Chapter 190: Congratulations! You have successfully solo-cleared the Second Floor!

"No. T-This can’t be. How’s that possible? You... you’re cheating," he said as he pointed at Kaelen, who had an unwavering smile as he spread his arms.

"Of course, I am. That’s what makes the game fun. After all, there’s no rule against inviting some extra friends to the party."

As those words left his lips, the sky suddenly darkened as several shadow dragons appeared in the cloudscape.

The party’s expressions darkened as they witnessed several dragons spitting jets of flames across the plains, increasing the temperature, along with Team Blue’s scoreboard, which quickly surpassed 60,000 and kept climbing higher without limits.

"Merge," Kaelen suddenly whispered, and thousands of dragons in the air and hundreds of shadow beasts on the ground all snapped their heads towards him and charged forward at once.

They moved at nearly the speed of light and didn’t pause until they ran straight into him and turned into spectral shadows that were absorbed through his pores.

One minute, the plain was being plagued by shadow creatures; the next minute, they had all disappeared inside Kaelen’s body, surrounding him with a dense dark aura that made him resemble a demon straight out of the pits of hell.

The party of eight could barely react when he disappeared and the head of one of them flew into the sky in a spray of blood that terrified the rest of them.

"D-Don’t just stand there!" The leader hurriedly bellowed. "Attack! If we use all our skills together, he stands no chance—"

The leader’s words were cut off when Kaelen appeared before him and swung a sword at his face.

He was quick to react and raised a dome of shields that surrounded him and made Kaelen’s sword bounce off, sending tremors up his arm from the sheer force behind the failed attack.

Kaelen stared at the semitransparent shield for a moment, and at the leader, who sneered at him viciously from inside, before he calmly turned around to hunt the rest of the party.

They were strong, with powerful abilities that would’ve completely changed the tide of battle if it were any other person they were up against. Except, after merging with all his shadow summons, saying Kaelen was stronger than a Tier 100 lifeform at that moment would be an understatement.

It was a one-sided massacre, which Kaelen wasn’t sorry about because not only had these people tried to kill him first, but it was also either they died or he died.

As his sword went through the last man, leaving only the leader still hiding inside his impregnable shield, Kaelen checked the timer to see that there were less than fifteen minutes left before it was over for the losing team.

He released his shadow summons once more to spread across the plain and hunt everything on sight until the last of the beasts on that second floor was dead.

It was then that he ran his eyes over his notifications as he went to pick up the golden chest, ignoring the leader, who was seething with rage but too cowardly to do anything about it.

Kaelen might not be able to do anything about the indestructible shield dome, but he was curious to see what happened to the losing team and whether he had miscalculated by making use of the Hearthstone earlier.

[You have killed eight members of Dawn-Vindicator]

[10,000× Reward Multiplier Triggered...]

[You have received 480,000,000,000,000 Evolution Points]

[You have received 240,000,000,000,000 Evolution Points from the Book of Kaelen]

[You have received (8) loot bundles]

[Quality or Quantity?]

"480 trillion evolution points from 8 kills? Not bad. Not bad at all," Kaelen mumbled to himself.

[You have found a Golden Easter Egg]

[10,000 points have been added to your team.]

[You have received a Golden Treasure Chest]

[10,000× Reward Multiplier Triggered...]

[Quality or Quantity?]

Kaelen stared at the notification before he tossed the treasure chest into his inventory without interacting with it. Then he shifted his attention to the scoreboard.

[Blue Team]: 208,000 Points. | [Red Team]: 64,000 Points.

"That was intense," he mumbled to himself.

If it weren’t for the Fate-Rewriting Pill, he might as well have been dead.

The moral lesson was supposed to be sticking together with your party to overcome challenges, but all Kaelen learned was that strength always won. And if you didn’t have enough strength, you should at least have something that could change the tide of battle; that was where the Fate-Rewriting Pill came in. To play it safe, he needed more Suppression Pills as well.

But for the time being, Kaelen believed that the Nameless Shadow God should be more than enough for the first ten floors. He didn’t plan on switching back to Infinite Mana until the next ability selection.

Kaelen shifted his attention towards the leader inside his dome of shields and moved towards him.

"Earlier, you made a statement that piqued my interest. You said something like ’that’s how Eden works.’ May I ask what you mean by that? Who or what is Eden?"

A flash of surprise crossed the leader’s resentful expression, and he couldn’t help but laugh bitterly.

"I can’t believe I lost to a random like you."

Kaelen fell silent as he tried to make sense of what that meant. "If what you mean by random is that I was brought to the Tower of Babel against my will, you’re wrong. I signed up for this."

The leader stared at him blankly for a moment before he laughed out loud in amusement. "You signed up for this but have no idea what a random is?" he said in disbelief.

"That’s right. I’m not from any of the big families who share information amongst themselves, and I come from a very small world in terms of knowledge. I guess I’m no different from a random," Kaelen said honestly.

The leader looked at him suspiciously. "If you come from a third-rate world, then how were you able to enroll to become a candidate?"

"I got married to someone big," Kaelen replied casually. "Before you ask, she doesn’t like to share too much and barely acknowledges me as her partner. Not that I care, but it wouldn’t hurt to give me a heads-up like the other big families do with their own."

The leader was silent for a moment as he stared at Kaelen. "I see... well then, I’m sorry I can’t help you with anything. From where I come from, it’s an unspoken rule not to reveal anything that has to do with the creators. But I’m sure you’ll slowly learn all about the universes out there," the leader said casually, but something about his eyes gave Kaelen a hint. Several hints.

Creators... Universes... ’s’.

If Goddess Zemira was the so-called Creator of his own universe, the existence of other creators probably stemmed from the multiple universes that the leader had just revealed he secretly knew about.

Another thing Kaelen noticed was that the hostility in the man’s eyes was mostly gone after their casual interaction. He couldn’t understand why.

[Special clear condition has been met. All the beasts within the second floor have been slain.]

[Calculating team points...%]

[Team Blue wins with 436,000 Points]

"Woah, look at those numbers... I guess my time has come," the leader said with a bittersweet smile before he shifted his attention back to Kaelen with a serious expression. "There’s something I’d like to know as well, if you don’t mind."

"Go ahead," Kaelen replied.

The leader inhaled softly. "The person you married to be here today, are they perhaps..." He paused for a moment as he stared directly into Kaelen’s eyes. "The War Demon?"

Kaelen was caught off guard by the question, but he found no reason to hide it, so he slowly nodded in reply.

"And are you perhaps an Atreus?" the leader asked almost immediately, which made Kaelen pause in surprise and disbelief.

If he was from another universe, how did he know all these names?

Just what impact did the Atreus family and Emir have in the past that made them this infamous?

"If I say yes, would that mean anything to you?"

The leader suddenly threw his head back and laughed heartily. "No, not at all. I may not have been married before, but all I can tell you is that your wife’s a keeper. If she’s playing hard to get, then use your masculine charm to melt her. Because she’s likely the only person who can understand you, and as time goes on, she’ll be the only person you can—and should—trust. That’s what makes a healthy relationship and a happy marriage. Hey, I’ll be cheering for you from the beyond," the man said with a big smile, but Kaelen felt that every single word that came out of his mouth was cryptic and meant more than met the eye.

But before he could respond, the man’s head imploded, splattering blood and gore across the interface of the dome of shields, which slowly disappeared, leaving Kaelen standing there with a complicated expression and mixed emotions.

[Congratulations! You have successfully solo-cleared the Second Floor]