Guild Wars-Novel

It should be obvious enough that nothing like 'Eternal Skills' or 'Eternal Items' existed in the real world or in any realistic sense of the word. It was something conjured up by the World Will to mimic the digital world Draco and Eva hailed from, so while monsters may drop both skills and items, they couldn't be taken out nor were they 'real'.

They could only be used while in the fragmented Eternal Plane here, and only for the duration of their trial. Then again, Draco and Eva were already satisfied with the opportunity given and didn't dare to be greedy for more.

It was clear to them that they were dealing with the big leagues, and while temporary, they could finally get a glimpse of the 'endgame' of the universe and where the limit lay.

Whatever the case, Draco and Eva put the speculations aside for later. They decisively scanned the area around them with their Control and didn't sense any enemy presence, so they began moving forward.

Since they did not have much help from their VoP, they decided to rely on the other sensory methods they possessed. For one, Draco and Eva used their psychic abilities to try and detect if other minds existed in the area.

This required the usual conversion of raw Bloodline Energy into the Devil branch energy to power the ability. Like Control, they could only scan 10 meters, but unlike control, the more energy they input into it, the more the range increased.

This increased the effort required substantially, but they pushed through. Even this wastage of energy to use this ability would pay off in the future as their efficiency would slowly increase. It might increase at a snail's pace, but it was nonetheless an improvement.

Their eyes lit up as the area around 500 meters from their location lit up with three faint lights. Three different minds existed in different directions, and the strength of their thoughts were not active, meaning they were likely low-tier monsters.

Draco and Eva chose the faintest light of the three and moved towards that direction. Since they had infinite energy, their consensus was to use their bloodline at all time, using any ability that was relevant to the specific situation regardless of anything else.

Like right now, they were using their Horned Demon/Heavenly Eye branches to enhance their physical bodies, making it so they could move across the sand faster. 500 meters was something that an average person could jog in about 5 minutes at 6 km/h.

At their current speed of almost 100 km/h, Draco and Eva arrived in just 18 seconds. The area was a small dune of sand where they could see a shape walking across the sand slowly, seemingly patrolling its territory.

As you could expect, it was a giant scorpion with a black carapace, two wicked claws, and a scary stinger coated with greenish-yellow poison dripping from it.

Draco and Eva did not immediately engage, crouching low to mask their presence as well as suppressing their existence using their various bloodline abilities.

Seeing how easy it was to switch between abilities compared to when they had been at 99%, Draco and Eva were beginning to understand how best to utilize their current prowess.

If only they could fix the damn low efficiency, they would be Gods.

No, patience, patience.

That was what they were here for. It was best to take things slow and reach the goal steadily. With that in mind, they used the World Will's system to inspect the Giant Scorpion.

｢Name: Hakrasha

Eternal Talent: Incurable Poison

Level: 1

Power level: Weak

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Eternal Power: 6

Eternal Control: 5.5

Eternal Limit: 9

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Eternal Skills: Poison Sting - Tier 1.

Eternal Items: None｣

Draco and Eva's faces hardened. This scorpion was considered an Eternal Class entity because of its poison which had likely been cultivated to a level where it could even destroy planets.

Not only that, it seemed that every existence that reached the eternal level would not be disgraced by being called 'Giant Scorpion' or 'monster', but be represented by their names.

It was only fair since neither Draco nor Eva would like to be represented by the mere title of 'human'.

It had an Eternal Power of 6 which seemed pretty good for a low-tier Eternal monster. Seriously, poison was great, but being only able to apply it from a stinger limited its growth potential, which was only slightly higher than its current power.

Clearly, Hakrasha had reached its bottleneck and could only progress in inches until it eventually hit its ceiling.

The problem here was its Eternal Control at 5.5 was testimony that while its power might be low, its efficiency and skill weren't. This was the exact opposite of Draco and Eva, so not only was this a perfect foe, but also a great test for the two.

The best part about Draco and Eva working together was that they had linked minds, so there was no need for lengthy dialogue or discussion. Faster than the eye could blink, they had already shared and 'discussed' hours of plans and ideas, ready to execute their chosen one.

There were many powers from the three branches they could use to initiate and handle the fight. Some commons ones were;

- Turn into Dragon/Phoenix and fight as behemoths

- Summon avatars from the branches to fight as minions

- Summon behemoths and various entities from the branches to fight as well.

- Turn into Demon or Goddess/Angel or Devil to fight

- Summon Hellfire/Heaven's Lightning to strike

- Summon Blackfire/Angels' retribution to strike

- Use Darkness/Light element to fight

- Use physical power to fight

- Use mind power to fight

And so on.

With that in mind, looking at the power of Hakrasha, they decided that a frontal fight would be unwise. They did not know their foe's speed, sensory abilities, or cunning, and if they got stabbed or poisoned in a way they did not expect, they could not hope to expel it easily.

Death was most likely.

Obviously, the best choice was a ranged engagement, and Draco and Eva chose not to use elemental or energy strikes, but rather an ability they hardly used and left for Zaine and Roma.

The ability of illusions and mirages!

A scorpion that cultivated poison and probably physical power would likely not have strong mental defenses, to the point where even though Draco and Eva had low efficiency, they should be able to brute force it using their high power by flooding the ability with energy.

And that was exactly what they did. Eva closed her eyes and manifested her Light Angel branch as she used her mind control abilities to descend onto the mind of Hakrasha. Immediately, the giant scorpion began to thrash and resist, clobbering its own skull as Eva's face paled slightly.

However, like a car slowly building up speed until it went from 0 to 100, she also strengthened her psychic hold on its mind as its thrashing began to slow and its eyes began to dull.

Here, it was Draco's turn as he also closed his eyes and used his abilities to sunder the mind of the scorpion, causing its illusions to double and its mind to devolve into even worse chaos. Maintaining the split was tough and Draco also had to slowly increase the power for it to reach the point where equilibrium was reached.

So from an outside point of view, Draco and Eva were crouched above a sand dune overlooking the area where a giant scorpion was, their faces tense and their bodies sweating - something they had not physically done in a long time - while the scorpion itself lay flat on the sand, body occasionally twitching a shaking as drool fell from its mouth.

This continued for more than 30 minutes until the scorpion's drool became blood and its body activity began to forcibly increase as it was getting used to the mental pressure and began resisting. Draco and Eva though, were also getting rapidly more efficient in their use of this ability.

If the individual measure of efficiency for their illusion ability had started as 0.1, then it had increased to 0.3 after all this time which was a large jump given that only 30 minutes had passed.

However, it had been 30 minutes of intense mental battle and stress, and the Evil Duo could only hold out and remain firm due to their suffering from the previous timeline which shaped their willpower and tolerance for pain.

Draco and Eva knew that they would eventually lose this mental battle. After all, the scorpion was also an Eternal being and its life force was not something easily extinguishable.

As such, the two starkly reduced their mental persuasion and only left a slight suggestion passively within, their physical bodies rising from the dune to face Hakrasha.

The scorpion himself rose to its feet and saw Draco and Eva, hissing with hatred due to the torment he had been put under. He bolted towards them so fast it was like a small spider moving from one spot to another to the human eye.

Draco and Eva split in the middle and avoided the claws of Hakrasha with some ease. Even if they had lower efficiency than Hakrasha, they still had their Control to help scan the area around them.

In close combat like this, Control was king!

Draco roared and struck out using raw Bloodline Energy, while Eva did the same. The energy clashed with the scorpion in the middle, Hakrasha using its two claws to block the attacks as they exploded upon his carapace.

Sand was thrown up to cover an area, and the Evil Duo would not be so foolish as to stand there and wait for it to disperse naturally before confirming the status of their foe. As such, they used their abilities to blow the sand away, revealing the injured Hakrasha.

Both of its claws were severely bruised and cracked in places, trembling as the giant scorpion could barely muster to move them. It then glared at Draco and Eva warily as it retreated slowly and carefully.

Draco and Eva's faces firmed when they saw the effects of their raw bloodline energy attack. They understood that the 'Eternal Control' referred to their ability to convert bloodline energy to their specific branches' power, but not the power of the raw energy itself.

If Draco and Eva were to measure it, the amount of energy used was equivalent to the amount of Eternal Power on a 1:1 scale. So, assuming that their max bloodline energy output could be put down as 100 points, then it would be 1:1 with their 100 points of Eternal Power.

In this attack and using this scale, they had used about 5 points of raw Bloodline Energy, which was about 5 points of Eternal Power, hence the great damage to Hakrasha.

However, doing this to win was foolish, like drinking poison to quench one's thirst.

This action of using raw Bloodline Energy yielded no benefit to their conversion and ability of Eternal Control, which was the main reason and benefit for being here.

Using raw Bloodline Energy, they could certainly storm around the place and reach level 10 quickly, but they would leave here as they came, with only 0.1 points of Eternal Control out of 100.

As such, this was only a test by the Evil Duo to see if they had a way out in case the battle got too tough. It was not a great idea to rely on this, as life and death situations eked out potential, so sticking to the training regime would be better, but sometimes, situations called for sacrifices.

As it were, they had confirmed that this was viable, so they returned to fueling their abilities with the bloodline energy. This time Draco changed into a Horned Demon while Eva manifested her Goddess form.

The two attacked at the same time and in sync with each other. There was no tank and damage dealer, as both of them filled that role with each advance they made, intricately and easily switching between their attacks and defenses to maximize the damage dealt to Hakrasha.