Epoch: A Berserker's Rise

Until now, Adam's situation was fine. Actually, a little too fine.

Although they outnumbered him, the demons were too scared to really go all out, and even the faster ones among them weren't able to endanger Adam, to make him feel the danger.

Without danger, then what he was doing was useless, he needed danger to stimulate himself and breakthrough. And just as he was wondering how to make everything a little spicier, he saw the old demon rush toward him with two big ass swords.

Well, he got what he wanted. Adam slashed with extra force as he created a powerful wind with the force of his sword alone to push the faster dregs around him, leaving him enough place and time to turn around and counter the charge of Kriar.

Adam's one sword blocked the demon's two swords, and Adam didn't try a typical swordsman stand off as it was just plain stupid, so he slide his weapon alongside Kriar's two weapons, before rotating on himself, dodging another salvo of spells and swords.

Kriar narrowed his eyes and also decided to go all out as he didn't even try to defend himself and hacked as much as he could at Adam.

This finally pushed Adam into the danger zone as he started taking damage. In term of strength, Adam was around Kriar's level, more or less, and if they fought one on one they would probably take some time to decide the victor.

Adam was much more skilled, be it swordsmanship or Concept Comprehension, but the Old Demon had many tricks up his sleeve, and him being a demon granted him access to some cool skills that allowed greater damage. And his stats were probably above Adam's.

And Adam was fighting him while being surrounded by many other demons, half of which were firing spells at him continuously. There was even a Level 200 among the mages, and although she was of lesser strength, she was still quite strong.

So obviously, Adam couldn't maintain the previous situation, and he started taking damage. Adam would first defend against Kriar's attacks, as they were the ones that would deal the most damage, then those of Sultra, and all the others were the only ones capable of hitting him.

Adam slowly but steadily fell, but as it did he also felt his swordsmanship was getting better and better. When he finally reached 30% though, Adam began recovering.

Until now, Adam used 100 Aura every second to maintain [Sword Aura], which cancelled his recovery rate. This meant he didn't regain any HP either as it used Aura to heal him.

Now, he would use the tenth of seconds during which he wasn't hitting anything to deactivate [Sword Aura], and used that moment to recover. Recovering 1% per second costed 30 Aura per second, so with his recovery he would recover 3% per second and still gain 10 Aura every second.

Of course, this was split in many fractions of seconds, but it still allowed him to stop his HP from continuously decreasing, and it was even increasing at a steady rate.

At first, Kriar didn't notice anything, but when Adam's HP returned to 50% he finally noticed, and he was shocked. How was this possible? Was he toying with them?

But Adam did not care about their shock, as he could feel his breakthrough was imminent. As long as he fought for a little longer…

However, Kriar suddenly released a weird cry, and all the demons retreated, confusing Adam. Confused as he was though, he immediately began recovering his lost HP, no longer activating [Sword Aura].

Kriar looked around at the surrounding demons, and his face turned ugly. Although they suffered no casualties until now, every demon who fought at close range sported numerous deep cuts all around their bodies which bled a large part of their blood, and that didn't show any sign of healing.

Meanwhile, even though the mages weren't injured, they all had used a large part of their mana. Kriar couldn't help but look at Adam with fear in his gaze. At first he, hadn't believed it was possible for a Hero to overpower them, but at the rate they were going at they really were going to lose.

But that wasn't what caused him to fear. Instead, what made him fear the Northman was that he remembered the fact they weren't facing a Hero, but a measly Silver Rank. On other words, they were facing nothing more than an Elder Rank monster, and yet they were losing.

How could such a monster exist? Although Kriar never met any Sovereign in his thousands of years of existence, he was a cultivated man and he knew a lot about Epoch, their ancestral place, and Sovereign weren't supposed to be so strong.

Unlike Epoch, who lost most of the real history books about the Era of the Gods, before the War of the Gods, because of the different ruling factions who destroyed those books to increase their own power, Providence never really changed rulers through it's long years of existence, and so the information about the ancient era was still mostly intact.

And Kriar had read about the legends of many, many talented beings, be they Chosen Ones or Sovereign. And yet, none of them even came close to the power Adam had been showing them. At most, they would be able to barely fight those two realms above theirs, and that was because they had Legendary or Divine Rank equipments to help them. After all, the restrictions on equipments weren't as stringent before the system. As long as one was strong enough, they could equip even Legendary Equipment, they didn't need a certain Level.

And even those who were able of such feats, they were very few, and that was for the lower ranked ones. All those who were capable of crossing two ranks, even with the help of Legendary artefacts, crossed from Bronze to Gold Rank.

This was because the distance between those two ranks was much lesser than the one between Silver and Hero. Heck, juts the difference in strength between a Hero Rank and a Gold Rank was bigger than the difference between a Gold Rank and a Bronze Rank.

And despite all this, Adam managed to do that, and the scariest, he didn't even seem to hold any Legendary Items. No, he couldn't even have any, even if he wanted, as the gods forbid it and set the requirements on equipments through the system.

This meant the Northman was able to cross two ranks relying only on his strength, and that made him much more dangerous. If he was allowed to continue growing, then it wouldn't be long before they were all exterminated.

So he decided to put his everything into killing Adam. He took out a strange looking flag that reeked of the odour of blood from his Spatial Ring and said "He is too strong, we have to finish everything now. Everyone, we must activate this Red World Flag or we will die."

He didn't even let them think about it as he infused a large part of his own energy inside the flag himself. Normally, he, and all other demons, would be reluctant to activate this.

The flag held an extremely powerful array in it, but to activate it they would have to sacrifice a part of their life force. This would weaken them for a long period of time, and even take a part of their lifespan away.

But since Kriar had been the first one to infuse his energy in the flag, despite being the oldest among them, the rest of the demons understood the situation was critical, and if they didn't obey, they very might well die.

One after another, all the demons input their energy in the flag, which started releasing a powerful killing intent. A deep scent of blood spread in the surroundings, the odour was so strong that even a Gold Rank would feel dizzy from it.

The very air around Adam started turning red, and he had to stop breathing as he had the feeling doing so would harm him.

Adam would have normally tried to stop them from activating that flag, but he could feel the power behind that attack. His instincts were telling him that if he didn't manage to block this attack, then he would die.

This excited him as he finally felt it was time for him to break through his limits. As the blood aura quickly gathered around the flag, balls of blood started forming in the air. Each of them were even more powerful than Sultra's earlier spells, and they were quickly growing in number.

Meanwhile, Adam closed his eyes and pushed every unneeded thoughts out of his mind, keeping it clear. In that moment, only the sword figured in Adam's mind, and anything that tried to enter his mind would be shredded apart.

Kriar and the rest of the demons aged visibly as the blood orbs finished forming, a with a weak voice Kriar said "Die."

With his words, all the blood orbs, which counted in the hundreds, fired with an explosive speed toward Adam.

They were quick, even quicker than Adam when he flew at top speed, and they reached Adam in an instant.

And yet, as they entered within ten meters of Adam, the latter opened his eyes. If anyone saw his eyes, they would be shocked, and scared by the absolute calm in them.

Suddenly, everyone felt the world around them slow down into a crawl. Even the incomparably fast blood orbs started moving at a crawl. The demons were shocked, they couldn't understand how could time just stop.

But then, opposite of them, they saw Adam swing his sword. The swing seemed slow, so slow that even a child would be able to dodge it.

But none of the demons were able to move, and the red orbs were so slow they seemed to be immobile too.

As Adam finished his swing, sword aura filled the sky.