Chapter 29 – Book of Order

「Stop dawdling! Hurry up and cast Meteor already!」Nie Yan pestered through voice chat.

「Meteor takes ten seconds to cast! By the time I finish casting, it’ll already be too late!」Tang Yao anxiously replied. He estimated he would be overrun by spiders before he could even finish casting the spell.

「I don’t care, just start casting! C’mon, hurry up!」

Tang Yao clenched his teeth and unravelled the Talisman. After brandishing his staff, he began casting Meteor. Soon, large amounts of fire essence from the surrounding area began converging at his location.

As the fire essence gathered, the sheer heat from the scorching blaze caused the temperature in the surrounding air to rise.

Tang Yao watched as Nie Yan led the twenty plus Rock Spiders through the passageway and into the cave intersection. As spiders surged into the intersection like a massive wave, Nie Yan ran into to the narrow passage where Tang Yao had retreated. The passage was so narrow that only a single spider managed to squeeze itself through, but in doing so, it blocked off access to the passage for the rest of the spiders behind itself.

“Concussive Blow!” Nie Yan turned around and struck the leading spider in the head, causing it to enter a dazed state and stop the movements of the spiders behind itself.

Eight seconds… seven seconds… six seconds… five seconds…

As time slowly ticked by, the fire essence which was steadily gathering around Tang Yao became increasingly intense.

For the most part, the spells that required a set of syllables to cast were also the ones that had a relatively large area of effect. From Nie Yan’s knowledge and experience, Meteor was the only area of effect spell that Elementalists and Arcane Mages could learn at Level 0, and it was quite efficient at killing many monsters. However, even if you were to gather up a thousand Elementalists and Arcane Mages, you still might not necessarily find one that possessed Meteor.

After three seconds passed, the spider woke from its dazed state and immediately pounced towards Nie Yan. In reaction, Nie Yan raised his dagger and began skirmishing with the Rock Spider. He kept the spider firmly in place and prevented any of its attacks from reaching Tang Yao, so as to avoid interrupting the spell.

Ten seconds—whether this moment was long or short depended on one’s perspective. The truth of the matter, however, was that the moment would simply be over once you counted from one to ten.

While in a trance-like state, Tang Yao raised his staff and chanted lines of strange syllables that even he didn’t know the meaning of. When he finished casting, an enormous fireball fell from above「Boom!」A deafening explosion echoed out as the fireball crashed into the group of spiders. The fireball resembled a heavenly maiden upon impact—scattering fiery blossoms in every direction. These blazing flowers didn’t immediately extinguish upon landing on the ground. Instead, they continued to burn, dealing a fixed amount of damage every second to the spiders that were caught in the explosion.

「Scritch! Scritch!」The twenty plus spiders caught in the explosion were in a state of upheaval as they cried out in agony. No matter what kind of state they were in, however, they were still unable to attack Nie Yan and Tang Yao.

So, he had already calculated everything. No wonder he dared to aggro so many monsters at once.

Nie Yan and Tang Yao were only able to kill monsters like this by taking advantage of the unique topography of this intersection. Attempting to use this tactic and unleash a fireball upon a large group of enemies would’ve been suicidal if they were out in an open field. Normally the destruction caused by Meteor would be extremely limited in narrow spaces such as this. As it turned out, however, the intersection within the cave was quite suitable for casting the spell.

Tang Yao couldn’t help but admire Nie Yan even more. For him to be able to think of a tactic like this…

A second later, another fireball rained down from above and exploded after hitting the ground.

The brilliant flames expanded into the surroundings upon impact.

Three more enormous fireballs subsequently rained from the sky. Of the spiders that had been hit by Meteor, six were directly crushed, sixteen burned to the death from continuous area of effect burn damage, and the remaining were all dying or near death. The destructive capabilities of Meteor had been clearly displayed before their very eyes.

Tang Yao gazed blankly at the pile of Rock Spider corpses that laid before him. He had singlehandedly caused all this destruction, a realization which hard for him to conceive!

“Nie Yan… did I really do all this?” Tang Yao asked foolishly. Only after looking at the enormous amount of experience, did he finally come to accept it. Just a moment ago, he really was the caster of that formidable Meteor spell.

“What’ve you got that blank look for? Come on, let’s take care of the remaining spiders,” Nie Yan smiled and said.

“I’m out of mana.” Tang Yao gazed at his mana bar that was almost completely bereft of any colour. He still had enough to cast a few Arcane Missiles, but he wouldn’t be able to cast anything like Flame Explosion.

After hearing Tang Yao’s words, Nie Yan recalled something; Meteor was a spell that voraciously consumed mana. That fact that Tang Yao was able to cast it was already quite impressive. Not to mention, he even had a little bit of mana left over to cast other spells!

Besides the mana consumption, Meteor also required Talismans which weren’t cheap either. Therefore, if he was to continue casting this spell while grinding monsters, then Tang Yao would find his funds being quickly eaten away.

Nie Yan pounced towards one of the remaining Rock Spiders and used Vital Strike to kill it. Following this, he and Tang Yao quickly began quickly cleaning up the remaining spiders.

Soon, every single of one of those twenty plus spiders had met their end and collapsed on the floor. Nie Yan walked over to the corpses and gathered up the loot which amounted to a total of three coppers. In the end, not a single piece of equipment had dropped. Nie Yan glanced at his experience bar; it had risen by another three percent after killing so many Rock Spiders.

“We’ve cleared out all the monsters in this area. Let’s head deeper in,” Nie Yan suggested. Mob grinding in such a manner could only be experienced every once in a while, as the monsters wouldn’t respawn fast enough to make it a viable tactic.

“What!? Why are we going even further in?” Tang Yao asked in a surprised manner.

“There’s something I must do deeper in the cave. Besides, the scenery inside this cave is quite mystical,” Nie Yan replied as he smiled mysteriously. Upon arriving inside this cave, Nie Yan had vaguely remembered something unique about it.

There was a spring at the very end of the Rock Spider Cave. Not only was the water in this spring quite deep, but it also contained many strong currents which weaved and intersected with one another underneath the surface. As for why these currents existed, it was because the spring connected to an underground lake. After passing through the lake, you would find yourself arriving at a secluded ravine where all kinds of exotic medicinal herbs grew in large abundance. However, there was something even more valuable inside this ravine. Something which countless players could only yearn for in their dreams; a torn page from the Book of Order.

In the game’s lore, the Book of Order and Book of Chaos were both divine objects which had been handed down since the Era of Shared Governance (873–1235). Even after five or six hundred years had passed, the legend of these two books continued to spread. Their emergence was a mystery, as well as the origins of their author.

Order and Chaos represented the laws of the world.

Each of the two books contained six volumes, thirty-six chapters total. These books represented two distinct and opposing powers which were scattered across the world.

Legend has it that if one were to gather every page and complete the Book of Order, they would be able to revive the God of Order and gain immense power. Moreover, the owner of the Book of Order would become the Supreme Pontiff of the Righteous Faction and control all the Holy Shrines in the continent. On the opposite side of the spectrum, if one were to complete the Book of Chaos, they would gain immense destructive power and become the Ruler of Darkness, arch-nemesis of the owner of the Book of Order.

The Book of Order and the Book of Chaos were both legendary existences.

When the first six-chapter volume emerged, a cinematic played showing the long history of the Viridian Empire and Satreen Empire.

The six chapters from the first volume of the Book of Order were as follows: the Chapter of Justice, the Chapter of Virtue, the Chapter of Courage, the Chapter of Wisdom, the Chapter of Harmony, and the Chapter of Freedom.

These six chapters fell in the hands of six people, each of whom were experts that possessed a seat as one of the top hundred members in the Righteous faction. The owners of the Chapter of Justice, the Chapter of Courage, and the Chapter of Wisdom were respectively the first seat, the third seat, and the sixth seat. As such, the correlation between the two caused these chapters from the Book of Order to be viewed as divine existences by the public.

It was correct that each of these chapters from the Book of Order possessed a powerful strength, but the caveat was that they could not be stored in a player’s personal storage. Thus, the player would be forced to carry them on person. When the owner of a chapter was killed by another player, the chapter would always drop, unless the player possessed all six chapters. Due to this, the fighting and killing instigated by the Book of Order was almost never-ending.

The Chapter of Justice, Chapter of Courage, and Chapter of Wisdom eventually fell into the hands of the leaders of three super guilds. The owners of the remaining chapters also gained formidable power, but they had to always keep a low profile whenever they set out. They would also try to avoid using their chapter’s powers in the presence of other players. Even so, Nie Yan had still witnessed the powerful might of these chapters from the Book of Order in videos before.

The holder of the Chapter of Justice was the president of Angel Corp, a Demon Hunter from the Elf race—Angyi Tianshi. He once confronted and defeated over one hundred hostile enemies by summoning sixteen Righteous Knights. One person had defeated over a hundred players. This event later became a legend.

The holder of the Chapter of Wisdom was Holy Judgement’s guild leader, a Holy Mage—Emperor Killer. He had withstood the invasion of the Undead, during which he used the Forbidden Magic Resplendent Brilliance and eliminated three hundred liches, thus creating another legend.

The holder of the Chapter of Courage was the guild leader of the Holy Empire Guild, a Berserker—Sleepy Fox. During a guild war, he rushed deep into the enemy ranks all by himself, killing an enemy every few steps and personally beheading over two hundred of them. He had slaughtered everything before him.

Nie Yan couldn’t help but burn with excitement when he thought of this.