Immediately after meeting with Min-Cheol.
Tearing the Return Scroll, Barub returned to the estate of the noble he first visited.
After all, no one would go to an estate that had lost its master.
Barub had quite the satisfied smile.
It was to be expected, as Barub had gained the massive power of a marquis in an instant.
And it was obtained not through a difficult fight, but from dealing only the final blow after hiding quietly.
In a split second, Barub had obtained a massive amount of power that would’ve been difficult to acquire.
One could compare this situation to winning the lottery.
And Barub was now well aware of Min-Cheol’s plan.
Unaware of Barub’s presence, Barub had been able to overhear everything that Min-Cheol spoke with his compatriots.
This meant that Barub could completely sabotage Min-Cheol’s plan.
Ruling out the 2 dead marquises out of the 10, only 8 remained.
Among them was Barub’s previous owner, Millions.
Killing counts was no longer important in this bet between the two.
The deciding factor now was who obtained more power of the marquises, which was far greater than that of the counts.
“Karupedan. This world that conniving girl has created is quite bothersome.”
Barub continued to mutter for awhile as if carrying a conversation with someone, then sat on a chair, clenching and unclenching their hand repeatedly.
Barub continued to move their body, which seemed to not respond to their command entirely.
It was because Barub wasn’t fully used to the power that had suddenly flowed into them.
For Min-Cheol, from Swesi’s guard to the general, and from the counts to the marquises, he had gained power in increasing fashion to increase the amount of power he could handle.
Because of the dizziness and his body overheating when obtaining power for the first time, he had to even swallow the King’s Marbles.
However, Min-Cheol no longer had such a constitution.
Adapting to this world and to his capabilities, his body had evolved to match it.
Barub had consistently traveled with nothing but baggy clothes.
Focusing all of their power into increasing their bodily strength, they had no need for any special artifacts such as armor or weapons.
No. To be more precise, Barub never had felt the importance of artifacts.
Because they were a peerless existence and god, they carried enough power to easily ignore the benefits that artifacts provided.
The slaves participating the Festival of Blood were completely obsessed with obtaining better artifacts with the prize money obtained from the competition, but Barub was the exception.
One of the reasons that the crowd of the festival cheered Barub with fervor was because they fought without any equipment.
However, it was different now.
Barub was wearing a piece of armor that shone gold bright enough to blind, and had also obtained a blueish lightning sword as well.
Barub finally looked less like a god and more like an Awakened or a Protector.
They had obtained the armor and sword from the Mobile Storage of the count that had taught them what a Return Scroll was.
While the nobles almost had no cause to partake in actual combat, many of them were quite greedy for artifacts.
Rather than function, the nobles used the artifacts to flaunt.
This was probably only possible because the nobles cared about how they appeared to others more than anyone else.
5 sets of armor and 3 sets of swords had poured out of the count’s storage.
Each with different colors and shapes, anyone could tell that not only was care taken to make sure the equipment varied in functionality, but also appearances as well.
Barub equipped each of the defensive equipment that had spilled out.
No matter the wearer’s build and body type, these artifacts automatically shrunk or loosened to fit the wearer.
As expected of creations crafted by artisans, this was only possible because these items could be considered nearly sentient.
It was no surprise that Barub chose the equipment specialized for offense.
The armor and boots glowing gold, along with the gauntlet, all raised offensive capabilities.
Each of the defensive equipment raised attack power by 5%.
However, these stats were far lower than the artifacts that Dump had created.
Perhaps because these items were held by a count and not by a marquis, it seemed that the capabilities of the items were not the best.
On top of that, the sword also had an attack damage boost of 10%.
And its special ability could activate at a fixed rate, sending out an indefensible lightning attack.
The indispensable part here means that that attack has a 100% hit rate.
However, it was possible that the attack could be blocked by damage reduction and shields.
With this, Barub had obtained a 30% increase in attack power altogether.
For Barub, who had been fighting without anything, it was change that they had a hard time getting accustomed to.
Perhaps used to this after moving their body around for a long time, Barub sat up and muttered.
“After obtaining this power, the first to come to mind is that man. I’ve made you wait for quite a long time, Millions…”
Barub awkwardly moved their body to bring up their status window.
For Min-Cheol, who was an Awakened, opening his status window was used to distribute stat points with each level, when obtaining a new skill, or to check the effects of an artifact he obtained.
However, for the peerless existence that was Barub, there had never been a need to do so.
And the creation of Awakened or Protectors wasn’t by Barub’s hand.
Both had been created by Karupedan and the God of Death, Gera.
The only time Barub had seen how the message system worked was when Millions commanded Barub to learn how to use Soul Messenger and Summoning, and a few hours ago when Millions sent a request for Barub to be summoned.
It was a pathetic plan, but Barub brought up the Summon Message that Millions had sent.
-Will you accept Millions’ summons?
-Location. Castle Larkenta. (Coordinates 110:448)
“If you want to see me that badly, then I’ll have to show up. Kuhahat!”
Barub accepted Millions’ summons.
After all, they had obtained enough power to no longer be on the backfoot against Millions.
Barub had lived a countless amount of years.
However, the only memory of defeat in their mind was at the hands of Millions.
It was the first day of arriving in Hell that Barub had been smashed into the ground, suffering an embarrassing defeat.
Barub remembered that day when they could not even squirm, forced to submit to Millions’ strength.
Reminiscing the day, Barub unknowingly grinded their teeth.
The moment that Barub accepted the request for summons, the message’s coordinates changed in an instant.
Perhaps because Millions had switched to to a new location since the moment of request, the coordinates now pointed at Millions’ new coordinates.
-Changed location. Castle Larkenta. (Coordinates 180:51)
The air warped in an instant and Barub headed through to where Millions was.
****
“Seems this is a fine location here.”
“Master. Isn’t this the middle of the hunting grounds?”
“That’s right. I’m sure that the number of people traversing through a pitch dark night in the middle of the 8th rank hunting grounds are few at most.”
“Well, it seems like this is a good place to begin the operation.”
“Count Audu. Can you begin summoning the marquises again?”
“Understood.”
Min-Cheol and his group positioned themselves at the base of the mountains located within the 8th tier hunting grounds.
Losing the marquises power a moment ago to Barub was a huge loss.
The reason for changing the location was to make sure that it wouldn’t happen again.
Because they had arrived here by tearing apart a scroll, there was a very low chance that Barub would come here.
Min-Cheol summoned his clones to clear out the monsters nearby.
While that was happening, Audu was working on setting up the next target.
It didn’t take long for a marquis to be summoned here.
He did not take kindly to Min-Cheol, who was there instead of the king in the Festival of Blood, Demon.
Without pleasantries or explanations, Min-Cheol began a brutal attack with his clones.
It seemed as though the pace of the fighting had picked up severely.
Because he had lost his prey just before, he wasn’t holding back anything and pressing with everything he had.
As expected, the winner was decided quickly.
The marquis lost his life, and Min-Cheol completely absorbed his power.
Massive shockwaves and tremors filled the nearby area, but this was the hunting grounds.
No one would be suspicious, and there was no way that anyone would come to the base of the mountains so out of the way.
Min-Cheol and his clones quickly performed a bit of maintenance and pushed Audu to hurry with the next prey.
Since the plan had been exposed to Barub, Min-Cheol did not want any hurdles to come up in his plan from unnecessary delays.
“Count Audu. Let’s speed things up.”
“Huh?”
“Please call 2 at a time now. There are only 7 left. 2, 2, and then 3 please.”
“A-Are you sure about that? Your opponents are marquises after all…”
“No issues.”
“If that’s what you want, then I shall do so.”
“Yes, please do.”
Audu quickly sent a Soul Message to someone.
While it was unfortunate that he could not contact multiple people at the same time, Audu was going as fast as he could.
However, Min-Cheol could tell that the contents of the conversation was different from before.
Audu’s expression hardened quickly, and his pupils shook with worry as if unsure of what to do.
However, it didn’t seem to Min-Cheol that he was up to something fishy behind his back.
Min-Cheol immediately asked the moment that Audu’s message spell finished.
“What’s going on? Your expression doesn’t seem that good.”
“It’s a huge problem. The plan has gone awry.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“It seems that someone has spread rumors of our plan.”
Dan and Audu had no idea of Barub’s appearance, because they had stayed inside of Min-Cheol’s storage the entire time.
It was obvious, since they were waiting in a space completely isolated from the outside.
Min-Cheol immediately thought of Barub’s face.
The only ones to know about the plan were Dan, Audu and Barub after all.
While Min-Cheol knew that Barub would disrupt the plan to some degree, he did not expect for Barub to cause this much trouble for his plans in such a short amount of time.
Audu continued speaking while beads of cold sweat ran down his face.
“The person I contacted is Marquis Servant. He and I were quite close.”
“…”
“Marquis Servant knew everything about our plan. He even knew how and by who Leon, Keltar, and the marquis that just arrived here, Luper, died to.”
“Damn it… Barub.”
“Huh? Barub? Are you telling me that someone else other than the three of us know of this plan? Regardless, it seems that things have become a lot more difficult…”
That was right.
Returning to the estate of the count, Barub wasn’t just muttering to themself.
While trying to get used to the newfound power by moving around their body, Barub had contacted the marquises that they had learned by both face and name back from the Festival of Blood in order to spread the news.
For Min-Cheol, it was as if he had been struck at the back of his twice.
Despite attempting to contact the other marquises after the initial failure, the situation was the same.
Aware of Min-Cheol’s plan, none of the marquises were receiving Audu’s summons.
“What should we do?”
“It’s obvious that this situation isn’t good. However, it’s not that dire if we change our perspective a bit.”
“Huh?”
“If we consider that I’ve been fed prey this entire time… Now I’m just starting the hunt for real. Now is when I’ve changed from prey to a predator.”
“…”
“Now I shall be hunting with my life on the line. My storage is no longer safe. I will be contacting you two both later.”
Min-Cheol’s eyes were filled with killing intent, and neither Audu or Dan asked any further after seeing that.
Perhaps with his heart hardened, he spoke to the two in a cold tone and immediately left.
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