Down in the three-mile crater on Skull-Cleaver Plains, Upper-Realm Envoy Xue Sha shoved the unconscious Demon Duke Xue Kuang off his back and scrambled to his feet. His pale face was twisted in livid humiliation.
The thirty-foot pink error screen above his head had finally faded. In its place ticked a cold red countdown clock in the corner of his vision.
[DAILY LOAN-SHARK UPKEEP REMINDER: Host owes 100,000 Slaughter XP before 12:00 AM tonight!]
[Time Remaining until Midnight Soul-Lightning Whip: 08 Hours : 14 Minutes : 22 Seconds!]
[Current Slaughter XP Balance: 0 / 100,000 XP!]
“Damn that broken Void Dragon egg! And damn this greedy system!” Xue Sha snarled under his breath, wiping a smudge of crater mud off his blood-bone cheek-guard.
In the original script, after drinking the Void Dragon’s marrow at the Planetary Core, Xue Sha was supposed to spend thirty leisurely days touring the Western Demon Continent. He had planned to pick fights at teahouses and slaughter one tribe every three days while enjoying his status as an Upper-Realm Envoy.
Now, however, his Phase 1 marrow quest had failed completely. Worse, his thirty thousand local cultists were whispering behind their hands about “sky-blue denim overalls.” And his loan-shark system. Was threatening to electrocute his soul in eight hours if he didn’t murder one hundred thousand living creatures before midnight!
