One Man Army and Symbol of Failure

(Author's Note: I have received the votes for the hidden class choice. It will be Druidic Calamity. It won by a landside of more than 50 votes difference from the others.)

Inside the Labyrinth of Khiss, Center of the 2nd Zone.

The sound effect of glass shattering was heard as the 3 guild parties cooperated to finish off a few Grey Orc Warriors. The guild members from [GiggleHeart] froze in shock as they each received a notification on their HUD. They could be seen to be completely distracted from fighting things and the other guild's members noticed they now had a shameful title above their information on their HUDs.

In fact, the title just constantly floated over them, reminding everyone of the shameful defense of their guild. The title read: [Symbol of Failure] and it was a common title that was extremely difficult to get rid of. It would appear when a guild's Guild Weapon was destroyed, disbanding the guild. They would be forced to bear the title of shame as compensation for their actions. Treech had destroyed their guild weapon along with their base in the city. The durability of guild weapons is always abnormally high and their data storage limit was also the highest in the game. Depending on the materials used, Guild Weapons can approach World-Class items in power due to their excessive data limits. As long as good enough Data Crystals were used to customize the weapon, it would be one of the most important things in a guild.

Sadly enough, Guild formation could only be done after finding a rare guild formation symbol from boss drops, which would allow for the creation of the Guild Weapon, the cornerstone of the guild to form from a clan. Unfortunately for GiggleHeart, they didn't use the best materials for their Guild Weapon, due to the game being relatively new. They hoped to make up for it in later parts of the game. Perhaps even disbanding the guild after acquiring the resources of some Magic Ore Mines. But in this way, their Guild Weapon's durability was quite pathetic and it was destroyed in the second comet's impact, disbanding the Guild of [Giggleheart] forever.

"Come on, we are leaving," TakeASeat grumbled in rising anger.

He originally joined this guild so that he improve his swordsmanship in Yggdrasil. He was a sword master instructor in real life and he enjoyed bringing his students in here to teach them techniques and skills. But how could he do this knowing they would see a giant symbol of failure title over his character. He felt like he got scammed, as did the rest of the GiggleHeart members. They didn't even get a chance to defend their guild base. The attack had gone so quickly.

Just then, everyone in the dungeon's attention was pulled, hearing the World Achievement announced by the Yggdrasil system.

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Congratulations to Player [Treech] for completing a World Achievement.

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Congratulations to Player [Treech] for being awarded for your Achievement.

World-Class Item: [Conqueror's Merit]

Note: Yggdrasil and the developer team support such outstanding achievements.

Go forth strongly players!

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Tonks, the Guild master of [DemiDemi], started to breathe a bit roughly in excitement. Her eyes practically gleamed, from a fantasy she was daydreaming about. Meanwhile, the Guildmaster of [DontTakeMyCookie], the guy in the half jester costume, [Tickles] was eyeing the Symbol of Failure titles above the former GiggleHeart member's heads in nostalgia while stroking his chin.

"We are leaving," TakeASeat said as a statement of fact.

He then left the raid group and started to look through the forums in his HUD while waiting for the dungeon leave timer to expire. They only needed to wait another 20 minutes and they could leave. The other former members of GiggleHeart did the same thing as him. They started watching the recordings that players took of Treech on the Forums.

The Forums of Yggdrasil had exploded with screenshots of Treech, videos of Treech, and articles about his build/classes/racial classes, etc. Other guilds were more focused on the power of super-tier spells. They commented about how unbalanced the game is and the developers reminded them that anyone can learn these skill class abilities once they reach level 70. There is no pay to win feature preventing them from learning it.

There were also players who were curious about Treech's race and why all his information is hidden from their HUDs in the video. They demanded an explanation from someone about how this functioned, as hiding valuable information from others was an important aspect of any war or fight. The developers backed up their claims that Treech was not cheating and that this was a racial ability of his race. They also encouraged players to find some hidden classes and abilities like Treech on their own, so that they could have an advantage over others. So the forum posts changed into a heavy discussion of super tier spell counters, counter-strategies, and counter items.

"My my, I truly want to see you fall from your throne even more now, Treech" Tonks muttered with stars in her eyes. She was hugging herself in pleasure as she daydreamed about stepping on his achievements with her own.

"Tonks-sama, what did you say?" A member of DemiDemi asked.

"Nothing." Tonks woke herself out of her daydream.

"We will also be leaving. We will do a quick hunt for Treech in hopes that we can get his World-Class Item. Although we don't have much information about those items in general, I believe that we can test a few times if it drops on his death." Tickles said with a slight smile to his guildmates.

"Right right" a man replied to him on behalf of the rest of them.

20 minutes passed quickly and the 3 guilds abandoned the Labyrinth of Khiss without completing it. They began their search for Treech, all for their own different reasons.

...

3rd Outer Zone of Vanaheim, Star-Dust Forest.

The tall redwood trees and silver stardust filled the surroundings, Starlight Prince had just arrived next to their designated meeting place he had set with his sensei. He was in a complete daze after processing the strategies and talents of his sensei. He felt excited and happy in his heart that he had asked him to teach him right away. Who knows what others would do to get an opportunity to learn from him.

As he reminisced about the battles, he took out another scroll to record his understanding of Command. He recorded how his sensei fooled thousands of players, the NPC defense forces, used high summons to break the defense magic towers, and finally a highly destructive 10th Tier spell to crush the remaining players, city buildings, and NPCs inside the city.

He thought that maybe, with enough time, he could do something like that. Maybe he could perform a recognized achievement of his own and make his sensei proud. He liked that thought. He wanted to make sure that everything his sensei had taught and given to him was returned 100-fold.

20 minutes passed as he wrote, filling scroll after scroll about the battle that unfolded. Finally, Treech arrived using [Greater Teleportation] to arrive at the meeting point. Prince immediately bent his blob body 90 degrees in a bow in greeting.

"Sensei!"

"Hey kid," Treech waved his hand in greeting. He glanced at the pile of scrolls the kid had in his hand and shook his head.

"So, does it make more sense now?" He asked.

"Yes sensei, I understand now." Prince bobbed around, shaking his metaphorical head yes. He was a bit distracted by the title hanging above his sensei's head and his HUD which showed it. It had a cosmetic effect which had black and gold particles sparking off of the words every few seconds.

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[One Man Army]

Name: Treech

[Race]: (Unknown)

Level: 81

Hp: (Unknown)

Mp: (Unknown)

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'I hope so kid because I got a bit too caught up in the fun there.' Treech thought to himself silently.

'Forget it, I'll just explain my actions as we walk and tell him to ask questions if needed.' He mentally shrugged to himself in laziness. He felt his excitement slowly fading from his heart and returning himself back to his dead fish feeling state. However, perhaps it was his imagination, but his heart didn't feel as heavily depressed as before.

Treech glanced at the flashing menus in his HUD of pending SP point configurations he needed to do now that he was out of combat. And he also needed to select which of the hidden class rewards he wanted. But first, he would head further out away from the center of Vanaheim and into the 4th Outer Zone.

As players went further and further from the center of the Realms, the monsters would get more and more difficult. But there were also high chances of finding Hidden Dungeons or Treasured Lands/Locations. He wanted to explore beyond these mid-game areas and he felt his interest pulling him in that direction. His dead heart was warming at the excitement of adventure and challenge.

"Come on kid, we are heading to break through the 3rd Zone this week. And maybe you can level up your racial traits as well." Treech instructed.

"Yes, Sensei!" Prince hurriedly put away all his scrolls and materials. And followed after his sensei, they flew through the Star-Dust forest, getting further and further away from the ruins of Forth Rite city, where the three guilds had just arrived.

...

"*Whistle*, Wow!" Tickles said as he looked over the ice-filled crater and ruins of the city of Forth Rite.

The other members of the guild were already picking up some of the dropped items that were left behind by Treech. He had left in a hurry and couldn't spend time picking up the more than 100 items still left on the ground from the dead players. The NPCs didn't drop nearly anything other than a few items here and there. They were city NPCs and didn't have much to drop.

"Do you guys have to look like thieves, immediately taking everything, when you arrive? Hmpf!" A pretty high elf member of DemiDemi commented snarkily at Tickles. She watched his guild act like ravenous scavengers, picking up the pieces of what Treech left behind.

"Haha, what do you expect me to honor their deaths? This is free meat and I pride myself on being a carnivore! Haha," Tickles laughed at his own joke merrily.

"More like a hyena.. "the girl commented sassily.

"What? It's not like they are going to miss it. They can't even respawn here anymore and need to travel from the 1st Outer Zone. Or Hmmm do you want to fight us for it?" Tickles spoke loudly so that all the guild members could hear the conversation. The guild members of [DontTakeMyCookie] all stopped their looting and stared over at the members of [DemiDemi] threateningly.

"Now now, we wouldn't want to see our allies bleed after spending so much time in the dungeon together right?" Tonks let out her killing intent of her own along with the rest of her guild members. DemiDemi didn't care about the loot, since it was mostly low-mid tier items. They were more concerned with Treech's location, but if [DontTakeMyCookie] wanted a fight, they wouldn't just roll over for them.

"Damn it! Our City!! Our Guild!" The tension in the air disappeared as the old members of GiggleHeart were cursing in the city ruin's corner in front of a destroyed guild building. TakeASeat shook his head in disappointment and walked over to the DemiDemi guild.

"Let me come with you when you search for him," TakeASeat demanded to Tonks.

"And why should I," She smiled playfully.

"I have to reclaim my honor," TakeASeat glanced at his title hanging over his head [Symbol of Failure].

Tonks thought for a moment, before agreeing. TakeASeat was different from normal players and was a real sword master. He would train students here and didn't care too much for the game. He probably didn't care about the World Class Item that Treech had.

'Tonks-Sama, I can't track his exact location with Divination Magic. We can guess his racial trait is blocking direct tracking. But after some spell combinations, I have managed to track his trail to some locations based on another player named [Starlight Prince]' Tonks received this via the [Message] spell from one of their guild's Wolf-man tracker, and Magic Caster.

'That's good news, [BBWolf]. We will leave immediately and follow their trail.' she replied mentally to the [Message] spell.

"You can follow us, TakeASeat-san. But we will give you no drops from any kills." Tonks replied to TakeASeat.

"Understood. " TakeASeat nodded.

After that, The DemiDemi members and TakeASeat left first, following Treech, while the other previous raid members finished looting the city's remains.

(Author's Note: Not too much happened in this chapter, mostly reactions, and interactions of OC's. I know some of you guys are probably impatient to see Treech just demolish everything or something but that takes some build-up and plot to get the feeling just right.)