The Grey Fog

Right at this moment of confusion, Luke walked out of his room,

"Hey you! Go and search for these materials in the market. Whatever you don't find, search for it in the forests outside the capital. Also, find and kill a Level 5 monster. It doesn't matter who does it, but I need its energy core! GO!"

Naturally, a compulsory mission popped up, just as OriginalMagus had expected, however something immediately caught his eye.

This was not a chain quest, but a single mission with multiple tasks to complete.

However, the reward, the reward was 1,000 exp!

OriginalMagus' jaw was as slack as ever, but Luke did not wait for him to say anything and immediately disappeared back into the spare room and locked the door behind him.

After another few minutes of recovering, OriginalMagus sighed in relief.

'It is a leader subordinate relationship, not a master slave contract. Although I will have to listen to his orders, he will give me the necessary benefits. Right, right! Being the right-hand man of a rising star is far better than a lap-dog for those established powers.

Consoling himself, OriginalMagus left for his chores, which were far more dangerous than normal chores, but what was danger to someone with 5 lives every 10 in-game days?

Back in the spare room, Luke sighed.

'How could the system put a timer on such an important decision.'

In truth, Luke did not want to grant OriginalMagus the status of his subordinate in exchange for 2 talent points. In fact, he was halfway done with his work of creating his new enchanted clothes when he remembered something incredibly important. He remembered he could create magic arrays.

This was the first time he would be creating a magic array. In Ultimatum, Magic arrays were rather unique among the other roles. Mechanics could create machines of all sorts and uses, while warriors could just fight with their bodies. Those from the priest pathway could create miracles with their specialized energy called faith, while hunters could use their tracking and hiding abilities along with specialized long ranged or burst close-quarters weapons to act as hunters, assassins and rangers with the highest dps for an extremely short amount of time in the game.

This left magicians as rather weak pathways in the early stages of the game, due to their lack of a specialty, and the difficulty in terms of learning how to use such a character and . However, as time passed, Magician pathway players slowly began to bring out stronger players who were more experienced with their pathways.

Battle after battle, they began to become more and more famous, until the tides completely turned in favour of the magicians when news got out that the entirety of Version 2 was caused by on single magician.

However, with this news, an sudden in-game update came up which equalized the playing field greatly by introducing new abilities to each of the other pathways except magicians.

Naturally, this update was in the form of certain players receiving an extra reward for a quest, which caused all players to flock to that NPC to gain that very skill.

Later word finally got out that these selected NPCs were not 'alive' like the other NPCs and worked more like the conventional NPC without feeling emotions, a true robot.

Anyway, this caused the strength of magicians to greatly drop from being the main damage dealer of a party, to being the supporting role along with priest.

This action of the game devs received great attention and ridicule from the media.

'A so-called independent world was influenced by their creators to balance player battles. What happened to being untouched for millennia in-game?'

After another 2 versions of this state, a single party of 12 players found ancient ruins containing something groundbreaking.

They discovered Magic Arrays. All 12 in the party received 3 multidimensional points for discovering a lost art which could overthrow the balance of the multiverse.

Magic circles were in essence magic runes placed in specific orders and places to achieve resonance among them and achieve a greater effect that enchantment.

However, what was groundbreaking about them was that they could only be directly tattooed on the skin, and the only limit to the number of magic arrays one could have was your level.

Unlike weapons, and magic tools, magic arrays would not be dropped upon death, and the greatest thing about them was that their effects stacked, and only magicians could use them.

The best aspect was that being able to be stacked unlimited times, they could cover the gaps over levels, and the sky was the limit. In essence, taking into account the limit of number of arrays per level, a level 10 could kill off a level 30 with one hit if he got the highest grade of magic array.

As all things in Ultimatum, magic arrays had their own classification system.

Starting from lowest Grade 1s, which gave a basic stat boost of up to 5 points randomly, the magic arrays went up to Grade 5 which gave, depending on the type of boost wanted and materials available, a basic stat boost of +200 for each stat, along with addition effects depending on the materials and the magician making it.

Naturally, as the grade went higher, the cost of both production and raw materials increased. But money was not something magicians lacked. They could churn out enchanted weapons as though they were launching virtual playing cards, and those weapons would sell like hotcakes anywhere in the multiple dimensions.

While he was in deep thought about magic arrays, the system gave a simple notification that OriginalMagus wants to become your subordinate, and in order to complete his race evolution, he needed to spend 3 talent points.

Luke would have naturally rejected such a blatant robbery; however, he was preoccupied by creating a magic array.

And that was why Luke missed on clicking cancel and it evolved OriginalMagus with that status.

At this moment, a dangerous though nested itself into Luke's mind.

'Why did I not remember something so overpowered until now? Was it the system? Was this revenge for choosing Draconic Overseer? Or, could it be that the system is holding back more of my memories, and only slipped up this one to distract me and accomplish something?'

At this moment, Luke felt like the fog in the darkness began to visibly vibrate with excitement. For some reason, he could feal it even though he wasn't present there.

Suddenly, everything stopped, and Luke completely forgot about everything that took place, along with the disappearance of that dangerous thought. He went back to creating his clothes and new mask, and making preparations for OriginalMagus to return with the materials he needed for the magic array.

Back in the void where Luke was almost brought to once more, the grey fog was trembling, not with excitement, but with anger and frustration this time, as though it had just missed its only opportunity to live. Despair could also be felt within those bursts of anger.