Lord Abomination threw something out from its mouth on Zach's lap.
"This is…" Zach looked at the weirdly shaped thing and muttered, "Is this what I think it is?"
[Indeed,] the dragon said. [This is the core of the world eater.]
Zach inspected the core and uttered, "None of the bosses so far had spawned a core. Now, this makes me wonder if the soul eater was truly supposed to be the level 75th boss…"
"What do you mean?" Victoria asked with a confused look on her face.
"I think Zach wants to say that the boss of this floor was supposed to be something else, but it was replaced by a soul eater by someone." After a brief pause, she added, "Well, in this matter. It was the gods' doing, of course."
"Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if this boss or floor was supposed to be a secret or bonus floor or something. But since it is still called the 75th floor, there are chances that the soul eater ate the original boss of this floor," Zach asserted.
It took a while for Victoria to process what Zach and Aria told her. And after pondering for a while, she turned to Zach and asked, "Do you think the same would have happened with the floor 100?"
"I don't think so." Aria shook her head and said, "The gods did this on the 75th floor to take the players by surprise. And now that the players are aware of it, it's highly unlikely that they would pull the same move again."
"But then again, we are talking about the petty gods here, so who knows what goes in and out of their brains," Aria added with a scoff.
"Yeah." Zach nodded and said, "To be honest, I don't think anyone in this game made it past the floor 75th. Of course, some would have, but that's when the boss was the original boss, not the soul eater."
"Possible." Victoria pondered for a while and uttered, "So do you think the boss of the 100th floor wouldn't be as hard as the soul eater?"
"There are chances that the gods could pull the same trick again, so I can't be sure about this. But let's go with the 50/50 chance, so we don't get surprised or disappointed by it. But wait…"
Zach turned to Victoria and raised his brows as he asked, "Why are you asking all this? Surely, you don't plan to come with us, right?"
Victoria nodded and said, "I am coming with you."
"No, you are not. It's so dangerous!" Zach retorted.
"I can say the same to you. And besides, you don't get to decide what I have to do. You are only a friend of mine," Victoria remarked in an annoyed tone with a furious look on her face.
Even though Victoria said that she didn't truly mean it, she simply found it annoying that Zach didn't listen to her when she was preventing him from proceeding to the next floor. Now, he was expecting Victoria to listen to him.
"Come on, Victoria…" Zach groaned with a sigh and said, "Please."
Victoria squinted her eyes at Zach and asked with a judging look on her face, "Did you listen to me when I asked you to retreat?"
"…" Zach didn't say anything because he had nothing to say.
"Fair enough." Aria scoffed and said, "I don't see why you don't want Victoria to come with us when there is a high possibility that we wouldn't encounter yet another unbeatable boss again."
After a few seconds, Zach sighed and groaned, "Fine."
"Of course."
"But you will retreat if the floors get difficult, okay?"
"If I feel like I can't go further, I will retreat with my guildmates," Victoria nodded in agreement.
"Wait, they are coming too?!" Zach exclaimed in shock.
"Yes. They are a few of the best players in the guild. I had brought them here as a backup for the emergencies, but the last emergency was more like a…"
"Like tragedy…" Zach completed Victoria's sentence.
"Yeah…" Victoria muttered in a disdainful tone after remembering the deaths of the guild members.
She also remembered Cindy and Munbeta, who constantly fought all the time.
"Say, Zach…" Victoria looked at Zach with teary eyes and asked, "Did we avenge them?"
"Yeah, we did." Zach pointed his gaze at the soul eater's core and said, "We did."
"No, we didn't," Aria quipped and continued, "We didn't avenge them. We didn't avenge anyone. There are hundreds of people dying every day, and it's all those gods' fault. We have to end them before it's too late."
Aria looked at Zach and Victoria with a furious look on her face and said, "That is the true avenge.; that is the true vengeance."
Aria's feelings were mixed regarding the Gods' impact. First, she simply connected her domain with the Gods' impact out of curiosity to see what the gods had done. But then she met Zach, a life, after thousands of years.
Sure, their first meeting didn't go as it should have, considering they were officially lovers now, and Aria was part of his harem.
Aria later managed to get access to the game, but not as a goddess, as a player whose powers were limited by her stats.
Aria had grown weak since her prime after. After the exile, she lost her other half, her sister— Erza, who was life, and death was nothing without life.
Aria slowly lost her powers, but she still had a tremendous amount of power left compared to everyone else. But it wasn't enough.
Aria was in Gods' Impact with 10% of her soul, meaning her power was at 10% than her true powers. And even that 10% of her power was limited by her stats as a character in Gods' Impact.
Now that she had fallen in love with Zach and made a few friends, who were also her first friends in her life, Aria was even more furious at the gods.
She wanted to end all of them for good and undo their creation since she and Erza were the ones who created them in the first place.
***
Total players in the game- 1,297,791
0 new players logged in.
37 players died.
====
Author's Note- Betrayed by their own creation, what treachery is this?