"Wait Silver-tier first kill too?!" It’s him again. It’s always him. "At this rate nobody else gets a single first-kill achievement this whole launch."
"That’s four server-wide announcements tonight. FOUR." Is this guy trying to break the announcement system out of spite?
The forums lit up harder than they had all night, the same name dragged back to the top of every thread.
Server-wide, the reaction had stopped being shock somewhere around announcement number three and slid into something closer to numb disbelief.
Every hour or two, like clockwork, another chime split the sky, and every time it landed heavier than the last a toy that kept going off at random, just when everyone thought the noise had finally stopped.
Nobody had an answer for who Unrivaled actually was. Just a growing pile of evidence that whatever hidden class and talent he’d landed on launch night, it had broken something the system wasn’t built to handle.
Guild-backed veterans with years of experience and full support networks were getting lapped by a single player nobody had heard of four hours ago.
Kael, blissfully unbothered by any of it, crouched over the loot pile the Wolf King had left behind and started sorting.
The count came out staggering: one Gold-tier piece, six Silver, two Bronze, a pair of D-rank Warrior skill books, and a small mountain of coin across all three metals.
A Gold drop off a Silver boss.
That kind of result was supposed to be a lottery win vanishingly rare even under ideal conditions. He’d landed it on his very first Silver-tier kill. Six Silver-grade pieces on top of that made the whole haul look less like a boss drop and more like a raid clear.
"Ring of Infinite Fortune. Right. Never doubting this thing again."He sorted through the Silver pieces first.
Wolf King Leather Boots (Silver) DEF 32, +13 CON, +11 STR, +16 AGI, Lv. 15
Wolf King Signet (Silver) +15 CON, +12 STR, +13 SPR, +300 Max HP, Lv. 16
Wolf King Hide Cap (Silver) DEF 30, +13 CON, +12 STR, +15 SPR, Lv. 15
All three sat above his current level requirement. Storage, for now no rush, the ring had room to spare.
The Gold piece took longer to look away from.
Wolf King’s Edge a longsword, level 16, throwing off a faint light of its own. Seventy-one attack, plus a 5% lifesteal clause layered on top. Genuinely best-in-class for anything at that tier.
Kael turned it over in his hands, and for a second the old itch flared up a lifetime spent as one of the best swordsmen the server had ever produced didn’t just switch off because he’d picked a different class this time around.
But the math didn’t lie. A Beastlord swinging a sword solo was leaving performance on the table when Warden’s Mandate already put a weapon in his hand with better numbers attached the General’s fused spear form outclassed this thing outright, and came with a full skill kit besides.
Sell it. No sense letting a good blade rust in storage.
Practical won out over sentimental. He’d list it the second he hit town everything was about to be worth converting into hard currency anyway, with the merge bearing down and every gold piece soon to matter more than it ever had before.
Last item in the pile: the Epic reward from tonight’s announcement.
A scroll, gold-edged, giving off a soft, warm light like something holy had touched it.
[SACRED OATH]
Grade: Epic
A binding record of the ancient pact between a Beastlord and their companions. Consuming this scroll grants one additional companion slot.
Companion count was the single biggest lever a Beastlord had. Every rival running the same class was capped at two slots this early. Kael was about to sit at three.
That gap alone was worth more than most gear upgrades on the board.
He didn’t hesitate. The scroll dissolved into a stream of gold light the instant he activated it, sinking into his chest, and a quiet notification confirmed a new slot had opened.
No rush to fill it yet. He glanced at the clock in the corner of his HUD.
Past 8 AM. A full night of grinding, and his stomach was making that very clear.
Breakfast first. Loot management before I log.
One thing left before he stepped away the pile of gear he had no use for needed to go up for auction.
Every capital city ran its own auction house once a player crossed into the secondary zone post an item, let the whole server bid on it, walk away with far better returns than standing around a square hoping for foot traffic. The only catch was the cut: a flat ten percent commission off every sale.
Worth it. He didn’t have the hours to spare hawking gear by hand.
He cracked a return scroll, waited out the five-second channel, and watched Frostwatch’s gates rebuild themselves around him in a wash of white light.
He walked straight to the auction house without breaking stride, dumped every piece he had no use for onto the counter, and blew through the listing process with the system’s suggested reserve prices rather than waste time haggling with himself over each one.
The moment the last item confirmed, the sky lit up twice in quick succession.
"Server Announcement: The #1 ranked Gold-tier weapon on the server, [Wolf King’s Edge], has been listed at Frostwatch Auction House starting bid, 500 gold. All players welcome to bid."
"Server Announcement: The #2 ranked Silver-tier armor piece, [Wolf King’s Bulwark], has been listed at Frostwatch Auction House starting bid, 100 gold. All players welcome to bid."