enemy to block the previous one's attack, when he was around in the middle of the group he used [Lightning discharge].
-160
Around 50 of the lords were hit by that attack, and by the looks of it, they had a battle recovery, of 1% per 5 seconds. That was more healing than he could do damage with only his [Lightning discharge], so James thought of another strategy, he would use [Lightning discharge] and then choose 3-4 stunned ones to focus down.
This strategy worked even better than James thought, after learning their battle strategy he could take out 4-5 consistently every minute.
After 3 hours of this James felt a little tired, his physical body may have been perfectly fine due to the lack of stamina, but his mind still had to work overtime, especially for these Refinement Realm monsters, James couldn't even imagine any player clearing this. He, a beyond Domain Realm, grandmaster mental strength martial artist, was a little tired, someone below the mental strength Realm would have long fainted from the exhaustion.
But just when he noticed himself getting sloppy, the system notification rang again.
System: congratulation on killing 802 of the 1000 lords, your achievement is incredible and will be recorded in the books of history, for this amazing achievement you will be rewarded with an A+ grade. The rewards you will receive for this achievement will not only be the Ancient Treasures chest, 25 legacy skill points but also a Fragment-Legendary treasure chest or you can get a crystal to replace the second chest that will fully unlock the prize you will get out of the Ancient treasure chest, the choice is yours.
James looked at the 2 different choices floating before him, at first he was going to take the 1st option no matter what, he could unlock an item himself after all, but looking and feeling the crystal made it all complicated. It was filled with Eternal energy, more than he had ever seen in his life, he truly couldn't imagine where he would ever get that much by himself. So after another round of thinking James bid his lip, stretched out his arms, and took the second pile of items.
The second he did so his vision began to blur once again, after a few seconds of blackness there he was, standing in the same cave yet again, but this time with a couple of new items in his inventory.
James didn't dwell on it and immediately opened the chest, if he did this in the outside world he would attract too much attention, doing it here was already a big risk, not to mention out there.
When he opened the chest a blinding golden light covered its inside, James thought that this was due to the effect of the chest, but a second later when the same golden light rushed towards him and disappeared inside his body, his previous thought seem to be wrong. The following system message also gave him a big scare.
System: you have accepted the Legendary quest " Resurrection of the soul fire", this was done automatically due to the fact that the item [Wisp of soul fire] has attached itself to your soul.
Quest Details: the item [Wisp of soul fire] has attached itself to your soul, and it is slowly consuming it. The only way to make it stop is to tame it, you have to do this by feeding it mystical flames, if you fail to do so your soul will be consumed In 1 year.
Quest Rewards: fully merge and gain control over the [Tier ??] Mystical flame, soul fire, Tier depends on the quality of energy fed.
Quest Failure penalties: the destruction of the immortal soul.
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James couldn't believe his eyes, it was soul fire, actual soul fire, one of the most powerful mystical flames known in the greater gods' Domain.
James calmed himself down, there were variants of soul fire, one that could protect and mend the owner's soul, and the other that could burn other people's souls, the second one was generally seen as the stronger on, things that could damage a players soul where extremely rare after all, damaging someone's soul would mean that they couldn't log into the game for up to 30 days, and for lower Tier players it even meant account deletion. It also wasn't only good against players, if you fought while having your soul fire Active your attacks would get a huge boost, and any monster that got burned by it would slowly lose a percentage of their health, and be in incredible pain.
After he calmed himself down James thanked God that he chose the second option from the rewards. He could get a fragment-legendary item if he just put in some work, but this soul fire was going to be at least [Tier 6], something that he probably couldn't get even if he searched the greater gods' Domain for years.
James wanted to walk out of the cave to let Iron know he was going to be a bit longer, fusing with the soul fire wasn't done in 5 minutes, but then he noticed an ancient book lying in the chest, he hadn't seen it before due to the blinding light, but now that he did he was amazed. This was a skill book, but it looked way more powerful than any skill book he had ever seen. James didn't waste any time and inspected it.
[holy aura] (ultimate) (Active type skill)
Requirements: any weapon.
When activated a holy light will surround your weapon for 5 minutes, this aura will increase any normal attack by 200% and you will gain the ability to shoot arcs of holy light at opponents by swinging your weapon.
Cooldown: 1 hour
Not learnable by beings with an evil alignment.
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James had never heard of ultimate skill books, but if he was ever to describe one this one would be it, to have so much power at level 0, was insane. James learned it and walked outside to tell Iron forge he needed some more time.
After that was done, he went back into the cave and took out his crystal.