Chapter 4

Suddenly, a bitter smile appeared on his face.

Because someone saw himself rushing forward without hesitation.

If Raven was still just the top player in the game, he would have undoubtedly abandoned this NPC named Karin, because death in the game was permanent, and every player only had three lives. Losing any one of them meant that character would be gone forever.

But now, Raven was a fusion of two souls, and in his soul's memory, there were many years spent with Karin.

Before this moment, Raven had never thought that something like 'I can't control myself' would happen.

Since it did, he had to do his best.

In an instant, Raven controlled his muscles and made a left hook.

This clumsy boxing technique, of course, missed. The Black Erosion Cultist sneered and slapped away Raven's fist. Raven, undeterred, rammed into him with his shoulder, looking like a child who had never been trained in fighting.

The Black Erosion Cultist didn't care; how much strength could such a frail body have?

Suddenly, the Black Erosion Cultist felt a sharp pain in his chest. A dagger had somehow appeared there.

Elbow strike!

No, it should be called an elbow dagger!

The Black Erosion Cultist paid for his carelessness with his life.

"Run!" Raven's roar didn't seem to wake Karin from her panic. She looked at him with a terrified gaze.

Raven soon realized that Karin wasn't looking at him but at something behind him.

"Bang—"

Raven felt as if he had been hit by a charging bull.

Another Black Erosion Cultist? Where did he come from?

"Ah—"

When Raven came to, the only thing spreading through his body was pain. His not-so-robust body convulsed violently from some intense stimulation. He knew he was on the brink of death.

His mind was in chaos, and he felt a deadly choking sensation in his neck. The pain, as if it could melt his brain, came in waves from his stomach.

Raven realized he was being held by the neck and lifted high. The other person was taller and stronger than him. Worse, Karin's face was covered in blood, and she lay on the ground, her condition unknown.

Karin! Don't die!

Gritting his teeth, the once 118th-level legendary assassin Raven made the best response—kneeing the other person's throat.

A sudden and unexpected blow.

It hit, but wasn't fatal.

Raven's full-force knee strike only made the other person loosen his grip from the pain, without the sensation of crushing the throat that Raven had imagined.

Raven's vision, blackened from lack of oxygen, hadn't yet recovered. The consciousness of a legendary player told him that the other person's body was too strong. This meant that the other person's Fortitude saving throw was too high, and he couldn't inflict effective damage in a physical fight.

He couldn't win!

The other person's level was likely far higher than Raven's.

In other words, the other person's challenge rating was too high!

One could imagine that the other person's name in the game would be a deep red, with a bunch of red question marks.

His vision recovered.

Raven, who had been thrown to the ground, ignored the dizziness and quickly scanned his surroundings, looking for a glimmer of hope.

He found it!

Three ungraceful rolls, and he grabbed Karin, dodging the other person's large hand. His superior agility allowed him to quickly push Karin into a sewer opening by the cobblestone road, and he followed her in.

The surrounding light suddenly disappeared, and Raven entered a cold, dark world. He took a deep breath, and the damp, decaying air filled his lungs. While an ordinary person might find it hard to endure, Raven, accustomed to walking in the dark, felt a sense of relief.

When the momentum of the fall made Raven roll a few times in the sewer, a rough man's voice roared from behind, "Brat! I'll tear you apart!"

Raven smiled. The sewer opening wasn't too narrow, nor too wide. From a quick glance, he knew the burly man couldn't fit through.

A few seconds later, the man's wild laughter echoed from outside the sewer, "Little bastard, you think you can survive after being hit by my [Corrosive Tooth]? You and that little slut will rot in the gutter! Hahaha!"

Raven's first reaction was to curse in his mind, "If I survive, I'll be the first to kill you and your ancestors!"

Despite the curses, Raven's mood couldn't be good.

[Corrosive Tooth] was a rare first-level divine spell in the Auctus World that players rarely encountered in the beginner area. It dealt 36 points of damage over 3 hours, enough to kill a beginner three times over.

Divine spells weren't like cabbages; using them recklessly would incur divine punishment. Was it worth using a divine spell against a civilian boy?

How unlucky did he have to be to be hit by this thing? What was going on?

Damn it, if I were still the Master of Shadows or the legendary assassin, I could have easily wiped out your entire lineage with one hand...

If this had happened to someone else in the beginner area, Raven would have laughed three times and patted the guy on the shoulder, "Congratulations, you won the lottery. Die early, reincarnate early, go buy a lottery ticket!"

Happening to himself, Raven could only say, "Besides swearing, I have nothing to say."

After successfully transmigrating, the body was his, and so was the fatal injury. He had to find a way to save himself!

He had already performed [Self-Stabilization] again without noticing, and the system showed his health at -2/11. [Corrosive Tooth] deducted 1 point of health every 10 minutes, meaning Raven had to perform a [Self-Stabilization] check every 10 minutes. If he failed, the accumulated injuries would burst out, causing massive internal bleeding and abdominal corrosion...

This was what they called 'dead as a doornail.'

Shaking his head to clear the ominous thoughts, Raven panted heavily, dragging Karin's frail body through the sewage.

"Will we die?" Karin asked, a bit dazed.

"No. I'll take you to a place where we can be saved."

Saying this, the situation was far from optimistic. Recalling the information about [Corrosive Tooth], Raven knew that beginners hit by this spell had only two outcomes:

One was to write a will and prepare for the worst. To treat such injuries, one would need to buy the 7th Life Elixir from the Goddess of Life, which cost at least 5 gold coins, an impossible task for a beginner.

The other was to gamble, a brilliant life-saving method discovered by players early in the game.

Saranda Ollam, the Gold City's Wealth Church's Bishop of Coins and the Goddess's spokesperson, had a series of extravagant practices. Since the Life Elixir had purifying and cell-activating effects, the Wealth Temple often abused it. For example, using low-grade Life Elixir as a cleaning agent to clean the temple or as laundry detergent for the priests' robes.

Especially one of the five fierce women under Ollam, Barasta Serries, who used the Life Elixir as a face mask every night to maintain her youth and beauty.

When players suffered from continuous damage they couldn't handle, they would run to the sewers, following a secret escape route discovered by a player, leading to a storage room in the Wealth Church's outer courtyard. There, servants would sometimes leave Life Elixir bottles.

If they were lucky and stole a bottle or two, they wouldn't die.

In the Auctus World game, the severity of death penalties had been protested by players countless times. Dying once meant the character was permanently gone, and the only option was to create a new character at a 20-level lower class.

Raven now had no concept of reincarnation; if he died, he was dead, especially with a little girl in tow.

With no choice, Raven led Karin along the route he remembered.

They found the place.

It was a seemingly ordinary sewer wall with two small holes covered in spider webs. When Raven poked his fingers into both holes simultaneously, the wall creaked but showed no change.

"Brother, this..."

"A place where miracles might happen. Come on!" Raven took Karin's hand and pressed it against the wall. The wall seemed to disappear, and their hands easily passed through it.

"Ah!"

"This is the legendary Phantom Wall." Raven's smile gave Karin confidence. She instinctively felt that Raven knew what was behind the Phantom Wall.

"Come!" Supporting Karin, Raven passed through the Phantom Wall and found himself in a wide, empty corridor leading to a deeper, darker place.

Inside the corridor, it was much drier. They supported each other to the end of the secret passage, but Raven didn't dare open the secret door.

Opening it would trigger an alarm, alerting the entire temple.

Next to the secret door was a small air vent, just large enough for a hand. Raven glanced at it, but it was still empty.

"Stay quiet. All we can do is wait and pray." Raven said calmly, helping Karin sit quietly at the entrance of the secret passage, awaiting their fate.

There was nothing Raven could do; he couldn't even find a clean bandage to help Karin in the secret passage.

Perhaps due to blood loss, Karin was a bit delirious, her head tilted, leaning on Raven's shoulder.

In the silent darkness, Raven silently recalled the details of the Life Elixir.

Since the servants used the Life Elixir for various purposes, it wasn't fixed. Unless they were extremely lucky and a maid placed the Life Elixir used by Serries for her face mask here, most of the time it was heavily diluted, low-quality Life Elixir used for cleaning.

Some enthusiasts had calculated that the Life Elixir placed here had a 43% chance of being the lowest-quality 10th Life Elixir, 29% chance of being 9th, 18% chance of being 8th, 8% chance of being 7th, and only a 2% chance of being 6th or higher.

To deal with the [Corrosive Tooth], at least a 7th Life Elixir was needed.

Raven's rich experience made him silently sigh.

He knew this was a typical one-in-ten chance!

This feeling of not being able to control his fate was the most annoying.

Waiting for the end or a new beginning of his life was undoubtedly a terrifying and lonely experience.

The pain from the corrosion continued to torment Raven's nerves, and he didn't even dare to cover his wound. It was a strong acid, and covering it would only damage his hand as well.

The pain came in waves, his nails digging into his palms, and his lips were bitten until they bled. It was so painful; how long had it been since he felt such intense pain that could drive him mad at any moment?

Perhaps it had been since he was chased by the avatars of a dozen deities?

He couldn't move his body freely; intense movement would accelerate blood circulation, indirectly speeding up the spread of the corrosive acid.

The system's voice echoed in his ears again:

"[Self-Stabilization] check failed, performing [Wound Stabilization] check... check failed. Your injuries are worsening. If you can't restore your health to positive within ten minutes, you will be declared dead!"

As the system's voice ended, his vision blurred, and everything around him became hazy.

Raven suddenly felt a jolt of fear. If things didn't change in ten minutes, he was done for. In a daze, he had a feeling that if he died, Karin wouldn't survive either.

For the first time in his life, Raven fell into despair, and the atheist prayed to the Goddess of Fortune for the first time.

Perhaps, this was what they called a desperate prayer!

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