Chapter 438: Dark Awakening - Part 2

"Stop that bitch!" A player shouted with his right arm missing. "Kill her already!"

Her friends rained the nearby swamp with spells and all kinds of skills, but they failed to hit anything, except trees and rocks.

In that moment, running through the swamp with heavy armor on, Fang Anna punched through a player’s face. It made the player’s face explode like a watermelon.

Fang Anna stopped, blood trickling down her gauntlet’s fist. She smiled. Everyone turned to look at her with fear in their eyes.

"KILL HER!" The mages rained her with spells. She simply lifted her shield and grinned. The spells landed on her. It exploded. "That must’ve gotten her!"

The explosion dust cleared, and there she was, Fang Anna, completely unharmed by the mages’ attacks. Not a single scratch on her armor and shield.

She was a petite young woman, so when she was wearing this silver-gold armor with large shoulder pads and a towering shield, it made her look a little silly.

Yet, nobody dared to laugh at her.

"Weaklings," Fang Anna brandished her greatsword, and then she cut through several players with ease. "When did 50th-floor players become so weak?!"

Elsewhere, Kerr Gehram rained arrows down on players. He laughed like a mad man, enjoying killing players clearly.

"Fucking Player Hunter!" a player screamed. "Why are you attacking us? We are not even going after the centipede?"

"Why?" Kerr Gehram released his arrow, and it flew straight through the player’s face. "Because it is fun!"

There was a graveyard of dead players all around him. Kerr Gehram was about to leave. But then, out of nowhere, the players started moving again.

It looked like they were slowly rising back from dead!

"What the hell?" Kerr Gehram frowned, but then he realized what was going on and looked over. "Is this your doing, Aria?!"

"Giggle~!" At that moment, Aria appeared from the fog with her healing staff in hand. "I am just giving them a second chance."

The players were alive again. They looked at Kerr Gehram with anger. They immediately attacked him like a pack of wild animals.

"Tch!" Kerr Gehram flipped and dodged the angry players, and he pulled out his sword and cut through a few of them. "Aria, I’ll make you pay for this!"

In that moment, players appeared behind Aria. They were all wearing healer’s robes. It was Healer Army—a guild founded by Aria.

It was currently an unranked guild, holding no position in the Global Guild Rankings, because it was hard to rank them based on strength.

Aria’s presence in the guild should be enough to put the guild in the top 100, but most thought that a guild with only Healer users would be extremely weak.

That wasn’t exactly true.

"I don’t like seeing players dying like this," Aria told her friends. "Do everything in your power to keep everyone alive. This mindless death is completely unacceptable."

"Yes, Miss Aria." Her guild adored her, as if she were a goddess.

"Especially now..." Aria whispered. "It’d be sad with Superhuman Syndrome running wild if all of them would lose their newly gained power."

At another part of Monster Backyard.

"Where did that speedy bastard go?" Collingham scratched the back of his head. "I lost a sight of him for one second!"

In that moment, he heard footsteps. Several flying knives suddenly shot out towards him. He caught them mid-air.

"What the hell?" He looked at the knives in his hand, and they suddenly disappeared in a puff of smoke. "Huh?"

At that moment, from the fog, a group of ten players appeared. They were hazy-looking, like they were a product of his imagination. It was hard to tell them apart clearly.

"You attacked me?" Collingham laughed. "You all are so dead. I am a member of Dead Redemption, you bitches."

"Hahahaha!" The group of players all laughed. "You are all alone now. I don’t see Leon anywhere, holding your hand like a baby."

"Hah," Collingham looked angry. "It looks like I am being underestimated. I will kill all of you and fuck your girls in front of you."

"The weakness of Dead Redemption is obvious," a player said. "Leon is obsessed with having a guild of elites, which is why he never has more than ten people in his guild. Thus, with every death, Dead Redemption’s total strength drops drastically."

"Leon doesn’t want some weak bastards staining his name." Collingham brandished his dagger. "We were all chosen because we are strong."

In that moment, flying knives flew straight at him. He knocked them out of the air. Then, a player suddenly appeared in front of him and punched him in the gut.

It knocked out all the air from his lungs. Collingham dropped on his knees, wheezing in pain, and coughing like someone who was having an asthma attack.

"Strong, is that so?" At that moment, the leader of the players approached Collingham. He had white-blue hair. "You are kneeling from just one punch, haha."

"P-Please..." Collingham put his hands together. It looked like he was begging. "S-spare me, I-I was just joking. W-what do you want? Money? I can give you money!"

"Hahaha!" They all laughed. "How pathetic. Dead Redemption sure has fallen off a cliff. I shouldn’t be surprised since Leon is as pathetic as the rest of you."

"That’s right!" Another player laughed loudly. "You all remember that livestream of players against hackers? How Leon was so badly beaten that he was crying, haha!"

Everyone laughed.

"Hahaha!" Collingham also laughed. "I-I remember. W-we are so pathetic, I know, right? I can lick your shoes clean if you want me to!"

With a sadistic smirk, the leader put his shoe before Collingham’s face and said. "Alright, lick it then. It better shine."

Collingham leaned towards the shoe, about to lick it. There were some players recording it even with smirks on their faces.

At that moment, he grabbed a handful of mud and flung it at the leader’s face. It blinded his eyes completely.

"Ah, fuck!" The leader stumbled back. "I can’t see anything!"

With a crazed look in his eyes, Collingham lunged forward and drove the dagger straight through his eye socket, all the way into his brain.

"Hahaha!" Collingham laughed. "I was acting, you fools. You guys are so easy, haha!"

Everyone paled as they watched their powerful leader drop to the ground. The dagger was embedded into his skull. He immediately died.

Their leader had been playing Black Online since the first day of release, and he had survived all kinds of powerful enemies to get this far.

Their guild started from only him and a few friends of his. It now had close to two hundred members. Now, out of nowhere, he had died just like this!

"And now," Collingham combed his hair back. "I am going to kill all of you!"

"You dishonorable piece of shit!" A player drew his spear. "You knew you couldn’t fight us fair, so you had to resort to cowardly tactics!"

"I didn’t fight fair?" Collingham laughed. "You are the ones who ganged up on me. I just did what I had to do to survive, and now..."

He approached them with a cold look on his face.

"I’m not going to show any mercy."

...

The massive centipede fought off against the players. It swung its legs and lashed out with its sharp mandibles. It even crushed some players with its massive head.

The spells kept raining on him. The arrows bounced off its exoskeleton. Boom! Boom! Boom! It was relentless.

Leon ran down the centipede’s back, and then he drove the sword through the crack in the exoskeleton and ran the blade down its soft underbelly.

Green blood gushed out.

BOOM!

At that moment, one of the magic spells exploded right next to him, and he was flung out of the back of the centipede.

"Damn!" Leon angrily flipped over and landed on the ground, with few scratches here and there. "Are those bastards intentionally trying to kill me?"

He wanted to kill something. In that moment, he saw someone he didn’t recognize, shooting arrows at the centipede. It was Rose Records member Adam Thorn.

’I’ll kill him!’ Leon lunged towards him with the white katana in hand. "White Slash!"

Adam Thorn looked over with a look of shock. When he saw Leon coming for him, he did feel something wet running down his leg. It was probably the scariest thing in all of Black Online.

’Why the hell is he coming for me?!’ Adam Thorn fired arrows at him, but Leon just cut through them, like it was nothing. ’I am so dead!’

"Light Mirror!"

At that moment, a beautiful light mirror with a golden frame appeared in front of Leon. His White Slash attack landed at the mirror. In that moment, his attack got reflected back at him.

"Hmm?!" Leon quickly tried dodging, but the attack was too fast, and it slashed through his shoulder. "Damn it!"

He landed back on the ground and looked over to see Della, with the light grimoire hovering right by her side.

It didn’t make him mad. This time around, his expression went soft. She was a really beautiful young woman, he thought.

Leon liked pretty things.

"That was not nice." Leon touched his shoulder. "You are quite an impressive mage. What is your name?"

"Della Rose," she said. "Guild master of Rose Records."

Time till the Dark Awakening: 2 hours and 25 minutes.