Is this really a Game?!



None of the three had encountered any truly dangerous situations like Reign and Beast had. Their challenges were relatively simple, just the kind that took a long time to finish and also took some luck in order to quickly meet the requirements.

Upon arriving, Reign and the others narrated everything that had happened to them, and upon hearing how Reign and Wolf had seen the Statue of Liberty and now knew that New York was relatively close, Shadow wanted to go immediately, just like Reign at the start.

It didn't take much to calm him down as they had after all gone through much and their wills were tempered, allowing them all to calm themselves down and think about the best course of action.

Knowing that his parents were fine and being relatively close to getting to them was enough for Shadow for now. With New York being visible from the area, they all knew that they would sooner or later be able to go there, which meant they only needed to focus on leveling up quickly in order to do so.

Luckily, they could still tamper with the party settings and were able to set the exp % to go mostly to Shadow and the others so that they would quickly catch up. They had arrived later than Reign and the others, which had set them back by quite some levels.

In order to quickly catch up to Reign and the others, they started hunting inside the depths of the mountain range and barely did anything else.

M'zagara's army had grown by quite a bit in those two weeks. With her Tier IV monsters set loose inside the city of Pripyat, the many Tier III monsters were hunted down with great speed and efficiency, allowing M'zagara to quickly start creating many monsters of all shapes and sizes.

Her army grew exponentially large relatively quickly and now she had over 200 monsters that were Tier III. The incredible speed upon which she was able to create her army was something previously unseen by Reign and the others.

There were many different kinds of monsters now present in the cave system below Doncaster, as well as inside the city of Pripyat which was their main hunting grounds. Even though she had 200 monsters, that was not enough as she was not even halfway through the maximum number of monsters she could control.

Her Tier IV monsters were more than powerful enough to completely overpower her army of Tier III monsters, and that was without counting in the 5 elite Tier IV monsters she had which could all single-handedly decimate the Tier III's.

M'azgara didn't stop and she was continuously sending her monsters into the city which had thousands upon thousands of Tier III monsters present. Her monsters had even started exploring the surrounding areas a bit as she, Reign, and the others were interested to find just what kind of creatures would be present there and if they would be able to get any benefits from going there in the future.

Her monster army had just started taking shape so they were slow when it came to exploring the areas and were slowly progressing in doing so.

As for Reign and the others, they were in the depths and were currently fighting some mid-grade Tier IV monsters.

'Dammit, they arrived without any of us noticing them.' Reign cursed as he blocked a blow and was sent flying back. Even though he and the others had gained over 20 levels during the time they were hunting in the depths, the mid-grade Tier IV monsters that had attacked them were all high-leveled mid-grade Tier IV monsters, which meant they were over 20 levels above Reign and the others.

They were all gray, completely gray, and out of the 5 that had attacked them, two were noticeably stronger, which made Reign and the others aware that they were the rare cases when a monster that was completely corrupted by the fog became stronger than it previously was.

Those two were the ones that were giving them all a headache as their group had 13 Tier IV combatants thanks to M'azgara's elites joining them. Even though the elites were weaker than Reign and the others, they were a bit stronger than an average monster of their level, which made them a valuable fighting force.

That, coupled with Beast and two of his Tier IV monsters, the two being Blackie and the white deer he had tamed which he named Spirit,  made it so they could gang up on the mid-grade Tier IV monsters.

The two powerful Tier IV monsters were fighting against 4 of them each, while the remaining three were going against two enemies, with one person helping out any of the three groups when there was a need to do so.

Still, even though they outnumbered the monsters by such a large margin, they were barely holding an advantage over them. The monsters were fighting without any care in the world, no injury would make them flinch or stop for a moment and they would simply continue with their attacks.

Their defense was not something that Reign and the others were able to easily penetrate through, with only Wolf being able to deal damage relatively easily up close as his sword was much more powerful compared to the weapons Reign and the others wielded.

He wasn't using the chaos flames, but thanks to him wielding the weapon, his flames held a bit of the chaotic energy inside of them, making them more powerful than normal, not to mention the incredible sharpness that the sword possessed that made it a simple job for Wolf to cut through or penetrate a monster.

The only drawback was the fact that Wolf had to listen to the soul of the dead enemy leader who was constantly nagging him and making him angry, but it was a small drawback when put in comparison to the sword and how incredibly powerful it was.

A rank SSS weapon was something that one could utilize until the very end, with only a rank Z being above it. Even without getting a new sword, Wolf would be able to use this one until he reached the realm of Transcendence as a Rank SSS weapon was not something that would simply stop giving him buffs when he reached a new realm.

The only time a person would notice that a Rank SSS item was giving a weaker buff compared to before was when they reached Tier X, which was the very peak of power below the Transcendent realm. Those that reached it would not care about the lower buffs as they would already become incredibly powerful beings that rarely anyone could go against.

With his weapon clenched in his hands, Wolf slashed down and opened a large wound on the body of the giant monster that was battling them, before cauterizing the wound with his powerful flames.

"Why are you using those flames, use the chaos from the sword you idiot, you will be able to deal a lot more damage that way, stop ignoring the great power inside of it!" The soul bombarded Wolf once again with verbal insults as it was getting annoyed by the fact that Wolf simply ignored the power of chaos and never used it.

Perhaps it was because he was one person that had utilized the power of chaos before being defeated by Reign, and even though he barely had any memory of that, he was annoyed when seeing others who were able to resist the temptation that chaos brought with it.

Merely seeing how Wolf was not budging from his decision to not use chaos until it was the only option left made the soul angry and jealous of his strong, unbending mind.

The monster that Wolf was fighting against was a huge one. It was about 30 meters long and it was 5 meters tall. With eight legs, the monster moved with a relatively high speed even though its body didn't look like it could move fast.

It had fur that wasn't particularly hard to cut through, but it offered high resistance to flames that even Wolf had trouble going up against, a first for him as every single monster that had fur was weak to his flames in the past.

He was battling the monster with Tank, Shadow, and Blackie, while Reign was fighting against the other powerful Tier IV monster with Laura, Beast, and Spirit.

Greenie was helping out M'azgara's elites together with Aelrinder, and their battle was seemingly going much smoother even though they only had a slight advantage in numbers compared to Reign and the others.

Aelrinder was the one that belonged to no particular group, and thanks to his great speed, he was able to go to and fro each of the groups and help them out when they needed it.

His help was welcomed greatly each time, and they were slowly starting to push the monsters back while damaging them more and more.

The current plan was for Reign and the others to simply stand their ground against the powerful Tier IV monsters before Greenie and the others were able to beat the other three and join them.