Money talks. Even in a video game.
The bounty lit a fire under the Cartel’s remaining crew, and they surged forward with fresh nerve, ranged classes opening up first a storm of arrows, ice shards, and fireballs converging on Kael from every direction at once.
Not a bad plan, honestly. Focus fire the Beastlord, drop him fast, and the world’s biggest pet becomes a very large, very useless statue.
Except Kael had spent an entire prior lifetime learning exactly how to not be a stationary target.
He broke into motion before the first projectile landed footwork tight and economical, blade flicking out to knock arrows off course mid-flight. His free hand shot up, and a thread of pale green light snapped into existence, tethering him to the Husk.
Lifechain.
An arrow found him a second later. The number that popped up over his head barely registered.
-7
Above the Husk, a heavier number bloomed.
-28
Eighty percent, rerouted straight through the chain. Against a health pool sitting in the thousands, twenty-eight points didn’t even dent the bar.
The crowd along the tree line audibly lost it.
"Did you SEE that? He just no-sold an arrow onto his own pet!"
"That’s gotta be the Lifechain skill the one from his boss-kill reward!"
"S-rank doesn’t even begin to cover it."
"And that health pool that thing ate a hit that should’ve hurt and didn’t even flinch. What tier IS that pet?"
Melee closed in next, blades flashing. Kael met them without missing a step.
He’d built his last life around a sword, long before Beastlord ever entered the picture and while this run had traded that mastery for a class built on companions, muscle memory didn’t care what character sheet he was running.
His stats, backed by real Iron-tier gear, already outclassed most of what the Cartel could field. He was light on class skills, sure but this early into launch, nobody had more than one or two moves memorized anyway. It evened out fast.
He used the Husk’s bulk as a wall, circling it, breaking sightlines on the ranged attackers while his blade turned aside melee strikes one after another parry, redirect, counter, every opening punished with a strike aimed at exactly the weak point that would hurt most.
The Husk fought like the mountain it resembled planted, roaring, cutting down anyone who got close.
Between the two of them, Cartel members started dropping fast.
ReaperDrake watched seven, then eight of his own crew go down in the space of a minute and felt something in him snap. He surged forward himself, blade drawn, an Archer timing a stun arrow to buy him the opening.
It worked. The shot landed, Kael’s vision swam, and ReaperDrake’s blade came down glowing with a charged skill, opening a deep gash across his chest. A few more hits landed in the same window, and Kael’s health cratered past the halfway mark before his head cleared.
He didn’t panic. Popped a potion, felt a hundred health flood back in, and answered with three clean strikes of his own each one landing exactly where he aimed.
Then his hand shot up again.
Rampage.
Crimson light rippled across the Husk’s frame. It slammed both claws down on ReaperDrake, and before he’d even hit the ground, its jaws closed around him and swallowed him whole.
-187
-851
Two numbers, both bright red, both massive. ReaperDrake’s health bar didn’t just drop it vanished, faster than his own healer three ranks back could even react.
With their leader gone, the fight came apart at the seams. What was left of the Cartel broke and ran without a second thought, and Kael let the Husk run a handful of them down before calling it off.
He looted the field clean gear, potions, whatever the dead had dropped and kept moving east like the whole thing had been a minor inconvenience.
For the handful of random players who’d watched the entire exchange from a safe distance, it was anything but minor.
"Twenty-plus geared players, and he just... walked through them?"
"That’s not even fair. His pet alone should’ve been the whole story and he’s ALSO just built different?"
"Two server-first boss kills and now this. This guy’s not human."
"Someone tell me they got this on video, because nobody’s going to believe this happened otherwise."
Whoever had recorded it was already halfway to the forums by the time Kael crossed out of the zone.
He didn’t spare it a second thought.
A dozen minutes of hard travel later, grinding down stray monsters along the way, Kael crossed level 8. The three Bronze-tier pieces looted off the Goblin Shaman finally met their level requirement and slotted into place, and he felt the stat boost settle in immediately.
The terrain shifted underfoot the path narrowing, the air turning cold and wrong.
Ahead, the tree line gave way to something bleaker. Dead trees stretched black, skeletal branches toward a gray sky, like something had reached up out of the ground and frozen mid-scream.
Bare bones wandered the blighted earth in slow, aimless patrols skeletal shapes picking through the dark with no apparent purpose at all.
Graystone Ridge.