MMORPG: Rebirth of the Mortal Online

40  Devourer

The sword, lying on the ground, started to change. The blade started to have scales and a serpentine shape, as if it were turning into a snake. It soon looked like a silver snake.

At the tip of the blade, a snake's head appeared, with two green eyes and a forked tongue flicking out. The snake's head opened its mouth, revealing two sharp fangs.

And then the snake lunged towards the unarmed Adam and chomped off two of his fingers from his left hand.

Adam, not showing a single pain in his face, even though it must've hurt, continued kneeling silently on the ground while the blood dripped down his hand onto the rough ground below.

While the game didn't perfectly replicate the game's pain factor, it was still tenth of the real world pain that he experienced. It was far from a painless experience.

As the snake, transformed from the blade, slithered down the ground, it suddenly stopped and began to turn back into the steel shortsword.

Once the transformation was complete, the blade of the sword cracked and shattered into a thousand pieces. The durability had reached zero percent.

Rumble!

Adam's stomach growled loudly. It was as if he hadn't eaten in days.

He, with his bloody left hand, unzipped the backpack and took out some food items, then started devouring them greedily.

It took some time, but his hunger was soon satisfied, and his health returned to normal. It also helped his stamina to recover slightly.

"Ngh…" Adam unzipped the backpack, slung it over his back next to his shield, and stood up painfully.

He then gazed at the broken shortsword and sighed momentarily.

'It's fine…' Adam opened his inventory and pulled out another steel shortsword, perfectly identical, but in much better condition.

It was Nick's steel shortsword.

Adam slowly slid it inside his scabbard, then looked at his left hand, which was missing two fingers. It wasn't as bad as he expected.

There was a time when the Little God skill caused both of his legs to be swallowed. If that had happened, his time in the tutorial would've been much more difficult.

'I also don't have enough Shinecoins to purchase The Flask of Setting Sun, which would allow me to recover my lost fingers and lost limbs if I am unfortunate enough to lose one.'

He then quickly checked the timepiece, noticed that he was already late for the meeting.

Adam quickly checked the two paths he didn't take, but instead the other players did.

'Since they returned here earlier than me, they must've encountered dead ends, and they ran straight back here. Well, there are seven other paths, which would take forever to explore.

'For now, I'll go to the meeting.'

Adam turned his back on all the corpses and started walking back to the entrance of the third floor.

…

"Ron!"

In the safe area, a mercenary loudly opened the door to the indoor gym. He was dressed in light armor and had a symbol of the guild he was part of on his shoulder pad. n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

There was another symbol on his other shoulder pad, signaling his rank in the Mercenary Hierarchy.

The symbol was a man seemingly shouting orders to someone. It didn't show who he was shouting at.

It was a symbol of the Ordergiver, the third rank in the Mercenary Hierarchy.

Ron was doing handstands inside the indoor gym, sweat glistening on his well-toned body that seemed like it was made out of steel.

"What?" Ron asked without stopping his handstands and then started doing one-handed handstands. He was pushing himself up and down, his muscles bulging with each movement.

"S-something happened!" The Ordergiver shouted shakingly. "I-I think you should come to the control room!"

"What happened?" Ron asked with a frown, then flipped over and landed on his feet gracefully.

He grabbed his towel from the chair, wiped the sweat off, and put a shirt back on.

"T-the third group has been annihilated!"

"What?!" Ron said in shock, but then he asked, "They all died to the boss?"

It was strange to him, as he expected Nick to be a promising leader figure. He was still quite arrogant, stemming from his highborn status, but Ron still had some hopes for him.

"That's the thing." The Ordergiver gulped. "They didn't find the boss. They were killed by another player!"

"Who?" Ron asked with shock.

"It's Adam!" The Ordergiver responded with a shout. "He killed them single-handedly!"

Ron's eyes widened in disbelief.

…

"He is not coming!"

In the first chamber of the third floor, players argued loudly.

"He is already late by half an hour!" A player screamed. "He must've found the Boss Room and is not coming back!"

"Calm down." Donald tried to calm them down. "The one hour limit was too short for everyone to arrive on time. I didn't know the passageways were so long. It takes a long time to navigate through them."

The players looked frustrated.

Meanwhile, Ramon and Hannibal stood near the entrance with smiles playing on their lips.

"He must've died." Hannibal said, "There were so many of them, and now that he hasn't returned, it is clear what happened."

Ramon crossed his arms and gazed in the direction of the passageway, where Adam and, afterwards, Nick's group went.

"Let's wait for another half an hour. If he hadn't come before that, we'll go search for him, alright?"

Donald said to the frustrated players.

The players eventually sighed and nodded, then moved back to their own small groups.

Donald sighed and turned to check out the rightmost path. His brows were creased into a frown.

At that moment, his ears perked up as he heard faint stepping noises in the distance. His eyes slowly widened in surprise.

"Someone is coming!"

All the players turned their heads towards the rightmost path.

Seth looked the most surprised, as he expected Adam to have already betrayed him. He didn't have any trust in him and believed that Donald was foolish to trust him.

"Is it Nick and them?" Hannibal asked with a frown.

Ramon looked stern. "There is only one set of footsteps."

A figure emerged from the path, making the players gasp in shock. The figure was stained with blood, with two of his fingers missing. It was clear that he had been through a violent ordeal.

"Adam..?" Donald's eyes shook.

"I checked three paths; I didn't find the room…" Adam said before coughing up blood.

"Are you alright?" Donald asked in shock. "What the fuck happened to you?"

"He must've discovered the Boss Room and got beaten the fuck up!" A player argued angrily. "Then he must've escaped with a tail between his legs. I told you all that we shouldn't have trusted him!"

Donald frowned and asked, "Did you find the Boss Room? What else could've done this to you?"

Adam wiped the blood off his lips and said, "Remember the guys in the cafeteria? Well, they didn't like what I did to them, so they ambushed me."

The players exchanged shocked glances and forgot about the fact that there was another group doing the same floor as them. It was basically a competition between the two groups.

"Are they still there?"

"What shall we do?"

"Should we go find them and fight them? It is not wise to move alone, as they might ambush us as well!"

"Adam?" Donald turned back to him and asked. "What happened to them?"

"They're no longer with us…" Adam said and held his waist in pain. "I am going to return to the safe area. You guys can continue searching without any worry…"

Donald and others watched in shock as Adam walked towards the exit, heading back to the safe area.

As Adam limped past Ramon, his lips curled into a slight smile and he said, "Ramon, nice try."

Ramon gritted his teeth and threw a side glance at him. "How did you survive?"

"If you try something like that with me again, I'll show you how I survived." Adam finished with a spiteful tone and then stepped through the exit, leaving Ramon seething with anger.