“Huff! Huff!”

ChungChung continued running without even stopping for a second.

“Die!”

“I’m sorry!”

As he ran, countless people tried to kill him.

They were not targeting ChungChung particularly. It was just that the whole place had descended into utter chaos, and everyone was trying to fulfill the required kill quota to survive.

It made ChungChung's journey toward Siegfried all the more difficult. It was nearly impossible to distinguish friend from foe at this point, as attacks flew in from every direction.

At this rate, ChungChung’s would certainly be zero.

However, the problem was that the distance between him and Siegfried was still very far.

The thought of having to dodge skills flying from everywhere, shaking off enemies coming after him, and witnessing the horrors of the battlefield made ChungChung briefly consider just giving up.

The several hundred meters remaining between him and Siegfried made him want to just drop dead. Meanwhile, Siegfried had finally made up his mind after witnessing the horrors unfolding before his eyes.

‘Calming them down is impossible now. Also, I don’t have enough time. The only way is to kill until I fulfill my required kill quota.’

He had no other choice now that the battlefield had devolved into this chaotic mess.

Even if he was highly respected, controlling this many people and selectively killing only those who needed to die was impossible.

He could manage to do that if he wanted to do so, but the problem was that time was not on his side.

One hour was nowhere enough to calm the people down, sorting them into who needed to be killed, and then killing them one by one.

If he were to risk it, the Mark of Bloodshed could end up exploding, killing him instantly.

Thus, Siegfried made up his mind to join the carnage.

“Hey, Hamchi.”

“Kyu?”

“You start killing, too. We have no other choice. It’s kill or be killed now.”

“Kyuu...”

“What else can we do, right?”

Siegfried flew up and conjured tens of thousands of aura blades around him.

The sight of him surrounded by the aura blades was both beautiful and terrifying for those witnessing.

With a heavy heart, he pointed to the battlefield underneath and—

“W-Waaaait! Waaaait a second!”

—Someone’s voice pierced his ears.

“Sir Siegfried! Please wait!”

“Huh?” Siegfried tilted his head in confusion as he descended to the ground.

“Huff! Huff!”

“Yes?”

“Huff... Huff...!”

“...?”

“I... Huff...! I-I have a solution...!”

ChungChung was so out of breath that he couldn’t speak properly. It was not that strange for him to be this exhausted. After all, he had been squeezing every drop of his strength to evade enemies while making his way here. To make matters worse, he was a fragile magician.

“S-Sir Siegfried! Huff! Huff!”

“Please take a deep breath first.”

“Heuuup!”

“Now, please tell me. What’s your solution?”

“You don’t have to kill—huff... huff...!”

“Huh? What do you mean by that?”

“No need. Kill... Living creatures count...!”

“Please calm down. One thing at a time.”

Siegfried handed ChungChung the Infinite Flask so he could recover some stamina.

After drinking from the Infinite Flask and resting for a short moment, ChungChung could finally speak properly.

“I am a summoner who can summon insects.”

“...And?”

“Killing insects also counts!”

“...!”

“We do not have to kill people! Killing insects adds to the kill count!”

“Really?!”

“Yes!”

As soon as he said that, ChungChung infused mana into his wand and summoned a massive swarm of bees.

“Try killing them.”

“O-Okay.”

Siegfried was skeptical, but he decided to trust ChungChung and kill the bees.

[Alert: Kill Count has increased by 1!]

[Alert: Kill Count has increased by 1!]

[Alert: Kill Count has increased by 1!]

(omitted...)

[Alert: Kill Count has increased by 1!]

[Alert: Kill Count has increased by 1!]

A flood of notifications popped up in front of his eyes, and his kill count went up by about one thousand five hundred in an instant.

“What?!” Siegfried gasped. Then, he stammered and asked, “T-This isn’t a joke, right?! It really worked?!”

ChungChung’s eyes sparkled as he replied, “Right?! We do not have to kill people! I just have to keep summoning insects for everyone to fulfill their kill quota!”

“Well done! This is huge! Absolutely huge!” Siegfried exclaimed, grabbing ChungChung’s hands and shaking them vigorously.

“Hahaha...”

“You just saved everyone! This is an incredible discovery you made!”

ChungChung’s discovery was, without a doubt, a breakthrough and a major achievement, as countless people could be saved by it.

‘Everyone’s strong in their own ways. I really shouldn’t judge someone solely by their level or combat power. All classes have their own strengths,’ Siegfried thought.

Right now, ChungChung was like the salt and light of the world. Without his discovery and ability, this raid would most likely fail.

“Can you... summon a lot?” Siegfried asked.

“Y-Yes?”

“You will have to summon a lot. I mean it.”

“H-How many is a lot...?”

“At least around... two million?”

Thud!

Shocked by Siegfried’s words, ChungChung’s legs gave out, and he fell on his butt.

“H-Hiiiik?!” ChungChung shrieked in horror.

***

Even though they had found a solution, another problem arose.

Insects were not particularly strong creatures, so summoning them didn't require a lot of mana. In other words, ChungChung could summon a lot of them without exhausting his mana.

However, summoning two million insects was a whole different thing.

Even if he could continuously replenish his mana using potions, he had no means to reduce his skill’s cooldown.

ChungChung had invested his skill points into skills that summoned insects useful in combat. The problem was that those insects consumed a lot of mana and couldn’t be summoned in large quantities.

What they needed now were weak insects rather than powerful ones, and they needed them by the millions.

Even if he cycled his skills around and cast them whenever they went off cooldown, it was practically impossible for him to summon the required number of insects in time.

“I think I need to reset my skill tree to summon that many insects,” ChungChung said.

“...Huh? Why, though?” Siegfried asked.

“I have a skill called Summon Fruit Fly. It barely uses any mana and has no cooldown. But I never invested any skill points into it because... well, it is probably obvious.”

“Then you can just invest skill points into it now and learn it, no?”

“Well, I cannot level up right now... and I do not have any spare skill points.”

“Ah, don’t worry about that,” Siegfried replied.

He opened his Inventory, reached into it, and took out two items that could reset skill points. Items that allowed one to reset their skill tree were extremely valuable, as they were highly sought after by many.

The reason that Siegfried had such a valuable item—two of them, even—was simple.

Everyone knew this about him by now, but he had the habit of keeping everything. In fact, he even kept a trash item called Shit-Stained Parchment at one point.

Some suspected that he ran a junk recycling center in real life, as he would collect all sorts of things he found. Ironically, it was this bizarre trait of his that allowed him to have an Inventory with infinite capacity.

“Use one right now and save the other for later when we’re done. You will need to reset your skills again afterward, no?”

“Whoa...”

“All good now, right?”

“Yes! This will suffice!”

ChungChung used the skill reset item immediately and maxed out Summon Fruit Fly.

Buzz, buzz, buzz!

A massive swarm of fruit flies, numbering in the millions, appeared.

Fruit flies were harmless. They could at least devastate crops or gnaw at human flesh if they were locusts, but these flies were nothing more than pests. They were neither useful nor threatening, so they required very little mana to summon, had no cooldown, and could be summoned without limits.

Whoosh!

Siegfried swung the Annihilation’s Grasp at the swarm of fruit flies.

[Alert: Kill Count has increased by 1!]

[Alert: Kill Count has increased by 1!]

[Alert: Kill Count has increased by 1!]

(omitted...)

[Alert: Kill Count has increased by 1!]

[Alert: Kill Count has increased by 1!]

In an instant, he racked up hundreds of thousands of kills.

‘This is it!’

Siegfried realized they had finally found the key to clearing the first stage of the Void.

One million? Easy!

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

Siegfried swung the Annihilation’s Grasp a few times and swept away the fruit flies. As a result, he fulfilled the required kill quota, and the Mark of Bloodshed above his head disappeared.

[Alert: Kill Count has reached 1,000,000!]

[Alert: Mark of Bloodshed has disappeared!]

However, Siegfried did not stop there.

“FRUIT FLIEEES!”

His voice, amplified by Primordial Force, reverberated across the entire chaotic battlefield.

“Kill the fruit flies! You can raise your kill count easily! You don’t have to kill each other! Summoned creatures count, too! As long as you kill a living creature, it counts! Just kill the fruit flies that fly at you!”

Hearing Siegfried’s shout, the Adventurers immediately stopped killing each other and began killing the fruit flies instead.

There was no need to kill allies anymore, so there was no longer any reason to fight.

Thanks to that, Siegfried cleared the quest with ease. The others also managed to clear the quest.

About thirty minutes later, a notification popped up in front of everyone’s eyes.

Ding!

[Alert: You have cleared the Quest — Slaughter to Survive!]

[Alert: The Void: Festival of Bloodshed has been cleared!]

They had successfully cleared the first stage of the dungeon, where the Creator himself was the final boss. They managed to do so with more than ninety percent of the total raid participants surviving.

***

[Alert: Entering the next stage!]

[Alert: 10 minutes remaining until the next stage!]

[Alert: Prepare yourselves!]

[Alert: You will move on to the next stage in 9 minutes and 59 seconds!]

After clearing the first stage, a string of notifications popped up in front of everyone’s eyes.

‘What the heck? Ten minutes isn’t enough to catch our breaths, damn it...’ Siegfried growled inwardly.

Then, he turned around and said, “ChungChung.”

“Y-Yes?”

“You really accomplished something incredible.”

“N-No, not at all. I just stumbled on it by chance.”

“What do you mean, not at all? We would’ve been in serious trouble if it hadn't been for you. Everyone here could have died.”

“Haha...”

“I will make sure to repay you generously.”

After promising ChungChung a reward, Siegfried looked around the battlefield.

The once-pristine grassland was now stained red by the blood of countless people who died. More than ninety percent of the raid participants had survived, but one percent of the total participants were still tens of thousands of people. In other words, at least one hundred thousand people had died in the first stage alone.

Just like Siegfried had said, the entire raid could have failed from the first stage if ChungChung had not stumbled upon the solution.

In fact, there was a high chance that Siegfried himself would have failed to kill one million people. The Mark of Bloodshed could have killed him.

“The difficulty level is already insane, even though we just started,” Siegfried muttered.

With that thought, he waited for the next stage to begin.

Time passed.

[Alert: Prepare yourselves!]

[Alert: The second stage will begin in 10 seconds!]

[Alert: 10! 9! 8! 7...!]

(omitted...)

[Alert: 3! 2! 1...!]

[Alert: The second stage shall now begin!]

Ding!

[Void: Fall]

Siegfried expected the scenery to change, but instead, a notification popped up in front of his eyes.

‘Huh? Fall? What does that mean?’ he wondered.

At that moment—

“Kyuuu! Look over there, owner punk!” Hamchi exclaimed, pointing toward the sky.

“What’s up?” Siegfried casually turned, and his eyes widened in shock.

Why?

Shwoooooom!

Far off in the distance, up high in the sky, a meteor was crashing toward the ground. It was massive enough to cast a shadow over the entire grassland, and it was coming at incredible speed, too.

“W-Why the hell is that thing so huge?!” Siegfried shrieked in horror.

The oncoming meteor was already casting a shadow on the ground, even though it was still miles away from making landfall. It felt as if a group of high-level mages cast Meteor Strike, a spell capable of unleashing the most devastating attack over a targeted area.

A meteor strike was going to create a massive shockwave centered on the point of impact, and the shockwave would be powerful enough to wipe out everything around it.

A meteor of that size, one so colossal that it could cast a shadow on the world down below, would surely cause a cataclysmic destruction. “N-Noooo!” Siegfried screamed.

Everyone on the grassland would be in danger if the meteor landed.

The ground itself would surely collapse from the impact.

A meteor of that magnitude could easily cause absolute destruction to the entire planet.

Since that was the case, then...

Siegfried gripped the Annihilation’s Grasp tightly.

‘We have to destroy that thing before it lands!’

That was the only solution Siegfried could think of in this current situation. The colossal meteor had to be destroyed before it could hit the ground, and he believed there was hope if he made use of the Universal-rated weapon, Annihilation’s Grasp.

Whiiiiir!

Annihilation’s Grasp spun like a drill and—

Wooong!

—Touch of Death converged on at its tip.

Shwiiiiiik!

Once it was all charged up, Siegfried threw it into the air, sending it like a missile flying straight toward its target.