"Welcome to Frostwatch, traveler."
The chime rang clean and formal in Kael’s ears as light dissolved around him, resolving into the East Gate Plaza.
Everything about it hit somewhere between familiar and foreign the same city, viewed through eyes that had lived a different version of this exact moment once before.
The square stretched wide, paved in flat gray stone worn smooth by decades of boots. At its center, a mounted warrior statue reared up on its plinth, sword raised toward a sky the color of old iron.
The buildings ringing the plaza were built for war, not comfort thick walls, narrow windows, nothing ornamental about any of it. Even the ambient music had shifted, trading the newbie zone’s soft strings for something low and relentless, all drums and tension.
Frostwatch.
A city that had bled for its place on the map more times than anyone could count, and looked exactly like it knew it.
Kael pulled up his panel and checked his running total.Ninety-one Evolution Points. Nine short of the hundred he needed.
He didn’t linger. A quick stop at the general store for a handful of return scrolls, and he was already crossing back out through the gate, boots hitting the drawbridge at a jog.
The moment he cleared the city walls, he summoned both companions in a single flash of light the Husk and the General, side by side, filling the road behind him.
"Lead on."
East of Frostwatch stretched Frostwind Forest a sprawling stretch of leveling grounds packing everything from level 10 fodder up to level 50 threats, the default proving ground for anyone fresh off the teleport from a starting zone.
They hadn’t gone far before a low, rolling growl broke from the tree line ahead, and something huge and striped exploded out of the brush.
[JUNGLE TIGER] (Common)
Level 12
A level 12 monster this early into the secondary city would’ve given most fresh arrivals real trouble.
It didn’t get the chance to prove it.
The General moved first spear snapping forward in a blur, punching three clean holes clear through the tiger’s flank before it had finished landing.
The Husk followed a half-step behind, jaw unhinging wide, and swallowed what was left in a single motion.
"Ravenous Husk used [Feast] and killed Jungle Tiger (Lv. 12). +102 EXP, +10 Max HP, +1 Evolution Point."
Kael’s eyebrows shot up.
An Evolution Point. Already?
Those things dropped like rationed treasure across every kill he’d racked up in the starting zone, boss fights included, he’d scraped together barely ninety over the course of the whole night.
Something under one in ten monsters coughed one up, if that.Getting one off the very first kill in a new zone felt like more than coincidence.
Could the ring be doing this?
He glanced down at the ring on his finger, nine colors shifting lazily across its band, and something warm settled in his chest.
They pushed deeper into the forest, and the pattern held nearly every kill dropped a point.
By the third monster, something dropped alongside the corpse with a distinct metallic clink a shimmering blue wristband, glowing faintly with equipment tier.
He crouched, picked it up, and checked the readout.
Bronze-tier. Level 10.
Equipment drops off regular trash mobs were already rare on a good day. Bronze-tier gear, this early, off a common monster? The odds on that had to sit somewhere in the neighborhood of one in a million.
Three kills in, and luck like that had already found him twice.
Kael let out a short laugh, turning the wristband over in his hand."So this is what the ring actually does."
No wonder it came bundled with a hundred thousand storage slots. It expected me to need them.Infinite evolution on one hand. Effectively rigged odds on the other.
He couldn’t picture a version of this game where that combination didn’t eventually break something wide open.
The Evolution Points kept stacking at a pace that would’ve taken him all night back in the starting zone. Within the hour, his total crossed a hundred.
He didn’t wait. He tore open the Husk’s panel and dumped the entire pool into a bloodline upgrade before he’d even finished exhaling.
The number vanished from his panel in an instant, and a wave of deep violet light rolled over the Husk’s body. Its skin rippled, cracked lines spreading across the surface like something underneath was rewriting the shape of it from the inside out.
Bone spurs that had already looked wrong pushed further out, sharper, more asymmetrical the whole silhouette tipping from "monstrous" into something that belonged in a nightmare instead.
"100 Evolution Points spent. [Ravenous Husk] (Iron) has evolved into [Voidmaw Ravager] (Bronze). New skill unlocked: [Bone Spike Volley] (D-Rank)."
[VOIDMAW RAVAGER]
Bloodline Tier: Bronze
Constitution ★★★★★★
Strength ★★★★★★
Agility ★★★★
Spirit ★★★★
Skills: Hardened Hide (E), Feast (D), Bone Spike Volley (D)
A ravenous horror clawed out of the space between worlds, grown massive and merciless. It does not stop hunting. It has never once been full.
Bone Spike Volley: Launch ten bone spikes in a line, 5m range. Each spike deals 70% attack to the first target struck. 100 mana, 40s cooldown.
Its star total had climbed from fifteen to twenty the ceiling most Bronze-tier companions never touched, and this one had walked straight to it on its first evolution.
The new skill sealed it. A ranged option finally gave the Ravager something beyond pure melee smashing ten bone spikes threaded through anything unlucky enough to be standing in a line five meters out.
Kael looked it over with open satisfaction, then turned deeper into the forest, both companions falling into step behind him.
Memory carried him the rest of the way. He didn’t need a map this exact path had burned itself into him a lifetime ago, and it hadn’t changed a single turn since.
Wolf Valley opened up ahead of him eventually a wide basin thick with roaming packs of Bladefang Wild Wolves, level 15 and aggressive, exactly the kind of dense, high-value grinding ground he needed.
Somewhere deeper in, past the packs, a Silver-tier boss slept the Bladefang Wolf King, level 16 and, as far as Kael knew, still completely untouched.
Another first kill, sitting right there for the taking.He gave the signal, and both companions surged forward as one, roaring in unison.
The Voidmaw Ravager reached the nearest wolf first, jaws splitting open on a guttural snarl as ten bone spikes tore free from somewhere behind its throat.
Thwip-thwip-thwip-thwip
Each one buried itself in gray fur, the wolf staggering under the impact.
Beside it, the General raised one skeletal hand and triggered Raise the Fallen.
The ground split in four places at once, and four ragged, half-decayed archers clawed their way up out of the dirt, bone longbows already rising as they fell in step behind their summoner and charged the wolf pack together.