A young boy could be seen standing in an open grass plain field with a frown on his face. He possessed dark skin, as he was from the Velkarin Empire. His eyes were green, while his hair was twisted into dreadlocks, a style unique to the Velkarin people. A tattoo ran across his hands, while various rings adorned his fingers, each one carrying a distinct design that made them stand out.
He was the boy Ryaen had been talking to on the night of the gala; Zis Zaitsu.
As for why he was frowning, well, he had landed in a Negative Zone.
"An unknown Player has entered a designated Negative Zone. The Zone Function is as follows: survive for one hour; all kills shall reward only ten percent of their original gain."
This was the announcent he had heard. Who wouldn’t go crazy after hearing it? The points per kill would be reduced to ten percent; wasn’t that wickedness to its fucking core?
How different was this from slavery?
And above that, he was told to survive for one hour.
The next mont, he sighed as he decided not to overthink it. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been told about the Negative Zones before he was teleported. He could only bla his own bad luck. Out of all the possible locations he could have arrived at, he had sohow ended up in one of the worst places imaginable.
The next mont, the ground shook. Zis Zaitsu’s green eyes flickered forward, and all he could see was an endless sea of Monsters, Beasts, and Emovirae, all of them racing towards him with glee in their eyes as though he were so special al. Their roars rged into a single deafening wave of noise that swept across the grasslands, causing the earth itself to tremble beneath their collective charge.
Zis Zaitsu didn’t react. He simply assessed them as they closed in, their ranks ranging from Rank 1 to Rank 4 on both the Monster and Emovirae power systems. There were no Rank 5 or Mark-class Monsters here, which was understandable. After all, you couldn’t unleash such a stampede and then add Rank 5 beings within it.
The students would simply die in such a scenario.
’At least it seems the Inter-Empire Competition isn’t going overboard,’ he mused to himself. ’And I have to find Ryaen after this. As a first-year student from another Empire, she can’t make it into the top fifty,’ he thought to himself as he planned to help Ryaen after earning enough points.
It wasn’t that he looked down on Ryaen, but he was simply making a factual observation.
As for the reason why he had decided to help Ryaen like he was so knight in shining armour, it was simply because he had fallen head over heels for her after seeing her for the first ti. He had even gone as far as calling it love at first sight. To him, there had been sothing captivating about her from the very beginning, sothing he couldn’t quite explain no matter how much he thought about it.
But alas, that love was destined to end here. After all, once the Inter-Empire Competition was over, Ryaen would be returning to the Zarethorne Empire, while he would return to the Velkarin Empire, never to see each other again... unless one of them could beco a Crownstar Life Rank and move to the other’s Empire in search of them.
As the Monsters, Beasts, and Emovirae approached, Zis Zaitsu took out his weapon... or rather, his Instrunt; a guitar.
He always wore it on his back as though he were part of so travelling band. He simply rolled it to the front as he prepared himself. Unlike what one would think, it wasn’t a normal guitar. It was a soul-bound Instrunt.
He held the guitar by the neck as though it were so sort of sword. The next instant, he took a step, his figure appearing like a ghost within the stampede, and without hesitation, his guitar blurred forward. With a rocketing boom, the body of the guitar erased tens of Monsters in a single strike. Flesh burst apart, bones shattered, and several creatures were launched through the air like broken dolls before crashing back onto the ground.
He vanished again from where he stood, his body flickering in and out of reality as though the air itself couldn’t keep up with him. And indeed, these Monsters couldn’t. He was a man capable of matching Rank 5 beings; how could Rank 4 creatures and below hope to even sense him?
Various elental attacks raced towards him, all of them attempting to bombard him at once. Streams of fire tore through the air, blades of wind scread across the battlefield, while chunks of earth and spears of stone erupted from different directions.
But Zis was unbothered. He simply increased the size of his guitar and stood behind it, using the body as though it were a shield. The attacks slamd into it with earth-shaking force, explosions echoing endlessly across the plains, but soul-bound weapons were indestructible, so none of the attacks even touched him.
Zis imdiately shot into the air as he sensed earth-based attacks coming from underground. His guitar shot upwards as his body twisted, and he landed on it, keeping himself afloat as he stared down at the Monsters below.
The mont he beca airborne, Zis saw a few bird-type Emovirae shoot towards him in a blur as they flapped their wings. Their sharp cries echoed through the sky as they attempted to surround him from multiple angles. He simply shook his head and sighed. While this Negative Zone might be a death sentence to weaker students, especially those who weren’t third-year students, it was nothing to him.
With a thought, the tuning pegs (machine heads) of his guitar imdiately appeared in his hand as they separated from the guitar itself. With another thought, they enlarged slightly before shooting forward like bullets from a gun. With explosive bursts, they tore through the heads of every incoming flight-based Monster. Bodies imdiately lost montum and plumted from the sky, crashing into the creatures below with loud thuds.
But the Monsters below hadn’t given up as they unleashed their own attacks, making sure Zis was occupied from all sides.
With a thought from him, one of the strings from his guitar detached from the body and appeared in his hand. Without missing a beat, he swung it downwards with rocketing force as though it were a whip. The sound barrier shattered apart as the string collapsed onto the ground.
Chunks of earth were torn apart, Monsters burst into bloody fragnts, roars echoed across the battlefield, blood pooled across the shattered terrain, while from the sky corpses dropped as though they were rain. The strike carved a massive scar through the grasslands, stretching across a considerable distance and erasing everything unfortunate enough to be caught within its path.
Watching such a scene, one would ask, how were students like Ryaen, William, or and all second-year students supposed to survive or even enter the top fifty (50).
Truly, the Negative Zones were wicked.
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AUTHOR’S NOTE: Been writing longer Chapters for so reason... urgh... should go back to my normal word count.
Also... does anyone want to bless this Greedy Author with a super gift? I won’t say no to such a kind offer.
And finally, thank you for supporting till now. We are now ranked 6th on the Golden Ticket ranking because of your imnse and constant support.
And we’ve also finally achieved three million views.
Truly, I am grateful for every support.
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