MMO: Pierce Heaven Til’ It Breaks

From the day the Cursing Sect was founded, they started working towards bringing back the Evil God. After thousands of years of searching, the Cursing Sect High Disciple Madara found a great power hidden in the ruins of an ancient civilization in the Land of Light. He firmly believed that with enough disciples’ faith, they would be able to successfully pull the Evil God back from the other dimension.

However, just as the Cursing Sect started to take action, the Church of Holy Light received a decree from God, ordering them to protect these Ancient Civilization Ruins and prevent the return of the Evil God.

The location of the Ancient Civilization Ruins was at the Dragonbone Waste in the Southern Continent. If a player had to travel there by themselves they would not even be able to reach their destination in half a month. However, if the player interacts with the NPC’s of either faction and completes their respective quests, teleportation doors would start appearing in the major cities, all leading to the Dragonbone Waste.

The Light and Darkness Instances were open to players from all three continents. As long as the player reached Level 40, they would gain access to the teleportation door.

In order to ensure the success of the expansion pack, the developers of Pantheon had put in a lot of effort into balancing the player-base. For example, they gave out Limited Quests to the players in the Western and Southern Continent, even giving them temporary double EXP gain. This was to help the players there level up more efficiently in order to give them an equal footing as the Eastern Continent players. Only when the player levels were more balanced, did the developers announce the release of the new expansion.

The main purpose of the double EXP was due to the difference in the progress rate of the three camps and the fact that the teleportation door unlocked from the Cursing Sect and the Church of Holy Light would disappear after ten minutes which would then require that players repeat the quest to reopen the door…

A single teleportation door could be used by 1,000 players. Once the 1,000-player quota had been reached, it would enter a 3 hour cooldown period, not allowing anyone else to use it in the next 3 hours.

The Ancient Civilization Ruins Instances were all absurdly difficult, but what made it worse was the massacre amongst the players of the three camps right outside the Instances. Due to being from different camps, players would see each others’ names in red, meaning there would be no PvP penalty but instead a reward of Reputation Value. If it was just a single person, the situation could still easily be controlled. However, there were tens of thousands of players gathering up at once. Even if a couple of people tried to start something, it would end up in a full-blown war…

The most disgusting Instances were precisely the Light and Darkness Instances. This was the unanimous understanding they got from polling the players from all three continents.

Once the Cursing Disciples appeared in the major cities, Li Yi had immediately ordered every Iron Alliance member to start doing the Cursing Sect quests in order to be the first one to open the door.

There was no difference in rewards for the Cursing Sect quests and the Church of Holy Light quests, but players could only pick one out of the two. Once the teleportation gate gets unlocked, the players also had to stick with their choice.

In his past life, a lot of players failed to understand that and started doing quests randomly. In the end, when they unlocked the teleportation gate, they were all stunned. Even if they were party members, the gates that they could use were different. This forced them to have to regroup after they entered the Dragonbone Waste. Ultimately, due to the party being separated, they were caught up in an ambush and earned a free ticket back to the city.

‘The first order of business was to ensure everyone was on the same page. Then, they would need to race to be the first to unlock the door.’

As the questline was unlocked, the red system notification text also started popping up.

[Who shall be the first one to unlock Victory’s Gate? Charge forward, heroes! When the Victory’s Gate is unlocked, your camp shall obtain a never before seen new reward…]

“Truce! Let’s stop the fighting, let’s stop the fighting! Everyone, we gotta work together and unlock the gate. Didn’t you see the system announcement? If even a single person unlocks the gate, the entire camp will get the reward!”

“Yeah, that’s right! Let’s have a temporary truce and focus all our efforts on unlocking the gate! Everyone, let’s work together…”

Suddenly, the players started banding together towards a common goal. The amount of PK-ing had gone down drastically. Conversely, there seemed to be an exponential increase in people offering to help each other with their quests.

Li Yi still wanted to rush his Reputation in the major cities up to the Worship state, but in order to be the first to unlock Victory’s Gate, he had to put his plan on the backburner temporarily and focus on the current quest at hand.

The Cursing Sect and Church of Holy Light questlines were similar, they were all randomly generated. Sometimes, they would have players run an errand and other times they would have players obtain certain rare items(Not available in the Auction House, these items were a unique spawn that were only available after the quest was given).

The first quests Li Yi received were all just errands that were simple for him. All he had to do was to ride his flying mount around the map a couple of times to complete them. However, the next quests he received was frustrating. He no longer had the ease and comfort of errand quests. The quest he received was a Splicing Quest.

[Splicing Quest: First, help an NPC find a unique quest item fragment. Then, find another player with who had also found another one of said unique quest item fragment and splice the fragments together. Lastly, return the spliced item to the NPC.]

It was impossible for this quest to be done solo, players had to look around for people with the same quest.

The first Splicing Quest Li Yi received was already absurd. The quest needed 4 fragments to be spliced together. Since he was so far ahead of the other players, even though he spent the rest of his day shouting on the Continent Channel, there was no one who had the quest items he needed…

‘This thing… It’s too unfair!’

If one were unlucky, they would receive a similar quest to the one Li Yi was doing now; conversely, if one were lucky, they would receive errand quests. Hence, the gate-opening quests were not affected much by one’s skills or equipment.

The Light and Darkness gate-opening questline was very long. There were a total of 300 mini quests. They would require at least two days of game time to be completed.

Li Yi was plagued by bad luck. All the quests he got were Splicing Quests. They kept popping up one after the other, he felt so utterly disgusted that he had the urge to bang his head through a wall. He had no choice, even if he had been reborn, he still had no control over his luck. He could only helplessly sigh.

On the second day the gate-opening quests were released, the system’s rainbow-lettered notification popped up. At that point, Li Yi had already completed 289 quests.

[The Southern Continent player Arthur completed the Light and Darkness questline, successfully opening Victory’s Gate. This event had been recorded in the Pantheon Hall of Fame. All players from the Southern Continent will also earn receive this Hall of Fame event.]

[The Light and Darkness Instances are officially open! Heroes, wield your weapons up high and charge towards the Ancient Civilization Ruins and seek out the countless treasures within!]

The Eastern Continent players were rendered speechless, so were the Western Continent players.

“Whut the f*ck? A’ve already gotten 298 bloody quests. I was just a whee bit from finishing this questline. Screw this w*nker’s bloody ancestors mate. ¹ ”

“Bloody f*ck I was at 299. Only one more to go…”

“I’m also at 299…”

The spirits of the Eastern and Western Continent’s players were crushed.

Even if they could no longer get the Hall of Fame event, they still had to do the gate-opening quests. If they did not, they could not even reach the dungeons, much less participate in them.

The worst part of it all was that right after the Southern Continent’s Arcane Emperor Arthur opened Victory’s Gate, Li Yi’s luck was back again. The quest he received right after that were all short-distance errand quests. Within 3 minutes, he had finished all of them.

‘What sh*tty luck is this…’

“As long as you pray for the Evil God’s glory, the teleportation door shall appear in front of your eyes. Witness it, this is the Evil God’s true power!”

Four Cursing Disciples all clad in black locked hands in a circle an uttered a curse, opening up a teleportation door for Li Yi.

Li Yi immediately jumped through it.

System Notification: [You have entered the Special PVP Map, the Dragonebone Waste…]

With a white flash, Li Yi appeared in one of the basecamps that the Cursing Sect had set up in the Dragonbone Waste.

The basecamp also offered some quests, but Li Yi did not take them. He summoned the Blue-horned Griffin and flew towards the Ancient Civilization Ruins Instances.

The Ancient Civilization Ruins was located right at the center of the Dragonbone Waste map. In that area, there was a total of 55 different Instances of all sizes packed densely for the players to choose from. There was a huge range of difficulty levels for the players to choose from, accommodating players from level 40 all the way up to level 100!

Li Yi was extremely familiar with this map. He had once solo-ed the 50-man dungeon the Remnant of the King for two whole years.

‘I didn’t get the Hall of Fame event, then I might as well try to get a first clear of these dungeons.’

With Li Yi’s current level, going to a Level 40 5-man small-sized dungeon and clearing it would be a piece of cake, would it not?

The Blue-horned Griffin zipped through the Dragonbone Waste map flying close to the ground. Soon, Li Yi had arrived at the Light and Darkness Instances.

Just as Li Yi landed, he saw a blond boy clad in a blue robe riding a horse into a dungeon.

That was the 5-man small dungeon Light’s Beginning.

“Arcane Emperor of the Southern Continent, King Arthur, let us have a competition to see who’ll be the first one to clear this dungeon!” Li Yi chuckled out loud before running into the Light’s Beginning dungeon as well.

He originally planned on running another dungeon, but since he saw King Arthur enter the Light’s Beginning dungeon by chance, he suddenly changed his plans.

In his past life, the record for Light’s Beginning was set singlehandedly by this Arthur who was known as the Arcane Emperor.

Inside the Light’s Beginning dungeon, the Cursing Sect and the Church of Holy Light were still locked in a heated battle, with both sides suffering casualties. Right as players enter the dungeon, the ground would start trembling. Countless heavily armored Ancient Undead would rise up from the ground, massacring everyone from the Cursing Sect and the Church of Holy Light…

The monsters in the Light and Darkness Instances were weird. Take the Ancient Undead for example, although they were lifeless Undead, they could still utilize the power of the purest Holy Light. Hence, there was no way for players to judge from their appearance whether they were Light creatures or Dark creatures.

There were 10 Ancient Undead patrolling far ahead. If players wanted to progress, they had to take them out first.

Undead-type creatures were immune to a large number of CC skills. Fortunately, the Archer’s Frost Trap had a temporary crowd-control effect that worked on them. Although the effect duration was quite short, to an expert like Li Yi, it was more than enough time.

Li Yi set a Frost Trap right underneath his feet and shot out two arrows. Instantly, all 10 Ancient Undead were aggro’d over.

“Tshhh——”

The Frost Trap was activated, freezing all 10 of the Ancient Undead in place. Li Yi took the opportunity to chug an Advanced-Level Fury Potion and began unleashing his arrows onto the 10 Ancient Undead.

The Lightning Leopard was furiously slashing its claws at the enemy, helping its master to attack his enemies. Although this leopard’s DEF was far lower than the Violent Bear King, it’s ATK was more than 3 times higher than the Violent Bear. It was the ultimate violent pet.

The Frost Trap’s 12 second freeze time was over in the blink of an eye. By that time, Li Yi had only defeated 4 Ancient Undead. Seeing the Ancient Undead swarming up onto him, he immediately turned around and ran out of the dungeon

The Light and Darkness series dungeons had very OP mobs. Not only were they immune to CC skills, but they would also ignore the effects of Mislead and Pseudocide which meant they could not be isolated out one-by-one.

In order to fully deal with the 10 Ancient Undead, Li Yi had to run out of the dungeon twice.

Moving forward, an Undead General wielding a spear and riding a Skeleton Warhorse appeared ahead.

He was the first boss of the Light’s Beginning dungeon, the Third General of the Original Holy Light Army, Rayman!