Afterlife Dream

All of us held our breaths in anticipation when the three beasts were unleashed from their cages and headed toward Ingenious at the same time. The latter remained calm, though his sharp eyes did not blink even once. General Aardvark was the first one to reach him. One second we saw the general swiping at Ingenious' head with a set of sharp claws, and the other second the latter already disappeared into thin air.

We were not the only ones who were confused. The three mini-bosses were also confused. Their opponent suddenly disappeared in front of their eyes. Soft murmurs went through the crowd. It was quickly replaced with terrified gasps when the mini-bosses started to take notice of the surrounding spectators.

The higher-level players barely showed reactions because we could sustain the damage from the mini-bosses just fine, at least enough until we killed them. On the other side, the lower-level players who came especially for that occasion were beyond terrified. The three mini-bosses did not exactly look very friendly. Everything about them spoke of danger. The lower-level players thus started to scream and scatter when the three mini-bosses started to run in three different directions, aiming for the players who were closest to them.

Ingenious' voice was suddenly heard again in the middle of the chaos, coming from exactly the same spot where he disappeared from sight.

"Where do you think you are going?"

What followed was some whirring sound when throwing stars appeared and slashed through the air indiscriminately. Two throwing stars each struck the back of the mini-bosses and remained embedded in their flesh. Considering the size of the mini-bosses, these throwing stars possibly hurt as much as an injection needle. They did not have much impact, but they were enough to make the mini-bosses freeze in their track before they roared in fury. The angry beasts then launched themselves at Ingenious, who was standing with one leg crossed against the other in the middle of the battlefield.

This time Ingenious did not plan on disappearing again. He instead avoided the combined attacks by jumping into a somersault high above their head and landed perfectly a few meters away.

"Waow," I caught myself saying. "That was insane!"

Not sure if being a Shadow Master gave Ingenious extra points in agility and lightness, but that move he just performed would have made a lot of olympic athletes drip from envy.

"Dance of Stars!!!" the Shadow Master shouted as he s. Twenty to thirty stars flew from the sleeves of his ninja costume with a lot of swishing sounds. Instead of hitting the targets directly, the stars revolved around Ingenious and created some kind of shield made of pointy stars. The mini-bosses cried in pain and immediately retreated.

The spectators cheered with every hit that Ingenious landed on his opponents. Ingenious was very fast. The mini-bosses tried their best to punch, scratch, and stab him but it all resulted in nothing. Half of the time their attacks were met with empty air, and the other half of the time Ingenious personally blocked their attacks.
I was in awe. The three mini-bosses from the Paradise Island Party Quest, particularly General Aardvark who gave us all so much pain and suffering at the final stage were nothing but putty in Ingenious' capable and swift hands. He literally beat them up using both physical and magical attacks. Even the Mythical Fox that he summoned for fun did not have much to do. It merely ran around like a little mascot. Its greatest skill was its cuteness. The fox had a brown-orange coat and a white belly. Every time it ran close to the girls, they all squealed in delight.

DragonTalon elbowed me and gave me a look before he leaned in closer to me and whispered, "I guess he was just being humble when he said that he could not take on three mini-bosses at once? Look at him bullying them as he pleases. I think he can take on even thirty mini-bosses if he really wants to."

I giggled and whispered back, "Well, apparently he is a lot stronger than HinoKun, so that is no surprise?"

HellWitch's words never left my mind. HinoKun might be the second player to reach level 150 after BlackPuma, but Ingenious was the second strongest player in the whole Afterlife Dream realm. I wonder what HinoKun would say. Speaking about HinoKun...

I looked around the crowd and found the folks from Dominion guild huddled together some distance away. HinoKun and SakuraChan stood at the front row. They did not cheer, just clapped their hands solemnly a few times with neutral expressions on their faces.

Ingenious could have worked on killing the mini-bosses one by one, but he did not. He even paid attention to their HP bars, making sure that they were always at approximately the same percentage at all times. I could see that he enjoyed this exercise. When their HP bars each went down to 1%, Ingenious split himself into three using a skill called "Shadow Clone". By using this skill, Ingenious was able to make his two clones copy exactly what he was doing. The three Shadow Masters ended the fight by killing all three mini-bosses at the same time.

The whole thing took around 30 minutes, but I was more than sure that Ingenious could have done it a lot quicker. He spent a lot of time showing off his skills instead of going straight for the kills. We all shouted with excitement when the multicolor column of light enveloped Ingenious' body and he leveled up to 150 with a loud cheer from all directions.

As tradition demanded, the sky was littered with megaphones.

"CONGRATULATIONS INGENIOUS FOR THE REMARKABLE ACHIEVEMENT!"

"WE ARE PROUD OF YOU, INGENIOUS! KEEP GOING!"

"FIRST NON-SPEAR MASTER PLAYER TO REACH 150!!!"

I noticed with schadenfreude that the congratulatory remarks that Ingenious received were a lot more sincere than the ones that HinoKun received.

HinoKun approached Ingenious with a smile. "Congratulations, Ingenious. Another player to reach level 150."

Ingenious cut him a cold smile. "ArrowRain will follow soon. Then BabyMage. Then Shinzu. It won't be long, now."

HinoKun's smile faded slightly before he regained his composure and had a comeback. "Indeed. It won't be long before we have thirty people to go to the Dimensional Master's lair together."

Both guilds had reached a consensus to not disturb each other in their gaming activities, but they also did not attempt to run the next-level raids together anymore. Knowing that the combined guild raid was no longer on the menu, players from both guilds started to get more serious about leveling up and getting stronger. Naturally, the past Dimensional Point event was very beneficial for leveling up. By the end of the event, I was level 94 and the countdown for the level 90 raid, "The Curse of The Dark Fairy", had begun.

Now that level 50 and level 70 raids were out of the picture, the main focus was given to the level 90 raid and then the 110 raid. The 120+ raids still posed a lot of challenges, and both guilds had not been able to complete any single one of them.

After Hime leveled past 130, the job to organize the level 90 raids was given to Cecilia. Being the High Priest with the second-lowest level, I kept receiving a reminder to finally level up. And yet when Cecilia sent me a message that evening, it was not to ask me to level up. It was to inform me that I should start joining the level 90 raid starting from the next day. Should I survive the first run, I would be given the priority to loot the Dark Fairy Gloves first.

It was thus with great joy that my dear friends and I went to the Cursed Temple early the next morning to complete the level 80 precursor raid. The Cursed Temple was still as gloomy as it was during our last visit. We made our way to the end of the map while ghostly voices accompanied our every step and caused the tiny hairs on our necks to rise in horror.

As if it was not creepy enough, the NPC that guarded the entrance to the level 80 precursor raid was a female ghost in a tattered robe. There was a bloody wound at her chest, from where blood incessantly dropped. We were instantly transported inside the level 80 precursor raid map when we clicked on the NPC.

The level 80 precursor raid map had a similar design to the Cursed Temple map, only that we were standing in front of the Cursed Temple itself. I remembered seeing the temple as a backdrop to the original map and not an accessible building.

A rattled male voice that hailed from the underworld spoke about its grievances not long after we set foot in the raid dungeon.

"My blood stuck to the rusty sword,

my bone was turned to mud.


Power and greed tore families apart,

sibling affection forever lost."

The voice suddenly became louder, accompanied by broken but crazy laughter.

"I WANT REVENGE! I WANT REVENGE!!!"