The scenery shifted quickly around the group as they moved through the long, seemingly endless path. The horses were moving at enormous speeds, and yet it didn’t feel like they were making any progress.
The forest looked the exact same so the sense of scale was only dawning on them with each passing minute. They knew that the Divine Realm was unfathomably big, so much so nobody could even imagine or comprehend how big it was.
The more terrifying fact was that all of this size was the areas people ‘knew’ about. Nobody had discovered every single place in the Divine Realm yet. As far as they’re concerned, it could be several times bigger in size than what they anticipated.
‘This map is stupidly big.’ Arthur muttered as he opened his map to check their location. As they moved, the map slowly grew bigger and bigger, and yet it still felt insignificantly small. Sighing, he closed it again and looked ahead of him.
The group was seemingly focused on the path. Each is in their own world, probably thinking about other things.
‘They look really stressed for some reason.’ He rubbed the back of his head confusedly. ‘Why I wonder.’
Arthur knew that this trip was dangerous, but in the end, it was merely a game so they didn’t have to be that stressful.
‘Wait, I’m stupid, aren’t I? They probably don’t see it as a mere game at all. It’s a huge investment that can get them an unfathomable amount of money once the conversion is available.’
Every rich family was eager to take a piece of this big pie or simply take the entire pie. Since the guild system and the money conversion system were still not open yet, everyone was gasping for every possible advantage they might get before the true war began.
Once guilds are established, they will expand so quickly that perhaps the entire Divine Realm will become akin to a chessboard where they can play whatever they wish. Especially when Arthur knew that there were Divine Shards waiting for them to be discovered and acquired.
These massive entities will fight tooth and nail to get them as that will entail insane profits and huge publicity. After all, this game had taken the world by storm and almost every single human on the planet had heard of it.
‘And these kids are going to be right in the center of these massive conflicts.’ Arthur looked at Isla and her group. He could easily tell that they weren’t simply driven by a desire to have fun or to explore a new game but a far greater goal.
They were driven by their families for the most part. The better they are in the game, the better their position in the real world will be once things are out of control.
‘In a sense, that does explain why they are on the edge. Because any mistake could lose them a lot of progress when every single level and every single stat is important.’ Arthur mused. ‘What a bunch of poor fools. I wish to never have to do that in my life.’
As miserably as his life had been, Arthur was grateful for one thing and one thing only. His problems were never big enough to make him lose his mind. Sure, he had work, he had school and bills.
But, those were things that he could handle and they were tailor-made to fit him exactly. He wasn’t fighting to become some kind of clan leader and dominate an entire industry or rise with his family to the peak against equally-minded people.
That was too much out of his scope and he was glad it was.
As he was like that, Arthur’s eyes suddenly opened as he sensed something. He lifted his head and looked in one particular direction. His face immediately turned serious.
“Guys, I think we have company.” He said.
*ROAR*
A second later, a massive creature emerged from the woods right in front of them. It was a massive silver bear with sharp long spikes on its back like a porcupine.
“Herculia, Danny, Emmy, you know what to do.”
Almost immediately, the four players went into formation as they spread across the entire road before taking different paths as if they had already trained on this.
Arthur was a little lost at first, but he decided to ignore them and simply rushed toward the monster directly. Then, when he got close enough, he immediately stood up on top of the horse’s back.
His body was able to easily balance itself on top as his core strength was now far beyond anything normal.
“Huh? WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!” Danny yelled in shock when he saw the boy basically throwing himself into the monster’s claws.
The creature was already slashing down with its paw, aiming to crush Arthur with one hit. The others immediately stopped as they watched what was about to unfold.
At the same time, Arthur snapped his fingers, launching all the arrows at the same time. The projectiles instantly reached the bear and hit it in several places.
That staggered the monster for a moment, a moment that was more than enough for Arthur to leap from his horse in the air, reaching several meters high.
Arthur’s eyes glinted with a cold light as he pierced his sword forward, stabbing the monster right in the neck. Blood splashed everywhere followed by the loud howl of the bear as it started frantically throwing its body everywhere, trying to get Arthur off its body.
The boy tried to quickly pull his sword out and escape, but he couldn’t dodge the rain of attacks from that close.
*BANG*
“AGH!” Feeling the crushing force of the monster’s paw on his back, he almost fell down on his head. But, he quickly grabbed the sword at the last possible second. His body swung around wildly as he felt his arm muscles almost breaking from the sheer power of the monster.
“You’re a very problematic bastard!” Arthur clenched his teeth as he yanked his sword out and then jumped in the air.
However, when he tried to retreat quickly, the monster suddenly did something unexpected. The spikes on its back suddenly stood up and before he knew it, a rain of projectiles flew toward him and everywhere else.
“Hide!!!” Arthur yelled when he noticed the others approaching the battle.
However, his call was a little too late as everyone’s position was simply too bad to actually hide again.
‘Shit, they’re gonna hit them!’ As he quickly deflected the spikes with his sword. His agility was enough to move the sword against the projectiles. But, he wasn’t sure if the others could do that too.
But, much to his surprise, what they did after that broke his expectations.
“Emmy.” With one single word from Isla, things suddenly shifted. A split second later, four different transparent barriers appeared around everyone. At the same time, Herculia rushed forward like a raging beast as he lunged at the dying bear.
His muscles expanded as he yelled. “Danny! Get him!”
His friend had already started moving the moment he saw what happened. With swift motion, he sliced through the monster’s legs to stop it from trying to stand up again. As Herculia wrestled with it on the ground, the monster used every ounce of power left in it.
At that moment, Isla stepped forward as she lifted her hand. In the palm of her hand, a small ball of purple energy manifested out of nowhere.
The ball looked unassuming at first. But Arthur immediately felt a threat from it that he hadn’t felt from anything else in this game before. Something about that ball of energy was screaming ‘danger’.
Then, she casually threw it toward the monster’s head. The ball flew quietly toward its target as if it were a feather. But, the moment it made contact with it…
*BOOOM*
The monster’s head exploded everywhere. Brain matter and blood splashed on the ground all around them as the monster fell dead to the ground.
“…” Arthur stared at the headless monster with an expressionless face for a second as he slowly stood up. ‘Wow… That was pretty quick. I guess I underestimated them a little too much.’
The way the group handled the situation was perfect. Their teamwork and coordination easily finished the monster off without any damage taken.
‘So this is what top players can do, huh? I’m with a group that I can actually rely on when needed.’
Sighing inwardly, Arthur looked at the notifications he received. Since the kill was shared between all of them, the experience points were also shared. However, since this particular bear was noticeably strong, the points weren’t too bad.
‘I did the most damage so I guess I received the most points.’ He rubbed the back of his head.
“You fucking moron!! What the hell was that?”
However, at that moment, Arthur heard a loud yell. Looking up, he saw the masked player Danny approaching him with a strong glare on his face.
‘Here we go again.’ Arthur rolled his eyes.
