บท 26: Hidden Mission

From what he understood, the Hidden Mission was a rare thing and was guaranteed. This means that not every floor had a Hidden Mission; there were plenty of Floors that didn't have one, as the Hidden Mission was explicitly tied to one thing.

Short, long story, Hidden Mission was tied to ancient inheritances and secrets that were left by powerful people who died or factions that were destroyed on some said floor. Sometimes, it was due to natural phenomena or some other cases that the Hidden Mission got created by the Tower's System and Akashic Records.

Thus for their legacies to not be lost in the passage of time, Tower System created the concept of Hidden Mission as a means to preserve their legacy and, at the same time to increase the strength of the Tower's inhabitants.

Some Floor thus may even have several Hidden Missions in them that could be assigned to someone by the Tower System, though one could technically find those things that were objects of the Hidden Mission, even without receiving the Hidden Mission. But that required a heavenly amount of luck, as those things were really well hidden most of the time.

After Samiel walked through the forest, aside from taking time in admiration of tranquil nature, even though there were several Ork Clans near with their tendency to destroy anything, the place was naturally preserved.

This area was probably inhabited by a lot of powerful Magical Beasts that called this place their home, though as Samiel was using the path that the Akashic Records provided him, he was safe from their danger or wrath.

At the same time searching for some nice Steel-Tier Orks to kill and create Undead from them.

He currently had 72 Steel-Tier Undead, and due to him being Level 8, he could control 120 Undeads altogether. Usually, the average Necromancer could control around 3 Undeads per Level when he was mortal, so Samiel being able to control basically 5 times of that number was unheard of.

Even during his time on Earth, he could control around 10 Undeads per Level, which was unheard of.

After one hour, his effort finally paid off, as he felt a small group of Steel-Tier Orks belonging to some Clan was lumbering wood here. Samiel quickly came up to the Orks and cast on them 1st Level Spell Crushing Curse, as he wanted to test the spell's effect in actual combat.

While in normal circumstances, the effects of the 1st Level Spell Crushing Curse of strong Steel-Tiers would not be that great to push them to the madness instantly, these were Orks.

A species that was obsessed with war, fighting each other, and killing. So in a split of a second, the several 1st Level Spell Crushing Curses fell onto designed Orks, they started hearing countless whispers as their minds couldn't bear it, and they started attacking other Orks, as suddenly all 42 Orks started fighting each other, in a life and death battle.

After only 14 Orks remained alive and standing, Samiel used [Winter Ruler] to directly freeze them to death, as he collected their Sous and resurrected other Orks as Undeads, increasing his number of Undeads from 72 to 100 Steel-Tier Undeads.

After that, he used some souls in his disposition to balance the level of his Undeads, as for now, he focused more on the quality of all of his Undeads due to their relatively small number, as the entire Tower was filled with countless powerhouse and experts.

The average level of strength was way higher in the Tower compared to other Worlds and Dimensions. This was because the enviroment in the Tower was way better, with extremely high mana density and accumulation of legacies that were left here by the powerhouses, thus creating stronger generations one after another.

After he dealt with the Orks and increased his Undead Army, he soon arrived at the location that was transferred directly to his memories by the Akashic Records. Samiel figured that this must be the preferential treatment that he got from the Records, as he managed to establish the connection as a mortal.

When he stood before the Gate of the Tomb, he realized it was huge; just the gate was more than twenty meters high, probably made so other species could enter or just to flex majesty of the person who was buried here.

[Warning, you have entered the Domain.]

[Warning, you are under heavy suppression from the owner of the Domain.]

When Samiel heard that he entered the Domain, he was washed over by a sense of dread because he knew exactly what the concept of Domains represented.

Transcendence.

The pinnacle of all Paths.

[Your Species Old Deus is resistant to the effects of the Domain.]

[You have resisted the effects of the Domain.]

Now he was pretty lucky because he guessed this Domain was just a reminder of a deceased Transcendent buried here, but it was still powerful to affect even Legendaries to a large degree.

Samiel was largely unaffected only due to him being Old Deus and partial Eldritch, meaning this Transcendent must be from some lesser race. Not to mention his resistant abilities were very strong, and the owner of this Domain must be long dead, thus weakening the power of the Domain as a whole.

His racial heritage let him resist things like this relatively effortlessly, as this was the concept of racial superiority between those inferior and superior.

Even so, he still felt pretty confrontable as he entered the Tomb. The entrance was filled with spider webs, dust, and terrible air; probably nobody has entered this place since its creation or for the past few millennia.

Samiel knew that he was practically allowed to enter only the 1st Layer of the Tomb, and even if he could enter more layers, he felt his instincts warning him against making such a move, as it would cost him his life very fast.

[You have entered the Tomb of the Last King of Humanity.]

[Hidden Mission has been updated.]

[Mission: Clear out the 1st Trial set by The Last King of Humanity.

Reward: Steel Gate Token, ???]

Samiel figured out that the entire Tomb was divided into 7 Layers.

1st for the Iron-Tier, 2nd for Steel-Tier, 3rd for Bronze-Tier, 4th for Silver-Tier, 5th for Gold-Tier, 6th for Legendary, 7th for Transcendent Level where the final Inheritance was located.

[1st Trial = Trial of the Heart

Details: Prove that you are a proud human by undergoing the Trail of Heart and that you are worthy of leading the human race to rise once against their oppressors and break their status as slaves.]

When Samiel read the details of the Trail, he immediately frowned as the wheels in his head started spinning very fast. He knew that he had zero chance of passing this Trail, as he was not even human in the first place, and secondly, he never cared about his humanity and abandoned it for power in a split of a second.

On the contrary, he hated his own human part because it reminded him of his own insignificance and his worst fear, of being an ordinary person on Earth, without any ability or power, and that was something that frightened persona of Samiel Zentaur, just like it scared and killed Patrick Smith.

But there was something that caught his attention.

The situation of the human race.

After they entered the Tower, he was surprised that Yvraine told him that there didn't exist any really top-ranking human factions in the Tower, while some of them existed outside of it but did not have a foothold in the Tower was something that was suspicious by itself.

And while the Magisterium could be technically considered a human-dominated faction, it was hardly a faction as those magic users only cared about their research and power and nothing else. If it benefitted them, they wouldn't have a problem doing the same atrocities as Cultists or worshippers of the Outer Gods.

Humanity was one of the most spread and common species in the Tower and across all reality. One could see them practically everywhere in the Tower and almost in every world in the Cosmos.

But in the Tower, the closest thing to all human factions was the Magisterium. But alas, Magisterium could be, in many cases, hardly be considered a functioning faction.

From what Yvraine told him, Magisterium was functioning like some kind of an Association for the Magic Casters and was headed by three representatives, the strongest from their Wizards, Sorcerers, and Warlocks.

Because of this, there was a lot of squabble and internal problems between tens of sub-factions of the Magisterium, and they often didn't act as one. So, even though they were one of the biggest and strongest factions, their disunity was their greatest weakness, and only on rare occasions did Magisterium act as a united front.

Most factions in the Tower and Cosmos were usually built on racial or ideological aspects. However, the racial one was more common, and the ideology was more typical for the religions and equivalent.