D.I.O
Chapter 220

Ting!

Along with a sound akin to plucking strings, a large image appeared in one corner of the Deep Place. There was a high school in the background, similar to the ones commonly seen on Earth.

“Teacher~ We’re going on a trip during this vacation, so please accompany us, okay?”

“Why should I accompany you girls on your trip? I’m about to finish working and go home, so stop talking nonsense and leave already.”

Female students surrounded a man with a solid physique. Despite his thoroughly annoyed expression, the girls were happily chattering beside him.

“W-what is this? Are you girls acting out a sitcom?”

Before the start of a mission, it was quite common to show the target’s appearance and the surrounding environment. Background information was often needed depending on the type of mission and its difficulty.

“A mission with over a hundred Masters and four Grand Masters is targeting a guy like that?”

Of course, the quest description explained that he was the Emperor of Martial Arts, but in the eyes of the gathered users, even including Merlin and Arthur, the target looked like an average man in his thirties. Anyway, the female students circled him and implored several more times, but he calmly denied their requests and sent them on their way. Before the group of girls eventually left, the Masters had to watch the female students flirt with the male target for about ten minutes.

“Dang, why is this mission starting so late?”

“Is it some kind of bug?”

The Masters started complaining and voicing their dissatisfaction. At that moment, the target spoke up, “Hey, sorry. Did I make you all wait?”

The man had been tidying up his desk when he raised his fist.

Crack!

Countless cracks suddenly formed on the Deep Place’s wall where the screen was floating, like the spiderwebbing that occurred when a bullet hit bulletproof glass. The previously-relaxed Masters jumped up in surprise and instantly got into fighting positions.

Rumble!

The space was torn, and the dimension collapsed; the entire Deep Place shattered simultaneously and blended with the dimension that appeared on the screen. Leighann quickly chanted a spell.

[Quarantine! Create! I am the owner of Alistar!]

In an instant, the surrounding background suddenly changed with a shrill cry, a sound that seemed to resonate with each user’s soul. The blue sky turned gray, and all the students playing soccer on the school’s field disappeared. The teachers and students inside the school and the people traveling in their cars vanished. The man was now sitting on the stairs, and he laughed.

“Oh, you guys prepared thoroughly. The normal type of quarantine space is observable, so you isolated and quarantined the entire planet, huh?” Regrants commented.

New beings appeared before the Emperor of Martial Arts, Regrant De Pecerion, who had a carefree smile.

“… You truly are a monster, Regrants De Pecerion. You noticed our quarantine spell,” Leighann said.

“Oho~ Emperor of Martial Arts, Regrants De Pecerion! I’ve heard so much of your great achievements and prestige that my ears are hurting,” Lionel remarked.

“I really don’t want to fight like this….” Adalcha added.

“If they tell us to take him out, we must do so. If a member of a group receives an order, this is how things go,” stated Thousand Scents.

During this exchange, the users were also present, and not just a few, either. Moreover, it was a powerful group of Masters, as every player present was Level 12 or higher.

However, those 100 or so Masters were completely overshadowed by the four Grand Masters.

“White Divine Celestial Dragon, Thousand Scents. Oh, my God, she’s really here ….”

“Ah, Lionel! I never thought I’d see the day when I’d watch Grand Master Lionel fight!”

“Oh, Leighann uses a staff.”

“Wow! It’s the first time I’ve seen Grand Master Adalcha open his eyes. He looks downright scary.”

Thousand Scents stood at the pinnacle of aura power, and when she raised her strength, her gray hair fluttered as if blown by a strong gust of wind. Archmage Leighann, with his neatly combed blonde hair, held a staff as tall as himself and dispersed golden magic power around him. Lionel, a huge black man with no hair, relaxed his body and emitted a series of popping sounds.

‘Oh, is that the ruler and instructor of the Holy Land for chakra users, Grand Master Adalcha?’

Merlin had his eye on Adalcha. He had seen Thousand Scents and Lionel a few times before, and he had a good business relationship and friendship with Leighann, who had partnered with Merlin to patent the latter’s innovative tech production process. However, Merlin had only heard of Adalcha in passing; it was the first time Merlin had actually seen him.

Basically, Adalcha had similar features to an Asian with entirely black eyes. Though Adalcha was standing still, darkness scattered around him. Since Adalcha rose to the level of Atman, he possessed an inner microcosmic world within him, so it was possible to extract infinite power within a specific concept.

‘He’s a Shadow Dragon… a rare species,’ Merlin thought.

Although it couldn’t be said that a Shadow Dragon was the strongest among the dragon species, they were certainly dangerous enough that no one could treat them lightly or carelessly. A Shadow Dragon possessed an almost immaterial body and could output destructive combat power with just its innate, untrained superpowers and attributes. However, Adalcha, with his chakra trained to the transcendent level, was powerful beyond any Master’s comprehension.

Moreover, there were Thousand Scents, Leighann, and Lionel. Thousand Scents had trained and reinforced her great spirit over a thousand years of hard work and accumulated achievements, while Leighann had realized the truth of the world and could control its laws. As for Lionel, he could concentrate power and cut through dimensions after training to the limit. All four were formidable transcendent beings.

‘There are over 100 users gathered here, but can we deal with even one of those Grand Masters?’

In the past, the users had fought Mahashah, the transcendent ruler of the Forest of Despair, but that was only possible because Mahashah was overwhelmed by the staggering number of users attacking simultaneously. Millions of users participated in that closed beta test battle. Undoubtedly, the power level of the users currently gathered was incomparably stronger than those who went up against Mahashah; however, compared to any of the four Grand Masters, the Masters present were insignificant.

“Oh, right. I remember. Are those the Noblesse’s kids participating in your second user development program?”

Even though four prominent transcendents showed up and emanated fighting spirit, Regrants De Pecerion, a physical education teacher known as the Emperor of Martial Arts, just smiled as if having fun. Leighann’s eyebrows twitched at this carefree attitude, which made it seem like Regrants De Pecerion was welcoming a longtime friend.

“Based on how defenseless you are, it doesn’t seem like you were expecting us, but you’re acting so lighthearted.”

“Of course, the situation itself surprised me. To create a barrier and quarantine space around the entire planet… wow. Putting aside the expertise required to carry out such a spell… isn’t it also pretty expensive? When I heard that you guys overthrew Jenica, I knew you were running wild, but it seems like you still care about what others think. You’re using such an expensive quarantine spell to hide your actions, huh? Or are you taking precautions because I’m the Guardian of the Elohim?”

After saying this, Regrants De Pecerion raised his body, and the four Grand Masters straightened their postures to enter a combat stance. It was one versus four. To be precise, it was actually one versus over 100, but there seemed to be more tension on the larger side. Soon, a message popped up in front of the users’ eyes.

/Buy time for the Grand Masters to attack!/

/The normal mission death penalty has been removed! The resurrection cooldown shall be lowered to between ten to 21 seconds based on the user’s level! Users can be resurrected up to three times!/

/Gem points will be given according to a user’s effectiveness in tying down the enemy!/

As if it was an urgent situation, the messages scrolled up quickly. The users who read the rapidly-scrolling words clenched their jaws and ran forward.

“Hmph! We’re being used as fodder!”

“Somehow, I knew it’d be like this! There’s no way we’d be paired with Grand Masters!”

“Smashing Vajra Formation! Tanks, advance and take the vanguard position!”

Among the tanks, Adol, the ‘Iron Wall,’ was the most famous; he summoned his Tower Shield and ran forward. Meanwhile, Hanma and other tank-type users lined up behind Adol. They emitted spiritual qi according to the formation and process they usually followed. Soon, golden ripples emanated out from the users’ bodies accordingly.

Woong!

Initially, the user’s individual powers didn’t resonate well with each other. Every user’s spiritual wave was unique and different, and their individual, specialized powers rejected each other’s. At most, users could only avoid directly opposing other players.

However, there was a rare, special case between twins in which their spiritual waves coincided and resonated perfectly, giving the spiritual waves an added effect and allowing them to execute advanced techniques. Martial artists and mages who attained this resonance could generate overwhelming spiritual waves and advanced formations.

Ting!

When about half of the Masters tuned into the resonance of the Smashing Vajra Formation, a huge wedge-shaped wave pressed the surroundings and spread out. Regrants whistled after feeling the force emanating from the formation, which cracked the stone stairway he was standing on.

“Oh, it’s the resonance synchro function. Jenica always complained about how hard it was to fine-tune and implement it, but it seems she finally succeeded!”

The Masters- no, every DIO user could synchronize with each other’s spiritual powers, just like the small percentage of twins. This even applied to abilities in areas that could never be mixed, such as magic and divine power. These skills resonated in a way that didn’t harm the players. As long as the user implemented the method correctly, they could resonate with another person and maximize the formation’s output power.

In other words, the more users there were, the stronger the output force.

Whoosh!

It was the same kind of spiritual pressure that oppressed Mahashah, the transcendent figure who attacked Starting in the past. Yet, at that time, the average level of the users was low, and they suppressed and overwhelmed Mahashah through sheer numbers. Now, although there was only a low number of players, their average level reinforced the overall spiritual pressure considerably. Furthermore, Arthur, the strongest swordsman and a member of the Heaven above the Heavens, stood at the center of the Smashing Vajra Formation, thus heightening the formation’s overall force to the extreme.

‘So intense and powerful… if I stand in front of it- no, if I became the formation’s target, I wouldn’t be able to escape and would surely die,’ Merlin thought.

Merlin groaned inwardly while generating magic in the back half of the formation, but Regrants laughed while watching the spiritual wave rushing at him like a tidal wave.

“Just what are you all planning to do…?”

Boom!

When Regrant’s hands cut through the air as if shooing pesky insects, the previously spiritual wave instantly dispersed, and nearly fifty players bounced in all directions like bowling pins hit by a bowling ball. He moved in an instant, so the users didn’t even have time to scream. The entire scene seemed unreal, like a movie using low-quality CG effects.

“Cry, Alistar! Pulverize!”

Once Leighann yelled his spell chant, the ground trembled, and everything bounced into the air like bullets. The force was so powerful that the steel podium in the field shot up immediately and soon looked like a dot in the sky.

Crack!

However, Regrants flew right in front of Leighann and broke the defensive magic barrier that protected the latter’s body. Regrants had easily resisted the upward force exerted by Leighann’s spell and crossed through the empty space to attack.

“Darkness, illusory dreams, eternity, destruction, isolation, and humanities… open.”

“O-oh, my God! Adalcha is simultaneously opening five concepts?!”

Uncaring whether the distant chakra users screamed with astonishment, Adalcha emitted a plume of darkness spiritual qi as he opened his chakra concepts. The enormous power he created already had a designated target, so he didn’t even need to hit it.

“Cruel Nightmare Hall.”

Adalcha’s inner microcosmic world opened as Adalcha activated his greatest destructive attack, which plunged the target into a nightmare that repeated forever, eventually leading to ruin. As long as he specified a target range, the chakra attack was powerful enough to put hundreds of thousands of people to death.