"Bond established. Silver-Tier companion acquired: Ice Banshee."
Deep in a hidden pocket of Frostwind Forest a stretch of the map buried under permanent snow and biting cold Kael’s third companion materialized in a burst of pale blue light.
She looked less like a monster and more like something out of a ghost story. Tall, pale-skinned, striking in a way that unsettled as much as it impressed a black cloak stitched with gold thread hanging off narrow shoulders, and in her hands, a longbow carved from ice that looked like it had been frozen solid a thousand years ago. Frost curled along the bowstring in slow, deliberate spirals.
[ICE BANSHEE]
Bloodline Tier: Silver
Constitution ★★★★★
Strength ★★★★★★★
Agility ★★★★★★★
Spirit ★★★★★
Skill I Frost Touch: Every attack deals +20% ice damage and applies a 10% slow.
Skill II Ice Barrage: Fire five ice bolts at a single target in rapid succession, each at 70% attack. 60 mana, 20s cooldown.
Skill III Frost Volley: Fire eight ice bolts in a fan pattern, each at 80% attack. 70 mana, 25s cooldown.
Twenty-four stars solid, but a clean three shy of what the General was carrying. Nothing extraordinary. Kael had no intention of investing long-term in this one.
A loaner, not a keeper.
He’d bonded her purely for utility a ranged specialist to speed up the grind until something worth actually raising crossed his path. Once that happened, this contract would go the same way any placeholder eventually did.
He triggered Warden’s Mandate anyway, and blue light swallowed her whole, folding her down into a longbow carved from the same pale ice, cold radiating off it in slow waves.
Kael closed his hand around it, and power surged up his arm cold, sharp, and immediate. His stats spiked hard across the board.
He drew back, felt magic gather along the string, and released.
The arrow that formed mid-draw punched clean through a sapling as thick as his forearm, the wound frosting over white the instant it hit.
He nodded, satisfied, and turned to lead both remaining companions deeper into the forest. Half an hour of travel brought them to a new stretch of map a place called Ashgrave Cemetery.
Cracked headstones leaned at broken angles across the fog-choked ground. Skeleton Warriors dragged themselves free of shallow graves, rusted blades trailing through dirt, wandering in directionless loops.
Deeper in, half-glimpsed shapes flickered at the edge of vision, and somewhere overhead, crows called out in a rhythm that didn’t sound entirely natural.
Straight out of a horror film. Kael had picked the location on purpose.
Beyond the sheer density of high-level targets, the map held something more valuable a hidden SS-grade main quest chain, one of the richest early-game reward lines in the entire game. Locking that down now meant reaping the payoff for a long time to come.
And maybe I walk out of here with a fourth companion, too.
The thought alone put a spark behind his eyes. If this went the way he remembered, whatever he found waiting in this cemetery would make both current companions look like starter gear by comparison.
He led the charge in himself.
The outer ring of Skeleton Warriors here started at level 17 a serious jump even for boss-tier companions. But both his pets had already climbed to level 13 from the grind leading up to this point, and stacked on the class passive, their numbers held up fine against the gap.
The ice bow made it better than fine. Boosted by the Banshee’s full 80% stat transfer, every shot Kael loosed cracked through the field like a whip frost trailing behind each arrow, monsters slowing before they even registered the hit.
They tore through the graveyard like a storm front, Skeleton Warriors dropping in waves, coins and gear and most importantly Evolution Points scattering with every kill.
Half an hour of steady cutting later, Kael’s counter crossed the thousand mark.
He didn’t wait. Straight into the Ravager’s panel, full pool dumped into another bloodline evolution.
"1,000 Evolution Points spent. [Voidmaw Ravager] (Bronze) has evolved into [Void Behemoth] (Silver). New skill unlocked: [Dread Wail] (C-Rank)."
[VOID BEHEMOTH]
Bloodline Tier: Silver
Constitution ★★★★★★★★
Strength ★★★★★★★
Agility ★★★★★
Spirit ★★★★★
Skills: Ironbound Hide (C), Feast (C), Bone Spike Volley (C), Dread Wail (C)
Dread Wail: Unleash a terrifying scream, dealing 80% magic damage to all enemies in a frontal arc. 100 mana, 30s cooldown.
Star total climbed by five, settling at twenty-five the practical ceiling for a Silver-tier companion, hit clean on its very first evolution into the tier.
The new AoE skill sealed the deal, giving it real crowd-clear potential to go alongside its raw single-target damage.
Its size had scaled with it. What had crossed the tree line a "monster" now moved like a small mountain given legs, each footstep sending a faint tremor through the cemetery dirt.
Kael was already planning to spend another hour clearing the rest of the outer ring before logging for lunch when something made him go still.
He turned.
A crowd of heavily geared players had pushed into Ashgrave Cemetery behind him, spreading out in a loose ring, every face carrying the same unmistakable weight of intent.
And every one of them wore the same guild tag.
Ironclad. At the front, Cynthia Miles walked forward with her chin high, mouth curled into something between a sneer and a smile.
"Thought you could hide from us out here in the middle of nowhere, Unrivaled?"
"Cross Ironclad, and there’s nowhere on this server you get to disappear to."