Translated by: LittleShanks
Proofread by: Flowerbridgetoo
Chapter 29 – Book of Order
「Stop dawdling! Hurry up and cast Meteor already!」Nie Yan pestered through the voice chat.
「Meteor takes ten seconds to cast! By the time I finish casting, it’ll already be too late!」Tang Yao anxiously replied. He estimated before he could even finish channeling the spell, he would be overrun by Rock Spiders.
「I don’t care, just start casting it! Hurry up!」
Tang Yao clenched his teeth and began unravelling the Talisman. Brandishing his staff, he began casting Meteor. Soon, large amounts of fire essence from the surrounding area began converging at his position.
As the fire essence gathered, the temperature in the air began rising due to the scorching blaze.
Tang Yao could see Nie Yan leading twenty plus Rock Spiders through the passageway into the cave intersection. As the twenty plus spiders surged into the intersection like a massive wave, Nie Yan ran over to the narrow passage where Tang Yao had retreated in. Only one spider managed to squeeze itself though, and as it did, it blocked off access to the passage for the rest of the spiders in the interaction.
“Concussive Strike!” Nie Yan turned around and struck the spider in the head which caused the spider in the passage to enter a dazed state.
Eight seconds… seven seconds… six seconds… five seconds…
As time slowly ticked away, the fire essence gathered around Tang Yao became increasingly intense.
For the most part, spells that required a set of syllables to cast were ones that had a relatively large area of effect. From Nie Yan’s knowledge and experience, Meteor was the only area of effect spell that Elementalists and Arcane Mages could learn at Level 0, and it was quite efficient at killing a large amount of monsters. However, even if you were to gather up a thousand Elementalists and Arcane Mages, you might not necessarily find one that possessed Meteor.
After three seconds, the spider awoke from its dazed state. As soon as it did, it pounced towards Nie Yan. In reaction, Nie Yan raised his dagger and began skirmishing with the Rock Spider. He firmly kept the spider in place and prevented any of its attacks from reaching Tang Yao so as to avoid interrupting the spell.
Ten seconds—whether this moment was long or short depended on one’s perspective. However the truth of the matter was once you counted from one to ten, the moment would simply be over.
Tang Yao raised his staff and in a trance-like state, had finished chanting lines of strange syllables that even he himself didn’t know the meaning of. In the next moment, an enormous fireball fell from the air.「Boom!」A deafening explosion echoed out as the fireball collided with the group of spiders. On impact, the fireball resembled aheavenly maiden as it scattered fiery blossoms in every direction. These blazing flowers didn’t immediately extinguish upon landing on the ground. Instead, they continued igniting the area around them and dealt a fixed amount of damage every second to the spiders that were caught in the explosion.
「Scritch! Scritch!」The twenty plus spiders caught in the explosion were in a state of upheaval as they cried out in agony. However, no matter what kind of state they were in, they were still unable to attack Nie Yan and Tang Yao.
So, he had already calculated everything. No wonder he dared to aggro over so many monsters at once.
Nie Yan and Tang Yao were only able to kill monsters like this by taking advantage of the unique topography of this intersection. This tactic of using Meteor on a large group of enemies would have been completely suicidal if they had tried it in an open field. Normally, in extremely narrow spaces, the destruction caused by Meteor would be extremely limited. However, as it turned out, the intersection within the cave was quite suitable for casting the spell.
Tang Yao began admiring Nie Yan even more. He was even able to think of a tactic like this…
After a second had passed, another fireball rained down from the air and exploded over the area.
The brilliant flames continued passing through the air.
Five enormous fireballs consecutively fell from the air. Six of these spiders were directly crushed to the death by the fireballs, sixteen of them burned to the death from the continuous area of effect burn damage, while the remaining spiders were all dying or near death. The destructive capabilities of Meteor was quite evident before their eyes.
As Tang Yao looked down at the pile of Rock Spider corpses laid before him, he gazed out blankly for a good moment. All of this destruction was caused singlehandedly caused by him! This kind of realization was hard for him to conceive.
“Nie Yan… Did I really do all this?” Tang Yao foolishly asked. He confirmed it after looking at the enormous amount of experience he gained from killing the spiders. Just a moment ago, he really was the caster of that formidable Meteor spell.
“Why are you blankly staring out? Let’s take care of the remaining spiders,” Nie Yan smiled and said.
“I’m out of mana.” Tang Yao gazed at his mana bar that was almost completely bereft of anything. He could still cast a few Arcane Missiles; however, as for following them up with a spell like Flame Explosion, that was something he was completely unable to do.
After hearing Tang Yao’s words, Nie Yan seemingly recalled something; Meteor was a spell that voraciously consumed mana. Tang Yao being able to even cast it was already quite impressive. Not to mention, he even had a little bit of mana left over to cast other spells!
Besides the mana consumption, Meteor also required Talismans which weren’t cheap either. Therefore, if they were to continue casting the spell to grind monsters, it would quite quickly eat away at Tang Yao’s expenses.
Nie Yan pounced towards one of the remaining Rock Spiders and killed it with Vital Strike. He and Tang Yao then quickly began clearing the area of any remaining spiders.
After a moment, every single of one of those twenty plus spiders had met their end and lay collapsed on the floor. Nie Yan walked over to the corpses and began gathering up the items that had dropped, which amounted to a total of three coppers. In the end, not a single piece of equipment had dropped. He then glanced at his experience bar. The experience he gained from killing so many Rock Spiders had caused his experience bar to raise by another three percent.
“This area’s already cleared out of monsters. Let’s head deeper into the cave,” Nie Yan suggested. Mob grinding in such a manner could only be experienced every once in a while, because the respawn rate of the monsters in the area wouldn’t be able to keep up.
“What!? Why are we going even further in?” Tang Yao asked in a surprised manner.
“I still have something to do deeper in the cave. Besides, the scenery inside this cave is quite mystical,” Nie Yan replied as he smiled mysteriously. Only when he arrived inside this cave did he suddenly vaguely recall of a matter related to this cave.
There was a natural pond that had formed at the very end of the Rock Spider Cave. The water in this pond was quite deep, and there existed many currents underwater which weaved in all directions and intersected with one another. As for why these currents existed, it was because the pond connected to an underground lake. After passing through the lake, you would find yourself arriving at a sealed ravine which grew all kinds of exotic medicinal herbs in large abundance. However, the most important part was that this sealed ravine contained an item that countless players would yearn for even in their dreams; a torn page from the Book of Order.
In the lore, the Book of Order and Book of Chaos were both divine objects handed down since the Era of Shared Governance (873–1235). Their legend had still been spread after the passing of five or six hundred years. Their emergence was a mystery, as well as the origins of their author.
Order and Chaos represented the laws of the world.
The two books each contained six volumes, thirty-six chapters total. These books represented two distinct and opposing powers which were scattered across the world.
Legend has it, if one were to gather every page and complete the Book of Order, they would be able to revive the God of Order and gain immense power. Moreover, the owner of the Book of Order would become the master of all the Holy Shrines in the various regions and become the Supreme Pontiff of the Righteous Faction. In the direct opposite, if one were to complete the Book of Chaos, they would gain immense destructive power and become the arch-nemesis to the owner of the Book of Order. If every page were collected, they would become the Ruler of Darkness.
The Book of Order and the Book of Chaos were both legendary existences.
When the first six-chapter volume emerged, a cinematic played showing the long history of the Viridian Empire and Satreen Empire.
These six chapters from the Book of Order were the Chapter of Justice, the Chapter of Honesty, the Chapter of Courage, the Chapter of Wisdom, the Chapter of Equality and the Chapter of Freedom.
These six chapter fell in the hands of six people. Each one of these members were experts who possessed a seat as one of the top one hundred members in the Righteous faction. The first seat, the third seat and the six seat each respectively held the Chapter of Justice, the Chapter of Courage, and the Chapter of Wisdom. As such, the correlation between the two caused these chapters from the Book of Order to be viewed as divine existences by the public.
It was correct that these chapters from the Book of Order possessed powerful strength, but the caveat was that they could not be stored in a player’s personal storage. Thus, the player could only carry them on person. When the possessor of a chapter was killed by another player, the chapter would always drop, unless the player possessed all six chapters. Due to this, the fighting and killing instigated by the Book of Order had nearly never ended.
The Chapter of Justice, Chapter of Courage, and Chapter of Wisdom fell into the respective hands of the leaders of three super guilds. The possessors of the remaining chapters also granted the possessors formidable power, but whenever they set out, they would always maintain a low profile. They also wouldn’t easily use their chapter’s powers in the presence of other players. However, Nie Yan had witnessed the powerful might of the chapters from the Book of Order in videos before.
The holder of the Chapter of Justice was the president of Angel Corp, a Demon Hunter from the Elf race, Angyi Tianshi. He once confronted over one hundred hostile enemies. When facing these enemies, he summoned sixteen Righteous Knights and defeated all of his enemies. One person had defeated over a hundred players. This event would later become a legend.
The holder of the Chapter of Wisdom was Holy Judgement’s guild leader, a Holy Mage, Emperor Killer. He had withstood the invasion of the Undead. He used the Forbidden Magic Resplendent Brilliance and eliminated three hundred liches, which turned him into another legend who was an owner of a chapter from the Book of Order.
The holder of the Chapter of Courage was the guild leader of the Holy Empire Guild, a Berserker, Sleepy Fox. During a guild war, he had rushed into the enemy ranks all by himself, killing an enemy with every few steps and beheaded over two hundred enemies. He had slaughtered everything before him.
[TL: Just a hint, the name Sleepy Fox has appeared in the previous chapters before. Here’s a hint, the chapter number is unlucky and even unluckier on a Friday.]
Nie Yan was burning with excitement when he thought of this.