World Awakening: The Legendary Player-Chapter 130: Upgrade

The last of the glitching, corrupted data fizzled out, leaving Nox crumpled on the rocky ground in front of the new, dark doorway. He was completely still.

Serian was terrified, she immediately ran to his side, her mind racing with a hundred different horrible possibilities. She knelt beside him but was afraid to touch him, the memory of that chaotic energy explosion was still too fresh.

"Nox! Can you hear me? Wake up!"

He did not respond, he did not even twitch. His chest was rising and falling, so he was alive, but he was completely out of it.

Mela walked over. She nudged him with the toe of her boot and got no reaction at all.

’Perfect, just perfect. The human breaks his brain opening a door, and now we’re stuck with a two-hundred-pound paperweight in the middle of a dungeon. This is his fault.’

"He is useless to us like this," Mela announced, her voice cold and pragmatic. "Whatever that backlash did, it fried him. We should leave him and continue the mission, we can come back for him after we kill the Grave Lord."

Serian looked up at her, her eyes blazing with a fury that Mela had not seen before, it was a look that was pure princess, full of authority and anger.

"We are not leaving him."

’She can’t be serious. He’s a liability. We’re in an active dungeon with who knows what inside.’ "Your Highness, with all due respect, that is a strategically foolish decision. He is incapacitated, we do not know for how long, and we are completely exposed here."

"I do not care. We do not abandon our companions. That is not who we are. That is not who I am."

She turned back to Nox, gently placing her hand on his forehead. A soft, golden light began to glow from her palm as she tried to channel her pure mana into him, to heal whatever was wrong.

The moment her magic touched his skin, it was violently repelled. The golden light sputtered and died as if it had hit a wall of solid nothingness.

She pulled her hand back, a look of shock on her face. ’His body... it’s rejecting my mana completely. It’s like there’s a shield around him, something that just erases any magic that isn’t his own.’

"It is no use," Mela stated, crossing her arms. "His corrupted nature is incompatible with your power, we knew this. Trying to heal him is a waste of your energy, Your Highness."

"Then we will wait," Serian said, her jaw set with a stubborn determination. "We will guard him until he wakes."

"And what if he never wakes up? What if he stays like this for days? Are we to starve to death in this chasm waiting for a human who was reckless enough to get himself into this mess?"

Serian turned to Mela once more, "I am really starting to dislike you. Shut up and stand watch."

Mela took a step back, her mouth falling open in complete disbelief before snapping shut into a hard, angry line.

’She told me to shut up? For the human? After he almost got us all killed with that stupid chain trick and then got himself knocked out opening a door? Unbelievable.’

Serian did not even look at her, her entire focus on Nox’s still form.

’I will not leave him. He is reckless and infuriating, but he is our companion. He came back for his friends, he helped save her people, he is not the monster he wants everyone to believe he is, and I will not abandon him.’

Inside his own mind, Nox was floating in an endless expanse of pure, featureless white. There was no up, no down, no sound, just an infinite, silent emptiness.

’So, this is what being dead is like. It’s boring. I was expecting more fire, maybe some screaming.’

Then a light flickered in the distance, and it got closer really fast, but it was not a light, it was a person made of blue, glitchy data.

It had no face, it was just a shape of a person, and when it tried to talk, the words were all broken.

[An0maly D#tect3d.....H0st C0re [email protected]#rgency P@tch R3quir#d.]

The glitchy person reached out its hand, and a small, glowing blue cube appeared in its palm. It pushed the cube into Nox’s chest.

He felt a cold feeling spread through him, t was like his whole body was being updated.

[S..s..syst#m R#st0red.....C0mpatibility at 98%.....N#w 0perating Syst#m.....V.2.0.....G00d Luck.....Player.]

The glitchy person dissolved into nothing, and the white void started to crack like glass, the cracks spread everywhere until the whole place shattered.

---

Nox’s eyes snapped open, and he sat up with a gasp, his body covered in sweat.

"Nox! You are awake!"

Serian was kneeling right next to him, her face full of relief, while Mela was standing a few feet away with her arms crossed, she just looked annoyed.

"It is about time, human, we have been waiting for an hour."

’An hour? It felt like two seconds.’ He looked at his hands, he felt different, stronger, but also cleaner, like some kind of junk data had been deleted from his system.

"Are you alright?" Serian asked, her voice soft, "you were screaming, and your body was covered in some kind of black energy."

"I am fine, just had a bad dream."

He looked at the dark doorway in front of them, ’the mission is still active.’

He needed to check his status, ’System, show me my status.’

A new window popped into his vision, but it was completely different from before, it was not blue and gamey, it was sleek and black, with clean white text, it looked more like a military interface than a game menu.

[STATUS]

[DESIGNATION: Nox]

[LEVEL: 33]

[SYNCHRONIZATION RATE: 98.2%]

[CORE: Void-Touched (Grade A)]

[PRIMARY DIRECTIVE: Survive. Evolve. Conquer.]

’What the hell is this? Where are my stats? Where are my skills?’ He tried to open the other menus, but they were all gone, replaced by simple, direct information.

[COMBAT EFFECTIVENESS: High]

[STAMINA RESERVES: 45%]

[MANA RESERVES: 21%]

[ACTIVE ABILITIES: Void Assimilation, Void Step, Void Forging, Chains of the Abyss.]

[PASSIVE ENHANCEMENTS: Acquired.]

’It streamlined everything, it took away all the useless skills and just left the good ones, and it even got rid of the numbers, this is way better.’

The new system was more direct, less of a game, he liked it.

"Are you done spacing out?" Mela snapped, "we need to move, this place is giving me the creeps."

"She is right, Nox, we should not linger here."

"Fine," he said, dismissing the new, sleek interface, "let’s go kill a Grave Lord."

He walked toward the dark doorway, Serian and Mela followed him, their weapons ready, the three of them stepped into the mausoleum, and the air immediately turned cold, a deep, bone-chilling cold.

The inside was a massive, circular chamber, the walls lined with hundreds of stone coffins stacked on top of each other like shelves, the ceiling was so high up it was lost in the darkness.

In the center of the room, on a raised stone platform, sat a throne made of bones, and on the throne was a figure in dark, tattered robes.

It was the Grave Lord.

He was a skeleton, but he was bigger than the others, and he wore a twisted, iron crown on his skull, his empty eye sockets glowed with an intelligent green light, and in his hand, he held a glowing black orb that pulsed with illusion magic.

"Intruders," the Grave Lord’s voice echoed in the chamber, "you have come to this place only to die, and add your bodies to my collection."

"Yeah, whatever," Nox said, summoning his Brutalizers, "we are here to break your toys."

The Grave Lord let out a dry, rattling laugh, "you think you can challenge me in my own tomb? Fools."

He raised his free hand, and all around the chamber, the stone lids of the coffins began to slide open with a loud, grating sound.

Dozens of skeletons, these ones bigger and wearing better armor than the ones outside, began to climb out of their resting places, their eyes glowing with the same green light as their master.

"This is going to be a long fight," Serian said, her sword held ready.

Mela did not say anything, she just unleashed her swarm of needles, ready for battle.

Nox just grinned, his new system was humming in the back of his mind, and he felt a new, clean power flowing through him, he was excited to test it out.

He was about to charge, but the Grave Lord did something unexpected.

He pointed his bony finger at Mela.

"The daughter of the Ashen Glade, your needles are sharp, but they are useless against the dead."

The Grave Lord then turned his finger to Serian.

"And the last daughter of Lifewoods, your pure heart is a beacon in this darkness, a light I will enjoy extinguishing."

’How the hell, can it read minds?’ Nox didn’t like that.

His glowing green eyes finally landed on Nox.

"But you," the Grave Lord’s voice was full of a strange, almost hungry curiosity, "I do not know what you are, your soul is a chaotic void wrapped in a mortal shell, it is... beautiful."

The entire chamber plunged into absolute darkness, it was a magical darkness so complete that Nox could not even see his own hand in front of his face.

Then, a single pair of glowing green eyes opened in the dark, right in front of him.