Kim looked through the contract and nodded. "Do you have any form of identification we can use? If possible, your hunter id," she said.
"Oh, right. Here you go," Ning said as he pulled the id card from his storage.
Kim looked at his pulling it out form his storage and couldn't help but ask. "Is that your system or because you are now an apostles of the 5 gods?"
"It's… a secret," Ning said with a smile. "You can ask your god for the answers though."
The girl didn't say anything. Bothering her god for something like this was an easy way to get your powers taken away.
"Alright, since we are done here, I will be leaving," Ning said. "When is the next dungeon run for me?"
"I will let you know," Kim said.
"Good, here's my number. You can call me anytime." Ning left the number that could reach him and walked out of the room. He left as quickly as he came, giving Kim a feeling that everything that had happened just now was an illusion.
Ning went over to find Hi-Ah in a meeting where they made plans on how to take down a dungeon. The person at the front was teaching all sorts of things about the dungeons and the monsters they were going to be facing soon.
He waited for part of the explanations to be over before calling Hi-Ah outside.
"Come to this place tonight instead of going home," he told her as he handed a small piece of paper.
"What's… this?" she looked at the location on the paper. It was at least 10 kilometers away from her house, so she was slightly confused.
"You'll find out when you go there," he said. "Bring your brother too. I've already told Uncle."
Hi-Ah was even more confused now, but she still nodded.
After that was over with, Ning left the building, going directly back to Ely and the others.
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He appeared in the air and looked down at the flat land that had nothing on it. Not even a single extra pebble.
"Wow!" Ning couldn't help but say. "You all did an amazing job."
"It's nothing," Blue said with a proud look on his face. He was incredibly happy with his master's words.
"Master, are you going to make a dungeon here or a cave? Make something big, okay? You should keep all your treasures there," Sorlus said.
"I'm making no such thing," Ning said. "It's just going to be a… well, I was going to say a normal house, but it's not going to be normal at all."
"Well, whatever you make, make it great," Saphandra said. "If possible, I want my own room."
"Every one is going to get their own room," Ning said. "There's going to be more than enough of it."
"So, when do we get started?" Ely asked. "How do you even start?"
"For starters, bring out the artifacts you have prepared," Ning said.
Ely quickly brought out all the artifacts that she had given him a list of before. Ning looked at the pile of artifacts and nodded.
"These are all, right? Or do you have something else that you haven't finished making?" he asked.
"No, this is all," she said.
"Good, now step back," Ning said.
Everyone stepped away for Ning to do his thing. Ning looked at the artifact and then his blueprint and closed his eyes.
Blue, Night, Sorlus, and Saphandra waited for Ning to do something. The land was probably going to rise, bricks were going to appear and start being placed around on their own.
They knew about his system and so they were ready to see something that even an Immortal like them wouldn't have normally seen.
Even Ely was a little excited.
"Do it!" Ning said.
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Instantly, a bright light appeared in front of them and the air in the area was pushed out from something. The light lasted barely a second at most, and when it was gone, in its place, a house had appeared.
They all looked at the four-story tall building in front of them and asked, "that's it?"
Ning looked at them curiously. "What else did you want?" he asked.
"I don't know," Saphandra said. "A bit more of a spectacle than just… this."
"I was ready to watch it being made like the work of a master craftsman," Blue said. "Having it appear suddenly… it's not very fun."
"Why do you need fun?" Ning asked. "It's a house, it's our house. Be more excited, or I'm going to take away your rooms."
"Master this is amazing," Sorlus said suddenly.
"Yes, yes, this is fantastic," Blue quickly nodded. "He's saying something right for the first time, master."
"I quite like this too," Night said. "Although… never mind."
"Let's go see the inside quickly," Saphandra said before anyone else.
"Yes, let's go see what it's like inside," Ely said. "He's been keeping the design a secret from me too, so I'm very curious how it came out to be."
There was no gate to the house, just a few sets of steps that directly led to the front door. The entire house was mostly white in color, and the chocolate-colored door gave the perfect contrast.
The front door led to an open space where the main stairs of the house were located. Taking the stairs led one to the upper floors, each of which had 6 rooms in total, all of which were bedrooms.
The lower floor had open rooms with no doors and that was where the living room, the kitchen, and the dining area were located.
Everyone looked around in awe as they went through the rooms on the lower floors. Then, when they learned that their rooms were on the upper floor, they went there too.
Sorlus and Saphandra were especially happy to find out that each of their rooms had a TV of their own that they could watch whenever they wanted to.
Ning showed Ely the rest of the house, including the underground space that he was going to have to immediately use.
"There are still a few more things left to add," he said. "But at the very least, this is now our house."
Hi-Ah and Jung-Hee arrived by the gate and were a little surprised. Hi-Ah took her phone and was about to call Ning, but before she did, the gate opened and a voice spoke through a speaker.
"Come in!"
Hearing Ning's voice, they drove in.
The two siblings were immediately surprised to see the massive trees on either side of the freshly paved road that led to the mansion at the end of the pathway.
Hi-Ah parked the card towards the left and the two of them walked out with awe on their face.
Ning hadn't explained properly where they had to go, so she wasn't expecting much. However, even if she would have expected something, this would not have been it.
The door opened and Ning walked out. "You're finally here. So late," he said.
"Sorry, the dungeon run took a bit longer than we planned," Jung-Hee said with an absent look on his face. "Brother… is this a hotel or something? Or maybe a place you rented?"
"No, it's neither of those things," Ning said as he turned around. "I own this place."
The two siblings looked at each other and back at Ning.
"No way!"
"You're kidding, right?"
Ning chuckled. "Do you think I can't own such a place?" he asked.
"Wait, seriously?" Jung-Hee asked. "You come back one day and you own such a massive mansion?"
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"Why not?" Ning asked. "What's the use of having so much money if I can't even do such a thing."
"That's right," Jung-Hee said. "Let's go in! I want to see the house."
Ning let in the excited siblings and gave them a tour of the house. Their voice echoes through the hallways and rooms as they made their way everywhere.
"You need to buy some furniture, brother. It's too… empty without it," Jung-Hee said.
"No need to hurry," Ning said. "We only just got the house. Everything else will come in due time."
Ely walked out of the kitchen with a ladle in her hands. "Ah, you two are here," she said. "You must be hungry. Come, I've created an excellent meal for you two."
"Oh, yes. I'm very hungry, sister-in-law," Jung-Hee said and went on ahead.
Hi-Ah walked with Ning and walked into the kitchen as well. She smelled the food that was being cooked and couldn't help but think that this was the best smell she had ever smelled in her life.
"What… exactly are you cooking, sister-in-law?" she asked.
Ely thought of answering but decided not to. "It's a sort of curry," she said. "A curry of what exactly? That you will have to find on your own."
The two siblings fortunately weren't weirded out by the lack of information and waited for the food to be served.
Ely handed them a hefty serving of the curry she was cooking and put some for herself and Ning as well.
They sat down to eat and both she and Ning kept a close eye on the two siblings.
Jung-Hee was the first one to dig his spoon into the food and take a bite of it. He was a little hesitant when the food entered his mouth, but when the taste settled in, his eyes went wide.
"Holy Shit! This is good!" he shouted all of a sudden. The curry had a burst of flavor that he had never experienced before. The bits in the curry had practically melted on his tongue so all he tasted was the smooth texture and flavor, and that was amazing.
He dug in once more and seeing that Hi-Ah got curious as well. She too took a spoonful of curry and ate it. As soon as she did, her eyes went wide with surprise as well. "Holy crap, he wasn't lying," she said softly. After that, the two of them didn't stop for a single second as they ate everything.
Ning and Ely smiled as they watched the two eat. While they did, the two of them ate as well.
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Jung-Hee finished in record time as well. "Sister-in-law, can I get some more?" he asked.
Ely smiled, however, she shook her head. "You shouldn't eat any more than that," she said.
Jung-Hee was surprised. He wasn't expecting to be refused for seconds.
"Listen to your sister-in-law, Jung-Hee. This is not a food you can eat too much of," Ning said. 'At least, not yet.'
"Aww, but this tastes so good," he said.
Ning smiled. "Just wait a few minutes, you will feel awful soon," he said.
"Huh?" Jung-Hee was surprised. "What… do you mean?"
Ely quickly finished her meal and placed her bowl in the sink. He walked by Hi-Ah who was just sitting there with a confused look on her face and tapped her on the shoulders.
"Come on, you don't want to be here when it starts," Ely said.
Hi-Ah was confused. "Uhh... when what starts?" she asked.
Ely gave her a wide smile. "Your breakthrough."
Ning took his younger cousin to one of the bathrooms on the upper floor and made it sit in the bathtub while he filled it with water.
"You will start feeling a bit of pain soon, prickly pain. Endure it," Ning said. "At the same time, your body will also produce a lot of filth. It's normal, so don't get scared."
"What is happening, brother?" Jung-Hee asked. He couldn't help but be worried. Everyone was being so suspicious after all.
"Don't worry, your body is accepting Qi, so this is normal," Ning said.
In the end, Jung-Hee got into the bathtub as told. Soon, he started grunting in pain and complaining, but it wasn't as bad as Ning was expecting it to be.
"I see," he thought. "Their body is already enhanced with mana, so this bit of Qi won't really hurt them much at all."
Jung-Hee was surprised when the black, gooey filth fell out of his body and made the water murky. However, the slight pain he did feel wasn't enough to make him cry out.
It took exactly 30 minutes for it all to be over, and when it was, both Jung-Hee and Hi-Ah had now become cultivators.
What is going on with me?" Hi-Ah asked, walking out into the living room in her fresh clothes. "I feel… weird."
"He says we are now a… what was it? Cultivator?" Jung-Hee asked.
"Don't worry, I will explain it all," Ning said. "Sit down."
The two siblings sat on the couch in the brightly lit room and listened to everything Ning explained.
Their eyes went wide in shock many times and many times their mouth opened as they finally understood many things that had confused them at first.
"So anyone who uses Mana is a mage, and anyone who used Qi is a cultivator?" Jung-Hee asked.
"In a sense, yes. But those are just names, and you can call whoever, whatever you want," Ning said. "All you need to remember is that Qi is usually better than Mana."
"Why usually?" Hi-Ah asked. "Why not always?"
"Well, in instances like Earth where there is both Qi and Mana, the amount of mana is far too much in comparison to Qi, so in this instance, cultivating mana would be better," he said. "However, what is best is growing stronger using both. Which is why I decided to turn you two into cultivators."
"So… I will be stronger now?" Jung-Hee asked. "I can get strong like you, brother?"
"Don't expect to get strong like me," Ning said. "But you can get strong like her."
The two turned to Ely and looked at her in surprise. "Sister-in-law is strong?" they asked.
"She's the strongest human on earth right now," Ning said. "Maybe even the entire galaxy."
"Even compared to you?" Hi-Ah asked.
"Of course not," Ning said. He wasn't a human after all. "Anyway, I will give you some information to learn about cultivation, do so in your free time. For now, I have something else you will need to do."
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"What is it?" Jung-Hee asked. He wondered if there was something else they were going to learn about besides Qi today.
"Just follow me," Ning said and continued walking.
Sorlus walked down the stairs and arrived in front of them. "You called, master?" he asked.
"Yes, come with me," Ning said and took him along as well.
Hi-Ah and Jung-Hee were surprised when Ning took them down the stairs. They hadn't expected to go to the underground space just yet.
The entire underground space was dark, but the moment they walked in, it glowed bright instantly. There were no bulbs lighting up the place, but rather artifacts attached to the ceiling that used energy from the sun during the day. However, neither of the siblings noticed it at all.
Instead, they saw the massive underground space that was far wider than they were expecting it to be.
"What is this place?" Hi-Ah asked. "It's very unsettling for some reason."
"Ah, don't mind the open space for now. I plan on having a few magic circles built in here. For now, go into that room," he said.
They turned to their right to see a door alongside the wall. They weren't expecting that to be a room at all.
When they opened the door, the light kicked back in and they saw nearly a dozen different bunk beds in the room, set up in a row like this was some hospital ward or an army camp.
"What is this place?" Hi-Ah asked. "This is definitely creepy."
Ning didn't say anything and just jumped onto one of the beds. "You all sleep too," he said.
They looked around for a bit and slowly got onto the bed and stared at either the other bed on top of them or the ceiling.
"What now?" Jung-Hee asked.
Suddenly, the bed or ceiling over them opened up and something dropped, scaring some of them.
"Holy crap, that scared me," Hi-Ah said. "What is this now?"
The thing that had fallen was a sort of helmet attached to a bunch of wires at the top.
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"Wear it and close your eyes," Ning told them. He did as he said and wore one over him as well.
There was no point in refusing, so everyone wore it and closed their eyes. One moment, they were wondering what was supposed to be happening, and the next, they felt a cool breeze on their face in a grassland that was on a cliff next to the ocean.
"What the fuck!" Jung-Hee shouted all of a sudden. "What the hell is this, brother?"
"Where the hell are we?" Hi-Ah shouted.
Ning chuckled a bit for a few seconds as he watched the two siblings freak out a bit. Even Ely was having a bit of fun.
Sorlus looked around, not understanding what was going on. However, he did manage to realize something.
"Something is wrong," he said. "This world… it's weird."
"It is," Ning said. "That's because this a fake world."
"A… what?" Jung-Hee asked. "What do you mean fake?"
"Have you heard of VR games?" Ning asked.
"I… have," the young man said as he looked around the world a bit. "No way! Is this a digital space? It looks so real though."
"It's because I meant it to be that way," he said.
"Is this a game?" Hi-Ah asked. "Are we supposed to be playing something right now?"
"No, this is not a game," Ning said. "This is a training space. Something I created just for the two of you so you can grow as a fighter."
"A… training space?" Jung-Hee asked curiously.
"Yes," Ning said. "Since this is a fake world, you can fight to your heart's content without worrying about death. I have made sure to have the system copy everything from your physical capabilities to your mana and Qi amount. Even your spells will only be the ones you can use outside."
"So, this is just normal training?" Hi-Ah asked. "We do that in the guild every day."
"Yes, but your guild can't teach you what I can here," Ning said. "So, let's start your training, shall we?"
"And for your first opponent, you will have to fight Sorlus."
We are… going to fight Sorlus?" Hi-Ah asked with a surprised look on her face. She wasn't expecting to have to fight with the 12-year-old-looking kid as part of her training today.
Jung-Hee was a little hesitant as well. Both of them knew that Sorlus was a strong dragon, but he was always in his human form, so they couldn't help but see him as a young brother to them.
Fighting such a young man was not something they were expecting to have to do today, or if ever at all.
"Not really fight, no," Ning said. "With the power difference, there won't be much of a fight at all. What you're going to do is die today."
Hi-Ah and Jung-Hee paused a little. "Sorry?" they asked.
"You heard me right," Ning said. "You two do not know the extent of the terror the monsters in the upper-tier dungeon can hold. So, today you will find out."
He then turned around to Sorlus and said, "Revert back to your dragon form and kill them."
The two siblings were immediately on guard when they heard that and looked toward Sorlus, ready to fight him.
"Are you sure, master?" he asked.
"Don't worry, this is not the real world, so they won't die even if you kill them," said.
"In that case, understood!"
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Suddenly, the little boy shined in a bright blue light as his body got larger. Scales appeared all over him and his hands and fingers turned into talons. A tail and two wings grew out of his back while the rest of his body turned blue.
When his face changed to that of a draconic beast, his dragon body was finally in view for the two siblings and Ely to see.
Let alone the two weak humans, even Ely was surprised by Sorlus' size.
Sorlus wasted no time and opened his mouth as he spewed out water from it. The water came out so fast that it ripped the two siblings to shreds in an instant, killing them despite their defenses.
They had no chance of survival against a Sorlus that was ready to kill. When the burst of water disappeared, the two of them were gone.
Ning waited for a few seconds and the two appeared in a bright light. However, compared to before they weren't standing at all. They were crouched on the floor, shivering in fear as the pain from dying filled them with dread they didn't even know they could feel.
Ning walked over to them and pat them over a couple of times to assure them that they were alright. "So, how did dying feel?" he asked.
Hi-Ah tried to answer, but she couldn't find the will or the ability to speak at all. The best she could voice was the clattering of her teeth.
Ning gave a warm blanket to comfort his two cousins and waited until they could finally speak.
It took a few minutes, but Jung-Hee was the first to speak again. "W-why d-did you kill us?" he asked. Hi-Ah looked at Ning for an answer as well.
"As I said, you need to know how terrifying the higher-tier monsters are and how easily you can die if you don't pay any attention," Ning said.
"B-but why did you make us feel the pain of dying? It hurts so bad," Hi-Ah said.
"Well, there's no point to this if you don't feel the pain," Ning said. "Only by feeling this pain will your body learn to avoid such a thing again."
"While I'm trying to teach you how scary these beasts can be, what I'm ultimately trying to teach you is fear," Ning said.
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"Fear? F-fear of what? Death or the monsters?" Hi-Ah asked.
Ning shook his head. "I'm trying to teach you to fear fear itself," he said. "You're now a cultivator and very soon you will be an SS-ranked mage. Your power will grow to such an extreme height in such a small period of time that it is impossible for either of you to not overestimate yourself."
"So, for the next however many days it takes, you will train here to try and understand just how weak you are and how no matter how strong you get, you will die every time you have to fight the beasts from those stronger dungeons," Ning said.
The two siblings took a deep breath. "D-do we have to die e-each time?" Hi-Ah asked.
"Of course," Ning said. "How else will you learn the severity of the difference in strength between you and the others?"
"T-this is a virtual world right?" Jung-Hee asked. "Can we at least not feel pain? There should be a setting for that."
"I can remove all pain," Ning said. "But I will keep it all. Besides, it's set at a capacity where you will barely remain sane. If you were to truly feel the pain of dying, you will go mad. To die over and over and over and to still retain your sanity, only a madman could do such a thing."
"Why do we have to feel pain?" Jung-Hee complained. "We know we will die, is that not enough?"
"Is it enough?" Ning asked. "If you don't feel the pain, then will dying have any effect on you? Will you be sitting here, unable to move just now if you didn't feel the pain and fear from having died?"
"There are stories of people in dangerous jobs dying stupidly because they were so used to the job that the danger became an everyday part of their life and they started ignoring the danger," Ning said. "If you die over and over to someone stronger than you and you no longer fear that, you will die stupidly against someone stronger than you too. Do you want that?"
The two quickly shook their head.
"Good," Ning said. "Now that you understand what is going to happen, I reckon you are ready to die again, yes?"
"What, wait no—"
Before the two of them could finish their sentence, Ning gave Sorlus the gesture and he killed the two siblings one more time.
After a couple of deaths, Ning asked Sorlus to not kill the two immediately again. He wanted them to at least fight back to see just how strong they would be against a dragon like him.
Sorlus agreed and let the two siblings attack him.
Hi-Ah did not find it hard to attack Sorlus at all. Whether it was because of his current size, or the absolute disparity he had shown them that led to them being in such despair, she wanted to hurt him too.
Her fingers suddenly crackled with lightning as a massive bolt of electricity flew towards Sorlus in the blink of an eye. It struck his thick hide, but the dragon scales were too strong for Sorlus to feel any pain at all.
Sorlus let out a weak attack that was barely strong enough to hurt the two siblings but not enough to kill them.
Jung-Hee jumped forward and moved his arms in a circle as he suddenly created a barrier in front of him.
Ning saw a magic circle flash right before the barrier was created, but no one else seemed to care much about that.
After all, it was quite an ordinary visual for them all as most spells did create a momentary magic circle.
If one could draw that circle, they could use that exact same spell despite not having the talent towards that category of the spell.
Ning thought of learning the designs for magic circles in his spare time if he could. He watched the three of them fight for a while and in the end left the virtual world to let them fight on their own.
Once he was out, Ning made his way over to the vacant underground of his house where he was going to draw some teleportation circles.
Ning got himself a bucket of paint and a brush and started drawing.
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He made two teleportation circles, each of which was about 3 meters in diameter. It could easily hold up to 8 people to teleport at once, and that was enough for everyone in his household to teleport over.
It took him about an hour to properly finish making it all and by the time he was done, it was midnight already.
Ely walked out of the room she was in and walked up to Ning. "You're done?" she asked.
"Yes, I made both," Ning said.
"Which is which?" Ely asked as she was unable to tell exactly which formation she was to use.
"Oh, the left one is for your brother's house, and the right one is for Uncle's house," Ning said. "You want to go there right now?"
Ely nodded. "It's 4 pm there, so I want to bring him here for the night to help him train there. Maybe even help him become a cultivator, we still have the leftover curry after all," she said.
"Sure," Ning said. "Step on, I will send you there."
Ely nodded and walked onto the paint that had dried already. She stepped inside and Ning poured his Qi onto the circle.
The magic circle lit up and she vanished.
Ning spread his divine sense that easily reached France within a couple of seconds. "You got there easily?" he asked.
"Yes, I'm inside the closet," Ely said as she unlatched the door and walked out. "It seems he's in his guild right now. I'll wait around a bit, see you later."
"Alright, have fun," Ning said and went back to the room where they were all inside their virtual world. He went inside the world and watched them continue their fight.
Neither of the brother or sisters realize just how many times they had died, but little by little they were learning to move even in the face of death. When Sorlus attacked this time around, they were at least able to move a bit far away, even if they were eventually killed in the end.
When the two of them came back, they were able to stand up immediately even while their body shivered in fear of their own death.
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Ning arrived in front of them and helped them up. "Sorlus, you can rest now. You don't have to fight anymore," he said.
"Okay, master," Sorlus spoke in his gruff voice. Ning taught him how to leave this world and he went out. Now, only three of them were remaining in this current world.
"Let's see just what you have learned," Ning said. "You will fight me now."
The two of them looked at each other and back at Ning. "Aren't you supposed to be stronger than Sorlus, brother?" Jung-Hee asked. "I feel like we will just die."
"Do I look like someone who is capable of killing my own junior cousins?" Ning asked as he shook his head. "You two must think I'm a monster."
The two didn't know what else to say. He had just ordered his dragon to kill them a dozen or more times after all.
"Stop dilly-dallying and come fight me. I want to see how much more improvement you two need," Ning said.
The two didn't hesitate any more and came to fight Ning. Lightning attacks struck Ning while barriers covered them.
Ning looked at their fighting styles and learned from them. He moved through their attacks, taking absolutely no damage as he appeared beside them.
He punched through the barrier, leaving Jung-Hee stunned. At the same time, he grabbed Hi-Ah by the throat and choked her for a few seconds before dropping her to the floor.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk," Ning clicked his tongue. "You two need to be able to react faster than this. I was so slow too."
"Jung-Hee, is making barriers all you can do?" Ning asked. "What about fighting back? I broke your barrier, but you weren't able to do anything at all."
"And you, Hi-Ah. You need to have something defensive of your own as well. You can't rely on your brother's barrier alone. Learn some defensive spells too," he said.
The two nodded in a daze.
Ning shook his head. "Start all over again. I will have to teach you quite a lot it seems."
few hours into teaching the two siblings how to fight, Ning stopped their training and sent them out of the virtual world.
They were disoriented when they came out of that world and took a moment to remember to unplug the headgear they were wearing.
The gear went up into its space on top of them, and the two siblings walked out.
"You will have to train physically too," Ning said. "It's good to give you instinct virtually, but if that won't translate to muscle memory, it won't be as good as we hope it will be."
"So… do we train again?" Jung-Hee asked.
"No, not today," Ning said. "It's already 4 in the morning, and while your body has been sleeping for the past 6 hours, your mind has not. So, you will have to go rest your mind too."
"Once you have a bit of cultivation and your mental state is improved, we can use full nights to train," he said.
The two siblings nodded as there wasn't anything else they could even think to do. Ning was going to teach them how to get better then they were going to accept it full-heartedly.
Ning showed the two of them to the guest rooms on the 3rd floor where they went to sleep.
After they were gone, Ning went to the living room and opened the TV there. He watched as he waited and just an hour later, Ely returned, this time with her brother.
Ning sighed. He had been waiting for this, but for some reason doing so much at once felt pretty exhausting.
He had always done many things back to back but somehow the difference in the tasks was making him feel burnt out. He needed to rest a bit to reset, but rest didn't seem like a luxury he could afford just yet.
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Should he open up a portal and leave for some distant planet where he could live 5 years and come back in 5 days?
No, that was way too drastic of a move. He needed to do something simpler.
Just then, someone called him. Since the call was in the system, he easily saw the name of the caller. He was a little surprised and accepted the call.
"Director Sung? Why are you calling me at such an unus—"
"Oh thank god you're awake!" the director's voice came from the other side. "Ning, we need your help. Can you come right now?"
Ning's eyes narrowed. "Is this an emergency?" he asked.
"Sort of," the director said. "I just got a call from the prime minister saying that his wife has gone into a coma due to mana poisoning. He's freaking out right now and is asking for anyone that can help. I have a report saying that you can cure these sorts of illnesses, so I was hoping you could help."
"I can't really heal them, but I can get rid of them for a year or two," Ning said. "Tell the prime minister I will be there right now."
"I will," the director said. "Do you need the address?"
"No need," Ning said and ended the call. Once the call was over, he stood there for a moment as he was reminded of some other things he had to do.
He massaged his head as he remembered about the hundreds of thousands of people that were waiting for him to heal their Mana poisoning.
Fortunately, he was reminded of it so directly. If not, he would have spent weeks doing his own thing before getting to that problem.
'I can't go heal them right now though,' he thought. 'I still need a bit more before I can reach SSS-rank, and then go to the tier above it.'
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That was the tier he needed to be to use the mass healing spell that cured the mana poisoning.
Ely walked into the living room with her brother who was in a daze looking around. He still couldn't figure out just how they were in a new house all of a sudden. After all, just a minute ago he was inside his closet with his apparently reborn sister.
"I need to go somewhere. I will be back in… well, I don't know," Ning said. "It might take a few minutes."
"Sure," Ely said. "I will give him some food and then have Blue or Night help me with the rest."
Ning nodded. "Alright, see you in a bit."
He teleported out of the room, surprising Chase once again. He quickly looked down at Ning's feet and didn't see any sort of drawings there. If there was nothing there then how was he teleporting?
Why did none of this make sense at all?
"Come on, brother. I've kept you from eating long enough," Ely said and dragged her brother to the kitchen.
Ning appeared outside a very high-security mansion while the world was still in shadows but the sky was getting brighter. The moment he appeared, the guards outside the gates immediately pointed their guns at him.
However, Ning wasn't scared at all. He simply pointed his fingers and the guns pointed away from him, out of the guard's control.
"I'm here to see the prime minister about his wife's illness," Ning said and waited at the gate for the guards to do something.
Someone picked up a small communicating device and called the house where they were quickly told to affirm that it was Ning and then let him in.
The guards squinted their eyes and pointed flashlights at him and finally realized who they were looking at.
"My apologies, sir. We didn't recognize you," they said, bowing at the waist multiple times. Ning chuckled a bit and waved his hands.
"No need to apologize, you were just doing your job."
One of the guards showed him the way into the mansion and very soon Ning arrived in front of a nervous man who Ning didn't recognize from his face, but from his importance in the hallway.
"Sir prime minister?" he asked. "I am here to help."
H-hi, I'm Park Woo-Young. Nice to meet you, Apostle Ning," the prime minister gave a shaking hand for him to shake.
Ning shook it firmly and asked, "Where's the patient?"
"Right here, with the doctors," the prime minister gestured towards the room next to him and Ning walked in.
As soon as he was in, he was very much surprised to see the lack of… anything in this room. A room with a patient should have been clean and with open ventilation for fresh air. However, the room was full of unnecessary bookshelves and tables that had gathered dust, and there weren't even any open windows in the room.
The windows that were there were behind bookshelves and were completely closed.
There was at least an AC, but that alone wouldn't be able to prove a lot of natural light and fresh air both the room and patient would need.
"Why are you keeping the patient in such a terrible room?" Ning asked with an angry tone in his voice. "Someone who is in constant pain from the mana poisoning should be kept in a proper room with good airflow and light. If you can't even do that, at least send her to a hospital where she can be taken care of."
The prime minister and the various doctors there were flinching at his voice. The doctors said nothing, but the prime minister spoke.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't know that was what you had to do. I will immediately have another room ready."
Ning nodded. "She must've been in pain for so many days, even months. At least give her some relaxation in the place you keep her," he said.
The prime minister who was about to give orders to his men suddenly paused. "Eh? No, my wife wasn't ill for months or even days. She fell ill today, or yesterday rather at night."
Ning looked around with a confused look of his own. "What do you mean she fell ill last night?" he asked. "She has Mana poisoning, right? That means she became ill months ago."
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"No, she just fell ill last night," the prime minister said. "It's been, maybe 8 hours since she fell ill. Definitely not months."
Ning frowned. "So, how do you know it is mana poisoning?" he asked.
The prime minister gave a blank look for a second and pointed toward the doctors. The doctors who were trying to keep their heads away from Ning's anger suddenly came face to face with it.
"T-t-the machine says there's mana clumped up in her body. That's why we said she has mana poisoning," one of them said.
Ning walked over. "But Mana poisoning doesn't happen overnight. It takes time, the patient grows weak and finally falls into a coma after months," he said as he checked the prime minister's wife.
"Y-yes, but what else would this be, sir?" one of them asked. "These are clear signs of mana poisoning."
Ning frowned. "That it is," he said. "But only the signs are that of mana poisoning. The illness itself isn't."
The doctors stepped aside as Ning did a thorough test of her illness. A few moments later, he found the problem.
Somehow, she had a bit too much mana in her body that was trapped inside her mana circuits, not moving even a single inch. What surprised him the most was the fact that her mana circuits were fully formed, not half formed like the people that were normally a victim of mana poisoning.
"Hmm?" Ning frowned. 'Can't I just take away this mana then?'
He reached up to her stomach and placed his hands there as he started absorbing the mana. The mana threatened to not leave at all, but Ning's pull was too strong for it to not move despite how badly it was dislodged in there.
After a few seconds, it came out of her body, entering into him, empowering him by quite a lot. It was akin to taking in 3 SS-ranked mana cores at once.
Once he was done, he moved away. "Test her again," Ning said.
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The doctors nodded and got to work. Ning waited for a bit for them to give out their surprised exclamations and notify the prime minister that she was fine. After a bit of rest, she would come out of her coma.
"I see," the prime minister took a deep breath. "Thank you, Apostle Ning."
"It's alright," Ning said. "Now that she is fine, I will be taking my leave."
"Wait, don't you want anything in return?" the prime minister asked.
Ning shook his head as he walked away. "I didn't help to expect something else in return," he said as he waved them goodbye.
He returned back to his house and called the director.
"Ning? What's up? Did you go to the prime minister's house?" the director asked quickly.
"Yes, I did. She wasn't mana-poisoned like you said. Something else was the problem," Ning said. "I healed her regardless so she will be fine."
"Oh thank god," the director said. "Now that she is fine, he will at least be able to attend tomorrow's meeting. Due to your performance, he should easily accept your proposal to distribute the knowledge of Magic circles."
"Oh, is he the one you must get permission from?" Ning asked.
"Yes," the director said.
"Then it's a good thing I got on his good side. If he had remained helpless with his wife in… coma..." Ning's voice trailed off as something struck him. "I'll call you later."
He ended the call without hearing anything in return and put on a frowning face. "Was that intentional?" he asked his system. "Did someone put mana into her body to make her sick so the prime minister wouldn't attend tomorrow's meeting?"
"You're smart," a voice spoke suddenly into Ning's ear from far away. "I thought my plan was watertight, but I didn't expect you to be capable of healing her so easily. I underestimated a weak human's reliance on others."
Ning looked in the direction of where the voice was coming from far, far away. "And which Constellation might I be speaking to?" he asked.
"I am called Briss."
Briss… I see," Ning said with a thoughtful look. "You have an apostle in Mexico and Ghana, don't you? What are you doing here in South Korea? And why are you hurting people?"
"Hurting? No, no, no," the constellation said. "I do not hurt people. If I wanted to watch them get hurt, I wouldn't have appointed Apostles to help your world. I simply wanted a distraction, but you got rid of it way too quickly, didn't you?"
"Distraction? To stop me from teaching them about Magic Circle?" Ning asked.
"Yes," Briss said. "Where did you even learn it?"
Ning ignored the question. "Why do you want me to not teach them about Magic circles?" he asked. He couldn't find any obvious consequence of teaching magic circles to humans at all. At least, not from what he was going to be teaching.
'Unless…'
"What will it take you to not teach them about magic circles?" Briss asked.
Ning gave a smirk towards the faceless godlike being who could peer through space to look at him. "Are you worried that humanity would advance far too quickly for your tiny pawns to no longer seem so unique?" he asked. "The moment the Apostles no longer appear as powerful and out of reach as they are now, you are afraid the people will lose faith in you. Given the context, it does make sense why you would be so afraid."
"Afraid? Hah, I don't fear anything," Briss said. "If my plan fails, I will simply stop and wait for the apocalypse to begin."
"So you will join the other side?" Ning asked. "Join the ones that are waiting for the world to end before it's their time to shine."
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He wasn't very angry hearing that. "That simply means I have to stop it from ever getting to that point," Ning said. "With me stopping all the Tier 6 dungeons, there will never be one that will grow strong enough to turn into an actual portal. Do you still want to wait for that?"
Briss didn't answer for a few seconds, leaving the morning silence lingering for a while before Ning got an answer again.
"If that doesn't work out, I will simply go to another world. Your galaxy has plenty anyway," he said.
"Yeah, but not all of them have the apocalypse like ours, do they? The ones that do have some are orchestrated by other Constellations, which makes it impossible for you to go to that planet," Ning said. "Besides, I know how useless Constellations are. You only want to sit and reap benefits. This is way to late for you to start sowing for anything."
Briss didn't not answer again, but Ning could feel the anger from that thing. He wasn't intending to, but he had managed to rile up this Constellation enough so that he was actually angry towards Ning.
His anger became very apparent when he spoke again. "This is your last warning, if you don't stop what you are doing, I will group up with the others and kill you. You may have killed Stryxus using some means, I am willing to bet you cannot do the same again. At the very least, you can't do the same to multiple one of us at once."
Ning felt a pang of fear in his heart too. That was something he had been worried about. He had talked with his system and he had gotten some rather unfortunate answers.
The system was only capable of linking to one Will at a time. This meant that in a battle against multiple Wills, he could only kill them one at a time. And depending on the amount of Energy they had, the time varied.
Still, Ning had a card to play in this situation.
"Do you know what I will say to the humans when I help them understand Magic Circles?" Ning asked. "I will tell them that all of this stuff was taught to me by my 5 gods, the one you surely know I'm in an alliance with."
"With such recognition from the world, they would certainly like it a lot, and in return, they will fight alongside me if you ever team up with others to attack me," Ning said. "Also, even if you bring so many that I will certainly die, I will make sure to take you along with me. How does that sound? Still want to fight?"
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Ning made sure to not let it be known that he was immortal. That was akin to telling the constellation that he was a host of the Energy system.
With how wanted that system was throughout the multiverse, he would immediately be taken and, figuratively and literally dissected to be learned from.
"This is your last warning," Briss said and then his aura vanished. Ning could no longer sense him at all.
He continued smiling for a few more seconds, but after realizing that Briss was truly not looking at him anymore, he finally dropped the act and frowned.
'This is bad,' he thought. He had been hoping to move under the Constellation's attention for a while so he could do the things he wanted to do, but it seemed he had brought himself directly in front of them.
The other 5 constellations weren't going to help him when war broke out against him, and he knew that. He only hoped the bluff would keep the others from acting rashly. Given how cowardly these wills were, he wasn't worried about that aspect.
"How much more energy until I can get uhh… two of them?" Ning asked his system.
For both of them, it will cost you 1.3 Octillion more energy
"And for all 3?" he asked
All three require a total of 3.9 Octillion Energy
"Damn souls make everything so expensive," Ning thought to himself. "I don't think we have the luxury to sit around anymore. I need to at least work towards one of it."
You do have enough energy for one of it
"Yeah, I might have to do that," Ning said. "Help me find a suitable one. Once we find it, I will leave."
The astral chart opened in front of Ning to show the location of that which he could find. The system quickly showed him the location which was somewhere at the edge of his galaxy.
"Here?" Ning asked with a frowned look on his face. If it was in the Milky Way galaxy, then it was a bad choice.
However, he also had to improve his Mana. That was an entirely separate problem that he had been intending to solve right now as well.
"How long will it take me just for this one task?" Ning asked, not even bothering to learn about the time it would take to gather the mana.
At least a year
Ning's frown only got deeper. "What is that in earth time?" he asked.
around 10 days
That was much better, but it was still quite bad. When adding onto that the time it would take for him to be a Tier 8 mage, that was even worse.
"I will need to be away for so goddamn long," he thought to himself. That was on top of the already exhausting amount of tasks he had to do here on earth.
"I can't do this all by myself," Ning thought to himself. He wondered what he could do for a few minutes as an idea came to his mind. When he thought of the idea, he couldn't help but smile like a child who had just thought of something mischievous.
"Let's start a new day with a new me," he thought to himself. "System, I'll be needing your help."
Ely watched as her brother walked out of the bathroom alongside Blue who had helped him through his breakthrough.
The filth was cleared up and Chase was looking around with a weird look on his face, not understanding what was happening to him. What the hell even was this cultivation bullshit that his apparent sister was forcing him to go through? Was this how he got abducted? Or was this just a way to make him work for the aliens?
"Good, you're—"
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She stopped speaking and looked in a certain direction with a confused look on her face. Blue was confused too.
She quickly walked outside and saw a portal opening right in front of the house that lead to somewhere that didn't seem habitable.
Outside of the portal, Ning was standing with a curious look on his face. However, even as she walked towards him, Ely could tell something was wrong.
"Honey?" She called out to Ning.
"Hmm?" Ning turned around. "Hey, what are you guys doing out here?"
"We sensed the portal," Ely said as she pointed to the portal in front of her, but even as she said that the portal closed. "Why did you open it?"
"I needed something that was there," Ning said.
Ely narrowed her eyes. "Did you get it?" she asked.
"No, it will take some time," Ning said. "But I'm certain I will get it."
Blue returned back to the house, but Ely stood there. She could tell something was wrong, but she couldn't tell what it was.
She walked close to him and suddenly punched him in the face. Ning tried to dodge the attack, but the attack was too fast for him.
Her punch landed on his face, breaking not just his nose, but also a couple of his teeth at the front.
"Ely, what the hell?" Ning cried out as he held his face to stop the bleeding.
"Hah! Imposter! You're not Ning," she said. "My husband wouldn't be injured by such a weak attack of mine."
"Geez, that's why you attacked me?" Ning asked. "You couldn't have just asked? I would've told you."
"Told me what? That you're an imposter?" Ely asked. "Who are you and where is my husband?"
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Ning's face slowly changed as his wounds reverted back to normal and even his fallen teeth grew back. "I'm not an imposter," he said. "It is me, your husband. Well, I'm a clone, but that shouldn't change things much."
"What? You're a clone?" She asked with an absolutely gobsmacked look on her face. "Where is the real Ning then?"
"Away," Ning said. "On an important job."
"And he didn't think to let me know before leaving?" Ely asked.
"I mean… I am telling you right now," Ning said. "There was no point in telling you since I would still be here anyway."
"That man needs to learn to control his impulses," Ely said while shaking her head.
"Hey! I'm still here. Don't speak badly about me while I'm in front of you," Ning said.
"But you're not him," Ely said.
"I am," Ning said. "Just because this is another body of mine doesn't make me a fake. Both my body are made up anyway."
"So you two are the same?" Ely asked.
"Well… not physically I suppose," Ning said. "I don't have a system, so I'm lacking a few skills aside from the ones I put into this body. But I do have all the memories and feelings, so on the inside, I'm essentially the same person, capable of making the same decisions. Also, I'm connected to the body with the system, so that can override me and use my body when needed."
Ely was having a slightly hard time understanding what was happening. It didn't seem like a clear case of real and fake as it would usually happen with clones that were made using Qi. This was something else.
"So you are just a worse version of Ning," she asked.
"In a way, yes," Ning said.
"And why did you do this?" she asked.
"I had multiple things to do, and doing it all back to back felt exhausting. So, I decided to go do the important tasks far away, while I take care of the less important tasks down here with this body," Ning said. "Once I am back, this body will be taken in by the system and all our memories will join together."
Ely thought for a bit. "What was so important that you needed to leave?" she asked.
"Let's go in," Ning said. "I will tell you all about it."
So, what exactly can you do?" Ely asked the Ning that was in front of her. He had already told her about his plans, so the only thing remaining was for her to wait until he was back from what he was doing.
However, they still had things to do so she needed to know what he could do exactly.
"I can teleport, regenerate, have the same base body that I can improve if I wanted to, and I have the same knowledge as my other self," Ning said.
"Are you connected right now? It's hard to say if I'm speaking to a new you or the actual you," Ely said.
"No, I'm not," Ning said. "I'm pretty much independent for now, but I can be taken over by the other me. Just think of myself as a terribly accurate copy of my own intelligence artificially created and put into this body."
"Well, as long as you don't mess it up," Ely said. "So, what do we do now?"
"Well, I have many things to do, but the first thing would be that I need to break through. I'm going to have to improve as much as I can for the next few weeks before Ning comes back," Ning said.
Ely sighed. "Alright. Let's go," she said and let him do his own thing.
Ning started cultivating without waiting, and at the same time he also absorbed mana and spiritual energy in the surrounding
He had spirit stones for Qi, so his cultivation speed would be quite fast, and Earth was full of Mana, so that wouldn't be very hard as well. However, there wasn't that much spiritual energy for him to draw from the surrounding, so that was a problem.
Also, since his 4 spirits were bonded to this other self, he didn't have access to Saphandra, Terra, Void, and Gray's abilities.
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They were roaming around in the house as he had let them free, but he wasn't going to be able to bond with them either way. The best he could do was try to find a different bond from far away and maybe summon it, but with the lack of spiritual energy on earth, he had to give up on the idea of reaching any higher than maybe rank 4 with it.
So, he decided to focus on cultivation and mana for now.
The people in the house, especially Night, Blue, and Ely were surprised by the constant movement of Qi in the air as Ning broke through realm after realm in a matter of minutes.
They knew their cultivation method was good and could help one break through very quickly. However, they had only seen that speed with themselves.
Now, they were witnessing what happened when you mixed the best cultivation method in the entire universe with a body with the best talent in the entire universe.
Qi Condensation, Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul, Spirit Transformation, and finally Ascension, Ning went through them in less than 2 hours.
The only reason he was so slow was that the Qi refused to leave the spirit stones any faster. Otherwise, he would've entered the upper realm even faster.
It was the same with Mana as well. He had a very good mana absorption technique, which he run parallel to his cultivation. Due to Mana circuits and Qi meridians being separate in his body, the same with Sea of Qi and Sea of Mana, he was able to perform both sorts of absorption at once.
In the 2 hours, he sucked dry the SS-ranked mana stone he had left for himself, reaching Tier 5 by the time he was done.
His Mana core was gone, so he brought out some more spirit stones and continued cultivating alone. His Body and Qi were improving at the same time, so he didn't stop.
Or so he thought. Unfortunately, he now had a job he needed to do. So, when someone called him, he had to stop.
"We have a training session at 11 today. Do you want to join?" Kim Min-Soo asked from the other side.
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"Is this for the S-ranked dungeon I went to before?" Ning asked.
"No, this is for a different one, government-owned. I'm trying to have a secondary team go clear the government-owned one as a favor. I just wanted to know if you are willing to come by for the training or not," she asked.
"11…" he said as he checked the time. It was already 9 am. He had been lost in his own time for a while now. The director and the prime minister still had to set up the global meeting, so he supposed he had some time.
"Sure, I can do it," Ning said. "I might even join as part of the group to clear the dungeon."
"Uh… I don't think that's a good idea," Kim Min-Soo said. "I just wanted you to come help with the training."
"Don't worry, I won't make it easy for them," Ning said. He couldn't do that anyway. "I just want to fight with a few monsters while they rest is all."
Kim sighed on the other side. "Sure," she said. "Be here by 11 then. We will have a 3-hour training. We will enter the dungeon later around 4 pm."
"Alright, I will see you at the guild then," Ning said and ended the call.
A few people walked into the room where he was cultivating and stared at him. Ning stared back and gave a confused look. "What?" he asked.
"How did you cultivate so quickly, master?" Blue asked.
"I have a talented body," Ning said. "I am the best there is."
"Can… can I have one too?" Blue asked.
"A talented body?" Ning asked and shook his head. "It's a 'me' thing. Anyway, stop gawking around. You've seen more fascinating things than this anyway."
That was true, but this was just as equally fascinating as well. A mortal breaking through to Immortality in just 2 hours.
"Where's Hi-Ah and Jung-Hee?" he asked. "Get them ready, we'll have to go to work any minute now."
Ning, Hi-Ah, and Jung-Hee left for their work.
"Sister Ely said that we will be able to fly too in the future, is that true?" Jung-Hee asked.
"Hmm, how strong are you guys right now?" Ning asked as he checked their cultivation bases. "Oh right, you didn't get a chance to cultivate, did you? Once you cultivate to Foundation establishment realm, you should be able to hover around and move slowly. To actually fly around you will have to be in the Core Formation realm."
"And… how long is that going to take us?" Jung-Hee asked.
Ning thought for a moment. "If you cultivated all night long, you should be able to reach there within the week, maybe even faster since your body is strong enough to handle the changes already," he said.
The two siblings couldn't help but be happy when they heard about it.
"By the way, brother. Why did you join the White Devil guild?" Jung-Hee asked. "That doesn't make sense to me at all."
"It doesn't?" Ning asked. "What? Did you expect me to join another guild? I'm pretty sure the White Devil guild is the best one."
"It is," Hi-Ah said. "But I don't think that's what he's asking. He wants to know why you didn't open your own guild. With your ability, people would flock to you far faster and your guild would be one of the best in no time."
Ning chuckled a bit when he heard that. "I have no desire to start a guild. In fact, doing so would work against what I'm planning," he said.
"Against what you're planning?" Hi-Ah asked curiously.
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Ning wondered if he could answer the two of them or not. One of the very unfortunate results of leaving behind a clone was that he could no longer sense the constellations when they were focusing on him. As a result, he didn't find it wise to speak freely every word in his mind.
"Well, I can't go into the specifics, but the goal of my plan is to rid of the dungeons on earth so humanity no longer has to live in fear every day," Ning said. "If I were to start a guild, I would have to find dungeons, make plans to keep the dungeon healthy for a long time, and make use of it, which ultimately isn't what I want. I don't want to keep the dungeons here," he said.
"I see," Hi-Ah said. "But are the dungeons really that bad? They provide us with mana stones and a lot of various rare ores that have been greatly useful."
Ning sighed when he heard that. "And what if that leads to another dungeon break?" he asked.
"Well," Hi-Ah hesitated. "That would be horrible. But we have fighters who can protect us this time around, so I don't think the casualties would be as high as last time."
"What if the monsters in the dungeon break range from E-rank all the way beyond SSS-ranks? Is that still okay?" he asked.
"What?" Jung-Hee exclaimed out loud. "There are monsters out there beyond SSS-rank?"
"Yes," Ning said. "The dungeons are too low level for that, but once the SSS-rank dungeons appear, you will see. Although, it might be very late by then."
The two showed a bit of fear on their faces as they understood the severity of the situation. "I see," Hi-Ah said. "Then we must destroy the dungeons very soon."
"Yes," Ning said. "But that's not very easy either."
"Why not?" she asked.
"Well… there are things that don't want you to interfere with those," Ning said. "You will find every Apostle against the idea of destroying a dungeon. They will use excuses like the ones you just did for keeping them around, but in truth, they are doing what they have been ordered to do."
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Hi-Ah tried to say something, but Ning interrupted her. "Don't speak about it." He said. "Never speak about it with anyone. There are forces here that I won't be able to save you against, not yet. Keep your thoughts to yourself."
Hi-Ah gulped down her words and put on a blank, but pale face as she continued driving through the highway on the way to the city.
"Man, I just wanted to work with the two of you, that's why I brought up the idea of starting a guild. I didn't think that…" Jung-Hee stopped speaking as well.
They arrived in the city and Hi-Ah dropped off Jung-Hee before taking Ning over to the guild.
Hi-Ah went to do her own thing, while Ning was led to a VIP room to wait out the minutes before the training was to begin.
He sat comfortably on the massive sofa, looking up the news on the TV that was inside the room. Just then, a headline popped up on the screen.
At the same time, his ring started buzzing, a sign that someone was calling him. He quickly checked and it was the director. He accepted the call.
"Is this about the new dungeon?" Ning asked as soon as he accepted the phone call.
"You know about it?" the director asked with a surprised look on his face.
"I'm watching the news right now," Ning said.
"Damn, the news outlets know already?" the director couldn't help but ask. However, he seemed to have gotten different news from the other side, so he quickly stopped talking.
The news anchors who were giving the normal news, immediately changed their state to put on a serious look to give the latest breaking news.
"We interrupt this segment to give you a breaking news that is coming to us from around the world. Many people have started noting the appearance of new dungeons all around the globe. These new dungeons seem to appear at random places, so we suggest all the people stay away from any you might come across and notify the authorities if you see one around your place."
Ning looked at the news segment with a slight awe on his face. "So that's your move, huh?" he thought. "That certainly will make things difficult going forward."
The team training for later that day was canceled as everyone immediately rushed to help the government document the various dungeon gates that were opening up everywhere.
People everywhere were advised to stay away from the gates, and while that didn't work entirely, they did manage to keep most of them away from the gates.
The daredevils couldn't be stopped as they rushed head-first into the dungeons, trying to find glory.
Ning walked with Kim Min-Soo towards the upper floors of the building to a massive room with screens all around them.
Various individuals, all important to the country, were on the screen.
"The White Devil guild is available," Kim Min-Soo announced as she walked up to one of the screens.
Ning stayed a little behind with the vice leader and other important members of the sect. He looked around to see the other 4 Apostles and their guild members, some more leaders from smaller guilds, various ministers, generals, director Sung and the prime minister.
"Does anyone have any idea what is happening?" the prime minister asked. He looked awful on the screen, not just from the lack of sleep the entire night, but also from the stress of having to hear such terrible news right afterward.
"What many dead?" Soo-Yun on the screen asked.
"As of yet, about 40 people that have entered the 13 new dungeons in Korea have not returned. It has been at least 2 hours since the first one is said to have entered, so it is expected that they have died already," the director spoke as he read from a few pieces of paper in front of him.
"It's also possible that they are inside there still, right?" one of the ministers asked. "A normal dungeon hunt can go anywhere from half an hour to an entire day."
"It is, minister. But one of the groups of people who entered included an S-ranked individual according to my data, and he too hasn't come out in the many hours. If the dungeons are so strong that it takes someone like that such a long time, then the other weaker ones certainly won't be having an easier time," the director said.
"That's a very negative look on the situation," the prime minister said. "But I suppose that helps us be realistic with our expectations."
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"What's the dungeon rank exactly?" Lee asked.
"We do not know right now, but our people are finding it out as we speak. We should have the answer by the end of the meeting," the director said.
"How many dungeons are there exactly?" the speedster Park spoke from one of the screens.
"There are 18 dungeons that have opened around—"
"26," Ning spoke up from behind Kim Min-Soo. Everyone turned around to look at him with weird looks on their face.
"How do you know that, Apostle Ning?" the prime minister asked.
"I have my people searching the entire country. They already documented the number and location of the dungeons in Korea," Ning said. "I've sent them overseas to document the entire planet."
"Can that be trusted?" one of the generals asked.
"I don't think it matters if we trust the information or not," the director said. "His number is higher than our own, so at worse, we will just over-prepare. No harm in overpreparation."
"Yeah, but we will have to split personnel throughout the various dungeons. That will slow down our time if this turns out to be wrong," the general said.
The director had no answer for that. He was right after all. So, he quickly fished out a piece of paper from the pile in front of him and started reading out the places where the dungeons had appeared.
Once finished, he asked Ning, "tell me one dungeon that I did not list that you know. We will check it immediately to make sure your words are true."
"Sure," Ning said. "There's one in an abandoned building in Seoul itself. It's a half-constructed building with no paint, warded by sheets of red tins in Jung-Dong, Mapo-Gu. Since no one goes there anymore, people haven't realized that one has opened there as well."
The director immediately sent someone to check there.
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"Alright, let's talk about what we're going to do now. Whether there are more dungeons or not, we still need to know how to go about the ones that exist," the prime minister said.
"What else can we do?" one of the generals asked. "Keep about 8 of them, and give the remaining up for auction. That's what we always do with the dungeons."
"We have no intention of buying that which has not been explored yet," Bak said. "So, our first task should be to explore one of the dungeons to see what it's about."
"Who is volunteering?" Lee asked.
Everyone remained silent. No one wanted to be the hero of the day. They would rather survive and be one some other time. If the dungeons were unnaturally strong, then they would be in trouble.
"Any of you Apostles willing to join? We will have to have at least two of you go together to look after yourself," the prime minister said.
"You should ask Graves what he knows," Ning said. "And if he knows exactly who is involved in this."
"Who are involved?" Kim Min-Soo gave a weird look. "What do you mean?"
"This is not something that just happened to happen," he said. "The various gods are behind this, I just don't know which ones."
The White Devil's guild leader couldn't help but give a wide-faced stare at him when she heard that.
"Sir, this just came," a voice shouted from the screens and everyone turned around just in time to see the director receive a note.
He stared at the note with so much shock and confusion, that the others couldn't help but get curious and a little scared.
"Director Sung, what did you just receive?" the prime minister asked.
"I…" the director tried to find his words. "The dungeons' ranks have been determined."
"And?" the prime minister pushed on him to answer quickly.
"And… they are all E-ranked dungeons."
E-rank? What?" everyone immediately showed their disbelief at the news they were hearing. Even Ning felt that it was wrong.
These dungeons were special, created by the constellations to screw with him and his plan to teach people about the magic circles.
He wondered how many constellations it took to open so many dungeons. 10? 20? He was sure there weren't many constellations involved in this, but certainly, there was a large enough number to deter the other constellations from either not joining in, or stopping them from doing what they did.
'Dammit,' he thought. 'If only I had more information.'
He didn't have access to the system to easily get the information he wanted. If he had, not only would he not have to send Blue, Night, and Ely to go around the world to document every single dungeon, he would have been able to tell what rank each one where and who had made them.
However, right now, he had no such ability.
He could contact Ning and ask him for some help, but given the amount of time that had passed since he had left, he had most likely already begun working.
Since what he was going to have to do was a delicate task that required his full attention and even the system to work along with him, he couldn't just call him and disturb him.
He would have to wait 10 days before he could contact him.
"Are you sure it's E-rank? That sounds impossible," one of the guild leaders said.
"That is what has been recorded," the director said. "We will do some more tests and will have to figure out if that is correct or not. But the fastest way will be for some of you to go in."
"Ning and I will go into the one here near our city," Kim Min-Soo said. "We will report our findings once we go through with it."
"Really, Apostle Kim? Thank you," the prime minister said.
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Ning didn't even get the chance to refuse. "Why did you speak for me?" he asked.
"What? Are you not going to go?" she asked. "You are the strongest of us. If you don't go, who will?"
Ning got a little frustrated. He was no longer the strongest at all, so he would rather stay low-key for a while.
'Screw it! What use is staying behind if others die due to my inaction,' he thought.
"We will get you the answer soon, prime minister. Just wait for it," Ning said. "Aside from that, regarding the magic circles, what will happen to that meeting?"
"I'm afraid that is going to have to be delayed, isn't it?" the prime minister said. "We have something new we need to take care of before we can even think about doing what you said. Besides, your request to gather every country will be impossible for a while since every country will have to go through this."
"I see," Ning said with a blank face.
They had won. Those damn constellations, especially since Briss had successfully stopped him from spreading the information about magic circles.
'For now at least,' he thought. 'They must have had to give up a lot of power to make this happen. But still, why E-rank? What does that accomplish?'
Of course, they were most likely not E-rank dungeons. Or else, those people that entered would have come out by now.
'Maybe it's a maze? That's why they are stuck in there for so long?' Ning thought. There was something fishy going on with the dungeons that he will have to find out soon.
"I just received another piece of information," the director said. "Ning's dungeon did indeed exist. We found the gate in the abandoned building and people are heading there to evaluate it."
"Dear lord, so there really are 26 new dungeons?" the prime minister shook his head as he thought about it. "So the number is now up from 58 to 84."
"Hopefully these new ones really are E-ranked dungeons. Otherwise, we won't have many people to spare for them," one of the Apostles said.
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"Alright, Apostle Kim, Apostle Ning, please prepare your group and go to the dungeon as quickly as you can," the prime minister said.
"Yes, prime minister," Kim said and turned around to leave. The vice leader took her place to continue talking with the others while Ning walked out with her.
"Do you really want to go?" he asked her.
"Huh? Of course," she said. "It's not like I have anything to fear. You're going to be with me. You have the power of 5 gods in you, so what's there to worry about?"
Ning gave a wry smile, not knowing what to say. There was a chance this dungeon run was going to be dangerous.
With constellations involved, death was all but confirmed for him. 'If it really is so dangerous that I die, then at least I will learn that something big is going on here,' he thought. 'Even if I have to stop what I'm doing, I will come back.'
"You stay, I will go alone," Ning said.
"Huh? I'm going too," Kim said.
"As I said, gods are involved in this matter," he said. "And…" he couldn't tell her about his lack of power just in case a Constellation was listening to him.
"Anyway, stay here," he said and teleported away, leaving Kim with nothing to do.
Ning appeared outside of the dungeon, surprising a few people that were working there. He didn't immediately enter the dungeon, however.
He instead contacted Ely with his divine sense and told her what he was planning to do and how dangerous that task likely was.
Ely wanted him to stay out, but she understood that it had to be done.
"Don't worry," she said. "I know what to do in the case of emergency."
Ning nodded after hearing her and finally was slightly relieved. He no longer had to worry about anything, even if he died.
As such, he turned towards the gate of the dungeon and walked through it.
Ning arrived in a brightly lit cave with a wide pathway and a high ceiling. The place he had just come from was the end of the cave, with no way back.
Without waiting, he spread his divine sense all around him, looking for the monsters that would be in this place. However, when he actually did find them, he was surprised.
In the entire dungeon that had so many various pathways around it, there were maybe 20 monsters total. And not a single one of them was above E-rank.
"What… the hell?" Ning thought.
The monsters were giant, fluffy spiders that were not strong at all. He could defeat them with the snap of his finger if he wanted to.
"Why are there so few monsters?" he wondered "and where the hell is the boss?"
Ning did not move a single step and just stood there in confusion. There was definitely something wrong here, only he couldn't figure it out at all.
He snapped his finger and a ball of fire appeared in front of him. He sent the fire forward, guiding it with his divine sense as it made its way through the entire dungeon.
The dungeon was so massive that it took an entire minute for the fireball to reach the fire spire where a piece of it split off from it and hit the spider.
The spider burned immediately, leaving behind nothing. As E-rank monsters, there was a very low chance for them to contain mana stones in them.
The ball of fire moved around the dungeon until 5 minutes later every single spider in every pathway was fully defeated.
When he defeated the final spider, a portal appeared where the last spider had died.
"That's it?" Ning thought curiously. He had defaulted to long-ranged attacks just in case there was something about this dungeon that was still being hidden. However, from the look of it, that wasn't right at all.
He teleported over to the portal and checked around once again. Then, having nothing else to do, he walked out of the portal.
He appeared outside the dungeon and was surprised by what he saw. "What? Why is it dark?" he thought.
He looked at the sky and noticed that the moon was in the sky. Then, where was the sun?
Ning frowned and turned towards one of the people that were looking at him. "What's the time right now?" he asked.
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"4— 4 AM," the woman said.
"How long have I been in here?" he asked.
"About 15 hours," she said.
Ning openly frowned now, making the people around him fear a bit. He sensed a divine sense fall onto him.
He teleported and arrived next to Ely.
"Are you okay? You've been gone for a while," she said.
"I'm fine," Ning said. "Was I really gone for 15 hours?"
"I'm afraid so," Ely said. "What happened? What took you so long?"
"Nothing took me so long," Ning said. "I was in there for maybe 10 minutes at most. I don't even think that's right. Maybe 7 minutes at best."
"What? Are you saying that time moved slowly in that dungeon?" she asked.
"I'm afraid so," he said with a frown on his face. He quickly contacted the Director and Apostle Kim to let them know he was out.
Both of them accepted the call despite the time.
"Young man, you're out?" the director asked.
"Yes," Ning said.
"Are you fine? Was the dungeon dangerous?"
"No, it was not," Ning said. "I'll go in once more and will let you know what I find in the meeting tomorrow."
He ended the call.
"You're going in again?" Ely asked.
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"Yes, an experiment," Ning said. "Come with me."
They both went back to the portal site where Ning one of the people working there.
"Do you have stopwatches?" he asked.
"Stopwatch? Uh… I have one on my phone," the man said as he took out his smartphone and handed it over to Ning.
"Good," Ning said. He opened the stopwatch app and set it up. "What time is it right now? Exactly."
"Exactly… 4:13 AM," the man said as he looked at his wristwatch.
"Alright, I'm going in again," Ning said and turned toward the dungeon. He held the phone in his left hand and a small knife in his right.
Then, he started the stopwatch and entered. As soon as he was inside, he searched for the spiders in the dungeon. He found them immediately, so he killed them all by teleporting over to them and walking out of the portal that had appeared.
As he arrived, he pressed the stopwatch on the phone. "3.22 seconds," Ning said as he looked towards Ely and the man that was standing there doing nothing.
"What's the time?" he asked.
"4:20," the man said.
Ning handed him back his phone. "So every second in there, two minutes pass out here," he said. "Good to know."
He left the young man in a daze who looked at his phone and the number 3.22 displayed on it. That wasn't minutes, that was seconds.
How could anyone clear a dungeon in such little time? "Is that what it's like having the power of 5 gods?" he wondered.
Ely looked towards Ning who had a contemplative look on his face.
"What are you thinking?" she asked him.
"I'm thinking if I'm somehow wrong about all of this," he said.
"Wrong?" Ely looked confused. "How so?"
"Until now, I had been thinking that this was all the 'good' constellations that were making the dungeons to send the world into chaos, thus delaying my knowledge of magic circles from being spread," he said. "However, I don't see how whatever is going on right now is possibly going to help them."
"What are you trying to say?" Ely asked.
"I'm saying that this is more than just about magic circles," he said. "This… this isn't just about that, but about me destroying the SS-ranked dungeons. They're trying to overwhelm me with many new dungeons where time passes so slowly that it could never realistically be cleared completely."
"They're going to force the other SS-ranked dungeons into existence merely by diverting our attention elsewhere," Ning said. "And I'm afraid that it is working."
Ning arrived in Seoul around 9 in the morning. He decided to come here before going to the guild.
He wanted to come to the director first, but he found himself going for the prime minister. He needed to have a small talk with the man.
"Apostle Ning, I didn't realize you had left the dungeon. No one else has," the middle-aged man said.
"I'm afraid it will take a while," Ning said. "I have something to talk to you about, prime minister.'
"What is it?" the man asked. "Is it about that magic circle? I'm afraid I don't have the time."
"You need to make time," Ning said. "Imagine being able to go from Seoul to Jeju in a single second. Imagine a barrier around the city where even S-ranked monsters wouldn't easily enter. Don't you want that? Do you really want the world to go through another dungeon break? Do you remember what happened last time?"
"We-we have Apostles now, and hunters," the prime minister said. "And we will be prepared this time around."
"Will you be prepared for SS-raked monsters? Can your hunters fight them? Imagine a thousand monsters, each as large as a skyscraper. Who would fight against that? You?" Ning asked. "Please, stop playing into the enemy's hands and just contact the other countries regarding this."
"They won't listen," the prime minister said. "Each one of these countries is busy with these newly found dungeons. They will never waste their time elsewhere at all."
"I've thought about that," Ning said as he brought out a small piece of paper. He handed it to the prime ministers.
The prime minister slowly opened the paper and found that it was a list of country names with coordinates on them.
"What's this?" the prime minister asked.
"A dungeon that their government missed while searching for the new ones. When contacting these countries, tell them that if they attend this meeting, they will get the rest of the list of dungeons that they will normally take months to find. I'm sure that will get them moving," Ning said.
"That…" the prime minister was surprised. "That might work."
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"Good," Ning said. "I want the meeting set within the week. I don't care how busy anyone is or what. They must attend it. Please get it done."
Ning left the prime minister in a very weird state where he didn't know who had the higher importance in their conversation just then. He was the prime minister but Ning's word held more weight than his own.
He decided to do as told and left for his office.
Ning arrived at director Sung's office and told him everything he knew about the dungeon.
"It's… slowed time?" the director was surprised.
"Yes," Ning said. "The dungeon is about 120 times slower."
"Is that why our people aren't out?" the director asked.
"Can't really say," Ning said. "I did only go to that one dungeon, but it is possible that they have some sort of time dilation there as well."
"So those dungeons actually are E-rank? We didn't mistake them?" the director asked.
"No, you did no mistake in the measurement," Ning said.
"I see," the director frowned.
"You're worried that it will be a D-ranked dungeon soon?" he asked.
"Yes," the director said. "All E-ranked dungeons have become a D-ranked dungeons within a few days of appearance. Within the next 2 days, these dungeons will change too."
Ning nodded. "How long for C-rank?" he asked.
"I… I can't really tell," the director said. "Not a single dungeon has been tested without sending anyone in it. Every time there is one, we always send people to investigate and complete it. So, we can't say for sure."
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"What's the fastest it's ever been?" Ning asked.
The director thought for a bit and said, "A month."
Ning sighed. "So we can expect the dungeons to evolve in just a week or two," he said.
"That's…" the director couldn't wrap his head around the fact that something so terrifying was happening so quickly.
"We will have to start sending people to complete it without waiting," Ning said. "No private dungeons, so schedule. Send anyone who wants to go in. It will take them forever to come out if what I'm understanding is true, but that will slow it down by just enough so I can be of help."
"You can help?" the director looked curiously.
"Hopefully," Ning said. "We'll have to wait and see."
Ning then pulled out the book he had brought and flipped through the pages. The director glanced for a second and saw the names of countries written in a massive font at the top of the page.
"There it is," Ning said and tore off the piece of paper and handed it over to the director. "These are all the dungeons that have newly opened in South Korea. I've listed some that are close to the borders of North Korea too."
The director looked at the list with a very surprised look on his face. "These numbers, they are longitude and latitudes?" he asked.
"Yes," Ning said.
"And this last number?" the director asked.
"Height," Ning said.
"Height?"
Ning nodded. "Some of these dungeons have formed in weird locations like underground or on top of a skyscraper. Quite a few even have appeared inside lakes and rivers all around the world. I decided to add height for that reason."
"I see," the director said. He looked at the piece of paper and called his assistant in. "Scan this paper and send it to everyone available to check and set up equipment around the dungeon. Also, call every available hunter around the country to visit their local Dungeon Defense Department. We are going to have to send everyone to fight in the dungeons, so have them prepare."
Ning smiled when he saw the director's reaction to the information. He had instantly accepted it all and made his moves.
'That's how it should be,' he thought.
"Anyway, I'll be leaving now. I'll let you know if I find anything else," Ning said and teleported away from the director's office.
few more days passed, and in that period, Ning spent most of the time either in the guild or back home helping the new cultivators get used to cultivation.
He helped them understand how Qi worked, how divine sense worked, and many other things that came with being a cultivator.
Both Hi-Ah and Jung-Hee broke through to the Core Formation realm in just 3 days despite cultivating for just some night.
Chase was the same, but his schedule was slightly broken due to having to come and go at irregular hours, so he didn't get as much time to cultivate at all.
He also called his Uncle and Grandmother over to stay in his house for a few weeks. That, however, was just an excuse to keep them close just in case.
One day late at night, he got a call from the director. He accepted the call.
"Director Sung, I didn't expect to hear from you at this time," he said. "It's quite late."
"I just got some news, I thought you would want to hear it too," the director said.
"What's the news?" Ning asked.
"That S-ranked hunter, the first one to go in, he's come out," the director said. "He says that it's been less than an hour since he entered. You were right, time is flowing differently in those dungeons."
"I knew it," Ning said. "See, you won't have to worry about sending in hoards of people."
"I hope so," the director said. "I already sent what I think is the right number, but with such delay, I might have to send more to stop the dungeon from evolving."
"Good luck regarding that," Ning said. There was nothing he could do to help regarding that situation. The system probably had some ways, but Ning still didn't have any communication with his other body.
It would be about a week or so before he got any feedback from Ning.
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"Oh right, about that meeting, how's that going?" he asked.
"It's… going as well as we could hope at the moment. Information has been delivered to all the countries, and I'm sure they are intrigued, but since they want to see the demonstration in person, it will take a while to create the meeting," the director said.
"How many of them said anything about coming to the meeting?" Ning asked.
"All of them," the director said. "They're very curious how you got the information you gave them. Besides, I think they're actually coming for you rather than the information itself. A 5 god blessed Apostle is not something you see every day."
"I see," Ning said. "Thanks for letting me know."
"Of course," the director said.
The call ended there and Ning went back to cultivating. The nighttime was the most peaceful, so he did nothing but cultivate.
The next few days, he went to the guild and helped complete a few dungeon runs to train the secondary team of S-ranked fighters.
Then when the weekend came, it was time for him to leave.
Apparently, since the world leaders wanted to see the magic circles in work by themselves, they held the meeting in person rather than over the internet, like most of the meetings nowadays took place.
The place where it was going to be held was the United Nations headquarters in New York, despite the fact that the United Nations barely did anything at this time and age.
Each country was out for itself and wanted to see the other one's downfall. Unless there was a global threat, no one even remembered the existence of this global body.
People from all around the globe were flown into New York on the weekends, all of whom were guarded by an apostle.
Of the remaining 129 countries, each and every single one of them had come to this assembly and Ning was going to be the one to address this.
Ely sat on top of a tall skyscraper along with Ning and looked at the sprawling city of New York.
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"It's not like what I thought it would be," she said as she looked at the city.
"I don't think anything is like what you thought back then," Ning said. "Those dungeon breaks really did reshape most of the world."
Ely nodded. "Still, it's not that bad," she said. "Certainly has a lot of the tall buildings still."
Ning nodded and continued watching the city. The sun slowly rose from the east as the morning came to light.
"That's very pretty isn't it?" Ely asked.
"I suppose," Ning said. "But it's not as pretty as those stars and nebulas I talked about. Now that is true beauty."
"I'm looking forward to seeing them someday then," she said.
"Sure, I'll take you out to the stars after all of this mess is over," Ning said.
Ely smiled and said nothing as she stared at the morning sun. To Ning, it might not look as pretty, but to her it absolutely was. To lose love for such a sight, she wondered what could be so much more beautiful than this.
She turned to see Ning put on a somber face as she looked into the distance.
"Are you nervous?" she asked. She wouldn't have thought that was possible.
"No, I'm not nervous," he said. "I'm just… thinking."
"About what?" Ely asked.
"About life, I guess," Ning said. He turned to see Ely looking confused at his statement.
"You see, ever since I left Kumia all those years ago, my goal had been to return back to you guys, which I did. Then, along the way, I had another goal added to my journey, to save earth from these gods," Ning said.
"I've already fulfilled my first goal, and if I complete my other goal soon too… then what do I do?" he asked. "I have an infinite amount of years to leave, and I'm worried I won't be able to do it at all."
Ely got contemplative for a moment and smiled. She grabbed Ning's arm and leaned into his shoulders.
"Don't worry. No matter how many years you have to live, I will be by your side forever to live them with you."
The speech booths on the podium had all been removed, leaving behind just a normal stage in the end.
Ning sat on a single chair on the stage and closed his eyes as he waited for the various country's world leaders to arrive in the meeting hall.
He opened an eye from time to time to see how many people had come and closed them again when he realized that the room was still not full.
He was a little annoyed about having to open and close his eyes just to see. It had been a long while since he to do something like this so… consciously.
Usually, he could see things no matter where they were without his eyes, but with the system gone, he was just an above-average person.
He used his divine sense this time around to see everyone in the room and noticed Night, Blue, and Ely staying on the other 3 sides of the circular room.
The director and prime minister from South Korea had also arrived at this meeting and were sitting in their own section of the room. They were perhaps the only leaders there that did not have an Apostle guarding them.
The rest of them each had at least one, sometimes even two guarding them.
"Hmm?" He opened his eyes and looked ahead. "Is that all?"
He looked around and realized that the room was filled up.
"When are we starting?" a voice spoke in English. The president of the United States of America was rather loud and boisterous, and he shouted at Ning after seeing that he still hadn't started.
"Yes, yes, I'm starting," Ning said as he walked away from the chair and arrived at the edge of the podium. His voice boomed through the hall, catching everyone's attention.
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He spoke in English, as that, Chinese and Korean were the only three languages he had let himself understand. He could use his ring to translate the other languages too, but that did not mean he could fluently speak them.
The English language was the most widely used language among them, so he decided to speak to the assembly about that.
"I see you have all gathered," he spoke loudly with a slight pause to let the translators have an easier time doing their job. "Welcome."
A few people started clapping for no reason and others joined in as well. However, not many clapped, so it died down as quickly as it started.
"Anyway, I know you have come here for two reasons today. First is the list of dungeons that have formed in your country and the second is to learn about Magic circles," he said. "Just in case anyone is just here for the dungeons, I will be providing that information after I've taught you about the magic circles."
A few people grumbled, but most of them were there for both, so they remained quiet.
"First, let me tell you what exactly a magic circle is," he said. "Basically, it is a diagram that lets you cast a spell without you needing to know that spell. That's as simple as it gets."
A few people talked with each other, trying to understand what they were hearing. They spoke to the apostles and asked if that was true. They wanted most of them to find out if that was true or not.
Not all Apostles were aware of this, and those that were didn't have much idea about it either.
"You all see confused," Ning spoke to gather their attention again. "Let me give an example."
He slowly walked back away from the edge of the podium and stood at the center of the stage. "Can someone please attack me," he said.
"Huh?"
"What?"
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Multiple such confused words, all in their own language were spoken throughout the assembly when he asked the question.
"Anyone? Just attack me," he said. 'Don't worry, I have 5 Gods on my side. I won't be hurt." He took any opportunity to fulfill his end of the bargain with the five constellations.
The president of India nudged someone, and a dark-skinned young woman stepped out of where she was sitting.
"May I?" the woman asked Ning, and Ning simply opened his arms wide, waiting for the attack.
The dark-skinned apostle took a deep breath as the people around her rubbed their arms as cold air flowed next to the woman.
Next thing anyone knew, there was a large icicle right next to the woman, floating like it was her own sword.
Many apostles took a defensive stance in front of their leaders, but the Indian apostle's target was always Ning.
"I'm attacking," she said and Ning nodded.
Everyone was confused why this was happening at all, but since it was, they couldn't help it at all.
The woman threw her ice spear directly toward Ning, aiming right for his chest. Ning was surprised that she was bold enough to aim at his chest but other than smiling, he did nothing.
The icicle slammed onto him and shattered into a million pieces, the shards of which scattered throughout the podium.
Everyone gasped when they saw the subtle greenish barrier in front of Ning which had blocked the attack. The glint vanished and no one could tell that there was even a barrier there anymore.
Ning slowly stepped away from where he was standing and removed the carpet from underneath. People were curious, so they looked to see what he was showing.
When they saw a 2-meter wide circle with intricate details drawn onto the floor, they were surprised.
"For today's example purposes, I snuck in here last night and drew this magic circle, which can create a barrier around the place it was drawn," he said. "I'm sure Miss Apostle wasn't trying anything strong, but she was still stopped. Imagine such a circle covering your entire city. Any sort of attack by any foreign threat would be snuffed out in an instant."
"Would you not want to learn more about this?"
The many leaders were surprisingly quiet, not even moving around their papers and tools in front of them to fully focus on what Ning was telling them.
Ning proposed to everyone to let them teach two magic circles.
One would be the magic circle that defends, and another a magic circle that lets them teleport.
For the defense one, everyone would get the exact same magic circles. However, for the teleportation one, each and everyone would have to be different due to the distance between the two magic circles.
Ning started by telling them about the first one.
"I will provide you with a better image later," Ning said. "For now, all you have to remember is that you will have to draw this around the place where you will want it to be defended by an outside force."
"The one I'm giving you will defend against any attack or stop any non-human with a magic core in them. Meaning, it will stop most of the beasts that can come out of a dungeon break," Ning said. "Of course, that also means it cannot protect those that do not have any mana cores in them, but those beasts are usually easy to defend against."
A few people raised their hands to ask a question. "Yes," Ning said, pointing to one of the people who raised their hands.
"Can this thing attack that which enters it, or is this just normal protection?" the person asked.
"It won't attack anything," Ning said. "But it will suppress whatever that manages to enter it, which will give you an easier time against that thing."
"Can we not have one that attacks?" another person asked. "That seems more useful, especially in the absence of hunters and apostles."
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"You could, but I'm not going to," Ning said. "The amount of mana used to run this thing is not small. Adding offensive capabilities to such a thing would make it almost impossible to run."
"Just this small one under my feet has already dried up quite a bit of mana in the room. A few more attacks and this will stop working. To make it work more efficiently, I would have to drop a few mana cores onto it."
"Similarly, the ones you will be getting will require a lot of mana to run, which I don't expect the city you will be drawing it around to have. In that instance, you will have to use S-rank or higher-ranked mana stones to power it. The stronger the mana stones you will use, the stronger the defense will be."
"Also, these symbols you see here, all work together to give you defensive capabilities. The more of these symbols here, the more defensive. However, if you somehow start removing it for offensive symbols, you will lessen its defensive power," Ning said.
"Also, I'm worried you people will learn how to use the offensive symbols to create your own circle. I don't trust you enough to hand you over such destructive abilities," he added.
The various world leaders that got those words translated for them gave awkward looks around. The smaller ones were glad that there was nothing offensive about it at all, and the bigger ones were angry that they weren't getting it.
In their minds, the best form of defense was the threat of retaliation. For a very long time, that had been the nuclear weapons. However, now that dungeons and hunters were a thing, they were far more fearful of those.
Especially the Apostles.
Once he was done explaining the defensive magic circle, he gave a brief explanation of how the teleportation circle worked and how they could use it.
"I will hand over the exact circles you will have to draw in various major cities of your country," Ning said. "For now, this is it. Does anyone have any questions?"
Almost all of the world leaders wanted to speak. Ning sighed silently and pointed to one of the closer ones to him.
The world leader there started speaking, and Ning got the question translated to him by his ring.
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"Do you really have the power of 5 gods?" the leader was asking.
"That has nothing to do with the meeting today. Please stay on topic," Ning said and pointed to someone else.
"Where have you been all this time? Were you made into an Apostle recently?" the person asked.
Ning couldn't help but feel slightly angry at the question.
"If you do not have anything else to ask about then please don't ask," Ning said. "I just want questions about the magic—"
A barrier suddenly appeared in front of him, while a massive fire bombarded him where he stood.
People cried out in fear and the apostles moved to protect their leaders from falling debris.
Ely and the rest were going to move to help, but Ning's voice entered their head, telling them not to help him, but instead get these people out of there.
Their Qi covered everyone from the falling debris as the building came crashing down from the fiery blast from outside.
The barrier Ning was standing in was broken long ago, but he wasn't hurt despite that. His clothes were a little singed on the edges, but he came out of the fire otherwise okay.
He looked at the woman that was flying on top of him, a woman with black hair that was completely uncombed, a white dress that was burnt for the most part, and a crazy smile on her face.
"Who are you?" Ning asked with an angry look on his face. The girl giggled when she heard that and Ning saw something that made him feel weird.
'Is that… a straight-jacket?'
The white clothes she was wearing were torn and burnt remains of a straight jacket, judging by the many straps on it.
Then, he looked at the woman with her crazy smile.
"Oh, hell no," he said as he looked at the woman, who was clearly a mental patient of some sort. "Someone actually gave you their power to come to disturb me?"
Ning frowned. He didn't know what to do right now.
On one hand, this woman was someone very strong, nearly as strong as him for sure. That meant fighting her wouldn't be as easy as if he still had his other body.
On the other hand, she was clearly a victim here too. She was being played by one of the constellations as a pawn in its plans.
Ning frowned as he had absolutely no idea who this constellation was at all.
'Come on, Ning. Hurry,' he thought to himself. 'Please complete it quickly.'
He knew Ning wasn't going to come unless there was an actual emergency since only someone's life in danger would be more important than what he was doing at that point.
He looked at the crazy woman who flew in the air. She was going for another attack.
A small beam of dark red and black fire flew at him with incredible speed. Ning checked the people behind him and only dodged after noticing that no one was there.
At the same time, the woman came flying at him with her fists together, which she swung like it was a club.
Ning crossed his arm to block it, but the strike still hit him so hard that he fell all the way back down to the crumbled assembly hall that had now been evacuated.
A few of the Apostles ran up to the woman while they looked from the ground.
"Get her, she wants to kill us all," one of them shouted.
"Attack!"
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The few apostles that had gathered suddenly let out a few attacks that went flying toward the woman in the sky.
Ning quickly got back up and ran outside, just in time to see the attacks fall on the woman.
"No, you idiots. Run," he shouted at the Apostles, not many of which understood what he was saying. "She's strong. Far stronger than you."
The ones that understood him frowned, but the others only saw an angry and annoyed person that was only flailing his arms around.
"Run!" Ning shouted as he looked up at the sky. The smoke slowly faded, and the woman emerged with not any damage to herself.
"She's too powerful for you," he said as he flew up to in front of them and looked to the sky.
The crazy woman was strong. Too strong. That was nothing like what he had seen before regarding the apostles. Not any of them were supposed to be this powerful.
She had the mana and the strength of someone far stronger than an apostle. As for her speed—
Before Ning could think of anything else, she disappeared and appeared right next to him.
Ning turned around and blocked her right arm, diverting the power in it to the sky. At the same time, he punched her in the guts to make her fall unconscious. However, he might have held back a bit too much as she didn't fall at all, and only grimaced in pain a little.
At the same time, she punched with her left hand, which Ning made sure not to underestimate this time around.
The woman frowned a little when she saw that he was able to block it this time around.
'Dammit,' Ning thought. 'This is no ordinary apostle. She's either been given the power by many constellations or one of them gave her a lot of themself. There is no way, one can be this strong without that.'
The apostles behind him got ready to attack, but Ning angrily turned around to shout at them again. "Get away from here!"
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His angry gesture seemed to have helped them this time around as they all ran away from this place.
'Let's finish this quickly,' he thought. A small spear came out of his ring and he held it strongly with two arms.
The woman attacked again, but Ning vanished this time around. He appeared behind the woman and slammed at her with his spear.
He didn't cut her but the attack still hurt her. He moved his spear again and hit her on the head with the butt of the spear.
Then he ducked as the woman sent the blackish fire all around her.
Ning moved up again and slammed the butt of the spear on her head again. He took back the spear and struck her stomach with his palm.
The woman cried out in pain, her giggles already stopping and only anger and pain remaining on her face.
Ning stepped back a bit in the air while the woman growled angrily. He needed to think about what he could do. He certainly couldn't kill her, but what other choice did he have here?
'I can capture her,' he thought. That was the only other choice he had, but that didn't give him the one advantage that killing her did.
If he killed her, whichever constellation gave a portion of their power to her would lose it forever. If he captured her, however, the constellation could just take it back, not losing almost anything.
Ning couldn't help but frown. The answer here for him to choose was obvious, but he really wanted to get back at the woman somehow.
"Screw it, I maybe not be able to waste all of your energy, but I can make you lose most of it," he thought to himself and put away the spear into his storage ring.
Then, he started attacking the woman, who also fought back.
Their clash made booming sounds in the air that shook buildings all around the city. Ning made sure to keep their fight to one area, but there were still quite a few destructions to the location around them.
Fortunately, everyone was evacuated, so there was no loss of life. However, the property damage was a lot.
For the next 5 hours, he fought with the woman continuously and in that time the United Nations headquarters was completely demolished while many of the buildings around them were cracked.
Once Ning saw that the woman was tired and could no longer continue fighting, he finally captured her.
The crazy woman was on the ground with Ning holding her hands behind her, keeping her from leaving.
She struggled, but she wasn't as strong now that she had used most of her mana on the attack previously.
"Ely! Do you have something for me?" Ning asked as Ely flew down close to him.
"Yes," She said as she brought out a plate from her interdimensional space. She threw the golden place toward the girl and Ning backed out.
The plate fell on top of her head and quickly expanded to become massive, nearly 5 meters in diameter.
Like a piece of cloth, it fell on the woman while spinning as it wrapped itself around the woman. When the woman was fully wrapped, she was suddenly squished on herself as the cloth went back to becoming a plate from before.
Only this time, the woman was trapped inside of it.
"Not bad," Ning said as he walked towards her.
"Of course," Ely said. "It's one of my best artifacts after all." She looked at the plate in her hand now and frowned a little. "I can't put something with a soul into my storage. What do I do with this?"
Ning took it from her. "I will take it for now," he said as he slid it into his robes.
Suddenly, the plate flew out from his hand and landed on the hand of another one. Both Ely and Ning quickly turned around to find someone standing next to them whom they could not sense there at all.
"You are not him, are you?" the… thing asked.
6 tentacles waved around like wings from its back while its head looked like that of a goat, only without any skin on it. The muscles wriggled on its face and the black cloak it wore was more black fog than cloth.
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Ning couldn't even tell if this thing had legs or arms at all as they were all hidden, even from its spiritual sense.
The golden plate suddenly broke open, and the girl they had just captured fell to the ground. She coughed a bit and looked up to see the black figure.
"Master!" she shouted.
"I have no need for you," the thing said as moved its slimy hands that came out of the fog. It suddenly wrapped around the woman, and Ning could visibly see strains of light move out of the woman, and into the thing's body.
He was taking back the power he had loaned.
At the same time, a few other hands grabbed the woman, as well as her power, was even more drained away.
Ning watched in surprise as he realized that he had been wrong about his assumption before. He had assumed that someone had given her a lot of their power to make her this strong, but as he could see, he was obviously wrong.
'They all gave her a piece of their power,' he thought. 'Damn, that's what I said I was given.'
"Where is he?" the first Constellation that had arrived asked.
"I am right here," Ning said, while covertly telling Ely to run away. Ely didn't hesitate as she ran away very, very fast.
One of the Constellations nearly moved to grab her, but on second thought, there was no need for that. There was nothing Ely could do that could be of harm to them.
"You are not him," the Constellation said. "You don't have his power."
"Is that so, Briss?" Ning asked. "Do you want to see my power?"
The Constellation hesitated for a bit. "You do sound like him, your attitude is the same, and you even know my name," Briss said. "But you don't have his power. You didn't even notice me when I came here. The other man would've noticed me right away. Tell me, where is he?"
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"Why do you ask?" Ning asked. "Are you that in a hurry to die? I have remembered you all, so soon you will die. Just like I killed Stryxus."
"You really do sound like him," another constellation spoke. "Are you sure this guy is not it?"
"He can't be," another one said. "Just look at his pitiful strength. He had to struggle with someone that we barely gave any strength to."
Ning frowned as he looked at the nearly dozen or so Constellations that were there. He couldn't help but wonder which ones they were. He took a gamble.
"Do your Apostles know you were involved in today's attack?" Ning asked.
"Why would we care if they know?" Briss asked. "They are our slaves and do what we say. Although, I suppose not for much longer."
Ning couldn't help but frown at what they meant. However, he knew they weren't going to kill them. Of course, that didn't mean they couldn't hurt them, but they would have to fight against their own power to do so if they wanted to.
After all, Constellation Wills could not kill or hurt anyone intentionally or directly normally.
That was why they used stuff like Dungeons and Demons to do their bidding. If they could do something on their own, they would have already gone to worlds and wreaked havoc on them and become the dictatorial god of that land.
Instead, they have to do sneak stuff like corrupting mana or manipulating them, or turning them into slaves via someone intermediary.
But that sort of restriction only meant that the Constellations had learned to get around it, and Ning was afraid this was one such thing.
"What are you planning on doing?" Ning asked with a worried look on his face.
"I told you not to reveal the magic circles into the world. Now, they know it works and with it, our value as gods will severely lower," Briss said. "We can't let you have that."
"So, instead of trying to help this world by giving you apostles, we will now harm it," Briss said.
Ning's eyes went wide as he looked at the 12 or so Constellation there. "We?" he asked.
Suddenly, more and more gods started popping up around them as Briss looked at him with a crazy smile.
"Yes, we," he said. "All of us."
:)
