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

Chapter 61: Mission Pass

The glow got brighter as Aidan walked, and so did the Terrors guarding it.

This deep in the tear, the low ranks thinned out, and the real numbers showed themselves. Epic-rank Terrors swarmed the approach in packs, drawn by the pulse of the core like moths to a fire that hated them back.

’Good.’ Aidan rolled his neck. ’Contribution points don’t spend themselves.’

He waded in.

A trio of clawed things rushed him from the left, and he didn’t bother separating them. He swept a wide arc of wind and blade through all three at once, and they came apart before they finished the charge.

[Epic-rank Terror slain. Contribution Points earned: 40.]

[Epic-rank Terror slain. Contribution Points earned: 40.]

[Epic-rank Terror slain. Contribution Points earned: 40.]

More poured out of the fissures around him, and he let them come, because chasing them would waste more time than standing still and letting the tear feed him.

A serpentine one lunged for his throat, and he caught it by the jaw with electromagnetism and slammed it into the ground hard enough to end the fight before it started. A pack of four-legged brutes tried to flank him, so he planted a line of Epoxy across their path and watched them trip over each other while he finished them one by one, almost lazily.

[Level up.]

He didn’t slow down to admire the number. He just kept moving, kept killing, and let the levels stack behind him like footprints.

An hour in, he had stopped keeping count of individual kills and started tracking the totals instead.

[Epic-rank Terrors slain: 84.]

[Total Contribution Points earned: 3,360.]

’That’s a lot of favors these guilds are going to owe Earth,’ he thought, grinning inside the helm. ’Good. Let them.’

The deeper he pushed, the harder the Terrors hit back. A hulking, armored one nearly caught him with a swing that would have caved lesser armor, and Aidan answered by driving a compressed drill of metal and lightning straight through its plated chest. It unraveled from the wound outward, the same as all the rest.

He fought through two more hours like that, never quite stopping, aspects layering into every strike until the fighting became something closer to breathing.

[Level up.]

[Level up.]

By the time the swarm finally thinned, he stood at the edge of a wide, scorched crater, and at its center pulsed the core itself. A raw, ugly knot of corrupted light, veined black with Terroreign’s rot, throbbing like something that knew it was about to die.

[Total Epic-rank Terrors slain: 211.]

[Total Contribution Points earned: 8,440.]

Aidan cracked his knuckles.

’Alright, you rotten little heart. Let’s see how you take a real hit.’

He gathered everything he had into one point. Metal drawn dense, lightning coiled through it, spin winding the whole mass into a screaming drill, and he layered burst on top until the air around his fist hummed with barely contained force.

Then he threw it.

The drill bored into the core, and for a moment, nothing happened at all. Then the black veins running through it cracked wide open, and light poured out of every fracture at once.

[Terror Tear core destroyed.]

[Quest 2 complete.]

[Reward acquired: 3 x Omni-Slot Machine Tickets.]

The whole tear convulsed.

Ash trees folded flat, the red sky tore itself open in long ribbons of white light, and the ground beneath Aidan’s boots buckled and rippled like water. He felt the dimension collapsing around him from the inside out, the entire violent little world unmaking itself.

[Congratulations. Peak Epic-rank stats reached through combat cultivation.]

[Total time elapsed: 4 hours, 12 minutes.]

He looked down at his own hands and felt it settle into him, dense and heavy and completely his now. Not borrowed power from Arthur’s armor. Just him, standing at the very top of what Epic-rank could hold.

’Not bad for an afternoon,’ he thought, and then the light swallowed him whole.

...

He came out the other side into ordinary daylight, and the camp looked exactly as he’d left it, except quieter.

No beastfolk anywhere. No war-pack, no captain, no scattered patrol tents pitched along the ridge where the Wolfshadow Clan had been squatting for weeks. The whole occupying force had simply vanished along with the tear that gave them their claim.

The Earth hunters were waiting for him, and every one of them was on their feet the moment he stepped out.

"He’s back!"

Isolde Marr crossed the distance first, scorch marks still healing along her arms. "The tear. It’s just gone. What happened in there?"

"Cleaned house," Aidan said, and left it at that.

He pulled the Contribution Points out and split them evenly between both guilds. A few hunters actually laughed out loud when the numbers landed in their tallies.

"This feels rather foul-ish." Isolde sighed. "We didn’t earn this ourseleves."

"Just take it. Consider it the fees for cooking the food."

Jiran limped over last, moving slowly but steadily, a bandage wound around his ribs.

"Finished it while you were gone," Jiran said, holding out a storage ring. "Every scrap of Epic-rank meat the guild had, cooked properly. It’s not much, but it’s the best I could manage with these hands."

Aidan took the ring and felt the weight of it settle into his palm, warm even through the metal.

He smiled, easy and genuine.

"I’ll bring back Legendary-rank meat next time," he said. "Until then, rest well, Mister Jiran. If there’s trouble, contact me. You have my Digicard number."

Jiran wryly smiled. "Sure."

Every single hunter felt an involuntary oppression from this Epic-rank young man.

’To be able to handle multiple peak Legendary-rank powerhouses? His master must have given him one hell of an artifact.’

The beastfolk left with threats, and based on their talks, the human hunters of both guilds knew Aidan had some kind of full-body armor that increased his power to the peak Legendary-rank.

As Aidan left, one of the hunters laughed. "I guess our civilization’s future is in safe hands. Good he thing he cares for the masses."

"Didn’t he say that his Divine-rank Master couldn’t be bothered about the alliance? It was only because Aidan begged his master that we were saved."

"Indeed."