Martial Online.

Rumble!

A massive volcano that spanned across most of the landscape erupted, sending hot lava cascading down the mountainside and throwing ash high into the sky, causing chaos for miles around.

Ambrose watched it all transpire as he was only a few kilometers away from the volcano and could feel the heat rising around him.

The ash started falling down around him, covering everything in a thick layer of gray dust.

Ambrose glanced at his shoulder, which had ash clinging to it, and patted it off.

At that moment, another flash of light descended behind him, and from there, Moriarty appeared with his spear in hand.

"We lost, huh." Ambrose whispered.

"No, you did." Moriarty said with a frown. "I wouldn't have been able to take both of them, so I jumped to the lava willingly."

"That's unexpected of you." Ambrose glanced over his shoulder at him. "I would've expected you to fight them."

"That would've been unwise." Moriarty folded his arms behind his back and looked at the apocalyptic landscape in front of him. "Anyway, what happened to you?"

"I lost; that happened…" Ambrose replied, keeping it vague.

He didn't want to mention to Moriarty that he was passing out again.

"It's not too big of a shame to lose to perhaps the world's strongest player." Moriarty said and frowned. "We aren't out of the tournament yet."

"What are we even supposed to do here?" Ambrose asked and pointed at the destruction. "This world is dying. It wouldn't probably take even another hour for it to be completely destroyed."

"Like the game master said, only one team can survive through this." Moriarty said. "We must be the last team standing before this world gets destroyed."

"Well, where the hell is everyone?"

Ambrose asked, but at that same moment, the light engulfed them like a warm blanket, and they were transported to a different place.

As they opened their eyes again, they saw that they were standing at the bottom of the hill with a bloody landscape in front of them.

Clang, clash, clang!

At the front of them, thousands of players were engaged in a fiery battle on top of the corpses of already dead players. It was so messy and bloody that they could hardly distinguish who was on which side.

Around the battlefield, the meteors continued to fall, and rivers of lava flowed right next to them. It was as if they were avoiding just this battlefield.

However, it was clear that this fight also had a time limit.

The time limit was how long this world would last before it was completely destroyed.

"Argh!" A player fell right in front of Ambrose's feet.

Ambrose pulled out his shortsword and stabbed it through the player's forehead, ending his life immediately.

At that moment, he heard a surprising sound in his ear—a dinging sound.

[You killed a player!]

[2100 XP Earned!]

"Wait, I received experience points." Ambrose said in surprise.

Moriarty's eyebrow jumped in surprise, and then he turned to look at all the players on the battlefield with a greedy look.

"This might be our chance." He said and looked at Ambrose with a smile. "Time to start grinding."

"Ohoh…"

Ambrose chuckled and remembered Julian's face and his perfect swordsmanship, which left him completely helpless. If it wasn't for his sudden new ideas that popped out of nowhere, he would've been destroyed.

He couldn't guarantee that he could think of the same things in their next fight.

Therefore, he had to grow stronger in order to stand a chance against Julian.

"All right…" Ambrose opened his interface, which was finally possible, and saw that he was at an early 73 level.

'73 level…'

He then looked at the battlefield, where there were thousands of players, and all of them were very high level. Some were definitely above his level.

It was a perfect grinding spot. This kind of chance would most likely never come again.

"We should move separately." Moriarty said. "In here, teamwork is a non-existent thing. We have to focus on ourselves if we want to survive."

"Fine by me." Ambrose nodded. "If we can't survive this, there is no point in going to the finals anymore."

"Exactly…"

Moriarty said and approached the battlefield with the spear in hand.

Ambrose unsheathed both of his shortswords and shouted. "Crimson God's Everlasting Bloodbath!"

His skin turned bloody-red, and he began to resemble a demon from hell.

Ambrose raised his swords high in the air and screamed. "All of you, die!"

With a powerful swing, he slashed through several players in one clean motion.

It immediately attracted the attention of nearby players, who rushed straight at him, but Ambrose went straight through them like a whirlwind, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake.

"Aaaaah!"

With another powerful scream, Ambrose jumped in the middle of the players and slashed through them like a hot knife through butter.

None of them survived.

A distance away, Moriarty stabbed his spear forward, which created a roaring dragon made of fire that flew through the players like a harbinger of destruction and devastation.

Ambrose moved among the players, blocking and slicing through them with his sharp, crimson swords.

And then he leaped into the air, transformed the two shortswords into the great sword, and then slashed down with such destructive power that it created an explosion of fire and chaos, leaving nothing but rubble in his wake.

"Howling Rage!" Ambrose screamed, and whoever heard it stopped in their tracks, frozen in fear at the sheer power behind his voice.

And then, as he transformed the great sword back into two shortswords, he killed the frozen players around him with one slash of his blades.

The blood splattered across the battlefield, painting the ground crimson.

A small distance away, Moriarty twirled the spear around him and went through the players like a tornado. They couldn't defend, and many fell to the ground in defeat.

"Zadkiel…" Moriarty whispered hatefully and stabbed through the heart of another player, whose dreams of reaching the finals were crushed in an instant.

It wasn't just him.

All the players on the battlefield dreamed about the ultimate glory of standing on Loch City's stadium, watched by the entire world.

With each passing second, another dream was crushed like an ant under the foot of a giant.

Ambrose crossed his shortswords in front of him as a group of players tried to kill him. Before they could break through, Ambrose used his Slaughter skill, which created an illusionary figure of him in the air.

All the players in front of him froze in horror, and then Ambrose slashed through them effortlessly.

They all fell lifelessly to the ground around him; some were still twitching and reaching their arms towards Ambrose with pleading eyes, as if they were seeing their dreams crumble before their eyes.

"The Immortal World!"

In the sky, nearly two dozen golden knives appeared that launched straight to the ground and impaled over a dozen players who were still standing.

"Whoo…" Ambrose breathed heavily and used his Muscle Defense to release his exhaustion with the steam cloud.

The area around him turned hazy because of the steam cloud, and the players were blindly moving around.

However, because of Ambrose's Starborn Constitution, he could see better than an ordinary human being and saw all the players around him.

He effortlessly used his dual-wielding and mercilessly slaughtered through them with expert precision.

"Bring it on!"

His shout echoed throughout the endless battlefield.