After A Billion-Year Torture, I Returned As A Transcendent Player

Chapter 58: Juicy Quests

A Blazeworth hunter answered him, cradling a burned arm.

"It’s the Wolfshadow Clan with some other beastfolks," he said through his teeth. "They claimed the whole tear as their private farm. Anyone who goes in to hunt Terrors gets thrown right back out."

He nodded at the four unconscious bodies. "Our four just broke through to Legendary. Went in to earn some Contribution Points. Two of the guards beat them senseless and dumped them at the entrance. Didn’t even bother killing them. Just a message."

Aidan crouched by Jiran, checking the shallow rise of his chest. Alive. Wrecked, but alive.

’Beat my chef half to death.’ Something low and hot turned over in him. He set it back down. ’Easy. Not yet.’

Just then the tear rippled, and two more figures staggered out.

Isolde Marr, the Sunflare of Blazeworth, and Lysandra Corvain of Thorn Guard. Both Legendary-rank leaders. Both bleeding, robes scorched, faces tight with fury.

"These bastards aren’t letting us earn a single Contribution Point!" Lysandra snarled, wiping blood from her mouth. "Two guards. Just two, and we couldn’t get past them."

"Is this even allowed?" an Earth hunter demanded. "Camping a whole Legendary tear? Beating everyone who enters?"

A hunter from a neighboring camp overheard and laughed, shaking his head like he’d heard a child ask why the sky was high.

"That’s exactly why backing matters, friend," the man said. "Real backing. A Divine-rank Hunter behind your name."

He jerked a thumb at the tear. "Wolfshadow hugs the thigh of the Desmeral Family. Two Divine-rank Hunters in that house. Nobody touches their people." He shrugged. "Our own civilization hasn’t produced a single Divine-rank yet, so we do the same. We tuck in under Desmeral and we take the scraps they leave. It’s just how it works out here."

A few of Earth’s hunters glanced at Aidan.

They didn’t say a word. They couldn’t. But the thought sat plain on every face. Garen has a Divine-rank Master. Garen could do something.

Aidan pretended not to notice.

’Well now.’ A slow grin tugged at him. ’This smells like a good time to pull my daily quest. Fingers crossed I get two again, and better rewards this time.’

He generated it quietly.

[Daily Quests generated. Two available.]

[Quest 1: Slay ten Legendary-rank Terrors. | Reward: 1 x Legendary Mystery Box.]

[Quest 2: Vaporize a Terror Tear by destroying its core. | Reward: 3 x Omni-Slot Machine Tickets.]

’Oh, that’s lovely.’ He almost laughed out loud. ’I need to grind levels and stats anyway, so a pile of Legendary Terrors to kill is perfect. And that second one is basically the guild’s mission with a bow on it.’

He did the math and licked his lips.

’Five tickets from the breakthrough, three from this. Eight tickets to pull all at once. Now that is a jackpot worth spinning.’

He straightened up, dusted off his knees, and let his voice carry across the whole camp.

"Folks. Both guilds." Heads turned. "If nobody minds, I’ll take your mission off your hands."

Silence.

"I’ll hand every Contribution Point straight back to you," Aidan went on easily. "I don’t need them. I just want Mister Jiran over there healed up quick, because my master has been dreaming about his cooking, and a dead chef makes terrible food."

For a second nobody moved. Then the objections crashed in all at once.

"Garen, no. You just reached Epic-rank."

"Those are peak Legendary-rank guards. You’re a full tier under them, and there are two of them."

"If something happens to you, your master will hold all of us responsible. Please, don’t."

Aidan let them fuss for a moment, then his easy smile went flat and sharp.

"Did I ask for permission, or did I offer to help?" he said, quiet enough that the whole camp leaned in to catch it. "Sit down."

The objections died in their throats.

Then, just as fast, the grin came back, warm and lazy, like the last three seconds hadn’t happened.

"Relax. I’m just going to go have some fun." He rolled his neck and started toward the tear. "You lot make sure Mister Jiran is fully healed by the time I’m back. I’m hungry, and I’m not eating anything he didn’t touch."

On the ground, Jiran cracked one swollen eye open and managed a weak, crooked smile.

Aidan stepped into the tear.

...

Cold blackness swallowed him, the same as always.

The instant it closed over him, he reached across the distance to his own locked world and yanked Arthur out of it.

’Come home, buddy. I’ve got a job for you.’

Arthur peeled out of the Epic-rank Dimension in a rush of motes and settled into Aidan’s summoning space, then Aidan pushed him straight back out here, into the Legendary tear, where a Legendary-rank dragon could finally stand at full strength.

’A Legendary tier for a Legendary beast,’ Aidan thought, pleased. ’No suppression this time. Stretch your wings.’

The blackness spat him out the other side.

He landed in a broken red wilderness of ash trees and slow-burning ground, Terror-light flickering at the edges of a wide clearing. And standing dead center in that clearing, right where anyone entering would appear, were two figures who had clearly been waiting for the next fool.

Beastfolk. Both of them peak Legendary-rank, their power pressing on the air like a held breath.

The first was a wolf. Tall, lean, grey fur bristling down corded arms, yellow eyes and a muzzle full of teeth. The second was a lion, broader and heavier, a mane of dark gold around a flat, cruel face, claws the size of daggers flexing at his sides.

"Another one," the wolf said, almost bored. "Name yourself, little pup. Where are you from?"

Aidan dusted ash off his shoulder. "Same place as those you beat up and tossed out the door."

The lion’s ears flicked. "Then turn around and crawl back before we increase the count."

"See, here’s the thing." Aidan spread his hands, friendly. "You didn’t actually kill any of them. So I figured I’d extend the same courtesy. I won’t kill you two either." He tilted his head. "But."

The wolf blinked. Then both beastfolk broke into laughter.

"But?" The lion wheezed, slapping his own knee. "A brat who just crawled into Epic-rank, and he’s drawing lines for us? Are you right in the head, cub?"

"Genuinely asking," the wolf added, grinning. "Did the tier gap knock something loose up there?"

"People keep asking me that." Aidan’s grin widened, and it stopped being friendly. "Arthur. Suit up."

Arthur burst out of him in a storm of crimson-gold light.

He did not take his dragon shape. He unfolded, wrapped, and poured over Aidan instead, motes racing across his body until a full suit of intricate cyber-armor sealed shut with a deep, resonant hum.

Gear Morph.

Every stat Aidan had slammed upward in a single breath, screaming past Epic, past mid-Legendary, and settling flush at peak Legendary. Arthur’s power, worn like a second skin.

The laughter cut off.

The wolf’s ears pinned back. "That’s not an Epic-rank aura."

"No," Aidan agreed, his voice ringing metallic from inside the helm. "It really isn’t."

He moved.

The wolf was fast, faster than anything the Earth hunters could have tracked, and he lunged for Aidan’s throat with claws that could gut Legendary armor. Aidan flicked into Super Agile Mode, slid a hair off-line, and let the strike carve empty air.

Then he tapped a single charged finger against the wolf’s ribs.

Electromagnetism seized, metal wound tight, and a compact burst went off point-blank. The wolf folded sideways and skidded thirty meters through the ash, yelping.

The lion roared and came in heavy, both claws hammering down with the full weight of a peak Legendary body behind them.

Aidan didn’t dodge that one.

He shifted into Titan Defense Mode and simply let it land.

The blow crashed across his forearms, a strike that should have staggered a mountain, and Aidan felt it about as much as a shove. His Divine-10 Health drank the impact whole. The armor didn’t so much as dent.

The lion stared at his own claws, then up at the unmoved figure under them.

"What," he breathed, shocked.

"My turn." Aidan closed his fist and drove it into the lion’s gut.

The Crimson Cyber Gunblade flared along his knuckles as he struck, aspects layering into the hit, lightning and break and blood all at once. The lion left the ground, folded around the punch, and went cartwheeling into an ash tree hard enough to snap it in half.

The wolf came again from the flank, snarling, throwing a flurry of slashes almost too fast to see.

Aidan read all of them.

He caught one wrist, redirected a second with a curl of wind, ate a third on his pauldron without blinking, and answered with an elbow of raw metal that cracked across the wolf’s jaw and dropped him flat.

The two peak Legendary guards, the terrors of this tear, the pride of the Wolfshadow Clan, dragged themselves back up to their feet, bleeding, ash-streaked, and for the first time since they’d started camping this place, afraid.

"That aura," the wolf rasped. "You’re wearing borrowed power. What in the realms are you?"

Aidan rolled his shoulders, the armor humming, lightning crawling lazily across his knuckles.

"Told you already." He started walking toward them, unhurried, having exactly the fun he’d promised. "I’m the guy whose chef you put in a coma."

[Arthur: Master, can I eat the loser?]

[Jovan: They are quite tasty, those two. Fortune says so.]

’Nobody’s eating anyone yet,’ Aidan thought, cracking his knuckles inside the gauntlets. ’First these two are going to learn some manners, with pain.’