FAMILY ABOVE ALL: BATTLING AGAINST GODS

 

The city was enveloped in an eerie silence.

Several yellowish-see-through specters blotted out the crimson sky.

“Run!”

It wasn’t clear who said it but as if a spark had been ignited several mages turned around, before fleeing for their dear life.

“Fools!” General Rock bellowed.

They were already far inside the city and were surrounded from all sides by hundreds of thousands if not millions of undead.

Not to mention the countless specters that covered the sky.

Where the hell were these fools running to?

“Kill the brat!”

General Rock in the end was a general and one with several years of field experience.

He already figured that if they could kill Dean, they wouldn’t need to fear all these skeletons and specters.

He didn’t wait for his army and immediately sprang into action himself.

“Earthquake!”

The earth around a hundred meters from him quaked before many wide fissures appeared on the ground.

Hundreds of skeletons fell into these fissures.

Surprisingly, the earth didn’t split where his subordinates were.

*Neigh!*

His horse galloped masterfully around the fissures as they quickly closed the distance between them and Dean.

Dean didn’t know why the system wasn’t controlling him.

He also didn’t receive any message to kill all his enemies in sight.

He had been trying to control all the skeletons that had risen around the city but every time he tried, he failed, before a splitting headache kicked in.

Before he knew it, General Rock reached a distance of two meters from him, before he drew the greatsword resting on his back and leaped from his horse.

Dean stopped trying to control his undead and quickly focused his attention on one of the two rewards he received after decimating this city.

<< Death Scythe: Sacrifice core essences to create a scythe and claim the lives of your enemies. The more core essences sacrificed the stronger the death scythe. In the process of destruction, the scythe automatically restores itself by consuming available core essences. >>

<< Available CE: 3,185,200 >>

AN: CE= Core Essence

Dean quickly willed to sacrifice two hundred core essences and before long two hundred skeletons and two hundred specters disappeared.

“Death scythe!”

He quickly jumped down from the massive block and looked up at the descending General Rock.

A three-meter pitch-black scythe with several purple runes running down its snath appeared in Dean’s hands.

AN: Snath: The shaft of a scythe.

Its long snath along with Dean’s small body looked comical.

However, Dean didn’t care about such things, as he quickly raised the scythe just in time to block General Rock’s greatsword.

*Clang!*

Dean was sent flying about fifteen meters before he came to a stop.

He coughed out a mouthful of blood.

While mages do not possess enhanced physical strength like warriors, the great majority of them still opt to fight with weapons.

Thankfully, the greatsword in general Rock’s hands seemed to be an average weapon as his scythe didn’t split talk less of getting destroyed.

“Great earth shift!” The earth beneath General Rock's feet seemed to move, his body moving at an extreme speed with his greatsword raised high up for another attack.

Dean didn’t dare to lax any longer.

A light of seriousness flashed in his cold and indifferent eyes.

He didn’t bother trying to control the undead in the entire city and instead sent his will toward those around him.

Even though the overall number was less, the undead skeleton around him still numbered a bit over a thousand.

“Kill!” he bellowed.

Thousands of undead suddenly moved, before launching attacks at the other mages, keeping them occupied.

At the same time, Dean activated the only fighting skill he had, which was the second reward he had yet to read its details clearly.

“Death dance!”

He felt the evil energy within him move in a strange way.

Memories of a skill flashed within his mind. It felt as if he had practiced the skill for countless years.

General Rock appeared before Dean before smashing his greatsword down.

Dean’s body swerved to the right.

*Thud*

The greatsword collided with the ground raising a cloud of dust.

Before General Rock could react, the scythe swirled around Dean’s hands four times before it drew a clod light and swept toward his neck.

He felt goosebumps and quickly raised his hand to block the attack.

*Clang!*

The sound of metal hitting metal resounded as the blade of the scythe collided with the gauntlet on General Rock’s hand.

Dean frowned slightly when he felt the slow strength behind his attack.

His feet moved in a strange way as he circled around General Rock while the scythe swirled in his hands, as he rained countless attacks on him.

The movement of the scythe could barely be discerned and before long, Dean’s scythe drew blood, as several cuts opened in the spaces in between General Rock’s armor pieces.

General Rock could only defend himself by raising his greatsword to block the opening in his helmet as he was placed in a passive position.

What threw him in despair was the evil energy that was seeping out of his wounds. He could feel it trying to corrupt his very essence and he had to use a lot of his mana to resist and expel it out of his body.

He knew he couldn’t continue like this.

While the mages panicked at first, they soon realized that with their rich battle experience, the undead posed no threat to them.

It was understandable as even though the undead could still use their magic, they were still normal civilians when they were alive.

The sky became covered in a variety of magical attacks.

Not before long, about six hundred undead from the original thousand fell while the mages were yet to suffer a loss.

During this time, Dean had been pressuring General Rock, however, he couldn’t deal any significant damage.

If not for the strange movement ability of the skill ‘death dance’ and the erratic and unpredictable speed of the scythe in his hands, Dean wouldn’t have been able to last three exchanges with General Rock.

It was clear that General Rock was bidding his time and waiting for him to reveal a gap in his attack.

Dean was starting to feel pressured not to mention that with every collision with General Rock’s treasure armor, his scythe would crack in several places before restoring itself after devouring some core essences.

However, even under such pressure he still remained calm, and his gaze freezing cold.

He didn’t realize that the system and evil energy were starting to change him.

While he was smart for his age before, he wouldn’t have been able to remain calm in this kind of situation.

He quickly checked his body and found that the evil energy remaining was less than half.

He could feel that he could resurrect all the undead destroyed by the mages, but after some thought he decided against it.

‘I need to grow stronger quickly.’

With that thought in mind, he quickly stopped his attacks, and with a masterful move of his legs, he appeared over ten meters away from General Rock.

General Rock brought his greatsword down as he glared at Dean who had already assumed a fighting posture.

His body was full of several minor cuts while blood seeped out of them. What drew General Rock's attention was the evil energy seeping out of these wounds, as even after gathering his mana to expel them, it was proving to be a bit difficult and time-consuming.

General Rock and Dean were locked in a staring contest.

While General Rock was trying to use this brief time to quickly eliminate the evil energy running rampage in his body, what he didn’t was that from the very start, while Dean seemed as if he staring at him, his entire attention had actually been on the invisible blue panel before him.

‘Use two-thirds of the remaining core essence to increase my cultivation.’

Dean felt the evil energy surge wildly in his body. He saw also changes on his attribute panel.

TITLE: DARK LORD

LEGACY: TRUE SUCCESSOR OF THE EVIL GOD

BLOODLINE: NONE

TRAITS: SUMMON UNDEAD (CANCELED)

               TREE OF YGDRASIL (SEALED)

               EVIL SUMMONING

STATS:

Strength: 34

Agility: 34

Stamina: 35

Mana(Evil energy): 174 

CULTIVATION LEVEL: Peak-Level Advanced Mage. (Number of Core Essence required for next level: 2,000,000)

COMBAT PROWESS: Weak Mid-level Master Mage. To increase combat prowess, spend 100,000 CE to increase all physical stats by one.

TALENT: SUPREME (Condition for evolution: unknown)

It had taken him nine hundred thousand core essences to raise his cultivation to the late-level Advanced mage, and a further one million, two hundred thousand core essences to reach peak-level advanced mage.

In return, his mana exceeded the 150 mark.

General Rock’s eyes widened when saw countless undead and specters suddenly disappear.

He looked at Dean warily and quickly hastened his mana to purge the evil energy in his body.

Dean looked at the core essences remaining.

<<Core essences: 1,000,000>>

He had used about two million, one hundred thousand to increase his cultivation, while the remaining ones were lost after summoning his death scythe and also destroyed by General Rock’s earthquake ability.

After thinking about it deeply, he made his decision.

‘Use 900,000 core essences to raise my physical stats.

More undead and specters disappeared from the city, causing the city to look more abandoned.

Aside from the few hundred undead that were still fighting against the mages, only a hundred thousand still remained in the city.

Dean let out a light breath when he felt the increase in his physical body.

While mana could not compare to Ki in terms of body strengthening, it was still rumored that the physical bodies of the strongest mages were about ten times stronger and faster than an average human.

If the average human had his physical body capped at 10, it means that the strongest mages would be capped at 100.

Considering that Dean's stats were at the 30 mark before, it showed he still had some distance to go before his limit.

However, after forcibly strengthening his body through the system, Dean could feel his power had greatly increased.

Sure enough, after looking at his combat prowess stats, Dean smiled lightly.

<< Combat prowess: Strongest mid-level master mages. >>

While he still wasn’t a match for General Rock, he wasn’t far behind either.

While all these processes sound long, they all happened in less than a minute.

General Rock grunted as he finally eliminated the last bit of evil energy in his body.

‘What is this energy?’

He had used more than thirty percent of his total mana to eliminate just this bit of energy that invaded his body.

Realizing how dangerous this unknown energy was, his eyebrows creased into a frown before they firmed in resolve.

‘This brat has to die!’

He was just about to attack Dean when he saw him take the initiative.

His eyes widened when he saw the speed at which Dean moved.

‘He is faster?’

While Dean ran toward General Rock, he saw that his thousand undead had almost been completely obliterated.

Not to mention that some of the mages used the advantage that the other undead were not active to destroy several thousand.

A few thousand undead also got destroyed by the shockwaves of the mage's attacks.

This group of undead were simply weak.

Closing half the distance between him and General Rock in barely three seconds, Dean decided to ignore the undead and instead sent his will to the hundred thousand specters still hovering above the city.

What surprised Dean was that only ten answered his call, and no matter how he tried the others didn’t move at all.

With wailing sounds, the ten specters entered into the bodies of ten mages.

With ten painful shrieks, the ten mages died.

The specters left their bodies before attacking another ten.

The ten tried to defend, but no matter the attacks they threw hastily, the specters just phased through them before entering their bodies.

With another ten painful shrieks, another ten bodies fell.

The entire place became silent, while the mages felt a chill down their back.

The specters however didn’t care about the silence and immediately attacked another ten mages.

Dean who had long stopped in his track and General Rock gazed at this scene, stupefied.

Dean was woken up by the continuous painful shrieks of the falling mages.

Turning his gaze back to General Rock who was just three meters away from him, he saw the look of fear in his eyes.

For the first time since the greatest misfortune of his life, Dean’s mouth widened into a grin.

Albeit the grin looked quite evil.

The cold voice of a kid about twelve years old echoed among the painful cries that reverberated into the distance.

“Let the carnage begin!”