“It is I! I offer you my veneration, oh mighty Osiris of the Nine Chief Gods!” Terraflame bowed before the statue of Osiris, his right hand pressed against his chest. “I offer you… … a sacrificial offering, Anubis’ killer!”
In his left hand, he held the small porcelain bottle.
The clump of lava resting on the plate was motionless. It seemed as though Chen Xiaolian had given up on resisting.
“I can smell Anubis’ blood on his body! His soul has become heavy from sin, causing the Feather of Truth to rise!” The statue of Osiris emitted a highly majestic and solemn voice. “Yes, he has infringed upon the dignity of the Gods! He will be devoured by Ammit!”
“It is my pleasure to serve you!” Terraflame performed yet another deep bow.
“Well then, in order to reward your veneration towards the Gods, I, Osiris, as one of the Nine Chief Gods, the King of the Underworld, bestow upon you the rights to immortality! As long as the fire in your soul continues to burn, you will never be extinguished for eternity!”
Another pillar of light descended to shine upon Terraflame’s body.
The overjoyed Terraflame heard the instance dungeon’s prompt.
[System prompt: You have sacrificed the Player who killed Anubis and pleased Osiris. You have gained a skill: Osiris’ Promise of Eternal Life.
[Osiris’ Promise of Eternal Life. [S] class skill. Whenever you receive fatal damage, so long as your lowest basic attribute is [D+] class or higher, you will become immune to the damage. Additionally, you will be returned to the state before the skill was activated and all of your basic attributes will be reduced by one class.
[If your lowest basic attribute is [D] class, this skill will not take effect when you receive fatal damage and you will not become immune to the fatal damage.
[System prompt: This instance dungeon has ended. In one minute, the surviving Players will be teleported out of this instance dungeon. The order of teleportation will be based on the amount of contribution.
[Countdown: 00:59]
Terraflame tightened his fist and the blood in his body was seemingly churning from excitement.
He had never heard of anyone acquiring this skill. Looking at the skill’s description, he found it to be unbelievable.
Although it was not – in the strictest sense – an unkillable immortal body, it was already strong enough.
For the system to classify it as [S] class proved just how powerful this skill was.
No matter when, he could instantly be resurrected with full health upon death. Although the price for the resurrection was considerable, a reduction of one class from each basic attribute was too cheap of a price to pay for one’s life.
In this world, there were many ways to increase or restore the lost attributes.
Terraflame felt lucky. Although he was specialized in melee battles, his overall development did not lean that much into melee attributes. Of all his basic attributes, the lowest was the Comprehensive Ranged Ability at [B-] class while his highest was the Comprehensive Melee Ability at [A+] class.
Disregarding other circumstances, Terraflame had to be killed five times in a row for his Comprehensive Ranged Ability to drop to [D] class.
Naturally, each death would bring about a great decline in his level of strength. However, with his team mates around him and the ability to fully recover his health, preserving his life would not be a difficult issue.
Naturally, things would end differently if he ended up encountering an enemy capable of trampling through everything. An enemy capable of killing him five times in a row and all of his team mates would assuredly be capable of finishing him off.
If it truly came to that, Terraflame would have no choice but to simply accept his fate.
“Everyone, listen to my command! Follow Aliosha and Ghostfox’s instructions and take aim at one target.” Terraflame walked towards the balance scale while sending a message to all of his team members using the guild channel. “Keep an eye on the countdown timer. When the countdown timer is down to five seconds, attack! Give those scums from Thorned Flower Guild a heavy blow!”
“Manager, you’ve killed off Riche?” Aliosha was both shocked and delighted.
“I easily killed him. Additionally, I also acquired the immortal body skill and… … a sacred artefact. A genuine sacred artefact!”
Terraflame kept the porcelain bottle. After he kept it, the blazing-hot Breathing Earth began cracking apart on its own. Soon enough, they disappeared into thin air to reveal Chen Xiaolian, who was lying on the plate.
Chen Xiaolian’s figure was motionless as he lay there silently. Both his eyes were closed. Light continued to flow across the surface of the armour on his body, but his face had lost all of its vitality. It was a pale-looking face.
The Moonless Fivefold Light Armour’s defensive power was terrifyingly high. It was so high that it could even block a few of Shen’s attacks, assuming he did not go all out. However, this sacrificial process involving an instance dungeon BOSS was not – strictly speaking – an attack.
Terraflame lowered his head to look at Chen Xiaolian and snickered.
So what if your armour’s defensive power is high? Osiris’ sacrificial process involves the instance dungeon’s laws, which will directly suck away the target’s soul!No one can defy the laws!Awakened ones cannot defy the laws. The same is true for the Players.The only ones who can defy the laws are probably those from the Development Team, the very existences that created the laws.
Thus, the thing lying on the plate was a corpse.
30 more seconds until the end of the instance dungeon.
There was not much time left. However, it was enough to pull out the armour.
Terraflame reached out with his hand and pressed it upon Chen Xiaolian’s armour.
However, before he could exert his strength on it, he suddenly received a new prompt from his personal system.
[System prompt: An unknown error has appeared in this instance dungeon, now correcting…]
The countdown timer for the end of the instance dungeon stopped as well, remaining at 00:29.
What the hell?
Terraflame, who was still feeling stunned, then watched as one prompt after another appeared in his personal system.
[System prompt: An unknown error has appeared in this instance dungeon. Correction failed. Now executing clean-up procedure…]
[System prompt: An unknown error has appeared in this instance dungeon. Regular clean-up procedure has failed. Now executing force clean-up. Some components may be affected, please take note …]
Since becoming an Awakened, Terraflame had participated in over 100 instance dungeons. However, he had never seen anything like this before.
What the hell is this?!
The balance scale before him flickered. In fact, there was even a blurry quality to the image that he was seeing. It was like the images one would see when watching an old CRT TV with bad reception.
Bang!
The balance scale flickered a few times before suddenly disappearing, causing Chen Xiaolian’s body to fall to the floor.
Terraflame took a few steps backwards, his mind reeling. Then, a new prompt appeared.
[System prompt: An unknown error has appeared in this instance dungeon; force clean-up procedure has failed. Danger classification: Yellow. Changing the instance dungeon’s course. Executing complete removal]
“Manager! What is going on? Did you receive the system prompts?” Aliosha’s panicked voice shouted through the guild channel. “Damn it! I have never seen such a situation appear in an instance dungeon before! What do we do? Manager!”
Before Terraflame could answer, he heard a sudden roar coming from above him. It was unknown just what the roar signified.
The roar reverberated throughout the entire Divine Temple of Osiris. It even caused the firm stone walls and floor to shake.
Terraflame swiftly raised his head and watched as the massive statue of Osiris… move.
Next, like a gust of wind, Terraflame found that Chen Xiaolian’s corpse was rapidly moving away from him.
No… it was not that Chen Xiaolian’s corpse was moving away. Rather, Chen Xiaolian’s corpse, the statue of Osiris behind the corpse, the floor and… even his beheaded body were all swiftly moving away from him.
I… … was beheaded?!
The thought had only just appeared within Terraflame’s mind when a sensation of pain spread out from his neck.
Next, darkness enveloped his vision.
The very next instant, however, Terraflame’s vision cleared up and he could sense his body once more.
His figure quickly fell from mid-air to hit the floor. He had appeared not far from the entrance to the passageway.
At the same time, he received a notification within his personal system.
[Prompt: Fatal damage received. Osiris’ Promise of Eternal Life had activated to cancel the damage. All basic attributes are now lowered by one class]
[Current attributes:
[Physique: A
[…]
The massive statue of Osiris was striding forward, stepping out from the altar that it was standing upon.
RUN!!!!
Terraflame could no longer bother to think about the armour on Chen Xiaolian’s body. Neither could he bother to finish reading the notification. He had instantly made up his mind. Run to the passageway.
Earlier, Osiris had instakilled him.
He had given Terraflame the immortal body skill, an existence which should not even be a BOSS in this instance dungeon. This Osiris, a character who should not have any reason to fight him, had instakilled him.
Terraflame did not even get to see what kind of attack Osiris used before losing one life, resulting in all his attributes falling by one class.
Only someone who was bored of living would continue to hang around.
Getting killed another four times meant that his Comprehensive Ranged Ability would drop to [D] class. At that point, he would truly be a goner.
Terraflame had to escape right now. The faster, the better. He had to escape from this Divine Temple.
As for the error mentioned in the system prompt, there was no need for him to think too much about it to know that it must be the damned Chen Xiaolian. Who knows what was wrong with his body? It had caused a completed instance dungeon to react in such a manner.
Terraflame did not have the luxury to even think about the wondrous armour on Chen Xiaolian’s body.
No matter how powerful the equipment may be, it was not as important as preserving his life.
Terraflame pushed out every last drop of his strength to run through the passageway. He could hear Osiris’ endless roars of fury coming from behind him.
All of his team mates were sending him messages through the guild channel.
“Manager! What is going on? The countdown timer has stopped!”
“The guys from Thorned Flower Guild have noticed it. They are putting their guard up!”
“Do we still attack them? At present, it will be very difficult to execute a sneak attack against them!”
“Heavens! What is happening inside the Divine Temple? I can see it shaking! Manager, are you still alive? Manager!”
Terraflame had no time to even answer. All he could do was to give it his all to run. As all of his basic attributes had been reduced by one class, there was a noticeable drop in his running speed. Terraflame was thus fearful that any distractions would allow the pursuing Osiris to kill him.
He did not even have the guts to look back.
The two little BOSSES prior to this, Anubis and Horus, were already so powerful. Terraflame cannot imagine how powerful Osiris could be.
Even if all of the participants of this instance dungeon were to join forces, Osiris would likely be capable of casually killing off all of them.
Terraflame’s only hope was that Osiris could quickly kill off Chen Xiaolian. No, wait. Chen Xiaolian was already killed by the sacrificial process. In that case… he hoped that Osiris could reduce that fellow to dust, completely obliterated from existence.
Perhaps, it would allow the error to be cleaned up and the instance dungeon would resume normal operations, allowing the countdown timer to tick down again and end the instance dungeon.
Soon, Terraflame saw a ray of light from up ahead.
Finally, the entrance to the Divine Temple was right before him.
Run outside!
Then, he would be safe. At least, he would be temporarily safe. The size of this instance dungeon was very big and he could keep running as far away as he could. Then, find a remote corner within the desert and hide. That way, Osiris would not be able to find him before the error was cleaned up… right?
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