Episode 17: Storming the Pyramid!

In this world, every gain has its shadow. If you seek to kill another, another seeks to kill you. The team from Atlas intends to kill Time Quicksand, and Time Quicksand’s team may well intend to kill Atlas’s team in return. This is a wager with everything at stake: win, and you seize the other’s ring; lose, and your own ring is gone for good.

Atlas, Morning Breeze, and Stan all felt certain that Time Quicksand would tell Peter, so before long there should be a collision between ring-bearing teams. Morning Breeze’s side had only three people, while Time Quicksand’s side should have four. If Morning Breeze and the others emerged one by one, they would be easily focused down and slain in an instant.

So the battles among ring bearers were truly fraught with peril. If Stan had not said so, Morning Breeze would never have imagined that Time Quicksand might bring reinforcements. It was clear now that collecting every ring alone was nearly impossible; if others cooperated, one solitary player would be at a dreadful disadvantage. Before, Morning Breeze had thought cooperation among ring bearers unnecessary. No one trusted anyone else, and at most there was only mutual benefit. But now it was different: if others joined forces while he remained alone, he would be in grave danger.

“We’re here!” Morning Breeze and Atlas rode atop the super-robot, while Stan walked on his own and Time Quicksand advanced beneath the sand. Together they arrived at a broad, level stretch of desert.

“Nothing ahead? Could the tower be beneath the sand?” Stan was puzzled. Ahead was still only desert, merely flattened a little, nothing remarkable.

“Didn’t you notice there are no monsters in this whole area?” The dark sand before them seemed ordinary enough, but its one unusual feature was the total absence of monsters.

At Morning Breeze’s reminder, the two indeed saw none. They followed him onward, and only when they entered the open area did they finally see a colossal black pyramid standing before them. It was invisible from afar; only within five hundred meters of the black pyramid could it be seen.

“From here on, the four of us go in together, and we’ll see who can reach the highest floor! I can tell you this much: each person may enter only once per month, so be careful.” Morning Breeze glanced at Atlas. “Shorty, don’t you dare die in there, or your ring may end up sealed inside forever.”

“Like hell I’ll die before you do. Besides, even if I do die in there, the ring will scatter randomly across the world map; it’ll just come down to who’s lucky enough to pick it up.” Atlas was not the least bit worried about dying inside. What concerned him was whether he would be the first to reach the highest floor.

One thing all three could be certain of was that Time Quicksand was unlikely to be the one to reach the top. He was a keen-eyed thief: formidable in damage, yes, but weak in defense and recovery. More importantly, in a trial like this, his ring would not help much. In a sense, his ring was suited to competition, whereas Morning Breeze’s and the others’ rings leaned more toward questing and progression.

“I’ve brought you this far. Whether you get what you want depends on how many floors you can conquer!” Morning Breeze said no more and headed toward the pyramid. There were seven floors in all; on each floor, one could leave, but could not enter again for a month.

Time Quicksand moved fastest through the dark desert and entered the trial pyramid first. Only after that did Morning Breeze and the others follow one by one. Being first inside was not necessarily best; as a rule, the first entrant often faced greater difficulty than the rest. If it had been otherwise, Morning Breeze would already have charged in through time-and-space shifting.

System: You have entered the first floor of the Trial Pyramid. Please find the teleportation array leading to the second floor. The higher the floor you reach, the more generous your final reward will be.

The first floor of the Trial Pyramid was like a maze, patrolled by many ordinary monsters five levels above the players. Once they spotted a player, they would launch their fastest attack. There were also many places within the Trial Pyramid watched by the True Eye, so thieves could not fare well even if they could hide, let alone when the monsters were five levels higher than the players; it was easy to detect a concealed thief.

Charge!

Once inside the Trial Pyramid, Morning Breeze did not hesitate for even a moment. He charged straight in to carve through the monsters. No finesse was needed here; killing his way through was the best method. Morning Breeze could have slipped forward in stealth, but that would waste far too much time, and with the poor concealment of stealth, plus the True Eye’s presence, he felt it would be faster to simply cut a bloody path through.

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For Morning Breeze, the level-36 dark snake-men and mummies posed little pressure. Clearing monsters like this was practically leveling up while farming experience. The only tragic thing was that these monsters dropped nothing at all. Morning Breeze’s burst power was extremely high; with the Brotherhood Sword in one hand and the Storm Sword in the other, he swept forward through the enemies, unstoppable.

Atlas, who had always won with his wits, came in and dropped to the ground at once, then took out a scouting tool and began searching relentlessly. His drake, fitted with a sensor, flitted about on the first floor as though seeking something. After about eight minutes, Atlas had already discovered the teleportation array to the second floor and even plotted the shortest route. Only then did he begin brutally clearing monsters onward. His speed was a bit slower than Morning Breeze’s, but he could reach the array by the shortest path.

Stan’s method was somewhat similar to Morning Breeze’s. He first forced his way through the monsters, and whenever he reached a fork in the maze, he would set down a teleportation array. If he took the wrong path, Stan would simply teleport back to the array, saving himself from much backtracking and avoiding many unnecessary fights.

Within the Trial Pyramid, one could not burrow underground, so Time Quicksand’s transformation into a bone scorpion was useless. He did not clear monsters as brutally as Morning Breeze and Stan, because he was too fragile. Even with strong technical movement, facing so many snake-men and mummies would still leave him easily wounded, and then he would have to sit and recover his health, wasting several times more time than the others. So this time he simply chose to creep forward in stealth, carefully slipping around the monsters.

Needless to say, the fastest to reach the second floor was the dwarf paladin Atlas. His own strength was not weak to begin with, and his equipment was excellent. With paladin talents in all three branches, he could tank, heal, and deal damage; after discovering the teleportation array, reaching it was easy for him. The dwarf paladin cleared the first floor in twenty-three minutes.

The second to reach the teleportation array was Morning Breeze. He used to come here once every month, so he was already familiar with the place. Even without knowing the array’s position, he could still cut his way through and find it fairly easily. The third to enter the second floor was Stan. By comparison, Time Quicksand was slower. If a thief was unfamiliar with this place, the difficulty would rise sharply. For Time Quicksand, survival came first. He knew his questing ability was not especially strong, and he did not insist on being the first to reach the highest floor.

The second floor of the Trial Pyramid required facing three elite bosses, each five levels above the player. What Morning Breeze drew this time was the Dark Mummy, the Venomous Mummy, and the Reaper Mummy. The Dark Mummy excelled at control, with all sorts of dark control skills that constantly interrupted attacks. The Venomous Mummy was practically a tank, with a slew of sustained debuffs, slowing effects, and innate poison; any attack could be rebounded with venom, making it extremely troublesome. The Reaper Mummy at the end, meanwhile, was a boss with tremendous burst. Each attack had a three percent chance to apply the Reaper Blade effect, and if it stacked fifteen times, death was certain.

Charge!

At the start, Morning Breeze filled his rage to the brim, then immediately activated God Mode and, without a second thought, bombarded the Reaper Mummy. This was the boss that threatened him most. With it present, Morning Breeze could not fight a war of attrition. Yet because he possessed Spring of Renewal and Blood Strike, his endurance was still very strong. He could slowly grind down the other two bosses, but he could not outlast the Reaper Mummy.

“Raven, I feel like this Trial Pyramid exists for me alone. It’s incredible!” Atlas was a paladin, and his holy damage dealt an extra thirty percent against mummies. Due to the opposing attributes, the Dark Mummy’s dark magic found it hard to control him. It had to be said that the second floor was quite easy for a paladin. Of course, that ease was only relative to a paladin as monstrously strong as Atlas; an ordinary paladin would have a far harder time.

“I’ve already killed the Reaper Mummy. How many bosses have you killed?” Morning Breeze was not especially worried about Time Quicksand and Stan. It was not very likely that they could surpass him. What surprised him a little was that Atlas had reached the second floor so quickly. What Morning Breeze did not know was that Atlas had arrived there three minutes ahead of him.

“No way. What time did you reach the second floor?” Atlas was somewhat alarmed. He was still killing the Reaper Mummy, yet Morning Breeze had already slain it. How could that be? Could Morning Breeze really be faster at clearing monsters than he was? Morning Breeze was a Blue Thunder Elf, and his burst power was indeed much stronger, but his survival should not have been great, should it?

“Two forty-eight in the morning!” Morning Breeze had activated God Mode and focused down an elite boss, so naturally he was fast. With the immense damage of repeated Rage Cleaves, he looked thoroughly delighted. But from here on, he could only slowly grind down the Dark Mummy, since his burst skills had all been spent at once.

“Damn it! You killed yours three minutes after me and still did it faster? Raven, don’t tell me you opened with all your big skills right away?” Atlas felt he had grown too smug. He had not expected Morning Breeze to reach the second floor so quickly. As expected, ring bearers were no simple matter. If Atlas had to guess, the only reason Morning Breeze was killing so fast was that he had unleashed everything from the start.

“You caught me. I’m not talking to you anymore; I’m charging ahead first!” Morning Breeze’s endurance really was inferior to Atlas’s. The other man had all three branches of paladin talents, full healing from Lay on Hands, an invincible Divine Shield, Hand of Protection that made him immune to physical attacks, the resurrection-like Ardent Defender, and even Hand of Freedom, which made him immune to any movement-impairing effect. The one thing Morning Breeze had over Atlas was superior burst damage.

Rage Cleave!

After cutting down the Dark Mummy, only the tank-like Venomous Mummy remained, and Morning Breeze no longer felt much pressure. Originally, he had thought his own speed would surely outstrip Atlas’s, but now it seemed Atlas was in no way slower than he was. Morning Breeze had to speed up, or things would become troublesome once the others arrived.

While Morning Breeze and the others were clearing the pyramid, three people had come to stand outside it. One was a god-knight clad in golden armor, bearing a dragon shield and a holy longsword; he looked strikingly handsome, especially with the cloak on his back, which bore the embossed head of a dragon. The cloak shimmered with orange light, and one glance was enough to tell it was a legendary item. This was Peter, the dragon knight hailed as number one in the American region.

Another was more unusual in appearance. His skin was a dark gray, his fingers long and sharp like a falcon’s talons, his feet like those of a bull, with a pair of goat horns atop his head and a pair of broad bat wings on his back. This was Dark Demon from the Russian region, a special demon-king race and a dark race class: the Night Demon King.

The third was a barbarian berserker. He was enormous, as large as two Morning Breezes, wielding a pair of axes in both hands. Clearly, he was an offensive player. Unlike the other two, this Italian-region player, Baru, was rather low-key, but his damage output could fully rival Morning Breeze’s.