Brief Farewells

Landing lightly on my feet in the midst of the quarter-mile dust cloud, I sense more than see the presence of the other clan leaders nearby and make my way over to their coughing and choking group.

Even I was having a little trouble breathing in the mineral dust that was certainly kill us in reality, but then opened slits and channels straight to my lungs through my ribs like gills witch cordycep silk screening to filter out the dust. Holding my hand high over my head as I walk, I both charge up an Air Cannon with several thousand MP and aim up over the middle of the crater-like battlefield.

Releasing the Air Cannon, I wait until it reaches over a hundred feet in the air above the center of the battlefield before detonating the giant ball of compressed air. With a sound similar to a mortar strike, the compressed air released with a strength rivaling the storm cloud of my Heavenly Thunder display.

The new dust cloud enveloping the battlefield in gritty darkness was unanimously blown down and outward in all directions. The dust cloud briefly compressed down against the ground as hurricane winds blew down on our heads before the winds and dust dispersed outward along the broken ground while seeping deep into the fissures.

Much of the dust cloud remained in the network of underground chasms and topside fissures but everything that the air previously shoved outward was pushed all the way to the circling ridge and then up into the air away from the battlefield. Up in the air, the pressure release of the vacuum left in the wake of my Air Cannon sucked everything above the ridge up and inward before re-releasing outward again.

Within moments, the smokescreen covering the battlefield was lifted and the world could clearly see the ruins of the opposition now that their camp obstructions were blasted away with sound. Thousands of players were left just barely alive strewn about the ground and even trapped in the broken ground. There were a few fates awaiting these players that I originally would not had wish on even my worst enemies.

Well, maybe a few, if I could have gathered the Fallen Monochrome leadership and just chucked them down into a big one.

For the moment, though, I was simply enjoying the view while wondering how much experience these people were worth. Once every week in game time, one person could farm another person for ten percent of their current level's worth taken from that player.

Every person I just killed were the leadership and elites of their clans so they were certainly around level seventy just from getting through the Winter Wood if they were good at it. Just being at level seventy-five is seventy-five thousand experience, netting me seventy-five hundred minimum per person since these guys were probably maintained by being fed the rest of the clan's kills.

Seven thousand and five hundred times one hundred was seven hundred and fifty thousand experience. That was more than all the experience I got from clearing the raid! And Melpomene had tried to tease me about finding levels after reaching level one hundred… as if.

I now had too many enemies to worry about not leveling up anymore.

"Have all of your dryads and druids start linking your people and familiars to share mana pools," I inform the other leaders while looking toward my party with a broad smile. "It's time to get everybody here in the triple digits."

Breaking down the remaining numbers to an estimated three thousand after destroying their leaderships with the storm strike and then Sound Barriers, I go ahead and round their overall levels off to sixty-nine just for shits and giggles. Left to be divided among the alliance's leadership and dungeon elites was over nearly twenty-one million experience.

Even I would continue going up a few levels when dividing that by an estimated eighty players! Though I doubted anyone here was still under level one hundred thanks to the raid clear rewards, everybody would enjoy roughly two-and-a-half levels from the end of this enemy army.

Moments after my orders, I was personally tapping into eleven different players in our alliance who were managing the shared pools of a few dozen entities at once. Altogether, we had a shared mana pool that was well over ten million MP. However, instead of taking action myself I simply filtered through the accumulative mana pools until I found Go.

"Do your worst, bro," I say as I hand control over the mass mana pool to Go. Go just stands there and looks at me with a strange expression of disbelief on his face. I was sure he had also done the math and knew that whoever dealt the final blow would get the most experience. I was literally handing him the lion's share.

Nodding wordlessly after several seconds, Go draws his poleax from his back and starts walking a few yards ahead of our alliance. By now, anybody with the ability to heal had been doing their best to get themselves and their comrades off the ground on the other side of the leveled enemy camps. Hundreds of people were now up on their feet and doing whatever they could.

However, Go was currently Self-Enchanting a combination of lightning, fire, and earth elements. His body actually appeared to change a little as granite similar to our surroundings began forming in plate-like patches about his body with molten lines running between them. Along those molten lines ran currents of dark red heat lightning that arced about the exposed areas of his armor and body.

Like his body, his ancient alloy and chaos soul crystal poleaxe had molten lines running all throughout and even shining through from the inside of the black crystalline head. Raising his weapon high overhead as if preparing to guillotine somebody, all of his Self-Enchantment was suddenly redirected into his poleax with a massive fluctuation of mana.

Even I was drained of a couple thousand Mana Points, which meant everybody and everything else here had to be drained of at least a thousand MP. All of that was used to charge Go's following strike. A split second before my friend's ax fell, I could have swore that I heard him quietly name his attack the same way I had done. "Apoc."

Right after those two syllables, Go's poleax was slamming down right into the granite and unleashing dozens of waves of seismic activity that spread forward and outward for hundreds of yards in every direction. The already broken ground was suddenly quaked into a dense lake of cobblestone and gravel within the first second or two while the ensuring quakes carried with it molten lightning energy that rushed forward and converted the lake of gravel into a lake of lava.

[Leveled Up x2]

[All stats raised by 2]

Red lightning tainted with thermal energy arced all about the lava lake whose shore was only a couple dozen yards away from us. However, by now most of the thousands who were still in critical condition had already been killed by the controlled quakes by being buried under tons of earth. Everybody else was nothing but a disappearing health bar as the lava flowed.

By the time the lightning energy actually had a part to play there was no longer anything for it to do. However, everybody here had gone up by at least as many levels as I just did while I could tell by checking my party itself that Go had gone up to level one-oh-six from level one-oh-one. Everybody else in the party was at least one hundred and three.

I myself was now officially over one-ten at level one-twelve, probably the current highest leveled player in the game. Unless there were secretly players who were living in cities near level one hundred areas, but even then they would need to have been carried by NPC for their entire lives and had little actual combat ability.

Enjoying the warmth of the lava in the otherwise cold and snowy environment, I look around at everybody else who were still going their their stats and earnings. This was probably some of their first times being involved in killing thousands in a single attack of some sort so they were probably receiving some form of massacre or slaughter achievement.

Suddenly, though, I received a private message from Go stating that he had been offered the chance at a hidden 'custom' class the same way Stonewall had after receiving his legendary gear and benefits. He was wondering if he should become Tragedy's Executioner or not.

Apparently, this class came with limited or even no chances of advancement but offered a few extra skills, a change of passives, a combat mastery, and several perks or buffs that augmented his varied abilities but were all based on PVP. There was no current downside to accepting such a class and since it was a divine achievement based class it would not be entirely impossible to one-up it in the future.

Maybe something as simple as killing over ten thousand mobs instead of a couple thousand players to switch from PVP to PVE. However, setting up such a situation was probably not going to be very easy at all. I doubted I could create such a situation and get away with it by using cordyceps or degraded biomass to mass produce mobs.

I told him to accept it purely based on the PVP aspects that came with it after thinking of the conversation I had with Melpomene in the cathedral. In fact, I was looking at it as if she were sending me a message. I needed to get all of my friends their own hidden classes.

While Go was calmly, almost dramatically, walking back to the peace party while holstering his poleax over his shoulder I simply turned to the other clan leaders and said, "Prepare for the backlash. Wherever they respawn at they'll be back from in only a day or two after all the numbers they've already passed through the region. I'll leave your demon commanders and their affiliated forces here with your guys, but my party and I need to complete my quest."

"This crater will the future city center," Donna remarks while surveying the area proudly, hands on his hips and chest puffed like a strutting chicken. As if she actually did anything. "With our numbers we can set up a six point outpost system like we did back in Monochrome while that World's Eye Caldera was our headquarters. It'll take an attack from the inside out to break our supply and reinforcement chains, especially now that we're out here and can contract outside forces through our people in the capital."

"They'll take a few more days to get here, but NPC mercenaries and clan recruitment will definitely secure this position for the long-term," Mr. Thirteen agrees while examining the lava pool. "I we can do THAT a few more times all over the crater, we can level and deepen the area s that when people trying to circumvent the outposts to come in… it'll be a hell of a drop. Surviving will take up a big chunk of an army's mana and that's just in manpower. Protecting familiars and supplies… they'll have to try taking one of our access points from us to get in."

Glad that these two were on board with the idea, I look to the outer alliance clan leaders and say, "This is your next chance at a piece of the pie. Call in all your manpower and resources and help defend this location while they work with their contacts to secure the location and its rights. If all goes well, you'll have seats on the city council or cabinet."

Turning my attention to my team, I say, "Go find Dew and our shit and let's crack open a bottle to celebrate, we'll be kissing this frozen shit hole of a region good bye in the morning!" Not needing to be told twice, my team and their familiars mounted up where applicable and started riding out from the peace party.

Returning my attention to the peace party leaders, I say, "Truly, it was good to see you guys again. I'm glad you're old ass is still around in these games, Thirteen. You, too, Donna, even if that is your real face. It's a nice face, though, so I'll be happy when I see it again."

"You guys…" I add, trailing off while looking at the outer alliance leaders and their elite groups who were still hanging around. "What are you doing here? Get to work! I'm not here to hold your hand and show you what to do!"

After they quickly got the message and organized their forces into leaving to rejoin their clans, I cannot help but smirk and laugh after having passively bullied the poor guys. Shaking my head, I flash a normal smile at Mistress and say, "Your help in the dungeon was invaluable and I definitely owe you for everything you and your people did down there. If anybody ever gives you trouble, let me know."

Nodding my head to the remaining groups as a whole, I turn around and spread my wings out to signal for Imperial to carry me up into the air and then shoot forward in pursuit of my party.

*