Epoch: A Berserker's Rise

At first, the fight went really well. In five minutes the players were able to slay many monsters, and barely lost anyone. But that's when the formation reached its limit.

The Clerics had never worked together before, and so they were almost all sending their heals at the same time. This allowed Unit Monk to not even lose one member, and they were all at full health. However, the Clerics had no MP remaining, and MP potions were too costly to have.

The same situation happened to the Elementalists, who killed many monsters but didn't have any Mana left. The magical classes used the [Juices] they had left to get some MP back, but for those who still had some, they didn't last much longer.

Without the support of the magical classes, the Monks started losing their health even faster, and the Paladins tried to heal them but they soon ran out of mana too. The Monks started going down, and some monsters began to target the Elementalists. That forced the Assassins to back up and protect the Elementalists.

As time passed more and more Monks were killed, so more and more Assassins had to retreat to protect the Elementalists. At some point Adam ordered the Summoners to send their monsters to replace the Monks, and to focus on attack this time.

30 minutes into the fight, both sides had suffered great casualties when Unit Monk got destroyed. Some Monks were still alive, but the formation was broken apart since the few remaining monks were unable to bloke the remaining monsters. Unit KS, Unit BP and the two Unit Assassins did their best to protect the mages, but they didn't have any provoke skills so some monsters were still able to pass through.

That's when the more skilled players really shone. By now, the weaker players unable to manage their mana or who just used their weapons like amateurs were already dead.

But even though most of the players had been killed, the same could be said for the monsters, and so the players knew they had a chance.

Moreover, all the kills they were getting allowed the players to level up, meaning they got a little bit stronger.

40 minutes in, and the battle was nearing its end. On the village's side, only a few remained. For the NPCs, all the guards had died and Arno was the only one still alive, but he was in a bad shape.

For the players, the losses were far worse than 50. Actually, there were only a few remaining.

Adam's party of four was still alive, since Unit Monk got destroyed Adam had joined the two girls and he had been protecting them while Holy Lotus healed him and Burning Lotus supported him. Both girls were Light Elves so they had huge reserves of MP which regenerated quickly.

As for King Slayer he was moving all around, ambushing monsters and disappearing again. He would hit a different monster each time so as to activate the Dark Elves' racial ability that bypassed 50% of their enemy's defense on the first strike. As for Adam he was using his skills as soon as he could, except from Wind Blade since he had run out of MP long ago. Until now he hadn't used his Everwinter skill though as the cooldown was of 2 hours, but he had used the Fire Breath from his Pendant a lot since it didn't cost anything. It was too bad it was a fire attack and not a frost attack.

Apart from the four of them, there was two other groups still alive. The first was made up of a Foxkin Elementalist who used her tail along her hands to throw many spells at once. The three were part of a guild called [Night Wolves] which was a First Tier Guild, thus how she was able to have so many potions.

Being a First Tier Guild wasn't just anything, it meant this was one of the best guilds in the world. There were literally tens of thousands of guilds, but many didn't have a rank to them, they were just small guilds. After that, were the Third Tier Guilds, followed by Second Tier Guilds. If a Third Tier Guild could be said to be a big guild, then a Second Tier Guild was a true power capable of influencing thousands of people.

And yet, above them was the First Tier Guilds. They were great powers in the video game industry, and most of them were backed up by the most famous companies and military groups in the world. And the top of the top, the legendary Super Guilds. They were the true peak powers of the Video Game industry, and even in the real world they had a great influence. They were powerful to the point where they had more influence than many countries. So being of the Elite Team of a First Tier Guild meant this was a really powerful person.

Anyway, Nima, the Foxkin Elementalist, was accompanied by Arin and Ela, respectively a Lizardkin Monk and a Dark Elf Swordswoman. All three of them were part of the [Night Wolves] elite squads, with Arin being a captain.

As for the other group, all of them were of the First Tier Guild [Dragon Temple].

They were led by 69420, a Catkin Ranger, he was the captain of an Elite squad too. With him were Silver Sword, a Kartian Swordsman; Steel Lungs an Orc Knight and 2Fast4U a Dark Elf Assassin.

Facing the sole NPC and 12 players, were slightly more than a hundred monsters. Among all those present, Adam was the one looking the oddest. The reason was, unlike all those veteran players, he never participated in such a war, and so he didn't know he would need a Sharpening Stone to repair his weapons.

Adam was the one who had killed the most monsters in this battle, by far, but that meant his weapon was the one that was the most used too, and so it's durability had dropped to a few points above the breaking point a few minutes ago.

Because he didn't want his weapon to break and lose it, he had stored it and had been fighting with his fists and feet since then. It was indeed weird to see a Berseker punch monsters, but it worked very well.

By losing his sword, Adam had lost 25 base damage, meaning he has less than 100 points remaining since he also lost the Strength points from the sword. Or at least, that's if he hadn't leveled up. Like many other players, he had leveled up despite being already level 6, and he had become level 7. His skills had also leveled up a few times, and he continued to use them since they didn't need a weapon to be used. Thankfully his armors were much tougher and thus had had been able to keep them on as most of them still had enough durability to finish the fight, and his [Vest of Everwinter] had barely lost anything.

He wasn't even able to pick another sword from the monsters because even though they gave XP, they strangely didn't give any loot.

Anyway, Adam had wanted to put his points in, but all the fighting made him unable to use his free AP. However, as the number of monsters remaining dropped to 100, they suddenly retreated.

The remaining players looked at each other, confused. Clearly, they didn't expect that. Still, that allowed Adam to look at his status.

Name: Valiant Heart

Level: 7 (100/7000 XP)

Title: None

Race: Northman

Class: Berserker

Rank: Iron

HP: 530/1160

MP: 20/150

Strength (+3 per level): 36 (90)

Agility (+1 per level): 28 (36)

Endurance (+1 per level): 21 (60)

Intelligence: 10 (15)

Wisdom: 5 (10)

Free AP: 10

Skills: -Mighty Strike (E, Level 7/10)

-Charge (E, Level 5/10)

-Wind Blade (D, Level 3/10)

-Lunar Smite (C, Level 2/10)

He had used Mighty Strike literally hundreds of times, and yet it had only leveled up twice, it served to show how hard it was to upgrade skills as they leveled up. Still, the effects were very good.

Mighty Strike (E): Dig into your hidden strengths to deal 120% (240%) of your normal damage. Cooldown: 3 seconds.

Charge (E): Ram into your enemy to knock them over (and deal 10% of your damage), stunning them for two seconds. Cooldown: 10 seconds.

Wind Blade (D): Sacrifice a part of your mana to summon the Wind Spirits around your weapon to enhance your attack speed by 100%(120%) for 5 (7) seconds. Cost: 20 (24) MP Cooldown: 30 seconds

Lunar Smite (C): Deal 4 attacks instantaneously, each of the four dealing 100% (110%) of frost damage to every opponent with a small chance of reducing their Agility by 30%. Cooldown: 60 (57) seconds.

For each of his skills, the values not in brackets were the values at level one, while the ones in brackets were the actual values with the level of his skills.

Back to his attributes, Adam spent his 10 AP. He put 4 in Strength, passing the Pure Attribute to 40 and the real attribute to 94. He used another two on Agility, passing the pure attribute to 30 and the real one to 38. For the last four, he put everything in Intelligence, passing the pure attribute to 14 and the real one to 19.

Now he felt ready for whatever was to come. The monsters gathered near the edge of the forest and stopped, doing nothing. Thinking this was a pause until the last effort, everyone began taking consumables to recover.

Unfortunately for them, it wasn't the case. From the forest a man dressed in a dark robe appeared in the middle of all the monsters. Although they couldn't see his status, the players knew this was an NPC. When he saw him, Arno, the only NPC present, cried out in shock "Aemon's Cult!"

Adam looked at Arno in surprise, it seemed this person was from a famous organization, or rather infamous seeing his reaction. He looked at the other players and they seemed to be as confused as him, they didn't know who this was.

King Slayer said, loud enough for everyone to hear "Aemon was presented in the Lore as a Great Devil, the equivalent of a God amongst the demons. Aemon is one of the strongest, evilest and most influential Devils as he rules over the undead."

Everyone nodded, it was good to have a knowledgeable teammate. As they were still recovering though Nima, the Foxkin Elementalist from [Night Wolves], exclaimed "The mana is being pulled toward the monsters, I think the cultist is preparing a spell, and a big one. Careful."

Everyone tensed at her words and stopped recovering, although most of them were already back to full health and mp. Adam had even used his [Basic Health Potion] to get back to full HP. He felt something was wrong.

And indeed, something was wrong. A big magic circle formed beneath the hundred remaining monsters, too quickly for anyone to actually go there and interrupt it.

Another pulse of mana was launched from the cultist, much more powerful this time as even Adam felt it. The land on which the magic circle was drawn turned into what looked like a sea of blood. The monsters began falling in the pit of blood, slowly getting drown as if they were in quicksands.

In the [Dragon Temple] party, the assassin 2Fast4U looked at his leader, the only Ranger in the remaining players, and asked "Boss, maybe you should attack them?"

69420 shook his head though and replied "Even if I can hit them, I won't be able to do anything. There will either be a barrier or maybe one or two monsters missing doesn't matter. Let's watch."

As the monsters fully disappeared in the sea of blood, only the cultist remained, in the center of the sea. Then, tentacles of blood surged from the sea and enveloped the cultist. At the same time, bones and shredded flesh rose from the ground before getting enveloped too.

For the next ten seconds the group couldn't see what was happening, but they knew something was wrong. They weren't prepared for what came next though.

The sea of blood disappeared as a being walked out. It was the ugliest thing they had ever seen in this game, as well as the most dangerous. It was five meters tall looked like a bulky mess of flesh and bones, and it emitted a great danger. As a Ranger, 69420 was able to see its status before the others, and his face paled.

A few seconds later, the rest saw it too, and had the same reaction.

[Evil Abomination] (Chieftain, Level 10)

HP: 10000/10000