Ancient Tower, 24th Floor, inside a pub.
"Hey, did you guys hear? The Ravenclaw invited a group of Grandmaster and Lord ranks to raid the 40th floor," said a middle-aged man.
"I heard about that. Someone even said one of them was Lord Zein, that young genius who rose to the Lord rank from being a warrior 7 years ago."
"Damn, I've been awakened for 10 years now and am still at the Master rank!"
"He's a genius, after all."
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40th Floor, Shadow Continent.
Inside a dark castle sitting atop a rocky mountain. A group of 26 people are in a heated battle with humanoid monsters inside the massive hall.
"Healers! Heal the tanks! There's 10 more Lord-ranked shadow demons coming over, watch out!" Randy, the guild leader of the Ravenclaw was shouting at the top of his lungs while commanding his party members.
"Not good, three more grandmasters and two lords from our side has fallen!"
"Quick! Come help us here—Ugh!" one of the swordsmen shouted as he was hacked to death.
"Damn it! There are too many of them here, who the hell said a hundred of us would be enough?!" someone shouted with exhausted voice.
"More than half had already died even before we reached the last platform!" a Lord angrily said while killing monsters with a hint of regret on his face.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the hall. A young man kept slashing the monsters in front of him with almost no sign of exhaustion.
This is too much.
Nearly than a hundred commander ranked shadow demons had appeared on the third platform alone.
Will we encounter a higher ranked shadow demon on the last platform?
*roar**boom*
*boom*
Suddenly, he heard a roar and massive footsteps from behind him.
{[ Middle-stage, Lord Phuara]}
A giant wolf shadow beast, with shimmering deep black eyes was staring at him while one of its feet crushing a man's head.
Looking at it's arrogant face, Zein sighed.
"Forget it. I shouldn't hold back now." as he was done speaking, he mumbled, "Light Speed!"
"Lightning Blade!"
His speed suddenly increased twice as before and thick lightning energy manifested on his long sword.
{[ Light Speed: increase speed by 200%. ]}
{[ Lightning Blade: Coat your bladed weapon with thick lightning increasing damage by 15% and 3% chance to stun your target. ]}
Seeing this, the giant wolf howled releasing a gale mixed with dark energy towards Zein. However, before it reached him, Zein disappeared and moved under the giant wolf, which surprising it. It then started clawing at him. Zein didn't dodge, instead, he slashed with his long sword and struck the wolf's claw with it.
Although Zein was only an early stage Lord, his combat power is already powerful enough to contend with late stage Lords making the wolf's claw split in half and the remaining lightning energy hurled towards the giant wolf's neck, wounding it severely.
Many awakened had already seen him fighting the giant wolf, however they couldn't help him as they were also slowly getting surrounded.
Five more minutes, five more grandmasters had also fallen. There were only 12 Lords and 6 Grandmasters remaining from the initial 104-member raid party.
Although many of them had fallen. The number of the shadow beasts had also significantly decreased. After finishing the 4 other early stage Lord ranked shadow beasts, the others came to help Zein.
Just like this. One more minute and the giant wolf's body fell down.
{[ You have cleared the third platform! ]}
{[ You have only 1 more platform to clear to unlock the 40th floor! ]}
After reading the prompt, Randy counted the remaining members and asked the healers to heal the heavily injured first.
In this raid, Randy took with him 40 grandmasters and 7 lords from his guild making 48 in total including him, while the other 56 people are hired from the Mercenary guild.
Mercenary guild is one of the top 5 guilds in the Ancient tower with a member count of more than 6 million, more than a thousand of them were lord ranks and more than ten thousand of grandmasters behind.
In every floor, there are 3 to 5 regions, sometimes with only 1 region they need to clear before unlocking the floor.
So far, only floors 1, 10, 20, and 30 are the only floors with 1 region needing to clear, now, including the 40th floor.
Normally, before they raid a floor, they will send someone with an avatar ability to scout it first. However, the result is not always accurate and many high ranked monsters are intelligent enough to set up an ambush after a scout was discovered.
"Everyone, the information collected this time has too big of a change from the initial scout's information."
"On behalf of the Ravenclaw guild, I sincerely apologize to every one of you, as well as the fallen comrades!" Randy bowed deeply toward the members as he recognized his mistake.
However, not everyone was in the mood to accept this.
Especially those whose close friends were killed, but they also know that they can't do anything about it now, there's only so few of them left and there's still the last platform where the highest ranked demon beast resides.
Since there were no items that allowed them to stop the raid or exit the floor before clearing it, they know they're all set to die here if the last demon beast was ranked much higher than they can fight.
Since that's the case, instead of fighting and blaming each other, most of them chose to stay quiet and ignore Randy.
Some glared at him fiercely before looking away as well.
However, none of these was in Zein's mind right now. After clearing the platform of shadow demons, Zein used his remaining mana potions to recover after using his skills continuously this time.
After all, even if there were healers, they still need to prioritize those severely injured and need to rest before continuing to the next platform.
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After almost an hour of rest and recover. They all got ready with somewhat gloomy faces on them, unaware of what kind of shadow beast was waiting for them.
When they reached the last platform in the underground dungeon of the Dark Castle, the torches installed on the walls and the huge crystal chandelier hanging in the middle suddenly lit up.
On the other end of the dungeon, there was a huge throne.
Sitting on it was the giant humanoid shadow beast.
After a short concentration on its figure, they saw the name of the shadow beast.
{[ Late stage, King Veregor ]}
{[ Ruler of the Shadow Continent, the giant werewolf shadow beast. ]}
"What! A late stage King?!"
"And a werewolf at that! Are you kidding me!?"
"How could that be, the strongest we've fought so far was just a middle stage Lord giant wolf!"
Among them, Randy was the most shocked, being a leader of a top guild himself, and someone who had experienced fighting demon beasts in the early years of the emergence of the Ancient tower, he naturally saw so many werewolves before.
But most of them not even surpassing the Elite rank, and now, a late-stage King werewolf suddenly appeared?
"This should be the first time a werewolf appeared since we entered the Ancient tower, right?" Randy asked his friend while his voice slightly shaking.
"That's right, even I had only fought middle-stage warrior-ranked werewolves in the tutorial before, but those are already as strong as an early-stage elite-ranked goblin."
Agreeing with what he heard, Randy mumbled, "Fuck…"
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Zein looked at the giant werewolf sitting on its throne. Although he has a skill that could temporarily increase his combat power by leaps and bounds, he knew that at most, he could only fight with a late-stage Lord demon beast.
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"It seems this is where we stop, guys" Randy sighed.
"We can't possibly defeat this outrageous thing." he added.
"I promised my wife I will comeback as soon as I can… it looks impossible now." an old man recounted his words to his wife.
Randy heard everyone recalling their life and remembering their families outside the tower. As he turned to face the giant werewolf he saw Zein slowly walking towards it. Assuming that he had already given up on himself and was ready to die. Randy slowly shook his head as he remembered he was just like him a few seconds ago.
As Zein reached the center of the dungeon, the floor below him started revealing a blood red ancient-looking runic formation that slowly lifted up in the air.
He was startled as he never saw this happening before.
That's right. Ever since he awakened, when he fought the demon beasts around the tower, when he first stepped into the first floor or even when he cleared floors alongside other guilds.
This is the first time he had seen this magical thing.
No. Wait. I think I saw this before… that's right!
Those teleportation arrays from the anime's I've watched before!
However, it was too late now.
As he looked back, he saw that Randy and the others weren't moving as if time was frozen.
When he looked up at the giant werewolf, there was a wide grin on it's lips.
This bastard!
*crackling*
Suddenly, he heard the sound of something breaking. He looked around and saw that the space around him was being destroyed.
Then,
*boom*
His surrounding went dark.