Killing Bugs

The team continued to walk into the inner regions where the Starfire Ore was supposed to be while killing the monkeys, their experience bar increasing constantly.

Ford Jr. was the second one to fight against a Chieftain, he that was wearing the Ranger Yin-Yang Walker Equipment finished the monster smoothly without even being hit.

Next was Mark, each attack from his daggers make numbers above 1,400 appear the monkey's head, when using skills he would deal more than 3,000 of damage, he had no problem killing it.

The next one to fight one on one against a Warchief was Olympus, he as a defensive class didn't have a high damage output, but his defense was at the very top of the kingdom. Altough it took him a little longer to kill the Warchief, he managed to do so.

The only one that hadn't fight from the very beginning was Leroy, the others would not let him fight even when it was his turn. He could only shake his head.

Some news reached them, the various guilds lost a lot of members before even reaching the Great Lord, even after they sent thousands of Level 20 and more elite players.

This didn't surprise them, Great Lords were in an enterely different stage than High Lord bosses, even if they managed to fight it alone, they would have to sacrifice much more than what they would gain.

A Great Lord would drop dark gold equipment and even had a chance to drop epic equipment, because of these, many first rate guilds still pushed forward despite the casualties.

After an entire day of killing, Leroy reached Level 25, while the rest of the main forces were at level 24 to 26 too. After all, different from Leroy, they hadn't stop fighting and grinding since they joined God's Domain.

They also found a some pieces of a Set Equpment called Warfire Set Equipment. The set base stats weren't very nice but it was special as it could be used by any class, if a berseker equipped it, it would provide effects according to said class, if a cleric used he would also receive effects suitable for his class.

The Warfire Set Equipment bonus stats increased Ignore Level +10, gave a skill that removed control effects on the player but by far, the most valuable was the Warfire Berserk Skill, it increased Damage by 50%, attack speed by 50% and movement speed by 30% to melee classes, it had a low cooldown of five minutes and no side effects such as weakening.

Soon after the first pieces of Warfire Set Equipment, players once again entered White Fog Canyon despite the dangers, even players from different kingdoms and empires came here.

The Warfire Set Equipment started as Bronze Rank, and it's rank could be upgraded to Gold Rank with the sacrifice of EXP points.

They arrived at the Inner Regions, and team leaders used some scrolls to detect the ore mines. They gave their team players the mines position and inmediatly got to work.

The inner region was densely covered by stone forests, a dense fog covered the area and the visibility was less than 20 meters, also many Elite and Special Elite monsters roamed this place.

Old Pat valued the Starfire Ore at 1-2 Silver Coins per piece, everyone grew excited at the prospect of making money, for every three pieces of Starfire Ore, they would hand 1 to the Guild. This was a treatment that no other Guild would provide to its players in Star-Moon Kingdom.

Leroy also went with a team and started mining, with his luck attribute he should have a higher chance to get more ores per mine, taking out his pickaxe, he hit the ores.

Acquired: Starfire Ore

The moment he got the piece of Starfire Ore, his the Ring of Vlaric released an aura that enveloped it, and then returned to the ring a bit stronger. The ore crumbled into dust.

System: Vlaric Star Ring has absorbed Starfire Essence. More Starfire Essence will help the ring upgrade.

He was stunned by this, 'The ring can actually increase be upgraded like these?' it seems he would have to give up in mining ores for himself and instead use it for the ring.

Three days passed like these.

The team managed to mine 20,000 pieces of ore, about 5,000 would go to the Guild Bank. Most players choose to exchange them for Guild Contribution Points or keep and wait for the prices to inflate.

The area also had many other rare ores that they acquired. Even still, only a small portion of the area was explored. They would also encounter some Chieftain and even Lord monsters here, but a single team was enough to kill them. Leroy could only sigh when he heard this, no monster higher than Special Elite would come his way, and his team members would dispose of it. Altough no one would stop him from attacking, he felt that killing those monsters was beneath him.

A good amount of Level 25 equipment dropped from the bosses, altough their quality didn't seem high for their rank and level, usually a Level 25 Gold rank equipment was slightly better than Level 20 Dark Gold equipment.

With so many berserk elite monsters that gave high amounts of exp, the hundreds of team members reached Level 26 to 27 including Leroy.

They hadn't met any players so far, when a team reported an ambush from assasins of a guild called Overwhelming Smile. The assasins were easily dispatched by them and posed no danger but it was still annoying to have people pulling sneak attacks.

System: Vlaric Star Ring has absorbed Starfire Essence. It can't absorbe more to upgrade.

Leroy saw the system notification, the ring couldn't acquire more essence yet it hadn't managed to upgrade, he would probably need to gather new type of special materials to upgrade it.

He then followed the reports of the Overwhelming Smile attacks, such a Guild was actually bold enough to ambush them.

'Hehe now that I think about it, I haven't killed more players since the snake guys ambushed me at the entrance of that Dungeon' He wandered in the area for a while.

"Guild Master, an assasin of my team found some Overwhelming Smile members guarding a cave" BadHalo reported to him, knowing that Leroy was looking for these people.

"Alright, I'll take a look" Leroy replied the message and changed directions.

Leroy arrived at a location and found some players guarding a cave with about two hundred players inside, but a small group did not belong to their guild.

He recognized the small party as members of Zero Wing, he recognized Black Flame among them, the mysterious Guild Master of Zero Wing.

'As expected, it is him' Leroy identified the aura that still hasn't dissipated completely and recognized him as Ye Feng.

He then moved his gaze to the other guild, they had a Guild Emblem of a purple moon 'Heh, Overwhelming Smile' he continued walking toward them and they frowned upon his arrival.

"It's been some time, brother" Leroy said while looking at "Black Flame" and smiled.

Black Flame had a shooked expression on his face. 'He actually can recognize me?' suddenly a sense of panic rushed through him. If others where to know that he and Ye Feng where the same person, it would raise too many problems.

Regaining his calm, Black Flame nodded and asked "Indeed, brother Sensations, I wonder what brings you here?"

"Some of our guild forces came here searching for Starfire Ores and I tagged along. Some annoying flies started ambushing our teams" He said while giving a sideway over Overwhelmig Smile members. "You must have come for the same reason right? Leroy asked.

"Indeed, I never tough that Overwhelming Smile would have such a courage tough" Black Flame couldn't help but smile while looking at Overwhelmig Smile and Oriental Sword who lead their team.

They truly provoked such a people... even more so, Sensations himself came, his equipment was definetly Dark-Gold Rank and above, he was even Level 27 already.

Besides Black Flame there was another four players which he nooded to.

'This person, he is so strong' Aqua Rose and the others could feel a strong aura emanating from Leroy.

Black Flame just looked at Oriental Sword who was holding his weapon. Before they could react, Black Flame disappeared, seconds later blades of light cut Oriental Sword's body and blood poured out of him like a waterfall.

Oriental Sword was confused and touched the wounds of his body and fell to the ground, dead.

Suddenly, fear striked the Overwhelming Smile members. Black Flame was acknowledged as the top expert in White River City and probably the whole Star-Moon Kingdom, seeing his might they couldn't help but realising what kind of character stood in front of them.

"Bug! This must be a bug!" Someone from Overwhelming Smile screamed. All of them put faces as if agreeing with him.

"Well then, since you actually ambushed my members, it is time for some payback" Leroy turned at the Overwhelming Smile members and started casting.

"Dark Hostage" He used his Soul Orb skill, players killed would have to wait three hours to log in again.

"Dark Rain" Suddenly a huge dark mana sphere appeared in the sky above them and Dark Arrows started raining.

-17,325

-16,487

-15,790

Big numbers of damage appeared above each player as their bodies exploded each time a Dark Arrow hit them. After a few seconds, the team of more than 160 members only had a few dozens surviving. It was an horrofying scene.

It was simply too horrible! Even Oriental Sword got killed by an attack of 4,700 by Black Flame, these players who had even lower ranked equipment received three to four times that damage.

Black Flame, Aqua Rose, Overwhelming Smile members... all of them sucked in cold air.

'How, just how can he be so powerful? What kind of class did he obtain?' Black Flame couldn't wrap his mind around Leroy. While the other members of Zero Wing felt their hearts froze, their Guild Leader was the aclaimed top expert of Star-Moon Kingdom and was a monster figure.

But now an even stronger monster appeared, it was something hard to imagine.

As Leroy saw some members still surviving the attacks, he once again chanted.

"Hell Fire" "Dark Arrow"

Both skills materialized at the same time, not giving time for anyone to react. Hell fire devoured a group of players while the dark arrow hit one away from the area.

'He actually knows dual-cast already' Black Flame couldn't hide the shock from his face. 'Just where does this person come from? It wasn't like these before' His heart was filled with different emotions. He, who previously was a mid-lower tier player, had now the chance to become a leading expert in God's Domain or that is how it should happen but...

"Well, this will stop them from fooling around" Leory said, suddenly a notification appeared on his screen.

System: 163 fragments of Immortal Souls had been captured, Soul Orb slightly nourished.

'This... wasn't the Dark Hostage skill meant to prevent players from entering the game for 3 hours?' Leroy suddenly recalled that the Soul Fragment of Vlaric told him... 'You will have to nurture it yourself'

'So this is what he meant, preventing other from entering for a while is nothing more than a side effect, the actual use of the skill is to nurture the weapon' He now understood, it was no wonder then that the Half-Moon Mage had so many enemies.

'But really, couldn't you put a better description to it' if he were to know before how to upgrade the Soul Orb, he would've joined the main force battles with other guilds in Star-Moon City.

"Brother Sensations is so strong" Black Flame had a sincere expression of admiration, even with all his knowledge, he still couldn't compare to some legendary figures, he also understood that God's Domain had many secrets out of his reach in his previous life.

"Just some early advantage, brother Black Flame can even use that technique to such an extent is truly amazing" Leroy complemented, it was an advanced movement technique that tricked people's brain into erasing the user existance from him, this way others would feel as if Black Flame had disappeared.

Black Flame was also surprised that Leroy could call out his movement at a single glance.

It wasn't weird, tough, altough the technique could trick the brain through the eyes, there were other ways of sensing someone using the technique, Leroy for example would continously release mana to the sorroundings and sensed him easily.

It wasn't difficult for Leroy to understand that Black Flame didn't really understand the technique principles, his use of it was very raw so he must have copied it from someone else. He speculated that at it's peak, the technique may even trick the sorrounding elements themselves, much less someone's brain.

Soon afterwards, Leroy choose to return to his team in the main forces and they parted ways.

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

Near the Ruined Shrine, various guilds where fighting goblins while trying to reach the Great Lord Boss.

"Oriental Sword, that fool! I just told him to investigate Zero Wing secret to obtain level 25 silver-rank equipment, yet he killed Zero Wing members and openly provoked Black Flame, moreover, he also provoked Raven Sanctuary, his whole team was slaughtered, we can't even contact most members" Youlan was furious after hearing the report. This would definetly trigger a war with Zero Wing, if Raven Sanctuary decided to deal with them... the consecuences would be too heavy.

"So what if it's Black Flame or Raven Sanctuary? We have advantage in numbers and this is not Star-Moon City, Raven Sanctuary isn't strong enough to spread their forces in a war" Lone Tyrant suggested to deal with them.

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A few hours later, a system announcement of a new upgrade spread through God's Domain, and players were expelled from the game.