CHAPTER 136: WHEN THE GENERAL FALLS, THE GATE OPENS

Though his first assessment had been wrong, Ryan felt an unexpected rush of relief. Two Elemental Generals had seemed impossible, but one? One he could handle... or so he thought.

That sense of victory was short-lived. General Eldris revealed his hidden strength, unleashing a wave of abilities that struck Ryan like a hammer to the chest.

Elemental Earth: all enemies would now suffer bursts of spell damage from various elements, striking at random intervals.

Elemental Foe: enemies marked by Eldris would suffer devastating critical strikes.

Elemental Armor: any damage dealt to Eldris might be reflected back at the attacker, leaving him completely unharmed.

All three powers came crashing down at once, and what unsettled Ryan most was the merciless nature of Elemental Earth. In the span of only five seconds, three separate waves of magic ripped into him. The damage wasn’t overwhelming in isolation—about two hundred per hit—but the constant barrage was terrifying. A standard adventuring party usually had around thirty-five hundred health, with only the sturdiest tanks pushing closer to four thousand. Under that kind of ceaseless punishment, no healer alive could keep up for long.

Ryan certainly couldn’t have, if not for Agu, the Nyman Shaman, who kept him alive with a steady stream of healing spells.

Elemental Armor was less alarming. The fewer strikes Eldris suffered, the less chance that reflected damage would come back. Ryan struck the general four times, and only once did the magic recoil on him. That was manageable.

What truly threatened him was Elemental Foe. That ability nearly doubled Eldris’s damage output. Even without shifting forms to gain elemental bonuses, the general’s ordinary strikes landed with brutal force—over six hundred per blow. A critical hit doubled that to twelve hundred.

And Ryan had been marked. Every swing carved away more than twelve hundred of his health. On average, he was losing fifteen hundred every two seconds. Even at full strength, he would last no more than ten seconds without healing support. Worse still, this was only the second phase of the fight. There could easily be a third.

While Ryan struggled against Eldris’s relentless assault, Mia and the others pressed deeper into the Forest of Decay, a level thirty dungeon notorious for its brutality. The lure of vast experience was tempting, but survival demanded patience, and so they took their time. By then, the dungeon’s progress had reached its second boss. At the top of the rankings stood Crimson Wake.

The guild had shocked the player community not long ago, first by felling the Level 25 Guardian—a feat many had dismissed as impossible—then by securing the world’s first clear of the Forest of Decay’s opening boss.

Crimson Wake had once been obscure, a name barely whispered in the halls of established guilds. Some had assumed their Guardian victory was the result of reckless sacrifice. But their triumph in the Forest of Decay proved otherwise: they were strong, disciplined, and ruthless.

Skilled unaffiliated players, unwilling to waste their talents in smaller guilds, began circling Crimson Wake like moths to a flame. They dreamed of joining early, rising through the ranks, and securing their place in what many now saw as a guild destined for greatness.

But Crimson Wake remained silent. They posted no recruitment notices, opened no applications, gave no signal they wanted more hands. It was as though they had no need of anyone at all.

Although some self-proclaimed critics on the forums railed against Crimson Wake’s silence, their outrage eventually fizzled out. Without explanation from the guild, the controversy lost momentum, and attention shifted to a new sensation.

On the Dark Horde side, another guild had risen from obscurity with shocking speed. Just like Crimson Wake, it had been completely unknown until now. They not only cleared the first boss of the Forest of Decay as the second guild in the world but also pushed the second boss to below ten percent health before the eyes of countless spectators. They called themselves Black Phantom.

If Ryan had known this, he would have realized something was terribly off. Black Phantom wasn’t supposed to appear until an expansion much later. Yet here they were already, destined to become Crimson Wake’s greatest rival for the title of strongest guild in the world—on the Horde side.

Ryan, however, had no time to worry about future legends. His present was a desperate struggle. His health had dropped below fifteen hundred, his mana had dwindled to a mere one hundred and twenty—barely enough to keep himself standing, and far too little to cast even a single Radiant Light.

"Am I really going to have to use my last card?" The thought clawed at him.

Another of Eldris’s crushing strikes slammed into him. His health plunged to just two hundred. With no choice left, Ryan triggered Desperate Healing, flooding his body with light and restoring himself to full.

General Eldris wasn’t in much better shape. His health had fallen below ten percent. Ryan glanced at his potion timer: still on cooldown for a few more seconds. If he could just regain enough mana, he knew he could finish the general. But then... what came after?

Ryan doubted this Unique Quest would end with Eldris. The general himself had spoken of being sent by a higher power. If Eldris fell, that higher power would surely intervene. And when it did, Ryan would be stripped of his trump cards—his Divine Shield gone, his Desperate Healing already spent. Could he possibly survive what came next?

He didn’t know. But he refused to give up here.

The potion’s cooldown ended. Ryan seized the chance, gulping it down and drawing on the surge of nearly a thousand mana. He unleashed everything he had left, spell after spell crashing into the general. Eldris’s health plummeted: five thousand, four thousand, three thousand... until only a single point remained.

Then, without warning, the general became invincible.

The battle was finished. A vast black rift tore open behind Eldris, pulling his body into the void. Agu, the Nyman Shaman, let out a ragged breath. "At last... General Eldris has returned to the Elemental Plane. Had his strength not been weakened today, we would have surely perished."

Ryan’s health and mana swiftly replenished, but the respite was hollow. A cinematic overtook his vision, and the world around him shifted. The ground rumbled. A portal of staggering size cracked open in the air, its edges sparking with dark light.

The roar that followed froze Agu in place, draining the color from his face. The protective totems he had planted shattered instantly, their beneficial effects erased as if they had never existed. All aid, all support, gone.

And then, from within the portal, a

voice thundered across the battlefield.

"Face me, mortal!"