YM778.TV Chapter 131: Reward boost
After Mark\'s video went viral, all Humans had been given a new hope.
Its contents were—as long as you sacrifice an animal in your stead, I would help you survive this war. It was a promise given to intimidate the A-rank Hunters.
By saying that, at least some humans will be tempted and will surely come to the mega-dungeon to throw out some sacrifices into it. To expand the mega-dungeon, native creatures had to be killed inside it.
And what better way than to make humans do it for him?
Now that he had the cooperation of the A-rankers, Mark revealed that truth to them. He required sacrifices to grow the mega-dungeon.
He messaged them:
For the dungeon to expand quickly, I need a lot of animals to die inside it. The more animals that die, the less humans would have to die. The animal population is much bigger than the human population anyway and they are cattle—throw all of them into the dungeon. The faster you let them die, the faster this will be over.
The A-rankers started to help Mark\'s video get even more popular than it was and even gave the content in it some credibility.
Yamuna said in a video: "For every animal that dies, one less human dies. So throw all of them into the dungeon—we support it! Anyone who throws the most by the end of this month will get a reward of 1 million credits!"
Some animal life protection authorities and such tried to interfere but they were wholly ignored and even called clowns. Then began the purge!
Many men and women began to gather all sorts of animals and move near the mega-dungeon, throwing them into it. Meanwhile, most others began to move the furthest away from the dungeon, heading for the parts of the world that would be devoured by it the last.
They had one mission and that was to survive till the Dungeon devoured everything!
Hunters began creating teams, some created special shelters where they could hold the demons at bay. While some others found hiding spots deep underground. All for one mission—live till the world ends.
And the mega-dungeon… expanded at a crazy pace. By merely the first week, it devoured an entire nation. The more native animals it killed, the more it expanded. The more it expanded, the more forests were covered by the dungeon, and thus, more animals were exposed to its horrors.
The cycle was virtuous. Animals died in millions.
Demons ran amock through one city after the other.
Humans retreated from one place to the next.
A dark and suppressed aura loomed over them all.
Meanwhile, in the mega-dungeon, Mark put all his effort into learning more about human anatomy.
He had been failing to use Alchemic Transformation and had never been able to change a living being\'s shape while keeping it alive, his goal was to learn enough about the human body so that he could change his own and other creatures\' shape into anything he desired. While being alive!
Days passed, weeks passed, and a month passed. The mega Dungeon had covered many countries at this point and Mark could feel a constant tug at him—the Will of the Demon World was asking him to give his ownership of the Dungeon over to it.
Mark ignored it.
It then improved the offer and Mark wondered hesitantly.
[Mission From the Demon World\'s Will]
•> Hand your authority over the mega-dungeon to the Demon World\'s Will.
[Reward: Seal of Destiny (x5), Portal Key to an unconquered World (x5)]
The reward had increased from (x1) to (x5)!
Reol\'ran advised against it and he didn\'t check it further. He immersed himself in the knowledge of human anatomy and biology. Atoms, organs, tissues, muscles, structural differences between lifeforms, digestive structure.
One by one, he began to understand things.
A human—or any lifeform for that matter—was not one thing. They were a system of many things working together to create \'one thing.\' When everything worked in their own weird harmony, only then, will one be able to change the shape of a living being while keeping it alive.
If he wanted to change the shape of his eyes, he not only had to change its shape but also the shape of the nerves within so that it could still allow light to move into the pupils and then let the information move into the brain so that he could comprehend what he saw. Shape has to change but the function should remain.
In total, one and a half months passed before Mark left the tree hollow along with Yuri and Dona. The hamster rested atop his head.
Taking a deep breath, he looked at the murky skies that stretched to the end of the world.
The Boss stood kneeling outside, tongue out like a dog. The Minotaur, too.
In the last months, Mark had slowly made it give out its own true name. He had used many tricks to do that—mainly by tricking Lumla into asking the Minotaur that question using some simple trickery—and now, both the Minotaur and the Boss were his servants.
Mark took into a flight, only taking the hamster with him. He felt a strange emotion.
He stopped flying and stood stationarily above a city that was currently going through an intense battle. Two B-rank Hunters were holding back atleast a hundred Demonlings, protecting a school from being invaded. The school was full of humans of all ages.
A shelter?
Mark closed his eyes.
What a strange feeling. It is as if I am complete.
He flew away once more, flying through the cluster of clouds to appear somewhere else. He looked around. As far as he could see, there was no end to the mega-dungeon. It stretched forever.
"Did the Dungeon completely destroy the Will of the Hunter World?" he asked, slightly dumbfounded.
"Of course no!" Reol\'ran said. "World Wills are not things that we mere little creatures could destroy. They are things that impact the World from a 4-dimensional level and we are all 3-dimensional creatures. Your Dungeon must have just covered the entirety of the Hunter World from one end to the other, so the World Will must not know where else to go and is just looking around its own world."
"Did the dungeon really?"
His heart pounded in his chest.
The violet screen confirmed it for him.
[Mission From the Demon World\'s Will!!!]
•> Hand your authority over the Hunter World to the Demon World\'s Will.
[Reward: Love of the Demon World]
"..."
Mark was speechless but his heart couldn\'t help its pounding. There was that weird feeling—a feeling of absolute freedom. A glee. A glee of being so powerful. Mark felt as if it was a sort of drug.
"It\'s not over yet!" Reol\'ran warned. "The Love of the Demon World. If you accept it, you will have incredibly auspicious luck whenever you are in the Demon World. You will be blessed like the son of the heavens! Do you want that or do you want something that would give you true, actual benefits?"
"Actual benefits!"
"Like every Dungeon has a Dungeon Core, every World has a World Core. One can only find it if the World Will gets completely pushed out of the World. And now, you can finally find it. Close your eyes and try to spread your Soul Sense everywhere."
He did as asked and immediately, he sensed a thumping heart and opened his eyes in surprise. The world was faintly breathing, and hidden beneath its atmosphere—space itself—was a heart-like Core.