Guild Wars

In the polar opposite direction of the Golden Savages group were the Upper Echelon, consisting of the Five Generals as well as the Three Pinnacles. These were the two elitemost groups in the previous timelines and still had some considerable clout in this one, but had been eventually overshadowed by the likes of the Golden Savages, the God Serpents, and more.

However, if one used that as a reason to try to deny their prowess, then they were being absurdly foolish beyond compare. The prowess of these two groups lay not just in their potential and accumulated power, but in the fact that they had experience, a lot of it.

It also showed in how they handled the grey rot.

Boyd's famous eye patch was gone, replaced with a fully functioning eye. After receiving a bloodline and undergoing a rebirth and reforging of his physical body, all such defects were eliminated, but he kept wearing one out of habit.

That all came to an end when their third daughter once complained that her papa looked scary with the eye patch on, Shani had pinched his ears and lectured him for a whole day, making Boyd sigh and eventually give up the accessory.

With two bright brown eyes filled with his typical ferocity from having lived in the underworld of reality for so long, Boyd was truly menacing, especially his physical size which was burly and only matched by Uno and maybe Noble Soul.

｢Name: Eyepatch – True God

Level: The Law of Transcendent Berserk (Basic)

Divine Energy: 100%/100%.｣

｢Law of Transcendent Berserk - Divine Law

Grade: EX

Effect: This is a maniac law that grants the user all-around enhancement to every aspect, even those that they are unable to use at the time. The strength of the enhancement is dependent on the law grade and can be applied to the body, external items, or other persons while requiring little to no divine energy. The minimum enhancement effect is 10x.

Sources: Colossus (Divine Class) + Limitless Berserk (Active Skill).｣

Boyd wielded his great axes, which were different from what AP had. AP used pole-axes, with longer shafts and a large, curved blade on a single side to maximize damage. Boyd used large great axes with short shafts and curved blades on both sides which was good for throwing and spinning.

Unlike the Golden Savages, Boyd was not high IQ enough to try and test the grey rot. He was from the OG Umbra, where if Draco and Eva gave you a task, you were expected to complete it properly, so he did so without hesitation.

｢Elemental Colossi Body – Active Skill

Effect: Manifest the entirety of your power and squeeze it into your musculature, allowing you to expand beyond the limit of your typical body. When gigantified, all your stats are increased by 500%!

Duration: 15 minutes

Cooldown: 20 minutes or 0.00001 Divine Points.｣

Boyd began to expand greatly, growing to the size of a small mountain on the spot. His stats did increase, but it was not useful in the Divine Realm for reasons that had been explained multiple times.

Here, only law or bloodline power would decide your fate, the era of stats, titles, and the like was over.

While at this size, Boyd lifted his head and glanced into the depths of the grey rot, seeing that it was as dense as fucking tear gas about a kilometer away from where they stood, so they would start to experience serious resistance around that point.

However, that was for later. Right now, Boyd raised his leg and stomped on the grey rot in the way that his skill made him do so.

｢World End Stomp – Active skill

Effect: Condense your power into your feet and then stomp on the ground with all your force. This causes the earth to pulsate with shockwaves from your foot that do not harm that land, but seep into the bodies of all enemies within range of a Continent Zone. All targets suffer 5,000% special damage!

Cooldown: 20 minutes or 0.00001 Divine Points.｣

Of course, Continent Zone-wide attacks did not have the same power in the Divine Realm that they did in side worlds or the main plane. The laws of the Divine Realm are more solid and blah blah.

Still, it was enough to affect hundreds of meters around Boyd, which he converged into a cone shape in front of him. The grey rot was like a mist that was blown by a fan, disappearing up until a point where the residual force of his skill was rapidly broken down and destroyed, while the grey rot began to recover slowly.

"What the fuck…" Boyd honestly said in a daze.

Even if the Divine Realm was sturdier, his attack was strong and should have gone really far after being imbued by his law, but it only went a few hundred meters? Boyd had tried to overestimate the grey rot menace, but he had clearly underestimated it.

Uno by his side saw this and shook his head. He was still clad in his grey, colorless paladin garb, his orange eyes filled with solemnity. No one knew his best buddy Boyd's strength more than him, so for Boyd to be dazed, this thing was truly a problem.

However, unlike Boyd, Uno chose a different path. Like the Golden Savages, he simply had to experiment to gauge his effectiveness on the grander scale of things.

｢Name: Alpha Male – True God

Level: The Law of True Defense (Basic)

Divine Energy: 100%/100%.｣

｢Law of True Defense - Divine Law

Grade: EX+

Effect: This law is the epitome of the defense series of Divine Laws, encompassing all the aspects of preventing harm of all kinds from being inflicted on a target. This law has zero offensive power but can defend from anything, anything that has even an inkling of an intention or effect to cause harm to a target, even oneself. Its strength is dependent on the law's rank.

Sources: The Bastion (Divine Class) + Immovable Defense (Active Skill).｣

As should be obvious, Uno had taken his job as Supreme tank of Umbra seriously. One might underestimate him because the core members seemed so OP and could fight gods even as mortals, but if it wasn't for Uno, these past ten years would have been true hell.

The man had been their source of safety against truly difficult world bosses, his crazy tanking skills and techniques coupled with his amazing Divine class had dragged many a desperate raid back into the light.

What gave Uno pressure was that Draco had patted his shoulder and directly said that in their raid against the true body of the grey rot, he would be the sole tank. Everything would rely on him to prevent the terrible and fearsome grey rot from consuming his alls to death in that fight.

As such, he had to test the limits of his defense now and get a clear idea of the grey rot. That was why he had called upon Cobra for help, who would use his great offensive power to clear the grey rot in his area and spawn grey rot monsters.

Uno then hoisted his shield and began tanking. Firstly, he used normal shields, which were broken in one hit. He then used uncommon, rare, epic, and legendary shields, but all were ruined in one blow, making his face grim.

Don't forget even if he wasn't using his law or his active skills, he still had divine class passive skills from Rank 1 to Rank 7 that were giving him countless buffs in the background!

Those buffs had even given him capital to fight Rank 7 foes at Rank 4, but these grey rot manifestations with basic laws and no sentience could shatter them in one blow!!

Uno shook his head and knew that it was time to be a little more serious, opting to activate various skills in their base form that had blocked world bosses. The grey rot manifestation did struggle with them, but not that much.

After that, Uno began using his law, but with the same shields as before, from common to legendary without using skills. The results were heartening, and even the common shield lasted longer than when he used his skills alone with a Divine shield and no law.

Laws really were the way forward!

Naturally, Cobra had long come to this conclusion. He had already begun his investigation into the grey rot before they had even come up here, because that was what he did. He wasn't simply an assassin, but also an information broker and Umbra's leader in intelligence gathering after the conquest of the main plane.

As such, he naturally chose what he felt was most apt for him to handle this foe.

｢Name: Cobra – True God

Level: The Law of Targeted Killing (Basic)

Divine Energy: 100%/100%.｣

｢Law of Targeted Killing - Divine Law

Grade: SSS+

Effect: This law is based on a single focus, exterminating a selected target with unparalleled efficiency. It is purely offensive and is limited, requiring the user to preselect a target to make the main focus of this law. Once locked on, the user gains surestrike, auto execution, and a 50x damage boost against that target.

Sources: Supreme Killer (Divine Class) + Law of Killing (Passive Skill).｣

Cobra's law was initially merely an SS one, far from the various core members who had EX or EX+ laws. However, even though he had better options, he still chose this one because it was the most useful in dealing with the grey rot.

Naturally, he had set it as his target, so his attacks, whether bodily, skill-based, or otherwise were permanently, passively buffed by his law without costing Divine energy. That was the special part about this law, the fact that it worked passively for no cost.

Unfortunately, these humongous benefits still didn't qualify it for EX because of its great limitations. Once the target was chosen, it couldn't be changed. If so, it wouldn't be the law of TARGETED killing nor would it yield such strong benefits when the target was locked on.

Surestrike meant that attacks would always hit. You could only block, not dodge or negate. In a battle of gods, having surestrike permanently on was completely broken, so a sensible limitation had to be put up to balance it.

Not to mention the 50x damage boost as the basic rank, who knew how that would grow at the higher law ranks? Also, auto execution, meaning that every single strike had, at least, a 1% chance of insta-kill, regardless of the remaining HP the enemy had.

Honestly, this law was more of the kind of thing you expect to see in a protagonist of a revenge story or a main character who is a friend of the protagonist in a different kind of adventure story.

Cobra had severely limited his growth and his future by choosing this, but he did not hesitate nor did he feel bad. His duty to Umbra always came first, even before his own life, and it making a small sacrifice like this was enough to get them ahead, he would gladly make it!

Cobra had selected the grey rot as his target, which included its fluff and the source of it all, so his power was likely the greatest among the fellows here. The only problem was that he had too few active skills with AOEs since his previous class was an assassin one.

Have you seen a fucking assassin with an AOE?

Wait, what would an assassin's AOE even look like? Would they spawn countless flying daggers to cut down people? Or would they summon Altair, Ezio, Edward, and Alexios to mass assassinate everyone in the area?

Cough, cough, whatever.

While Cobra had to use his great power in a limited way, Rina did not have that problem in the least. She had AOEs for days and her destructive power was extremely high with her focus being on that of the fire element, so she bombarded endlessly simply using divine points to recharge his various skills.

What bullshit testing? What bullshit Umbra? Just hurry up, finish the daily task, then run to Draco to get dicked down!

Rina was a gal with a plan!