I feel an ether orb form, and the subtle visuals of movements and ether commands triggering all around us.
All that can be seen is a blinding white light afterward, as the density and opacity of this orb are far different from the standard ones from Ellipsia.
—
Seconds later, the blinding light disperses, and I feel my feet hit solid ground…
Eerily natural and familiar solid ground, actually, like there are real rocks, grass, and dampness below me.
I breathe in, and the humidity in the air is even palpable, something I haven’t felt since back on the human world while diving into jungle biomes.
The divine thread density is the same as it is outside, and the number of ether commands in any given area is still so complex that trying to sort them with my unaided senses is impossible.
We’re in a perfectly constructed controlled environment.
Ava looks around beside me as well, taking in the lush forest we’ve been dropped into.
There are tall trees, colorful mushrooms that seem to be soaked with mana, flowing water sounds nearby, and true rocky forest soil beneath our feet.
There are vibrant vines all over the trees and a blue sky overhead.
I even hear movement all around and turn my head to watch a small blue ball of slime hopping up and down next to a pond of water at the base of a thick tree.
My gaze tightens, and I continue looking around, letting my senses go out as far as they can while maintaining the output of a 5th Class human Lord.
I don’t let my aura surge outward more than a few hundred meters, but in doing so, I find even more unintelligent life.
Dozens of slimes, all with five grey floating crowns rotating above their heads. There is even a forest troll about 150 meters to our right, with four crowns above its head.
“What… is this place…?” is all I muster out, my eyes wide open.
It all feels so real, and if what that guard at the door said was correct, these are all lower-class Lords without enough intelligence to assimilate into the Mensa or Ellipsia Citadel…
There must be some kind of scan done upon arrival that tests if a Lord can hear or interact with the system, and if the answer is no, they drop them in here to be used as entertainment.
Ava replies to me, but through telepathy instead of speaking aloud.
“It wouldn’t make sense for them to just send Lords in here to die without reason, even if they’re unintelligent… It’s not like we were charged an entry fee or anything.”
I nod along in agreement, and simultaneously, the blank map that was given to me starts to update itself.
Wherever I’ve turned my head back and forth has printed a perfect image of the terrain and even notes on the monsters and their classes.
Though, that feature isn’t what catches my attention—it’s the bright white dot off in the distance in an unmarked area of the map.
It’s impossible to know how far away it really is without any references between myself and it, but the fact that it’s labeled [Safe Zone] makes this exactly where I point in front of us.
“I’m sure you see it too, that destination is our first goal. That guard really dropped us out in the middle of nowhere.”
—
We head forward through the vibrant mushroom forest and cross paths with many of the docile slimes hopping about.
They look so clear and beautiful, even more real and lifelike than any dungeon I’ve ever been in.
I see no point in killing them, as they haven’t attacked me, so the two of us just wander through the woods.
The sour smells from the mushrooms and the gentle serene trickle of water soothe my ears as we walk almost a full kilometer through the wilderness before encountering any problems.
One of the lurking 4th Class forest trolls jumps out from a swampy area, holding a short, curved sword-like weapon covered in algae and plants from the still water.
One of its crowns is bright white, and another is just white on the bottom. The other two are grey and empty.
I’m quite intrigued, as many of the slimes we’ve passed have had varying fullness on their crowns too. Though, I don’t fight back, as I already see Ava moving into action, so I don’t bat an eye.
The long-limbed, wet, brown, and grey-bodied monster, standing over three meters tall, is hit with an ether-imbued punch to the chest, tearing it in half and shattering its avatar into dozens of pieces.
This is all still well within the standard commands that can be bought in a basic-grade avatar on a 3rd Class Lord; though the strength behind the punch itself, from Ava who surpassed level 20,000 while fighting Demonic Orcs and Cyclops beneath Ellipsia, is far higher than the average 3rd Class Lord that ascends to the Upper Realm at level 3,000–4,000.
However, despite this difference in strength, the four grey crowns above the largest piece of flesh remaining still spin in circles.
The visual of this troll’s fractured body parts all floating back up to the swamp’s surface, and crawling down from the nearby trees they’ve been splattered onto, reminds me of where I got the Self Regeneration skill in the first place.
Trolls are equally as annoying to get rid of in the Upper Realm as they were in dungeons, it seems.
“It’s going to need a bit more than just brute force to kill these things…” I message into Ava’s inner ear as I step forward, making it so she doesn’t have to borrow any skills from me and blow our cover.
Humans have a high chance of gaining elemental skills, while I’m unsure if goblins are capable of doing so naturally.
So, as soon as the troll’s parts come together and its vocal cords reform to let out a screech, I put up my right hand and let out a simple pillar of fire.
It takes a few seconds for the screeches to stop, but once the flames completely envelop it and its flesh begins melting away, the regeneration cannot keep up with the heat I put out.
I don’t stop until I see the crowns above its head start to fade and hear a string of notifications ring in my mind…
[Use Absorption]
Skill: Self Regeneration
Upgrade: Divine
[YES] [NO]
I chuckle to myself at how easy that was as I press [YES], and my excitement for coming here rises far more than just moments ago.
My body doubles that are stuck in the Lower Realm do not have [Divine Grade] absorption and cannot farm endless dungeons to upgrade my long list of [Mythic Grade] skills.
However, there seems to be a wide-open construct of feral monsters ready to be farmed straight from the source.
My attention falls back down to where the corpse of the troll melted away.
I’m prepared to create an illusion array with light magic and a multitude of complex ether commands already set up to trigger inside my prebuilt false avatar, but for some reason, I don’t have to use much…
My system triggers this as a kill, and a small amount of the divine threads from its core flow into me and are perfectly masked. Considering it was never a compressed true core, I get no extra abilities, and it isn’t much.
Draining threads like this from a corpse is possible for any skilled Lord, but absorbing ether is not. This is what I created the special commands to mask, but no ether leaks out from this kill.
Instead, it stays trapped inside the crowns that fade away and collapse in on each other until they hit a single point, creating a small white orb that floats from the damp ground and up to my eye level.
[Kill confirmed!]
[Reward: 2.7091 Low Quality Ether]
[Add to Crown Pool]
[YES] [NO]
I raise an eyebrow, as this may not be a lot of ether to me—holding almost 110 million in my true pool—but for a normal Lord, this is an extremely high amount.
Some 5th Class Worlds could be purchased with this much ether in Ellipsia.
I press [YES] and let the white orb dissolve into my palm, adding to the artificial ether stores in the commands that line my body.
I’m expecting my crowns to fill up and begin glowing white, but this is not what happens at all…
The ether just sits dormant in my avatar’s artificial pool.
The only difference I feel is that the pull from this pool feels stronger, as though it’s draining faster into the crowns.
“Hey, look, it left its blade behind too!” Ava comments as I turn to my side to see her picking up the dead shell of a soul weapon.
“I guess, keep that with us. We might as well kill a few more and collect some loot along the way…”
She places the long knife into her ether storage using a basic-grade avatar command, and we continue forward at a steady pace.
Though, I do stop to send a fireball at a slime with two of its five crowns filled, minding its own business beneath the shade of a bright red and blue mushroom.
It doesn’t even have time to react before the same ringing in my ear and formation of an ether orb begins.
[Use Absorption]
Skill: Plunderer
Upgrade: Divine
[YES] [NO]
[Kill confirmed!]
[Reward: 0.4103 Low Quality Ether]
[Add to Crown Pool]
[YES] [NO]
I press [YES] on both, gaining another Divine Grade skill and more ether toward this avatar’s pool.
—
None of the fights really seem worth it as we walk another 10 kilometers toward the pulsing light that signifies a safe zone.
More and more of our terrain is mapped out, and far more trolls begin popping up.
I kill three more, bringing my avatar’s pools over 16 Low Quality Ether. Some of the Trolls with more than one crown filled grant more ether than one’s that have less. I come to the educated assumption that each crown on the 4th Class Lords are worth 2.5 Low Quality Ether.
We even get another dead soul weapon shell in the form of a long, spiked mace.
However, even after learning this, there isn’t much more to explore in these woods.
The frequency of the mushrooms and colorful flowers begins to dwindle, and less water and swamplands form around us as we continue to walk.
The biome we’re in slightly changes every few hundred meters we travel.
The wet ground turns hard like a rocky mountain terrain, and the green becomes thicker and darker.
A temperature and humidity shift can even be felt, as the air smells like pine trees and fresh earthy dirt, rather than the sour swamplands behind us.
The feeling of sharp eyes watching me hits my senses all of a sudden but fades away as soon as it comes.
Ava and I share mental notes, as she felt it too, but neither of us are worried that anything can harm us in these parts. We just keep walking forward into this new mountainous region.
We don’t stop or change our path at all, heading straight ahead.
A few 4th and 5th Class wolves in packs of three to ten cross our paths, but since I had all the fun in the swamps, Ava fights off any packs of wolves that attack us.
Every time we stop for Ava to collect the ether from her kills, that faint feeling of being watched from far away comes back.
I could easily spread my senses and find it, but playing with these 5th Class limitations has become kind of fun… I still have the inner reflexes of a High Noble, so my instincts and reaction time are far greater than anything in this whole construct. But having to limit my aura and only see things in a small, restricted slice of this map is exciting.
The eyes that watch us come closer, and from varying directions every time we stop to collect more ether.
Ava is quite unbothered, keeping the small nuisance at the back of her mind, but after about five kilometers of trekking through this new biome, it’s pretty much all I’m paying attention to.
As it stays just out of my field of view behind us every time.
Then, my attention is captured by something else entirely…
As we walk down into another valley, blindly following the map toward where the Safe Zone light is lit, the sound of humanoid voices travels through the air.
There must be other Adventurers like ourselves out here.
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