With the enemy-clone activating Buddha’s Avatar, he was pretty much planted to his spot unable to manoeuvre as necessary to keep up with Max’s explosive attacks.

His sword in-hand Max moved like the spirit of the Gryphalos had possessed him as he was extremely nimble on his feet, moving beyond what the clone could keep up with as although it could detect Max’s incoming attacks using [ Way Of The Wind ] with the Buddha’s Avatar active it could not keep up with Max’s speed as Max kept striking against its golden body again and again and again.

-430

-500

-600

-730

-300

-400

-500

Max was dishing out an insane degree of DPS and while his clean strikes could only dish out a damage of few hundred because of the Buddha’s Avatar having ridiculously high defense, slowly but surely the enemy’s HP was draining at a visible rate.

Had the enemy clone still have attacks like [ Thunderblast ] and [ 9 Ashura Sword Slash ] available it could have potentially pushed Max back, but with the those big moves already on cool-down it was a sitting duck against Max’s rampage as the only options it had were either fire or blood attacks, both of them ineffective against Max.

Max was a unique build, most of his offensive prowess came from his fire attacks and it was supplemented well by his blood attacks. But other than that he did not have many versatile moves in his arsenal.

While this did not matter much when facing a varying range of opponents, when facing himself it made for an interesting battle since his primary mode of attack, ‘ Fire ‘ became useless and unless his opponent had a greater mastery over [ Blood Manipulation ] than him, it became useless too.

This left only physical brawling as an option to which the [ Golden Buddha ] was a very effective counter, but with having fought thousands of battles against himself, Max knew that while the Golden Buddha looked like the best move on the chessboard in reality it was not.

It had a weakness that could be exploited and he was doing exactly that.

Little by little, Max whittled down the HP of the enemy clone and brought it down to a dangerous red level before the Golden Buddha had taken enough damage for the clone to prematurely dispel it.

In a precarious position now, the enemy clone needed to desperately turn the situation around, but it found that it had no cards to play to get it out of this situation.

Max thrust his sword towards the abdomen of the clone who twisted to the side to avoid the thrust.

” How very predictable ” Max said as he smacked his lips and smiled.

Closing the gap between himself and the clone’s body as he pulled back the thrusted sword, Max tried to hold onto the enemy clone’s arm.

The enemy clone was alarmed; Max was preparing to employ the [Blood Explosion] technique. It needed to neutralise this threat immediately, or else it would be reduced to minced meat.

What it did not expect was that Max’s summoned clone would suddenly prepare a suicidal attack as it turned it’s back towards the system clone and lunged in to attempt an [ Overhead Slash ] right this second.

This move exposed it’s back to the system clone who used a [ 9 Ashura Sword Slice ] of it’s own to reduce Max’s clone’s HP to a dangerous red level, but it was not enough.

On the other hand the enemy clone was defeated by the overhead slash which ended the bout in favour of Max.

” BOOYAH! “

Max cheered as the enemy clone and it’s summoned system clone turned to dust as he and his clone stood tall in the battle.

[ System Notification – You have completed the stage 3 of the tier promotion test in 6 minutes 47 seconds.

You have been given a perfect score for this battle at SSS ]

[ System Notification – For achieving the extraordinary feat of defeating your own clone in under 7.5 minutes your final evaluation has been improved from SSS—>SSS+ ]

[ System Notification – You have completed the tier 5 promotion test successful passing all 3 stages. Congratulations adventurer you are now officially a tier5 warrior! ]

[ System Notification – You have completed the tier 5 promotion test with grading.

Stage 1 – SSS/SSS

Stage 2 – pass/pass

Stage 3 – SSS+/SSS

Final grade – SSS+ ]

[ System Notification – Your final grade has gone above the set threshold value, calculating additional rewards….. ]

**********

( Meanwhile Sebastian )

Sebastian had been digging for 4 days now and had managed to excavate a U shaped tunnel from the outside of the forest to what he believed to be the basement of the necromancer’s treasure room.

Having finally hit what seemed like a solid tile, this was going to be the moment of truth for him.

If he removed the tile and found himself in the middle of some boss room fight, Sebastian was going to instantly teleport back to the light faction safe zone where his return-token was stored, but if there was no immediate danger he would slowly explore the area and loot it dry if it were a treasure room.

On the other hand, if there was no immediate danger and no treasure either, Sebastian decided to try again from the other end of the spectrum down the centre.

Profusely praying to Kremeth, he lifted the tile to the room as the acrid stench of death and decay entered his nose making him wish he never lifted the tile.

Resolving himself to peek more, he lifted the tile just enough to get his eye level over the floor level as he scanned his surroundings to see where he was.

He found himself in the middle of a dark room where various golems remained unmoving.

About 5 metres to his left was a big coffin which seemed to be the cause of the stench of death.

Sebastian tried to inspect the coffin to see what exactly it was but his system scanning failed as the object returned as a series of question marks [ ???? ]

Sebastian was not discouraged after seeing that the inspection returned as a series of question marks but was rather excited about the prospects of its contents.

If anything was too high level to be inspected, his experience as an adventurer told him that it was guaranteed to be of high value.

Had it been any other adventurer they might have lost their calm and decided to rashly approach the coffin, but not Sebastian.

He was a thorough coward and his cowardly senses told him that rather than taking the risk of entering the room, it was a smarter choice to dig a hole under the coffin such that it would fall through the ground and into his clutches!

This way the threat of triggering the activation of golems could be contained, while the content of the coffin could be explored much more safely.

Deciding that it was the best approach, Sebastian researched the dimensions and position of the coffin relative to his current position thoroughly, before slowly lowering the tile and once again picking up his makeshift shovel as he began digging a perfect pit for the coffin to fall into.

——–

/// A/N – Tomorrow will be a one chapter day that will be about the rewards of tier5 promotion and voting on the choices will be open as usual.

So don’t miss tomorrow’s update if possible guys.

All your votes are most important ///