MMORPG : Ancient WORLD

"Two Months Later"

'It looks like those two are settling well in their roles,' Alex thought, as his mental perspective shifted from an arena to the frozen tundras.

It had been two months since the incident at the apothecary lab, and now Alex could create clones with 75% of his base stats, allowing him to successfully place his soul wisps in them and send them to deal with matters that required his attention.

The events of that day were mind-blowing, to say the least, as Alex saw an entity in action wielding overwhelming strength like no other.

Alex also saw how Vasticus made the sect leader of one of the biggest and strongest sects grovel like a dog and accept his demand without question, not daring to even raise his voice at the damage he had caused to his sect.

Vasticus was no ordinary man as he belonged to the Drakaryx clan, one of the three clans who ascended the established powers of the realm, three clans who could wage war with the three empires and possibly come out on top.

Vasticus Icarah was a famous individual, at least to the older generation, since he had single-handedly conquered the death land of Benighted Tower, a place taken over by ever-consuming darkness that could make even the strongest of people go mad.

The surprises did not end there for Alex as once he refused to ask for anything else, even when given an open offer, Vasticus invited him to the Drakaryx clan to take their trial and be guided under the tutelage of great masters.

It was a great offer, and Alex planned to make use of it in the future once he had dealt with his current problems.

The encounter ended with Alex getting what he wanted, but once the adrenalin and shock from the entire chain of events ended, a question began to bother him.

The thing that troubled Alex was Zahra's departing words, "Only if we had met a bit sooner." These words echoed in his mind every so often, and the more he remembered them, the stranger they felt to him.

At first, Alex thought she was trying to express her feelings, but the more he remembered them, the more he felt that her words had some other meaning.

Alex knew that Zahra was capable of manipulating reality or simply wishing things into existence by meeting certain conditions, so it was not hard to imagine that she was responsible for his continued remembrance of her words and his feelings about them, considering he could not forget them no matter how hard he tried.

However, besides this small issue, everything was going smoothly, as with each passing day Alex learned more about the avatar technique and built his soul strength so he could walk freely and remove or lessen the few major limitations of his avatars.

------------------

"Three Months Later"

'So this is the place that that Astovias Gold said houses the time treasure, but the question is how true it is, and if it is true whether it is still present or not,' Alex thought, as he overlooked a towering mountain that looked like a giant dragon roaring into the sky, from a distance.

It had been three months, and now Alex clones had 88% of his base stats, while he had improved his sole strength and control over it enough to freely roam the world without expiring too much fatigue because of the distance between his two avatars.

Alex could create three avatars now, but if he did, he could be back to square one, forcing him to stay inactive due to the heavy toll of his spiritual energy on maintaining his avatar.

In the past eight or so months, Alex had also achieved stat maximization for the Elementalist Rank, but he was still far away from Elemental Ruler rank promotion even with minimal requirements, let alone by fulfilling the perfect requirement.

However, Alex was not worried about the next Rank promotion since he had a lot of time and much to learn, and his immediate concerns were getting stronger through any means possible.

Alex had also gathered six of eleven entry token shards and also knew the location of three more shards, but since he could not collect them at the moment, he decided to come and see if there was any truth to the claims of Astovias Gold.

Astovias Gold was the ancestor of Morgan, the merchant from whom Alex stole the legendary grimoire needed to complete the Archmage legacy, and from the same grimoire, he discovered a hidden message with a location inside the ancestral realm.

The location given in the hidden message was hardly hidden, as although it was not publicly available since only adventurers could enter it, the location could be easily obtained from the information organization for a reasonable price.

It was the tomb of an unknown dragon, available only to adventurers, where, after a talent evaluation, they were required to complete certain objectives, and depending on their performance, one was offered a reward.

However, such tombs were not unique, as there were hundreds of such tombs scattered throughout the vast realm.

However, they did offer rewards ranging from average things to what could make even the empires want to take it even at a high cost, but the latter kind was so rare that hardly a few were found every cycle.

It did not take long for Alex to find the tomb that matched the location from his vision, but to his dismay, the tomb was categorized as Common quality and not even rare.

Alex had tried to look for any information available on the tomb, but not even in wild rumors did anyone believe that a time treasure of great worth was waiting to be collected inside the tomb.

So, while Alex did not expect to find a useful treasure, he still came just because the trials could be completed within one day, and he had little to lose.

'I hope the challenges are at least good, as the last few champion games had been quite boring,' Alex pondered as he moved toward the roaring dragon summit.

"I will see you in some time," Alex said as he patted Ricin and sent him into the beast companion space.

Alex appeared before the two towering slabs of dark marble that formed the door of the tomb, and after taking a calm breath, he placed his hand on the door.

Instantly, a arcane circle of immense magnitude came alive, so large it covered the entire chamber, momentarily lighting the dim chamber nested with the daron jaw with bright light.

Alex lost his vision as he felt the surrounding space stretch and twist around him before he was teleported to a place of perpetual darkness, where he could see nothing and feel nothing.

After being suspended in the void of darkness for nearly a minute, Alex finally saw the light. It emanated from a massive figure, a towering being of light, a dragon who had multiple pitch-dark eyes set on a menacing face befitting an apex predator, with its body shimmering in white scales, stretching for at least a few kilometers.

Alex was left stunned as he stared into the void-like eyes, the moments blending into each other, his mind occupied with understanding the monstrosity before him.

Darkness engulfed his vision once more, and a single pondered forged itself in his mind, telling him of the objectives he needed to complete. Moments later, his vision returned, and he was welcomed by another impossible sight.

'He is not supposed to look like that,' Alex thought, confused by the appearance of the dragon.

But he was not given time to contemplate that pondered as he felt his body free-falling toward the island below, accelerated by extreme gravity.

As Alex used his chaos wings and struggled against the intense gravity, he saw his surroundings stretching seemingly as distant as the eye could see.

Chains of floating mountains were suspended above a void of darkness, with some islands facing upward and others downward.

It was the first of the four lairs, named the Sky Islands of Zephyrion, a place dominated by apex predators and twisted gravity.

As the information about this place and his objective in this lair flooded his mind, Alex could not help but feel that something was truly wrong with his trials, as the difficulty was off the roof.