“Oh la la! Master, it looks like something bad is about to happen.” Guoguo swung her small head about, looking ahead and then behind, calling out with obvious relish, then leaned close to Ye Tianxie’s ear and said in a sweet, cloying voice, “This uncle in the funny clothes is really scary. He has a really scary skill, and it’s called… the Glory of the Mercenary King! If he gets finished off within a minute of showing up, there’s a 50% chance it triggers, and then he comes back from the dead — and it brings aaaall of his companions back too!!”
Ye Tianxie: “!!”
“Oh la la! Master is so unlucky… eh? Wah wah wah! Master, look look look, they’re already starting to stand up, so scary… should we run away first?”
Just as Guoguo let out a scream that may or may not have been genuine, the fallen Mercenary King propped his sword against the ground and rose slowly to his feet… and at that same moment the Sword Soul, Spear Soul, Blade Soul, Shadow Soul, Bow Soul, Summoning Soul, Flame Soul, Thunder Soul, Wind Soul, Earth Soul, Immovable Soul and Holy Word Soul he had defeated… all rose slowly from the ground as well.
Thirteen gazes shot in from every direction and converged on Ye Tianxie.
Wherever the Eye of the Evil Dragon fell, the information it returned was… not only had every one of them revived, their health… had all been restored to full!!
Right then there were four words Ye Tianxie badly wanted to say — son of a bitch!
The Glory of the Mercenary King: a terrifying special skill that was fine so long as it never triggered, and lethal the instant it did. Its effect wasn’t attack, wasn’t weakening, wasn’t support… it was the resurrection after death of every member of the Heaven Soul mercenary corps, himself included!
One could picture it easily enough. Players fighting their way forward from the first wave, beating each successive obstacle at greater and greater cost, finally destroying the last enemy… and getting for their trouble the revival of every enemy at once and all of them combined into a single siege… What kind of helplessness and despair that would be.
What made Ye Tianxie grind his teeth harder was… one of the necessary conditions for triggering the skill turned out to be defeating him inside a minute! To stop him from using that unknown hidden skill, Ye Tianxie had chosen to finish him as fast as possible so he’d never get the chance to release it — and by doing precisely that, had triggered the Glory of the Mercenary King.
That said, the trigger condition had its own logic. For ordinary players, a twelve-person party averaging around level 20 could not possibly kill the Mercenary King inside a minute, so beating him would never trigger this despairing scene. And if someone genuinely could finish the Mercenary King in a minute, it necessarily meant that person or that team had formidable combat strength — which meant they were qualified to face the cruel version.
So the final enemy ordinary players met was merely a Level 20 Lord BOSS. Whereas powerful — or rather, extremely powerful — players might trigger the Glory of the Mercenary King. So… could this be a hidden branch of the quest?
As Ye Tianxie was turning it over, a prompt sounded in his ear.
“Ding… You have successfully triggered the hidden branch of the System Quest ‘Relic of the Mercenary King’ — Glory of the Mercenary King. You will face a siege by every revived member of the Heaven Soul mercenary corps. If you can defeat them, you will receive one additional reward. Good luck.”
The System prompt gave Ye Tianxie his answer and finally quieted his indignation. This was indeed an extremely difficult hidden branch to trigger, several times harder than the System Quest’s original difficulty. But the greater the difficulty, the richer that “additional reward” ought to be. The two words good luck had already made clear how terrifying the coming enemies would be.
The brief surprise passed, and what surfaced on Ye Tianxie’s face was a flat expression carrying the faintest trace of a smile.
Thirteen enemies… ten Level 20 3-star Elites and three Level 20 Lord BOSSes, and what they had between them were different classes, with overall strength far beyond enemies of the same level and grade.
A lineup more lavish and more powerful than any he had ever faced.
The smile at the corner of his mouth grew fainter and fainter while his heartbeat slowly settled, and when his gaze turned sharp, the pressure that had been weighing on his heart dispersed rapidly instead.
Since entering the World of Fate he had run into too many thrilling things to count.
In the novice village, classless, with attributes weaker than an ordinary player’s, he had chosen the Abyss trial that nobody could pass… On its third stage he had faced twelve Level 10 3-star Elites. And relatively speaking, the berserk Fierce Bulls of that time had posed a far, far greater threat to him than the Level 20 3-star Elites he faced now!
But after more than half an hour of grappling, he had passed miraculously without taking a wound, cutting down all twelve 3-star Elites by himself.
On the Abyss trial’s final stage his opponent had been a Level 20 Lord BOSS that could have one-shot him at any moment… He had used every factor there was to use, released his talent abilities without holding a thing back, walked the edge of danger magnificently and brushed past death again and again… and in the end he had still won.
And not long ago he had met his first Immortal Spirit Beast… the kind of Immortal Spirit Beast no player could possibly defeat. Yet in his hands, with him and the Hour of Fate joined together, that impossibility had become fact… he had destroyed an Immortal Spirit Beast alone.
So why should he be nervous or afraid now, and what reason was there not to beat them?
So what if it was the Heaven Soul mercenary corps, so what if all thirteen were gathered… They were the Heaven Souls, and he… was Ye Tianxie!!
Still as the dead water of a deep pool, moving like gale and thunder — the time Ye Tianxie’s body needed to go from complete stillness to top movement speed was an unbelievable instant, an explosive power entirely beyond an ordinary person’s limits. His first target was the Holy Word Soul, with its healing, its resurrection, its support.
The moment he moved, it was as though a single thread pulled at all thirteen sets of nerves at once. The gazes fixed on him turned cold in an instant, and the weight of that pressure made his advancing body falter for a heartbeat. The shadow soul went into Stealth, the Bow Soul raised the silver bow in his hands, the Summoning Soul lifted both hands, the guardian soul and the three warriors charged him together, and magical light of different colors began to flicker across the four Mages.
The only one who didn’t move was the corps’ leader. One hand held his shield, the other propped his sword against the ground, and he stood there motionless — only his eyes, giving off that sharp cold light, turning to follow Ye Tianxie’s movements, exactly like the eyes of a living man full of vitality.
The Holy Word Soul’s and the Immovable Soul’s coffins were the closest to the Mercenary King’s; they were the corps’ strongest protection, one standing before him and one guarding behind. Their positions were naturally nearest him as well. Ye Tianxie sprinted to the Holy Word Soul and launched a thrusting Dragon Rend Slash, which the Holy Word Soul avoided with Blink… and that evasion was entirely within Ye Tianxie’s expectations. In the very instant the Blink went off, Ye Tianxie’s Dragon Shadow Slash followed, arriving hard on the Holy Word Soul’s heels and passing straight through his body; then he spun and brought a Dragon Rend Slash down with everything he had.
-1341, -1320.
As Ye Tianxie landed those two attacks, the shriek of a cold arrow tearing the air reached his ear, and at the same time the Immovable Soul’s shield was already slamming toward his body.
All around him the four magic souls finished their incantations one after another, and within a single second falling thunder from above, flying boulders, a fire wall spreading along the ground and a laterally sweeping gale all came crashing toward the spot where Ye Tianxie stood.
Just as he steadied himself, a cold short blade stabbed suddenly at his back out of the darkness.
BAM!
Ye Tianxie, who had sensed the Shadow Soul’s movement long before, struck later and landed first, the Hour of Fate hammering into the Shadow Soul’s body before the blade could reach him. One strike missed, then flee a thousand miles: having already tasted Ye Tianxie’s terrifying attack power, he chose withdrawal without hesitation and vanished into the darkness. And just then healing light flared over the Holy Word Soul, and the health he had lost under Ye Tianxie’s attacks refilled in an instant.
The three warriors had closed in and stood together with the Immovable Soul, firmly blocking off the Holy Word Soul and the Mercenary King behind them. Since being woken by the Glory of the Mercenary King they seemed reborn, plainly possessing an intelligence far different from before. Warriors and shield tangling him up at close quarters, the bow pinning him at range, the assassin’s burst strike, the Mages’ magical bombardment, the Summoner’s ceaseless summoning, the Holy Word user’s monstrously troublesome healing and support… In a single exchange he felt the pressure spike all over again.
These Heaven Soul corps members, with their perfect class composition and their powerful skills, were after all nothing like the berserk Fierce Bulls of the novice village that had known nothing but charging blindly about! With their core soul — the Mercenary King — present, their souls seemed to have been woken; and though their power fell far short of what it had been in life, the understanding and coordination between them had been rebuilt in this moment!
(End of Chapter 175)