Chapter 255 Hunt For Arkhen, Ghostly Building

Arkhen climbed a thick vine until it finished on a vast array of branches in the middle of the giant tree.

On the branch at the very center, everyone saw a bloody plant with a signal red flower on it.

[My lord! That's a special rank resource flower. It will refine your chi pond completely in a matter of minutes. Since you are in just 4th class, the leftover energy of that flower will also help you completely refine your Chi pond again after your breakthrough].

'Woah, that's awesome. But I guess it won't be that easy to get it,' Arkhen replied as he saw a bunch of vine and plant monsters coming out of the branch.

Someone tried to fly towards the flower, but the moment that person traveled half a meter via flying, he was smacked down on the branch before some slim vines produced from the branch and snared him.

'Alright. So the flying option is to cancel. We have to move to that central branch by defeating these monsters on the way,' Arkhen thought as he saw the overview of this middle-of-the-tree place.

A bunch of vast branches was present aside from the five main branches at the edges from which Arkhen and other people climbed through the thick vines from the ground.

From the edges to the center branch where the special rank flower was located, there was a distance of two hundred meters. That's how wide this entire thousand meters tall tree was.

Arkhen saw two plant monsters with vines-like feelers around their creepy mouth filled with sharp leafy teeth.

They came out of the branch he was standing on and attacked him.

Arkhen dodged two incoming vines that shot towards him like a bullet before waving his hand as he released Piercing Rain Blades of fire type from his Sarangan Dragon Blade.

The burning dark red blades instantly incinerated the plant monsters, and this was only possible because of the 79% progress in his fire affinity. Otherwise, the damage wouldn't have been enough to kill those plant monsters who were 7th-grade dire beast equivalent.

After breaking through to the 4th-class, Arkhen's stats were like this:

——

|Stats|

-Stamina: ∞

p -Constitution: 400 (+25) = 425 (+100%) = 850

-Agility: 400 (+25) = 425 (+100%) = 850

-Strength: 400 (+25) = 425 (+100%) = 850

-Charm: 10

-Soul: 400 (+100%) = 800 [-Soul Energy: 800/800]

-Energy Power: 400,000 (+100%) = 800,000

—> Primal Pond: ∞ (4th-class: 1%)

—> Chi Pond: ∞ (4th-class: 1%)

—> Mana Pond: [5,000,000/5,000,000] (4th-class: 1%)

-Symbiotic Items: Archion-Draconic Armor, Sarangan Dragon Blade, Deck of Mystic

Cards.

——

This time, his Mana pond's capacity increased by 2,000,000.

Arkhen has been using high-grade essence stones to refine his ponds because he could afford to. But general people would usually refine their 1st to 3rd class ponds with low-grade essence stones.

From 4th to 7th class, one needed middle-grade or high-grade essence stones to refine their ponds. Low-grade essence stones wouldn't work.

From the 7th to the 10th class, one must use high-grade essence stones.

These differences in the usage of resources ensured that people would get higher energy capacity as they reached higher classes.

…

While Arkhen was killing plant beasts and approaching the center branch, Sierra had finished off the people below in a matter of seconds. After collecting their rings, she started climbing the vine and soon arrived at the vast array of branches where people were fighting to reach the center branch.

Although Arkhen was powerful, he was still slower than many.

The people in other groups were all 7th-class powerhouses, and since they were high in numbers, they killed the plant monsters faster and were getting closer to the central branch.

Arkhen was still a hundred meters away from the center branch even though he was killing fast with his Slaughter Blades. Meanwhile, the other groups were roughly fifty to eighty meters away from the center branch.

"Tsk… I need to do something," Arkhen clicked his tongue in annoyance as he saw five more plant monsters producing after he hopped onto the next branch.

However, just as he was going to attack, he saw several rays of golden light with deep blue energy whirling around them piercing those five plant monsters and killing them in an instant! Naturally, it was Sierra who released that attack.

Arkhen grinned seeing that and jumped to the next branch.

Soon, ten plant monsters produce but they were also killed instantly by ten rays of the same type.

Sierra's stats were off the charts. In a way, she was stronger than normal 10th-class powerhouses.

…

While Arkhen and Sierra were in the Tier-7 labyrinth, the person who had cursed Arkhen was getting antsy as that old man finally noticed that the presence of his curse had disappeared.

Now that could either mean that the person bearing that curse died, or…the curse was removed. But instead of leaning towards the former, the old man's guts told him that it was later.

As such, he sent a few people from heaven in search of Arkhen to kill him before Arkhen grew powerful.

Since the old man had seen Arkhen's face, he easily projected that and gave it to four heavenly lords and sent them to find Arkhen. All of them were 9th-class powerhouses.

To shorten the search process in the vast 1st realm, the old man tried to check the last location of the curse's presence before it disappeared and found it to be in the capital town of the Bariat Kingdom.

The four heavenly lords appeared in the Bariat Kingdom and sought an audience with the King.

"It's rare to see people of heaven in this part. So? What business do you have?" the King asked.

"We are looking for this person," spoke one of the heavenly lords with dark orange hair as he showed an image of Arkhen through a projection from a mirage stone.

Seeing Arkhen, the Queen's eyebrows were raised a little. She asked, "Why are you finding him?"

"It seems that you know him… Well, we have some small business with him. I hope you can tell us his location."

"I don't know," the Queen said as she waved her hand nonchalantly. "He left the kingdom over a month ago and went to the Pentarix continent."

"Well, you got the answer. You may leave now," the King said with a smile.

"If you know more about his location, please share it."

"That's all I know. Do you think we keep records and tabs on a mere 2nd class powerhouse?" the Queen scoffed.

"Alright. Sorry for taking your time. We shall leave now," spoke one of the heavenly lords with long golden hair and a sexy body covered in a beautiful white dress. She was the leader and strongest among the four.

After saying that, she turned around and left.

N0 v el Next. CoM

The King turned to the Queen after they left and asked curiously, "Do you know him?"

"Arkhen, yes. He was staying in Grand Duke's house and was friends with Meya and Gereld. An interesting kid with a unique and strange background."

…

Time passed as seconds turned into minutes and minutes into hours…

Arkhen and Sierra had to kill a lot of monsters and also people who got in their way.

Only after entering the 3rd floor did they start getting beast cores from the monsters that they fed to their personal treasure chest.

After four hours, they arrived on the 6th floor, apparently named Ghostly Complex. Through the passage to the 6th floor from the 5th floor, they directly arrived at this strange vast building having wooden stairs, rooms, and halls, on each floor.

There were a total of twenty-seven people in this building and all of them were in a vast hall on the 1st floor in this building.

The atmosphere was creepy with faint gray fog with a dark green hue permeating the hall, and all eight groups stayed cautious of each other.

Nobody moved because there was a countdown of ten seconds that everyone could see at the center top of the hall, and it was nearing zero.

3

2

1

0

The moment countdown hit 0, the four closed doors of the hall opened.

"Should we go together? On the 5th floor, our group had to work together with other groups to solve a puzzle and kill the boss within a limited time frame. It's not always about internal competition in the labyrinth. Sometimes, we also have to work together, and we get equal rewards for that as my group got on the last floor," said a guy with shoulder-length silver hair and soft leather ranger clothes. He was an elf, indicated by his long pointy elven ears and handsome complex.

"Huh? Don't you see four doors, dumbass?" said a bulky man with thick brown fur, a bear head, and a muscled body before he spoke again quickly, "Four doors means we have to go separate ways. Choose your fucking door and get going. Let's go, Yalas!"

"Hou!" shouted the bear-like beastkins of the group.

The bear man and his group of four people left the room as they walked towards a door.

Arkhen and Sierra nodded at each other before they also left the hall. As they entered through the door, they saw stairs going up and started walking on them.

"This is really creepy, haha. I wonder if we will have to fight ghosts," Sierra said as she grinned after looking around.

The ghostly fog still permeates everywhere.

"We'll see soon," Arkhen said as he rubbed his fists. "If they are ghosts, we need to use spirit energy or soul energy attacks. Otherwise, they won't get hurt."

"Well, we can just infuse soul energy in our punches to make them ethereal-based. That way, our powerful physical prowess will be effective on them," said Sierra.

"Eh? We can do that?" Arkhen was surprised. He didn't know about that.