Ethan stared blankly at the old man floating in the air, his eyes fixed on the shimring na above the figure’s head.
"What’s even the point anymore? I might as well surrender..."
A Level 200 Pseudo-Divine Boss. The words burned into his mind. Against sothing like that, what chance did he have? Escaping was already near impossible, let alone fighting.
"If you never want to see your girlfriends again, you can always choose surrender," Morzan’s mocking voice echoed in his head, a mixture of amusent and scorn.
"Why?" Ethan shot back, rembering what Morzan had said earlier—about kicking players out of Ethereal to keep them from dying in real life.
"It... its true form has descended into the passage between the Ninth Universe and the Desolate Domain," Morzan explained quickly. "What you’re looking at is just a vessel. The real Crowling God hasn’t shown itself yet. It’s built up a mountain of faith power by gathering zealots like a cult, using that energy to deceive Ethereal’s order perception. If that faith power infects the system, then every player’s soul here... they won’t be able to resist."
His voice faltered, as though struggling to explain sothing too vast for words. "Forget it, just focus on the problem in front of you. I’ve already cleared out everything in this world it could possess. But listen well: if you die here, this ti, you die for real." With that, Morzan went silent.
Ethan’s pulse quickened. "Damn it... then why didn’t you kick out too?" He panicked, instantly sending a command to log out.
[Ding... System Notification: You have been locked. Unable to log out!]
Tears pricked at his eyes as the words burned across his vision.
"Where are you going?"
The old man appeared right in front of him, as if he had warped space itself. Ethan flinched at the suddenness. The figure had descended from the sky faster than the blink of an eye.
"You destroyed my avatar, desecrated my teachings, obliterated a wisp of my soul... Today, I’ll rip out your soul and damn it for generations."
Though the figure still looked like the Town Mayor, his eyes were empty voids glowing with a sinister violet light. Purple mist bled from the sockets, trailing like smoke.
"You blabbering old fool!"
The face was so close that Ethan lashed out on instinct, slapping it with all the force he had.
Whack!
The technique he had crafted, one he never fully understood, triggered again with frightening power. His palm cracked across the old man’s face.
"Graaagh!"
The body hosting the Crowling God reeled in agony, half of its head bursting apart under the strike.
Ethan froze. His eyes darted from his hand to the crumpled old man on the ground. "What the hell... I didn’t even transform. How is that possible?" He swallowed hard, muttering, "This is supposed to be a Level 200 Pseudo-Divine Boss? Are you kidding ?"
No sooner had he spoken than the corpse twitched. The health bar above it had not moved an inch. A suffocating aura burst forth, purple mist surging in all directions.
"Teleport... coordinates..." Ethan muttered, already pulling up his Divine Teleportation ability. Two coordinates flared on his interface: Blood King’s Castle, and General’s Tomb. He had leveled there once, before heading to the Sea of Death.
Without hesitation, he chose the Tomb. His earlier strike hadn’t triggered combat, so Teleportation still worked. A flash of light enveloped him, and in the next instant, he stood at the base of a grassy hill, the mound of General’s Tomb looming above.
Ethan’s clothes clung to his sweat-soaked skin. The last glimpse before teleporting was burned into his mind: the Town Mayor’s corpse ballooning grotesquely, then dissolving into a storm of blood mist. From it rose a colossal Crowling wreathed in violet fla. The instant its talons had lunged for him, he had barely escaped.
Had he hesitated for even a second, he would have been pulverized. The raw terror of that mont left him shaking. He had thought himself beyond fear of death, but the sensation of imminent annihilation gripped him with a primal chill.
"Caw, caw, caw..." The cries of Crowlings echoed unnaturally across the distance.
Ethan turned north and saw a pillar of purple light stabbing skyward. The Crowling God had already locked onto him.
"Damn it, I’ll risk it." He clenched his teeth and sprinted toward the entrance of General’s Tomb.
The ground erupted behind him. Boom! The entire hill shuddered.
"Don’t shrink, damn you..." Ethan dived into the tomb’s entrance, just as the outside world drowned in violet radiance. A massive, lidless eye appeared in the opening, staring in after him. His heart pounded; a heartbeat slower and he would have been caught. The creature’s speed was insane. What took him ten minutes in Swift Flight Form, it had covered in seconds.
So this is a Level 200 Pseudo-Divine Boss? Ethan thought in disbelief. In his past life, divine bosses had been killed—at the cost of thousands of lives. But none of them had ever seed this unnatural.
"Caw! Damn you! Let’s see how long you can hide!"
The tomb trembled violently as the monster clawed at the earth above. Dust and pebbles rained down. But the ancient structure held. Its pillars had long since cracked, yet it remained impossibly sturdy. Ethan realized why: once the creature took its true form, it could no longer shrink. Without a human host, it couldn’t enter. Morzan had purged the world of potential vessels, leaving the Crowling God trapped outside unless it leveled the entire Tomb.
For the mont, he was safe.
Breathing hard, Ethan pressed deeper into the tunnels. He couldn’t log out. He couldn’t fight. All he could do was move forward and pray the tomb had another exit.
He knew this place well. He hurried down the first level, heading toward the passage to the second. But sothing was different this ti. The Corpse Guards that normally patrolled the level were in chaos, skittering around and staring upward, reacting to the pounding from above. They ignored him completely, even though their levels dwarfed his.
’Interesting. Were they responding only to sound?’
He slipped past them in stealth until he reached the bend leading to the second floor. As expected, two Corpse Guard Warriors stood at the entrance—the sa ones that had nearly killed him last ti.
He activated Advanced Analysis. A familiar chi rang in his ears.
[Corpse Guard Warrior]
Rank: Elite
Level: 77
Health: 3,850,000 / 3,850,000
Attack: 38,500
Defense: 38,500
Base Attributes: Ignores 30% Defense, 30% Damage Reduction.
Skills: Savage Cleave.
Savage Cleave: Concentrates all power to deal 300% physical attack damage to the enemy (Cooldown: 8 seconds).
Ethan’s eyes narrowed at the additional line under base attributes. Monsters above Level 60 had started spawning with new chanics. Ignoring defense ant that no matter how solid your armor was, thirty percent of it might as well not exist. Damage reduction ant that every strike you landed would hit for thirty percent less.
To a casual player, the difference was manageable. But for those with high-end builds, the effect scaled brutally. If you normally dealt 1000 damage per hit, three hundred of it simply vanished every swing. Over ti, the loss was devastating.
It was Ethereal’s way of forcing balance. Yet no one stopped grinding for better stats. Everyone dread of climbing higher, of standing out, of becoming soone who mattered. Players who had nothing in the real world ca here chasing recognition, fa, and power. No one wanted to stay ordinary.
Who wouldn’t want to be like Druid God—known by all, admired by friends, sward by won, envied by rivals? In a world like this, the chance to matter was worth bleeding for.
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