Osiris did not pursue Terraflame.
On the ground, Chen Xiaolian had already become a stiff and cold corpse. However, the riot of colours shining from the Moonless Fivefold Light Armour attracted Osiris’ attention instead.
Osiris raised his right hand, spreading open all five fingers before smashing it down heavily upon Chen Xiaolian.
When the palm was only halfway down, it suddenly began swelling and deforming.
His entire right arm transformed into a monster. It had the head of a crocodile and the body of a lion. Its two rows of teeth brought with it a putrid stench as it lunged down to bite Chen Xiaolian’s body, which was lying on the ground.
However, just as the crocodile head was about to successfully bite down on its target, Chen Xiaolian’s eyes suddenly snapped open.
Chen Xiaolian looked at the crocodile head, not a trace of panic on his face. On the contrary, he appeared to be smirking slightly. Next, he raised his hand up.
The monster – transformed from Osiris’ right hand – was several times larger compared to Chen Xiaolian’s figure. Additionally, there was a mighty downward momentum behind its attack. However, Chen Xiaolian simply raised his hand gently before using two fingers to stop the monster’s lunging attack.
“A soul-devouring monster, eh?” Chen Xiaolian’s finger tapped the surface of the monster’s teeth and smirked as he regarded the terrifying visage. “Your name is… … Ammit, right?”
“Where is your soul?!” A thunderous voice reverberated down from above. Osiris was looking down upon Chen Xiaolian with a furious expression on his face. “Why can’t I devour your soul?”
The monster known as Ammit, formed from Osiris’ right arm, had frozen after getting tapped by Chen Xiaolian’s fingers earlier. It could not move at all.
“Soul? Devour?” Chen Xiaolian retracted his hand and straightened himself.
As for the other side, both Ammit and Osiris remained still, not moving in the slightest.
“Why?!!!” Osiris bellowed. “What did you do to me?”
He had suddenly realized that it was not just his right hand, Ammit. At that very moment, not a single part of his body could move.
As for Chen Xiaolian, he had already stood up. His figure slowly floated up into the air.
His body floated before Osiris, who was over 10 metres tall. He was clearly incomparably insignificant compared to Osiris. And yet, the pair of wings flapping behind him radiated an overpowering atmosphere. It gave the impression that he was even bigger than Osiris.
Chen Xiaolian floated in front of Osiris’ head, where he regarded Osiris for a moment with a faint smile on his face.
“Thank you, for killing me once.”
Next, he tapped the air before him.
A ripple spread out from the very spot, like the water ripples spreading out from the surface of water when a stone was dropped on it. The ripple slowly spread forward.
When Osiris’ body made contact with the ripple, a burst of high-frequency vibrations suddenly overcame it.
After the burst of vibrations ended, his body stood still for just half a second before crumbling into dust, spilling down on the floor.
Before all the remnants of Osiris’ body fell to the ground, Chen Xiaolian had already turned to look upwards.
It was the ceiling of the Divine Temple. However, Chen Xiaolian’s eyes were seemingly capable of piercing through the stones there to gaze at what lay beyond.
“As expected… … they’re here!”
…
Terraflame practically flew out into the sands.
“Manager!”
Ghostfox and Aliosha quickly got up, each breathing a sigh of relief.
“Where is our Team Leader? Terraflame!”
Seeing that Terraflame was the only one to run out from the Divine Temple, the members of Thorned Flower Guild immediately raised their weapons, aiming them at the members of Starfall Guild standing before them.
The other smaller guilds turned to look at one another in panic. Next, they hurriedly backed away, moving far away from this potential battlefield.
They don’t want to suffer as bystanders.
“Don’t worry about your goddamned Team Leader!” Terraflame’s face was so ugly to behold, it seemed as though he was just molested by a group of obese women, each weighing over 150 kilogrammes. He shouted his lungs out at the members of Thorned Flower Guild, “Don’t aim your weapons at us! Aim there! That is, if you fellows don’t want to die!”
“What do you mean?”
Hillghost and Myriad Baiter stared intently at Terraflame. They saw Terraflame stretch his hand out to point at the Divine Temple behind him.
The series of prompts earlier regarding instance dungeon error had utterly confused them. They did not understand what was going on.
However, seeing the dazed state that Terraflame was in, the two of them had this vague feeling… … something extraordinary had happened.
At any rate, his look of panic and the fact that he was completely sweating all over did not look fake.
“Everyone! Get your bitchy asses ready for battle! I don’t care if you are from Thorned Flower Guild or Starfall Guild or some other damned small guilds! If you don’t want to die, listen to my commands!” Terraflame quickly rushed into the middle of them all. “An error has occurred within this instance dungeon! The Divine Temple’s Osiris has arrived! This BOSS is even more powerful compared to Anubis and Horus! If we do not kill off this monster, we will all die here! Do you understand?!”
“Manager, your words… … is it real, or are you just trying to trick those guys from Thorned Flower Guild? You want them to lower their guard and…” Aliosha asked through their guild channel.
“Nonsense!” Terraflame bellowed. “Of course it is real!”
Everyone exchanged glances. Then, they instantly trained the weapons in their hands at the Divine Temple.
By then, the three Thunderstorm Tanks had been given to the members of Starfall Guild. The three tanks’ turrets turned to aim right at the gate of the Divine Temple.
Thankfully, they’d had a short period of time to rest and heal up. They had rested themselves and used medicinal substances to replenish their stamina. The ammunition and energy cartridges for their weapons and equipment had been reloaded.
Everyone’s heart was palpitating.
A BOSS that is even stronger than Anubis and Horus?
When they were fighting against the two BOSSES earlier, they had nearly faced total annihilation. And now, there was an even stronger one? They were likely incapable of beating it. However, they simply did not have the time to even consider it. Regardless of what the end result would be, they had to give it their all.
However… … time ticked by, seconds and minutes passed. And yet, there was no movement from the Divine Temple.
“Manager…” Ghostfox leaned close to Terraflame from behind. “The BOSS is not appearing.”
“Just wait.”
Terraflame wiped the sweat on his forehead. “Earlier, he killed me one time!”
“Killed… … one time?” Ghostfox frowned.
“I had only just received the instance dungeon’s immortal body reward when I received the error notification from the system. Then, that guy attacked! Damn it! He’s not supposed to be a boss for this instance dungeon!” After having recovered from his earlier state of panic, Terraflame slowly calmed down. He continued to wipe off the sweat on his forehead. “Hopefully, we can kill him…”
“Then… what about Mr Moonless? He is so strong, surely he is not…” Ghostfox frowned.
“Moonless my arse! He is a swindler!” Terraflame gnashed his teeth and said, “The kid’s personal strength is only at that of a piece of trash. However, he somehow managed to obtain a sacred-tier armour and used it to put on a façade before us. He has already become a sacrificial offering. However, before I could take off his armour, Osiris went nuts and took away one of my lives! Damn it! I suspect this instance dungeon error to be that Chen Xiaolian’s doing!”
“What?” Ghostfox was shocked. “But Anubis…”
“Enough with the nonsense! I don’t have the time for-”
Terraflame jerked his head back to glare at Ghostfox. However, before he could finish what he wanted to say, his throat went dry.
“Manager?”
Noticing something amiss with Terraflame’s expression, Ghostfox instantly realized that there was a problem. He turned as well to look behind him.
There up in the sky behind them, a vortex had unknowingly appeared. It spun slowly.
Countless black dots were swiftly ejected out from the vortex and they all flew around the vortex.
Those were…
“Electronic Guardians!!!”
An Awakened suddenly screamed.
Everyone turned to look at the vortex up in the sky. Instantly, they broke into an uproar.
The members of Thorned Flower Guild and the few other Player guilds did not appear particularly nervous.
“It looks like that Osiris you mentioned will not be a threat anymore.” Hillghost immediately moved to stand before Terraflame. There was a somewhat insidious expression on his face as he looked at Terraflame. “The system has sent the Electronic Guardians to start the clean-up. In the face of such a high number of Electronic Guardians, what is one mere instance dungeon BOSS? Now, I have a more important question for you… … our Team Leader, what happened?”
Terraflame raised his head to look at the seemingly unending Electronic Guardians gushing out non-stop from the vortex. The expression of despair on his face grew.
“Answer me, Terraflame!” Hillghost grabbed Terraflame’s collar. “The fourth phase of the quest requires sacrificing someone involved in killing the earlier bosses! Did you kill off our Team Leader?”
There was a wretched smile on Terraflame’s face as he slowly shook his head. However, he did not answer Hillghost’s question. “Hillghost. Do you think… … the error mentioned in the system prompt refers to Osiris?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Hillghost raised his brows and a dagger appeared on his right hand. “I am telling you to answer my question! Did you kill our Team Leader?”
“Hillghost! Release our Manager!”
Everyone from Starfall Guild turned their weapons at Hillghost and shouted.
Terraflame was still shaking his head. His eyes looked beyond Hillghost’s face as he stared at the ever-increasing number of Electronic Guardians. His eyes had slowly turned blurry. “Do you think that, as Players, you fellows will never become clean-up objectives for the Electronic Guardians? You are mistaken… these Electronic Guardians, are not your backers at all…”
Hillghost was taken aback. Terraflame had only just said that when he received another two system prompts from his personal system.
[System prompt: An unknown error has occurred within this instance dungeon. The instance dungeon’s clean-up procedure has been terminated. Danger classification: Red. Now deploying the highest-level procedure. Loading the Electronic Guardians to execute a complete removal.]
[System prompt: You have received a new quest. Quest objective: Die.
[Please cooperate with the Electronic Guardians’ clean-up procedure. (^_^)]
There was even a smiley face in the system prompt?
At that moment, Hillghost’s face had grown to match the astounded look on Terraflame’s face.
“Damn it! Impossible! We are Players! Players! Why did we become clean-up objectives as well?”
Hillghost shouted frantically.
As for the other members of Thorned Flower Guild, when they read the new system prompts, they were all left dumbfounded as well.
The new quest objective is… die?!
Additionally, it wants us to… cooperate?
Damned instance dungeon! What happened?!
“Like I told you, Hillghost…”
As Hillghost was bellowing maniacally, Terraflame finally calmed down. At that moment, the only expression left on his face was despair. “All of us… … are clean-up objectives.”
The distant vortex finally stopped spinning. Slowly, it shrank before disappearing without a trace.
As for the tens of thousands of Electronic Guardians that had emerged from the vortex earlier, they did not disappear with the vortex. Rather, they were flying uniformly to assume the shape of a massive dragon.
The dragon swirled in the sky once. Then, it raised its head up high before diving furiously towards the ground.
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