Entering the game for the first time he is greeted with a screen that asks for various details for character creation. Firstly is the account name, then which category of character to play, Humanoid, demi-human, or heteromorphic. Then which race specifically to start out as. After that you get dumped in Midgard as the starting realm and left with a "welcome to Yggdrasil" and then everything is off to the races.
The early game was quite simple after choosing his character name as Typhon, and I obviously chose the heteromorphic category of monsters and started out with my first level in the angel race which is understandably a heteromorph.
The early game was quest after quest and filled with exploration and exploitation and it wasn't long until the first level 100 players started popping up. Unlike most MMO's Yggdrasil's leveling is quite fast and 5 levels are lost on death.
This system is in place to encourage players to constantly respec their builds and try new things so getting maxed level so fast wasn't surprising in the least.
In the end, I chose to go in an interesting direction for my build. It is a racial level heavy build with most of my level tied up in races. Firstly is the common [Angel] race which is part of the 3rd triad of the angel hierarchy, then I took levels in the uncommon [Powers] race from the 2nd triad of the hierarchy before finally taking my rare race of [ Seraphim empyrean] which I was surprised to learn is essentially a 6 winged holy/fire elemental.
This is of course in reference to seraphim translating to "burning ones" or "to burn". But that is only the end of the conventional line of the angelic hierarchy, there are dozens of others that simply are not widely known to the player base.
Such as the [Chayoth Ha Kadesh] one of the rarest angelic races I could get my hands on whose main ability is for a short duration copy into 3 additional clones of your exact build and they will basically act like allied NPC for the few seconds they are in existence, although they do not use any special abilities and only do basic attacks and defense. I am extremely interested in what this skill would do in the New World.
That is all well and good but I didn't buy 40 percent of this company and spend years gathering intel on how it works, just for a build that isn't shamelessly exploitative.
The real fun begins when I take another uncommon race, it was nothing fancy or even hard to get for most players, but one shouldn't be able to have it with the other races he has. This is of course the demon race.
You see, the prerequisites for [Demon} were simple, minimum of level 30 and a karma of -200 or lower. The devs intended the first 30 levels to be [lesser demon] to get the negative karma and then any common job at level 15 with 15 more levels in [lesser demon] (you can only level one race at a time so you cant have, for example, 7 levels in [lesser demon] then 6 levels in [demon] you need to max out whichever race you had first before you can level any other race).
And since Angelic races had to have positive Karma then naturally this should have not been possible. However, while looking over the shoulders of some of the devs while casually chatting with them about idle topics, I saw the code of how prerequisites are calculated.
And this opened the door to the demonic races as well, so naturally, I invested heavily into such an opportunity, grabbing the rare race [archdemon] as well as the much lesser-known [Prisoner of the 9th circle] (the implication of course being that satan is the prisoner of the 9th circle of hell). The special ability of this class is rather underwhelming from a visual standpoint but immensely useful, it simply freezes enemies in places for a few seconds.
It can be counter with proper resistance and immunity but it also deals a nonnegligible amount of unholy damage and ice/unholy resistance is a rare combo so most people who can't make custom armor to counter this end up in the tough spot of either taking the status effect or the damage.
By the time people started to realize what I did with my race, it was already too late. I have already sunk hundreds of hours into this game and their complaints to the dev about a player abusing a "bug" to get crazy race combos fell on unsympathetic ears.
They weren't going to just up and delete the progress made by one of their major shareholders, and largest investor because they didn't see a possible exploit that was abused. So instead they announced it as a "feature".
"Through ingenuity and discovery of our world anything can be achieved if one looks hard enough and such discoveries should be rewarded" was the now default response to such reports.
They even released new hybrid demon/angel races whose prerequisite is to hold various demon and angelic races at the same time. But pretty much no one knew how to get such a combo, and even the devs asked what exactly I exploited to get this build to work.
I, of course, avoided the question and so in the end nothing got fixed and I pretty much made the design team make a series of races that even I didn't plan on taking since I was already way too heavy in the racial side of things.
In the end, my avatar ended up as a tall man with long black hair, pale skin with 3 pairs of wings, so far what is expected of a seraphim. However, I also have much less angelic-looking horns, two of them both straight and sleek and black as well as a pair of black eyes with yellow irises and a slit pupil.
This was originally going to be my final appearance at least as far as my body is concerned until the day the devs officially made angel/demons a feature. Since stacking the immunities granted by each side would be too unbalanced and would be so good, that it would practically invalidate any other build in the competitive scene.
So as a compromise they allowed players who have these builds to switch between either having the defenses of one or the other but not both at the same time, However, to switch between them, requires about 10 seconds of not moving and disabling all active skills, so it can only be done outside of combat.
A consequence of this is that if you buy enough cash items for customization you can have some pretty interesting effects occur with your appearance. Such as inverting the colors of your wings, hair, horns, and eyes when using the defensive states of the demonic line. Which is something I am quite happy with.
As for the Job side of things, I respeced often and took many different classes from melee-based ones to magic, support, even crafting-based jobs. Although the crafting jobs didn't go too well since I had very few available job classes to dump in that particular discipline.
But it never really mattered. I do not plan on taking any conventional classes over to the new world when the time comes, such things such as archery, sniping, crafting, magic, and whatever else can be earned after I make it to the new world.
Right now I am in a video game and this is the only chance I will ever have to get classes that require me to be in a game, such as the world champion class, and world disaster. There are a few other classes that can only be earned from mechanics only present in the game, mostly by having high ranks on the leaderboards of various categories.
So with that plan in mind I only need to somehow find the ouroboros world item, win the annual world tournament to get my class, then wait until the guild base update since right now so early in the games lifespan players can only form clans like nines own goal, the precursor to ainz ooal gown.
I look to the virtual sky of Vanaheimr and sigh, "There is so much left to do." I mutter while some heteromorph Pkers disappear into motes of light around me.
"At least being a heteromorph gets me a consistent source of items" I mutter looking at the drops from the now-dead team of players. They didn't have anything particularly good on them, if they did then they wouldn't have been dealt with so quickly.
Disappointed I carry on, it is roughly 10 months into the game and I have been making good progress, I have scouted much of the 9 realms and obtained a few things on my get list.
The search for the ouroboros went well, and my request was quite underwhelming but critical for my post-Yggdrasil plans. Simply put there are various items in the game that can bank experience points usually cash shop items, they are most often used to cast spells that require XP to cast or to respec players who have recently died.
My request was simple to uncap how much XP one of these XP bank rings can hold and double whatever XP is put into it.
"So that's all you want to change? Really? Isn't that just a worst version of Avarice and Generosity without the benefits of getting immunity to other world items?" The dev who I am talking to asked.
"Yes that sounds good to me, exactly what I want" I replied.
"Look I can obviously see that you are trying to use this to make infinite XP by pouring in your XP having it doubled then reabsorbing the difference, and we are obviously going to patch that, this isn't as clever as whatever you did with the racial karma exploit. So are you sure this is what you wanna use ouroboros for?" The dev explains, obviously a lot more cautious than he needs to be.
"I'll have you know that I would never do such things, I am an upright individual who plays by the rules I never had intended to take advantage of such low hanging fruit like that." I, of course, very much so intended to take advantage of such low-hanging fruit like that.
But in the end, it doesn't matter, having a large bank of XP is essential even if I can't exploit it so simply, Perhaps I can take advantage of this item more at a later date.
"Fine if you really want to, lemme get to typing the code real quick, and then you will find it in your inventory when I'm done" and after that, the signature sound of a call ending filled the grasslands I was standing in.
Moments later I hear a slight ding and go check my inventory to see how they interpreted my request and found the ring which had the following description;
[ Once equipped this ring stores any amount of experience and doubles any incoming experience that is earned by the player, and can be used to cast XP based spells or a player can withdraw experience to level the wearer. Experience can not be deposited into the ring manually.]
"Hmm, fair enough, glad I got this so early in the game then."
I am sure the dev was confused on why I would even want this, there are many rare items and resources in the game, but XP is not one of them. Most players will spend most of their Yggdrasil careers pinned at level 100 and XP-based spells either don't take up much XP or are based on percentages and thus you would want as small of a capacity as possible.
It is an item that makes no sense unless you know you will somehow find your way into a remarkably underleveled environment where XP is scarce.
With that journey over, the only thing to look forward to is the tournament. I was genuinely looking forward to it too, it wasn't very stressful or particularly nerve-wracking to me, I knew that I had a strong build, I was surprisingly good at the game, and most importantly, I have spent nearly every waking hour since the day of release inside Yggdrasil and have over 4000 hours of experience of non-stop grinding, PVP, and dungeon diving.
I was almost disappointed when the tournament came to an end. Naturally, I was the winner by a respectable degree.
So much so everyone was calling me "the grand archangel king of the world the best player to have ever lived!"
. . .
I am of course joking, everyone called me try-hard and moved on. I got a few friend requests out of it and did move on myself after quickly respecting my limited job classes to now include the [World Champion] class and I was thus one of the 9 world champions in Yggdrasil.
Though sadly I did not get to face Touch Me as he competed in Alfheim while I competed in Vanaheim.
Additionally to the class all [World Champions] also get a special piece of equipment to the 9 winners, this is how Touch Me got his signature armor [Compliance with the law].
My reward was also a piece of armor called [Overbearance] and just like all the other world champion items it boasted of ridiculously high stats that rival guild weapons and the armor has a color scheme of a dull dark grey trim with bright silver primary color with golden engravings, gems, and cape.
The items themselves don't have any jaw-dropping abilities specific to them, since the class already has enough of those, it just simply has amazing stats all around, but can be edged out by super expensive guild weapons, or hyper-specialized equipment that are only good at a single trick and lack versitility.
It really is a beautiful piece of armor, and it is definitely becoming my go-to set of armor.
But thinking about the world champions it suddenly hits me. In the series, it was said that the world champion of muspellsheim used the [World Champion] class to somehow turn himself into a [world enemy] and grew strong enough that a 30 vs 1 of top-ranked players would have been considered a fair fight.
Eventually, he was hunted down and killed to the point of player deletion.
"He must have pissed off more than 30 people then" I joke to myself.
In any case, he must know something I don't, so I think it is time that I pay him a little visit to see if he could use a friend.
Finding him was not hard, Every world champion was well known and it didn't take me long to find him. He was at the entrance to the temple of the fallen sun god which is currently the best place to farm in this realm until the next update, and I figured someone as power-hungry as him would be in the most competitive locations.
The man goes by the name of Summas and he is pretty much what you would expect from the world champion of a place like Muspellsheim, a large demon with deep crimson skin, wings of fire, and 4 grand brown horns that adorn his head.
He was equipped with a plate mail set of armor decorated with various skulls, spikes, chains, and ripped robes,additionally, he was holding an impressive sword that has no tip but instead flares out at the end, on the blade itself a series of decorative and glowing runes shine brightly.
"Ah, another PKer, I'd tell you to stop but I could use the free loot" He jokes.
He then immediately rushes in and opens up with [Dimensional Slash] one of the hallmarks of the [World Champion] class, I myself am not terribly surprised and defend with [Dimensional Gap] another hallmark of the class, followed by my own slash.
Summas, showing that he was not a world champion for nothing, responds with his own [Dimensional Gap] and we lock eyes.
Before I can say anything at all, he swiftly disengages and goes for another swing, but using my off hand I get to him first and land a firm punch in his face. The attack itself does minimal damage but it was enough to interrupt his attack and make some space.
Finally, I get enough time to put some words in. " What? You never met anyone in this game that wasn't a PKer?" I sarcastically ask.
"Tsk, don't you know how heteromorphs get treated in this game?" He counters.
To that, I can raise my eyebrow in confusion, and I send him the appropriate emote that implies my confusion while wiggling my wings.
He apparently understands my non-vocal "are you serious?" and further explains.
"Don't act like you don't know what I mean. We Both know that Angels don't get half of the shit we other heteromorphs have to put up with."
Jeez, what is this guy some heteromorph supremacist? I am just here to ask about turning into a [World Disaster] and I somehow get dragged into this?
Whatever just get back on topic.
"Ah I suppose so, PKers are only occasional on my end." I agree just so we can get back to the matter at hand, and also because it is probably true.
"But say, the word on the street is you are up to good and are planning something big" I cryptically ask.
I am trying to be as vague as possible since there is no "word on the street" and this is simply a trivia fact I read about overlord in my first life.
"Is that really what they are saying? And what of it? You planning on Harassing me for something like this?" He definitely seems on the defensive now.
"No no no. I want in" To that he gives me the same raised eyebrow emote I gave him and follows with a;
"Do you even know what you are trying to get into?" he asks in mild disbelief and skepticism.
"No" I bluntly state the "truth."
"Care to fill me in on the details?" I ask.
"Hey man, information like this is valuable. I'm gonna need some…" he pauses and gestures with his fingers rubbing together. "Compensation" he finishes.
In Yggdrasil, most players have a wallet or account that has real money that can be accessed in-game so players can buy cash shop items and gacha items. This can also be used to send players money for items or whatever else they want. There are so few corporate laws for things like this anymore that such a system is allowed, and even sometimes exploited for real-life crimes like money laundering.
The devs don't care because every transaction has a fee, and the government and company bigwigs don't care because 9 out of 10 times they are the ones doing it.
I dramatically pause and pretend to think about the offer for a moment. I really don't care about the money and I will obviously buy the information at pretty much any price but I won't let him know that.
"What kind of price are we talking" with a false hesitation to my voice.
"Oh, I don't know, 1000 dollars?" He says with a sly voice.
This price is fine but if I agree too quickly he will just raise the price again so I play along.
"What exactly do you think you have that is worth 1000$!?" I asked with as much shock as I can manage without bursting out in laughter. I knew he wouldn't ask for a crazy high amount since the fact I am rich is not well known yet. But still, I probably made more than 1000 dollars in interest in the time it took us to have this conversation.
"It is something that will change everything, Easily be able to top any leaderboard" He genuinely does sound like a scammer right now but I know that what he has will change everything, and can definitely top any leaderboard. That last part is especially relevant, in the next update, among other things, the devs plan on giving out special classes to the top 3 players of every category of race. The top-ranked, human, elf, dwarf, beastman, lizardman, undead, angel, demon, etc. It has been all over the forums just right behind the announcement of player-made guild bases that is also coming out that update.
So of course everyone is scrabbling for power trying to get on top of those leaderboards.
I feign some reluctance and interest and respond "I can do 800".
"900" he instantly responds.
Now he is getting too cocky it is just information and he loses nothing from telling me, I know just how hard poverty has driven some people so I am confident he will give in if I keep insisting.
"Look 800 is all I have, if you want more I just don't have it" I originally planned to turn and walk away but I don't even take a step before I hear the words I am looking for.
"Fine 800!"
See? Was that so hard?
I pay the man 400 upfront and will pay the rest after and goes on to explain.
"So I found a World item right? The ability is it lets the user gain any racial level in the game as long as you got the XP for it. ANY. RACE. IN. THE. GAME., not just any playable race. So I am trying to get the World Enemy race. All I gotta do is a couple of Sacrifices about 50 players or so, then touch whatever race you wanna copy. Simple as that" He says.
I got to admit this sounds too good to be true, sure 50 people sound like a lot of enemies to make but this isn't real life, it is a game and PKing happens and no one holds grudges for too long, If I am smart about this I can get them easily as long as I don't kill from the same clan or allied clans too much, lone players would just take the loss and get back where they were and move on with a little bit of salt.
But something doesn't seem right.
"What's the catch?" I ask. If I know those shitty devs then there must be a catch.
"It's barely anything, you take a curse that slowly drains your max HP while in combat, but It is slow as hell and comes right back up after combat is finished." He pushes the pitch further. That honestly doesn't sound too good.
Don't get me wrong, In a game that sounds like small potatoes and if I only cared about the game I would take it in a heartbeat but I am preparing for the New World. And in the New world I would likely never take significant damage ever, but taking this would mean I would always have damage done just for entering combat, and all for power that is already overkill to just be more overkill. I don't like this at all.
And if that wasn't all, Summas continues " I've been doing my research on the World Enemies and it is definitely worth it, just check out this lore book I got from some side quest. 'World Enemies, being of such terrible and awesome power that their mere presence brings out the hatred and malice of every entity that it crosses paths with, capable of…'"
Summas Goes on to read more about their lore, capabilities, and his theorized stats and abilities he extrapolated from how they are described in the book.
But I nearly immediately tune out, this is definitely not for me.
That stuff might just be lore right now but it will become very real as soon as I cross over, and it will bring nothing but complications for power I already have in spades.
I wait for the man to stop before shaking my head and saying "ah, I see so that is what I wanted to get into. Now thinking about it, I don't think Imma go for something like that." I pay the man the rest of what he is owed and walk away.
How disappointing I think to myself while walking away.
But suddenly I see something very familiar and horrifically bad. From the corner of my eye, I see the world fragmenting as if there is a wall of crystal clear windows in front of the tip of Summas' sword which is point towards me.
I recognize that since I have the same skill, [World Break] the most powerful skill for a [World champion].
I try to prepare best I can but the most I can do during the incredibly short cast time is minimize my silhouette and cast [Dimensional Gap], and not a moment too soon, as the wall of reality-warping glass shatters and a bonafide lightning storm of reality slashes is unleashed by the dozen in a fraction of a second. I am able to brave the worst of it but I still take a nonnegligible amount of damage.
"What the hell!" I shout.
"What? I gotta charge up this thing somehow" he says while waving a stone tablet in his hand, which is presumably the world item he was referring to.
What a prick, I can definitely see why so many people joined up to PK him into oblivion. My response was instant.
[Gaze of Thrones] a spell that is a reference to a member of the first triad of angels, the thrones, which are a series of winged interlocked rings covered in eyes. Usually, when an angel starts his conversation with "be not afraid" in the bible, it is probably a throne.
The spell itself is something all first triad angels get, and on each feather of the player's wing a copy of the player's eye opens and allows "sight" 360 degrees around the player, which in the game is just modeled as a marker for where the enemies are and greatly improves senses, but more relevantly it also greatly increases the effect of gazing type abilities as well as turning them into AOE abilities if they weren't already.
Abilities that this effect, include, a vampire's charm and dominance, petrifying gaze, intimidation, and anything else that uses eyes to target; Like the skill that is just about to ruin this poor ignorant bastard's day.
[Aperture to the soul] Suddenly I extend my wings as wide as they can go and black dots soon form in the middle of the feathers, each with their very own yellow iris, and immediately after each eye bursts holy rays of light and fire, scorching everything from stone to dumbasses, nothing is left unscathed.
I follow up with a [Dimensional Slash] hoping to get him off guard after the blinding light and manage to get a good hit in, forcing him to create distance and down a health potion.
So although after the exchange he recovered all the health he lost from that attack, he still needs to wait 1 minute before he can use another potion which gives me a 1-minute window to go for a kill.
I dash in trying to close the distance, but apparently, Summas still needs a second to orientate himself as he sends a torrent of flame from his own wings.
Me, unwilling to stop my momentum, continue on, casting my ability given to me from my [prisoner of the 9th circle] race called [Glacial requiem] and an equally vicious torrent of Ice spews forth.
Quickly running through the resulting cloud of mist I am met with a [Dimensional Slash] already on its way. And without missing a stride I dismiss it with a [Dimensional gap].
And as if that was expected the sword of Summas is right behind it already following up his attack. [Dimensional Gap] is on cooldown so that is not an option, but I can manage just fine without abusing my [World champion] Class for 5 seconds so I go for a good ole reliable parry which I assumed would be easy enough.
A quick note about my sword, while it is by no mean an invaluable treasure, it is not even a divine class item. But it is still a top-tier legendary item with nothing but respectable stats and abilities.
So imagine my surprise when I look to find Summas' Sword cutting clean through my reliable top-tier legendary Sword, then continue through and nick my armor.
He didn't manage to land a good hit because I realized that my sword was failing me before it got all the way through but still. To leave a scratch on [World Champion] Armor can only mean one thing. That the sword of his was his prize for winning the tournament.
I immediately grab whatever else I can find in my inventory as a quick replacement and bait out his own [dimensional gap]. Then using the [Glacial requiem] Once more I manage to get a second of him staying still enough to try to finish things off with [World Break].
I expected him to die, but much to my frustration A beam from the sky came down and in a shower of rainbow-colored light took Summas away, leaving me with just a broken sword, $800 dollars out of pocket, and no-kill.
"Did this prick just summon the fucking Bifrost?!" I exclaim in exacerbation.
What utter bullshit is this? To have such a convenient method of escape. Either some cash shop item or even a world item perhaps? Why does he have 2 world items barely 14 months into the game? How does he have more world items than me? I barely have a few pieces of Divine equipment, Have I really been distracted by grinding data crystals and rare levels?
These are all questions for another time, I need to get a new sword. What a pain.
I came here with the intention of joining him, but it looks like ill be the one leading the hunt for him when the time comes. How Ironic.
Looking around I see an imp staring at me.
"The fuck are you looking at?" I Smite the poor bastard, then [gate] away.
I will have another chance to fight him soon. The tournament between the 9 world champions is near. But first I need a sword... And an extra backup sword.
I Wouldn't have to wait long for my rematch, however, and in the blink of an eye, it is the big day. And luckily I do get matched up with Summas.
But the fight is uneventful, just a standard high-level fight between two highly optimized builds albeit one decisively thrashing the other.
For those who follow the competitive Yggdrasil scene, it comes to no one's surprise that Summas got thrashed, as well as every other world champion. The champion from Jotunheim was the person who originally won and I can see that he was, by all means, a highly competent opponent, but in the end, the final rankings got shifted down one place from the original place.
After the tournament, many of the spectators left, while a few of the Champions stayed around to talk. One of them came and approached me with an offer that I was quite surprised.
He was a user with the name "Holierthanthou" the champion of Asgard and he wanted to tell me about his plan for after the guild update. He wanted to make a full guild of angel-only players and he asked me to come be his right-hand man.
Wait, don't tell me, doesn't this sound a lot like the seraphim guild? It's not a bad deal, seraphim ended up being one of the top guilds if not the top guild in Yggdrasil in the overlord series.
"So, what do you think?" he asks after finishing his pitch.
If I was a normal player I would absolutely join up. But of course, I had other plans for when the guild update comes out.
I politely decline stating that I also wanted to try having my own guild and he understood, as the days were getting closer and more features of what guilds could do were being released, more people have been itching to get their own guilds started up as soon as possible.
Soon enough even the competitors were dispersing, but I managed to catch who I was looking for before he had left.
"Touch-me!" I called out, he turned his head and I waved him over to where I and Holierthanthou were standing.
"Typhon, I don't believe we met, but I've heard a lot about you," he says.
"As have I, nines own goal and its leader have been having some good luck these days in the Muspelheim raids so I hear," I respond.
"haha, yes we have, it's been pretty good for the most part," he responds.
"Except for the PKing that's been happening over there right?" Holierthanthou chimes in.
"Yea, I don't see the point of it, Summas doesn't even need the items or XP" Touch-Me states in exasperation. As someone who believes in good, law, order, and overall doing the right thing he simply can't get why Summas is going out of his way to PK so much.
"Actually that's what I wanted to talk to guys about," I say catching both of their attention.
I look around the room to make sure that Summas has left, then continue my explanation.
"Word is that he got a world item that with enough player kills can get levels in any race, he is planning to use it to get the race of a world enemy."
If they were not miffed enough about having their clans, and raids disrupted by Summas, they definitely are now.
Both of their clans as well as many others have been being PKed by Summas so hearing that it's probably gonna get worse if this is left to continue, was just the cherry on top.
Needless to say, the immediate meeting between me, all of nine's own goal, and Holierthanthou's clan was a surprise to nobody who had to deal with the rampages of Summas.
Maps, spreadsheets, and battle plans were immediately drawn up and ambushes planned.
Even a few probing attacks were sent, equipped with recording items to analyze after the fact with everyone inputting their thoughts and potential countermeasures and one thing became apparent.
He is one slippery bastard.
Despite being a [World champion] he is not a god, so a scouting team that was sent his way with 4 heavily min-maxed assassins, and archers, including Paroronchino, and Nishikienrai actually managed to get him on the back ropes and was even in the position to kill him completely but just like my battle a beam of rainbow-colored light came down and beamed him away. Despite the team taking measures against such items and spells like [Dimensional lock].
From that battle, it became clear that he holds not just 1 but 2 world items.
Seriously, are these supposed to be rare? They don't just grow on trees. After this, I definitely need to pick up my game and get my collection of items in order.
In any case, two solutions presented themselves. One, it can be reasonably assumed that this time, world item or not, likely has a daily limit, and thus we could hunt him down many times a day hoping to drain his charges of jumps.
Or alternatively, A world item of our own that can counter such teleportation.
Luckily, such an item exists. Even better, I know who has it.
"I might have something to help with that," Touch-Me explains.
Then in a flash of light, the scroll known as [Depiction of nature and society] appeared in the hands of Touch-Me.
He then followed explaining very vaguely what it did but assured us it will disrupt his escape.
With that, the plans were finalized and the hunt went from the planning phase to the setup phase.
Equipment that was custom made or bought to counter his abilities, potions of various effects, and one last lesson in tactics courtesy of Punitto Moe were all taken care of and we set off to Muspelheim.
There we saw the worst-case scenario. We were too late.
Standing at what must have been at least 14 feet with gnarled horns adorning his very monstrous-looking head. On his back, huge wings and tendrils of fire can be seen flailing about.
He succeeded.
He got the race he was looking for.
And I couldn't be any more excited.
The Scroll of [Depiction of Nature and Society] was the opening move, the archers and snipers coordinated with the high-speed crit based assassins and simultaneously 6 devastating blows were scored against the dumbfounded beast before he turned with a quickness that would normally unassociated with a creature of such stature, and a heavy strike empowered by flames insta killed one of the lightly armored assassins while the other 2 only made it out because of their specially optimized gear that was tailor made for this very battle.
And thus began one of the greatest battles that no one knew ever happened. With the assassins coming back to the mages raring to go for another sorting in the back rank, the front line fighters consisting of me, Touch-Me, Holierthanthou, and 2 other spearmen from the seraphim clan, finally made it within attacking range.
Me and Holierthanthou, drop back for a few seconds, while Touch-Me and the 2 feathery spearmen bait out his dimensional gap. As soon as they do be simultaneously cast the goto seraphim combo [Gaze of Thrones] and [Aperture of the soul]. The resulting damage would usually be more than enough to kill high-level demon players, but they don't call them [World Enemies] for nothing and through the blinding light and searing sounds of his skin, a similar fist of flames comes careening down towards Touch-Me.
Taking advantage of dimensional gap, the same attack that killed an assassin and injured 3 more, did nothing more than a step back from knockback and superficial damage to the insectoid [World champion].
And on cue just as Summas is getting into the groove of things, the situation changed once again, in the Mid ranks between the healers and archers of the back and melee fighters in the front, summoners such as Momonga, and various angels complete their respective spells, and a new wave of high tier undead and angels come storming down on the demon.
Not only does this add more mental pressure on Summas constantly switching between targets he also has to contend with the sheer information overload of having so many things coming his way.
I of course add to this with my [Chayoth Ha Kadesh] ability [Divine Cohort] And 4 summons who are copies of me also join the fray for the 40 seconds they are allotted in this world.
Even worst still is the now freed up summoners are currently using their time slinging spells, casting buffs, debuffs, and minor heals, just in time for the second sortie of the assassins to come back again.
All of this, was nearly ruined by an AOE spell by Summas, his uselessly flailing fire tendrils were apparently more than just cosmetic as they suddenly twirled around ripping apart all but the highest of summoned creatures and he took to the skies and began raining down meteors, which scattered the unprepared or those unable to fly. 2 more assassins, a mage, and 2 of the warriors with us on the front line were caught up in it and were no longer able to fight.
Taking our time now, reforming, and getting his wings with a [Glacial Requiem] he falls from the sky and is stunned for just long enough to take 3 simultaneous [World Break]s, and 2 [Fallen Down] super tier spells that Momonga and Ulbert have been casting for some time now.
But even still [Summas has some life in him, and it took another minute of attacks before he finally fell and the [Depiction of Nature and Society] was dispersed.
"What a hell of a battle" I hear Touch-Me say, he is usually not one for profanity so his use of it really showcases the sheer absurdity that was this fight.
It took 3 [World Champions] along with 2 top-tier clans several minutes with tailor-made equipment to kill a single player.
"That's definitely one way to put it" I responded while walking towards the item he dropped.
Picking it up I see that it is an ornate golden necklace with a slightly blue-tinted crystal that has streaks of Rainbow light glowing in the gem.
"Oh that unlucky bastard," I say as I look at the item card.
[Shard of the bifrost] - 9 times a day instant unblockable teleportation as long as the sky is overhead.
I chuckle in my heart, every player drops an item upon death but post players fill their inventory with just as much junk as they do useful items so the chances of having critical items lost is minimized. But to lose the life-saving world item in the first bout. He must have angered fate itself too while he was at it for this to happen.
"In any case," I say bring back the attention to me.
"We are not done. 19 more times" I announce, as a murmur of chuckles come from the remaining players.
Every time a player dies they lose 5 levels, if you are level 5 or less then you simply go below level 0 and you are basically forced to go back to the character creation menu as well as losing your inventory.
We are going to hunt him to oblivion.
It took a few weeks and 22 hunts as he regained levels in the time we were searching for him, but after the first loss, his power was in general decline as we took less and less time and casualties to defeat him.
2 weeks later the 3 of us were on top of a mountain, just me with Touch-me and Holierthanthou. If people saw the 3 highest-ranked players standing over the motes of light that were once a level 4 player they would scream out in the sheer absurdity of that amount of overkill but in our defense.
He was a bit of a prick.
We each look to the setting sun and sigh.
"So what are you guys going to be doing after the update? Setting up your guilds?" I ask.
"Mmm, We are disbanding the clan as soon as guilds are available and going back to Asgard to look for a proper base." says the feathered one.
"We are going to look around the 9 realms, we aren't exactly gonna be choosy with where we end up, though I haven't told everyone that we are disbanding tomorrow." comes Touch-Me's response.
"What about you Typhon?" Touch-Me asks.
"Vanaheim" I curtly reply, I have been looking over the shoulders of the devs and already saw the highest level dungeon in Vanaheim and where it is, I am confident I will be able to solo it first run since the most difficult parts of it will be the surprise traps that are mostly moot if you know about them ahead of time and the algorithm to determine where the "random" traps spawn.
"Then it looks like we will part ways for now. We got to meet up later when we have our guilds established," says Holierthanthou.
"Indeed" I responded.
With that, both of them log off for the day, and with one look back at the setting sun, I join them.
When I wake up tomorrow, I will have nothing but work ahead of me to establish the largest institution of wealth knowledge, and power this game will ever see.
And with that, I log out.