Guild Wars

The vast army of critters and minor beasts came to a sudden and clean stop as the sky above them opened, revealing the scene of a giant sun surrounded by a revolving planet as well as an orbiting moon.

The moon flashed and then released a projection. That projection come to this world through the hole in the sky and spun around its axis. Eventually a huge blue wave of energy was shot out that covered the entire land, turning it into ice.

Apart from the Evil Trio and the Tree of Cario which defended itself with a bright green light, everything else was frozen into an ice sculpture. The entire meadowland had turned into a realm of sold ice.

The hole in the sky closed and the projection faded away, but the effect remained. Seeing that all the critters were dealt with, Draco smiled while Eva and Shuangtian rolled their eyes.

What happened to not using skills? Fine, since you were using skills, we would too!

｢Active 1 – Inferno: Purge the world of all dirt. Send out a shockwave of heat and light that deals 2,500% light damage and 2,500% fire damage over an Area Zone. Cooldown: 1 day or 0.1 Divine Points.｣

Eva used the Inferno skill of her Lightfire Mystic Flame to send a shockwave containing bright light and yellow flames over the entire area, turning the ice sculptures into broken shards that were disintegrated and melted at the same time.

The ice that had frozen the ground and formed a sheet almost melted into water and then was evaporated, causing the area to be covered in a faint mist.

｢Active 1 – Elemental Punch: Activate this skill punch out with a fist that contains your normal damage value but possesses elemental damage of your choice. Cooldown: 5 seconds or 0.000000000001 Divine Points.｣

Shuangtian grinned and then punched out using the first active skill of her special Divine gauntlets, Elemental Punch. Her fist struck the trunk of the tree and exploded with only unarmed force, but also explosive fire damage that spread all over the tree and covered its entire body.

Once again, the Evil Trio could hear an agonized scream on the soul plane, and a shockwave emerged that pushed them back. The tree was entering its third phase, which was Nature's Defense.

Here, it would summon an endless army of wood element top monsters to besiege it's attackers and these beings were all Rank 5 and very powerful. It was no different from Draco using his Nature's Call from the Heart of the Woods.

After the shockwave, the Tree of Cario seemed to roar and the hundreds of wood element monsters and NPCs rushed out of the boughs towards the Evil Trio.

Draco sneered and naturally countered with his own version of the skill.

｢Active 1 – Nature's Call: Activating this skill allows the user to summon an army of Wood-type monsters that are of the same Rank as the user for 18 hours. Cooldown: 24 hours or 0.1 Divine Points.｣

From behind Draco and out into the horizons, roars were sounded as various wood element monsters of the same type as those charging them them rushed over, clashing with the opposing group in the middle.

Immediately, a meat grinder occurred and it was partially sad. Two different forces of the same race and alignment fighting against each because they had different masters, their eyes filled with callousness and hatred when it would normally have been filled with empathy and kinship.

However, their masters did not feel this sadness or pity, only hoping that their force would win. Draco stopped Shuangtian and Eva from interfering while he watched his army collide with the enemies in order to measure the difference.

The numbers and power were about the same, so neither side had a clear advantage. If Draco wanted to wait for a resolution, it would certain take hours to achieve, so he rolled his eyes and attacked with his tow beauties, aiming for the tree itself.

｢Active 1 – War-Monger: Activating this skill allows the user to merge with the Fire of War, boosting damage by 300% for as long as there is stamina to burn. No cooldown.｣

｢Active 1 – Dark Fires: Cover the blade in a blackish miasma that is a mixture of Destruction Energy and Darkness Energy for 3 hours. Cooldown: 30 seconds or 0.00000001 Divine Points.｣

Draco activated the War Monger skill from his Fire of War and the Dark Fires from his Dragorugio swords. In his entire body glowed in a golden red light as if he was on fire while his two black swords glowed with black flames that spread around them like an enchantment.

Like this, he looked amazing and very cool, and he proved it by rushed towards the Tree of Cario and cutting off an entire branch in one slice. One could see that the area that was cut was glowing with a black fire that wanted to devour the entire tree itself.

As for the cut branch, it erupted in black flame and was burned to ask by the Destruction Energy.

Naturally as a result of using this skill, Draco gained a law relating to Destruction Energy called the Law of Destruction Fire. However, neither he nor Eva or Shuangtian used the laws in their attacks so far, just raw stats and skill damage modifiers.

The Tree wailed once more, and the loss of a branch forced it into the next stage as it released a shockwave.

Lord in heaven, Draco, Eba and Shuangtian were literally tearing through a World Boss with one attack to take it down each stage! One couldn't help but wonder that if the World Boss didn't have stages, would a single attack be enough to end its life?

This was the second to last stage, and the Tree of Cario was now desperate. It plunged its roots into the ground to absorb the life of the realm and also search for corpses to absorb.

However, the tree was soon speechless. Draco's act of freezing the land and then Eva's act of burning it had killed all the life in this meadowland, causing it to become barren and lifeless.

Not only that, but the critters and the woodheart constructs were all destroyed into nothingness, leaving no corpses behind. Luckily for it, the wood element armies were still fighting and some corpses were left about.

However, the moment it tried to reach for them, its roots were cut of by Draco who was still in his 'blazing mode' at speeds the tree obviously could not follow. More screams at the soul level occurred from the pain.

｢Light Ball – Active skill

Effect: Concentrate a large amount of Light Energy into a spherical shape that deals huge AOE damage, amounting to 2000% over 1000 miles.

Cooldown: 30 seconds or 0.00000001 Divine Points.｣

The tree was silenced by Eva who used her Light Ball skill to bombard the entire area zone. This cleared the opposing wood element monsters in one fell swoop and caused them to turn into ashes like those that came before.

Meanwhile, the tree released another - and possibly its final - shockwave as it entered the final stage of craziness. It released all its roots, branches and vines then began swinging them around crazily, like a person who was panicking and trying to get some beasts to stay back.

There was no skill or rhythm, just endless fear and madness as it refused to die a second time, not when it was so close to restoring its power and returning to the peak of its power!

This kind of final struggle was what amounted to 60% of the losses in the previous timeline as by this point, everyone was tired a nd a bit slow. To even get close to attack was a huge risk an gamble, and many had to pay with their lives for them to succeed.

However, now…

Draco, Eva and Shuangtian looked at the trees last struggles with thick disdain in their eyes. Were they supposed to fear this? Was this all the mighty World Boss amounted to?

Its a good thing the AI couldn't hear their thoughts, or it would cough blood and point at them with fury. How could they be so shameless and despicable?!

Look at your power and your stats and look at the poor World Boss. You should already feel bad for bullying the weak, how dare you disdain the fellow for trying his best?!

"Who is going to do it?" Draco asked boredly.

"Not me!" Eva said quickly, one step ahead of Shuangtian who grimaced.

"Meh, fine." Shuangtian gave in and walked forward calmly, entering the danger zone with giant roots, vines and even branches swinging about. Given the size difference, if one of them struck her, she would be lucky to be sent flying.

It was more likely that she would be turned into bloodmist in the spot.

However as she entered the area and the various branches and roots struck her, rather than get sent flying, they dealt no damage to her and did not even ruffle her robes. In fact, the various 'appendages' that struck her were blown apart, turning into wood splinters as they spread all over the place.

This caused the tree to scream again in agony and fear, but its madness prevailed. It continued to strike down, focusing all its blows on Shuangtian in a bid to stop her.

However it just kept destroying what was left of itself and lowering its own HP. However, one could sense the endless fear, as if it had no choice to do this and hope it could stop Shuangtian before she got too close.

Of course, this did not succeed and rather by the time Shuangtian got close to its trunk where she usually struck, it had nothing left to stop her. The entire tree was visibly shivering so bad that its leaves were falling.

One could hear sobbing as well as begging in the soul plane, and a normal person would feel pity and hesitate. However, Shuangtian simply pulled her hand back and struck forwards using her True Titan Smash skill.

｢True Titan Smash – Active skill

Effect: Punch out with the might of your Titan bloodline, causing the world to quake and the ground to sunder. This skill deals 2,000% unarmed damage over an Area Zone.

Cooldown: 5 minutes or 0.00000001 Divine Points.｣

BANG!

This time, unlike before, Shuangtian ending up punching a hole through the tree, causing a giant gaping expanse to appear in its trunk that showed the area behind the tree. Even the ground behind the hole was fractured and had formed a huge ravine that could likely also pass as a canyon.

Shuangtian took her fist back and walked away. The formerly shivering tree now relaxed and stopped its sounds and behaviors. It visibly slumped as its greenery became grey as all the leaves were shed while its bark withered in a rapid fashion.

It slowly crumbled piece by piece onto the ground, and the energy it possessed dissipated into the atmosphere, returning to the world for re-allocation.

｢Congratulations on completing: Tree of Cario World Boss Raid

Time elapsed: 0:3:22

Enemies killed: 1,334,589,786,334

NPCs killed: 233,644

Stages completed: 10

Team Deaths: 0

Team Members: 3

Assessment: EX+

Reward:

1,000,000% experience

Special Rank: World Boss Slayer

1,000,000 reputation with all races.｣

｢System to Player Announcement

Congratulations! You have achieved the first kill of a World Boss among the playerbase and have established yourself in the world of Boundless. However, World Bosses are only the first stage of endgame content and there is much more for you to explore! Aim for Divinity and walk the path of Gods!｣

｢Boundless System-wide Announcement

Enough data has been collected to increase the playability and effectiveness of the game world. As such, all players will be logged out for 24 hours in real-time in order to allow the AI to perform maintenance for Update 3.

Thank you all for playing so far!｣