Book 2: Chapter 4

Aqua I yawn after dealing with most of the aquatic monsters in this part of the cavern. After which I just send off all my abyssal servants to deal with the other monsters in the waters while I swim up to the closest ship to check it out. Because I should look at more than just the waters here. There’s a pretty high chance that the boss will be on one of the ships. But as I’m doing that and find another level-up appearing in my vision, a notification appears next to it. One that surprises me a little. System Notification Congratulations, Aqua Azuranth! Your position on the leaderboards have officially updated: Oceana Leaderboards – 1st Dartric Galaxy Leaderboards – 1st As a reward for reaching first place on the Dartric Galaxy Leaderboards, you have received the trait Galaxy First Ranker. Furthermore, for reaching first place on the Galaxy Leaderboards, you have officially unlocked the Universal Leaderboards! I blink at it before grinning. Another notification quickly replaces the first. System Notification Congratulations, Aqua Azuranth! Your position on the leaderboards have officially updated: Oceana Leaderboards – 1st Dartric Galaxy Leaderboards – 1st Universal Leaderboards – N/A Your rank on the Universal Leaderboards is too low to be shown. Well that was pointless. Which makes sense seeing as the entire Dartric Galaxy was just initialized into the System at the same time as Oceana. So there aren’t many high level people in it yet. At all. I’m actually surprised it took me this long to reach #1 on it considering my Bloodlines. What’s not pointless though is the other trait I got. So I quickly check that. [Galaxy First Ranker – A trait reserved for the first ranked user in any galaxy. However, should the user lose their position as first ranked in their galaxy, they will lose this trait one month after losing the rank unless they reclaim the rank within that time. During which time both the new and old first ranked will have the trait. This trait grants the user an additional free point every two levels. When paired with the World First Ranker trait, the user will now gain a third free point every level.] Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Nice! It’s too bad I got this trait after my most recent round of level-ups... I glance at said round of level-ups whose messages were delayed other than that last one. Which was shown due to the leaderboards update. [Congratulations! You have now reached level 88! As the current First Ranker of Oceana, your total free points have increased by three, and your mana stat has increased by ten. Allocate the free points whenever you please.] [Congratulations! You have now reached level 89! Your total free points have increased by two, and your mana stat has increased by ten. Allocate the free points whenever you please.] [Congratulations! You have now reached level 90! As the current First Ranker of Oceana, your total free points have increased by three, and your mana stat has increased by ten. Allocate the free points whenever you please.] [Congratulations! You have now reached level 91! Your total free points have increased by two, and your mana stat has increased by ten. Allocate the free points whenever you please.] [Congratulations! You have now reached level 92! As the current First Ranker of Oceana, your total free points have increased by three, and your mana stat has increased by ten. Allocate the free points whenever you please.] [Congratulations! You have now reached level 93! Your total free points have increased by two, and your mana stat has increased by ten. Allocate the free points whenever you please.] [Congratulations! You have now reached level 94! As the current First Ranker of Oceana, your total free points have increased by three, and your mana stat has increased by ten. Allocate the free points whenever you please.] To think I’d go from practically not leveling up almost at all to leveling up this much in just half an hour. It’s a little ridiculous, but I’m not complaining. Not when I’m getting closer and closer to level one hundred where I’ll get my next skill. I should be hitting level one hundred soon enough in fact. Considering my current rate. I’ll also be getting three free points per level now instead of just two thanks to this new leaderboard trait. A smile spreads across my face at that thought. And what’s more is that my level is still gradually rising thanks to the abyssal servants hunting the other monsters. It’s just too bad I can’t summon my servants outside of the water. So they’re completely useless when it comes to these ships. I climb up to the top of the ships before looking around, finding quite a few monsters on them in the process. Monsters I deal with by summoning tentacles to knock them into the water below as I search the ships. But there isn’t anything particularly interesting on the ships that I check. Which eventually leaves me growing bored and using Call of the Abyss. Summoning the orcas but more importantly flooding the cavern with water all the way to the roof. Then I order the abyssal servants to attack all the monsters on the ships. Only for my current plan to be shattered rather quickly when the monsters on the ships quickly figure out that they need to kill the orcas. Which they do within a couple minutes. Leading to very little progress being made before the water level goes back down to where it was before. That said, using Call of the Abyss wasn’t a complete waste. After all, it knocked down the monsters from the ships and sent a lot of them into the surrounding water off the ships. So I let the abyssal servants hunt down the monsters that were knocked into the waters. Which isn’t very difficult when those monsters in question don’t know how to swim very well. Meanwhile I attack the monsters on the ships. Although I spend more time trying to knock them into the water than anything else. I let out a sigh as I fight against the undead on the ships. Taking quite a few hits from them in the process and even almost losing an arm to a spear. All because my strength is a lot weaker outside of the water. Both literally, as in my strength stat, and because some of my skills only work in the water. Like Pressure of the Abyss and Abyssal Ruler for example. At some point though, I order my servants to start just barely not killing the monsters so that when I finally start taking critical injuries from the monsters of the surface, like ones disabling my arms for example, I just use Devourer of the Abyss. Healing myself back up in an instant while also finishing off the monsters left half dead by my servants. And unlike when I did this on the battlefield for the migration, I actually get all the EXP from them this time. Since my servants were the ones that left them half dead in the first place. So one ship after another, I go through fighting the monsters. Clearing each ship out one by one. Although a couple of the ships actually have captains that almost cut my head off. Which would’ve been bad. And one of them almost splits my brain in two. Which would’ve been even worse. After all, while I could technically survive the blow itself, it would leave me unable to think or even move. Giving the monster plenty of time to destroy my hearts. And that’s assuming my hearts don’t just die off from my brain dying. Since I’m pretty sure that would normally happen if your brain is destroyed. So that whole ‘needing all my hearts and brain destroyed to die’ thing is rather misleading. Seeing as if enough hearts are destroyed or if my brain is destroyed, the rest will eventually follow. Unless my regeneration grows strong enough to regenerate them within minutes of them being destroyed, that is. But that won’t happen for a very long time most likely. Eventually my abyssal servants all run out of time. Specifically the new ones that I pretty much got almost for free by extracting them from their corpses. So I go ahead and extract more abyssal servants. Although it doesn’t work on the corpses above the water. Not that it really matters since those monsters wouldn’t be of much help underwater anyways. I let out a sigh at that thought before resummoning the large shark and the two-headed shark and focusing on my battles above water again. This might take a while.