I Am the God of Games

As everyone looked on, the lid over the stone coffin rumbled and moved on its own.

Even before the master of the coffin appeared, an aura thicker than blood and darker than the night skies were already overflowing from within, shrouding and soaking every corner around the ancestral hall.

Winter was clearly over, but Edward and the others felt a coldness that cut into bone and heart-as if the frost had returned and they were wearing only a single layer of clothes.

In a Shounen anime, someone would probably be yelling something like ‘such powerful Reiatsu/Haki/Chakra’ right about now.

And for an instant, Edward actually saw an illusion: thick blood was flowing out of the stone coffin and himself being drowned under it, suffocating

It was fortunate that all Players had basically died a few times and even being locked inside the black hut was basically no different from entering ‘the divine realm of the god they worshipped’. Even if Xi Wei was too stingy to bless them with any special gifts, their souls had been refined at bare minimum level and their spiritual resistance on the higher side.

As such, even though the Long Ears and the Roaring Blaze Tiger Warrior couldn’t react immediately against such a horrific illusion, the Players had all free themselves from the domination of the illusion and regained clarity.

Nonetheless, a bloody wing that was so massive it shouldn’t physically fit inside the stone coffin extended from within, followed by a figure that slowly rose to its feet.

It was a handsome white-haired man whose gender could be misidentified at first glance.

He was dressed in noble clothes of otherworldly fashion-mostly black, but adorned with red in certain spots. In fact, it resembled the evening formal clothing of noblemen from this age.

The clothes also covered most of the man, revealing only the skin on his face and hands.

His skin was also pale-white but unhealthily so, as if it had never been touched by the sun.

Behind him, the blood wings stretched out and filled the ancestral hall.

Those blood wings weren’t solid but in a state between gas and liquid. The ceiling was not destroyed when they brushed upon it, but instead rotted into many holes that extended through the roof and formed a cloud of blood on the skies above the ancestral hall.

The thick, heavy cloud of blood was not as immediately powerful as the Roaring Blaze Tiger Warrior in appearance, but it does throw an enormous shadow over everything else. Even if it prompted the sense that it could come crashing down at any given moment, it exuded a sense of unmatched threat and pressure that made breathing difficult.

Every Player then noticed the System page popping out in front of their eyes.

[A wild Revived Nightstalker has appeared]

(Urgent world quest started—the Nightstalker Strikes Back]

[The ancestor of the Nightstalkers had learnt of his kind’s demise after rising from its grave thanks to zombification. Reluctant to fall under the control of the masterminds of its revival, he exhausted all efforts to win the trust of the Mountain Tigers, and, in the battle between Players and the Mountain Tigers managed to grab hold of the mentally shaken chief of the Mountain Tigers, who in turn spilled the blood of every Mountain Tiger child and sacrificed them for his awakening.

The Nightstalker is the enemy of all life, a world-ending calamity of the last century. Countless living beings were consumed as their flesh and blood, and the world’s balance had once faced destruction in their wake! Stop the world from falling beneath the dominion of a bloody storm, for now is the time that you come forth and shine!]

[Quest Objective: Defeat the Revived Nightstalker.]

(Quest Reward: Unlocks reputation system in the New World (Western Continent), one ‘Awakened Nightstalker’ memorial item (randomly obtained), certain amount of game coins and EXP (distributed according to contribution)]

(Note: ‘In this very hour, the first and the last Nightstalker of the world shall lead the Nightstalkers to rise again! If you can’t stop his awakening, they would once again feast upon all beings, and stage an encore of the calamity that lay waste to the last age…’—says the God of Games in a whisper]

Although the God of Games had finally assigned them a quest and the reward looked quite good, none of the Players present were pleased.

After all, the unawakened Nightstalker had appeared before them.

Not only was he Level 55, it also has the overlord template—which was a higher level compared to the elite template!

It’s not even funny.

They were almost wiped out by the Roaring Blaze Tiger Warrior who was below Level 50. There was just no winning against an enemy of his class, and they have to wait until every other first-rate and second-rate Player rush to the scene after receiving the quest.

“Ahem—”

That was when Taiga, who was still dangling over the Roaring Blaze Tiger Warrior’s hand coughed out a mouthful of blood, his eyes clearing once again. “W-what have I done…”

“Chief?” The Roaring Blaze Tiger Warrior carefully controlled the heat over his hand so that Taiga wasn’t baked by the flames. “Have you finally come to your senses?!”

“I have hurt the Mountain Tigers… I have dragged our tribe to a new low where we couldn’t hope to recover from…” Taiga appeared to remember being manipulated, and firmly grasped the Roaring Blaze Tiger Warrior shoulder with a distorted look, his voice at once a bellow and a mourning. “I killed Nina by my own hands, and used her flesh and blood as sacrifice… I hate this!”

“Chief…” The Roaring Blaze Tiger Warrior watched him, troubled.

“It’s good that you’ve killed me… I can’t bear to face our ancestors… But in the very least, before my journey to the underworld… I… cough… Would have that thing come with me!”

Taiga glared at the Nightstalker, who was still standing in his stone coffin.

*

*

*

In the distance, Rangka of the Long Ears was showing a look of empathy.

While the Players had a part to play in the fall of the Mountain Tigers, Taiga merely disliked the Players and did not hate them.

He had provoked them first after all, and the Players didn’t retaliate with any underhanded measures-instead came knocking on their doorstep and dished out an almighty beating on the Mountain Tigers.

Moreover, they were not so cruel that they would wipe out the tribes’ women and children, which was compassion in a war between two tribes.

On the other hand, the Nightstalker had manipulated Taiga into killing every last child of the tribe, directly destroying any possibility of the tribes’ survival. Couple that with the indescribable tragedy of having the chief kill his own flesh and blood, and such level of hate only made sense.

Rangka even felt that he would already have been driven to madness by the cruel reality if he had been in Taiga’s position.

“Leave it to me.” The Roaring Blaze Tiger Warrior nodded in immeasurable solemnity, while Taiga smiled in gratefulness and release in return.

In the next split second, the flames covering the Roaring Blaze Tiger Warrior’s body raged again while Taiga, who was still hanging limply over his hand was promptly reduced to ashes.

However, it did not happen out of the Roaring Blaze Tiger Warrior’s desire to dignify his chief with a cremation—the truth was that a mysterious power had poured within the Tiger Warrior’s body, causing his power to go haywire for a moment.

The Players were unaware of that, and simply didn’t have the attention to spare with a great foe before them, and simply considered that the Tiger Warrior was venting his frustration through the flames.

And yet, Xi Wei who had been watching the show from his divine kingdom was stunned by that turn of events.