Summoning the Holy Sword

Chapter 1203: Chaos Lord

Perhaps this scene before Lydia and the rest was unbelievable. But for veterans in the game like Rhode and Canary, this wasn't surprising at all. In the late stages of the game, players occasionally met similar instances. As for the reason why it was occasional for them, it had to depend on luck. If one's luck was down, one would face some troublesome characters. One must have forgotten to burn incense or help an old lady cross the road, which explained the bad luck.

And the troublesome character in this situation was referring to the Chaos Lord.

That started in the later stages of the game, specifically after Rhode eliminated the Dark Dragon. Thereafter, the Order of the entire continent crumbled, allowing Chaos to infiltrate and thus begin the phase where players occupied territories and built guild countries. Due to the mass invasion of Chaos, players faced innumerable mysterious Chaos Beings during the expansion of their land. As Chaos wasn't characterized by any rules, in many instances, players had no choice but to name them uniquely to prevent confusion. For example, some Chaos Beings were called 'weak xxx' or 'strong xxx'. But the issue was that these labels were irregular and weren't based on subjective conclusions for being 'weak' or 'strong'. For instance, some Chaos Beings were compared to formidable, boss-level Chaos cores and considered 'weak', while some were compared to goblins and considered 'strong'. From the beginning, players didn't figure this out entirely and discovered that those creatures labeled as 'weak' had millions of health points, where they were harder to defeat than an actual BOSS. On the other hand, those creatures labeled as 'strong' collapsed in a few attacks and didn't even drop any valuable equipment, which was utterly ridiculous… Therefore, after being tormented by the inaccurate labeling of Chaos Beings, players had no choice but to use their own ways to distinguish them. For instance, Chaos Lord was a title they gave to some formidable BOSSes, in comparison to Devil Lord and Demon Lord, because they were similar in strength. This was much easier to understand than the so-called 'weak xxx'! Apart from misleading and deceiving players, these inaccurate labels had no purpose at all!

These deceptive labels and hidden health points of Chaos Lords weren't the most crucial issue to players. The main problem was that once players got into a battle with a Chaos Lord, dead players couldn't automatically be resurrected in battle or by resurrection spells. When one player waited to be revived in battle automatically or relied upon healers to use resurrection spells, one would receive a system prompt—[Soul missing. Unable to be resurrected.]

In that case, that player had only two choices: one, the player could resurrect in the birthplace of his soul where the guardian angel was. The player would also lose some gold coins and equipment tolerance and remain in a state of weakness for several days. Two, the player could find stronger players to annihilate the Chaos Lord. After the Chaos Lord was slaughtered, that player would receive a system prompt stating [The restrained soul has returned to the body] and the player could be revived using resurrection spells.

This trait of Chaos Lords was why players hated its existence. Due to this trait, once a party was defeated, that party could only lay and wait for others to annihilate the Chaos Lord; they could either lose gold coins and equipment tolerance or return home. It could also be said that in the later stages of the game, Chaos Lords were the most hated and annoying enemies. Moreover, their spawn locations were unfixed and they could appear anywhere from starting towns to BOSS areas. Players just couldn't figure out its spawn pattern, where some parties even arrived in a land of Chaos and couldn't find any Chaos Lord. Meanwhile, some parties left the border of Order and faced two to three Chaos Lords and were wiped out immediately. It was simply intolerable…

But despite that, Rhode's Starlight loved these Chaos Lords because Starlight was the only guild that slaughtered their way through everything no matter what the enemies were. This led to many guilds and parties seeking help from Rhode instantly upon being annihilated by a Chaos Lord. Of course, Rhode was unwilling to pass on his responsibilities to others for helping allies and charged a fee by schedule. Even though the guilds were dissatisfied with Starlight looting a burning house, in the later stages, the repair fees for godlike equipment and their tolerance was astronomical. Considering the inversely proportional income and output, many guilds cursed inwardly and had no choice but to seek Rhode's help.

But what enraged the guilds was that while Starlight received the fees and annihilated the Chaos Lord, Starlight also looted the items that the Chaos Lord dropped…

Pay for the drops if you want it; I'll host a live auction now. After all, it was us who defeated the Chaos Lord, no?

As a result, the guilds became selfless model citizens who helped Starlight find wild, valuable BOSSes and even paid them for it… These Chaos Lords spawned randomly. There was a period of time when Rhode waited to see if the public also looked for Starlight's assistance in searching for the location for Chaos Lords too.

Thereafter, the guilds were naturally unwilling to spend any more innocent money. They were strongly determined to succeed and improve their skills and equipment by a lot, where they finally were able to kill a Chaos Lord. On the other hand, Rhode's business gradually fell. But at that point in time, he wasn't attracted by that little profit because when the other guilds were finally able to defeat Chaos Lords for godlike equipment drops, he had already set his sight on the Deepest Labyrinth…

One shouldn't look back at the past—yes, the story also unfolded to his liking…

It was due to the reason Rhode was so familiar with Chaos Lords. When he and Canary heard Mini Bubble Gum's description, they felt entirely relieved. It would be bothersome if it was some unexpected issue. But now this was, in fact, the specific reason why Starlight slaughtered so many Chaos Lords in the later stages of the game. Rhode didn't die in this world before, so he wasn't aware if he would be resurrected to the side of a guardian angel. Despite that, he doubted the same for Gaya. After all, she wasn't a player and didn't own and understand what a system interface was. If she knew what a system interface was, perhaps her corpse would have disappeared by now. It seemed like there was only one solution.

And that was to slaughter the Chaos Lord, release Gaya's soul, cast a great resurrection spell, and everything would be fine.

At this thought, Rhode turned to Lydia and explained the situation. Of course, he didn't mention much about the system interface and whatnot. Even though Lydia stayed on Earth for a period of time earlier and was aware of the existence of this game, due to pressing time, she didn't have a chance to play it. If they weren't pressed for time, Rhode would have returned to the game and to see how the moon princess and archangel played the Dragon Soul Continent together…

Yes, that would be amusing.

"I see."

After listening to Rhode's explanations, Lydia nodded, gripped the sword, and stood up to leave. But Rhode was apparently prepared for this. Upon witnessing her action, he held out his arm to stop her.

"Your Highness Lydia, I think you will have a hard time doing it alone. We don't know how many Chaos Lords there are this time. Since they were able to kill Gaya, I suppose they are strong enough to defeat you. Even though we need to kill that Chaos Lord as soon as possible, things will be troublesome if we are careless and let that Chaos Lord escape."

These words from Rhode weren't just alarmist talk. The reason why Chaos Lords were so tough to handle was that during critical junctures, they would use a method to control the entire battlefield, making all players unmovable. Then, they would seize the opportunity to escape. What made matters worse was that Chaos Lords might no longer stay on the main plane of existence and return back home to the abyss or hell instead… When that happened, players would have no chance of finding them anymore.

As a matter of fact, Rhode felt anxious when he heard Lydia describing the earlier battle. It was apparent that Gaya's final attack dealt huge damage to the Chaos Lord. Fortunately, according to Lydia, that Chaos Lord flew off instead of teleporting away. If not, there would be no hope of rescuing Gaya anymore. But even so, Rhode believed that the Chaos Lord was low on health and it would be best if it could be defeated in one blow. If Rhode's group failed to defeat it in one attack and startled it instead, perhaps it would escape by teleporting. When that happened, Rhode would be in tearless grief. He couldn't possibly make a trip to the abyss, hell, or Seven Fantasy Boundaries just for the sake of one person… Gaya also wasn't his woman, so he wasn't overflowing with love toward her.

"Celia, how's the situation with the ghost fleet?"

"The ghost fleet is standing guard in the distance and hasn't left."

Seems like they are fearless…

Upon hearing Celia's answer, Rhode twitched his brows.

That Chaos Lord was hurt by Gaya and still didn't flee yet. It seems like there is more than one Chaos Lord inside the ghost fleet. If not, they should have retreated for the time being. But now, it seems like they intend to bide their time to create a trap, so it obviously won't work if we charge toward them. But if we sneak over, we will spend a lot of time probing the situation…

Damn it…

However, Rhode wasn't afraid of anyone if he bombarded the area. After he and his younger sister metamorphosed into their dragon form, they could spurt dragon breaths to wipe out the entire ghost fleet. But it was an entirely different matter to investigate who was onboard. The ghost fleet was within the range of the Dark Dragon's soul protection, so he and his younger sister couldn't detect the Chaos Lords' positions through their senses. Besides, no one could guarantee that the Chaos Lords wouldn't escape even if they blasted dragon breaths. In the game, the reason why Chaos Lords remained undetected was because they were immune to most detection methods. Be it the cleric's holy sign, mage's death imprint, or thief's tracking instinct, they were all useless on Chaos Lords. That was why many guilds fought against Chaos Beings naively and couldn't gain any information on Chaos Lords. It was only when they discovered that they were fighting against Chaos Lords that they knew it was too late.

"We have to think of a way to detect the Chaos Lords…"

Rhode shook his head. Among his subordinates, Gracier and Madaras were most suited to carry out this mission. However, their flaw was that they were close-range assassins and might be discovered when they got closer to their targets, especially ones with the caliber of Chaos Lords. But in terms of long-range, Rhode didn't have any useful attackers. Battle angels were capable in mid to long-range attacks, but Rhode was too familiar with their skills. Most of their talent trees were built for battles and vigilance, so they weren't proficient in probing. It was the same for the dawn angels. It was too late for them to gather reinforcements now…

"Oh? By the way, Leader…"

At that moment, Mini Bubble Gum raised her arm all of a sudden.

"Since we're on the topic of probing, why don't you just summon Little Icy? Didn't you have that phantom-guardian-something?"