Kael turned, bow already in hand, and let his gaze sweep the line of players fanned out behind Cynthia.
Every face in that crowd was familiar.
Ryan stood near the front, along with the rest of Ironclad’s starting five.
Behind them, more than a dozen reserves the bench players the org had been quietly grooming for months. Not a scouting party. Not a warning shot.
This was Ironclad’s entire competitive roster, standing in a cemetery, less than a day into launch.
Kael almost laughed.
Every serious player on this server is racing the clock right now, and you burned half your active roster on a grudge match.
Only Cynthia could turn a business decision into a manhunt this fast. If this was the kind of judgment steering Ironclad’s strategy, the org was going to bleed talent long before the season even started.
Still credit where it was due. Ironclad hadn’t clawed its way to the top of the domestic scene by accident.
Every player in that crowd sat above level 11, geared in a mix of Bronze and Iron, and the five starters wore full Bronze sets top to bottom.
Against an ordinary solo player, a lineup like that wouldn’t be a fight. It would be an execution.
Kael’s eyes narrowed, and something that wasn’t quite amusement flickered behind them.
This many, for me? I’m almost insulted. Should’ve brought the whole roster and then some.
He let his voice run through the system’s distortion filter, flat and unfamiliar, and called out across the graves.
"Come to watch me level, or did you actually think this many of you would matter?"
"Bring the whole guild next time. This lot wouldn’t even season the fight."
"Big talk from a lucky nobody!"
Ryan’s voice cracked across the clearing, tight with old resentment finally given a target.
Every server-first Kael had claimed tonight had landed like a personal insult, and standing here in front of Cynthia was exactly the stage he’d been waiting for.
"You got a hidden class and a soft launch. That’s not skill, that’s a coin flip that landed your way!" He drew his blade with a metallic hiss, murder plain in his eyes, and closed the distance at a dead sprint. "Let me show you what an actual gap in skill looks like."
Kael didn’t wait for him to arrive.
The bowstring sang, an ice-wreathed arrow arcing straight for Ryan’s chest.
Ryan’s mouth curled in something close to contempt. A clean sidestep, no wasted motion, and the arrow whistled past empty air.
He’d trained this kid personally, once upon a time every habit, every positioning tell, every instinct Ryan leaned on in a fight had Kael’s fingerprints all over it from a hundred nights of scrims.
Which meant Kael already knew exactly where that dodge was going before Ryan’s feet finished moving.
Two more arrows left the bow in the same breath, angled from two entirely different lines, boxing in every inch of space Ryan had just cleared for himself.
Along the tree line, a cluster of Ironclad’s Archer-class players went rigid, eyes widening in unison.
"He called that dodge before it happened"
"That’s not Beastlord instinct. That’s elite Archer-level read."
Ryan’s expression cracked. He hadn’t expected a Beastlord to handle a bow like a dedicated ranged specialist, let alone one that timed the follow-up shots to close off his exact escape lines.
He got a blade up in time to deflect one arrow. The second caught him square in the side.
-371
A full quarter of his health bar, gone in a single hit. The gasp that rippled through Ironclad’s ranks was audible from twenty meters out.
"That’s not possible"
"He’s wearing a full Bronze set! One arrow doesn’t take a quarter health off gear like that!"
"What kind of attack stat does a Beastlord even have?!" They had no way of knowing.
Warden’s Mandate had fused Kael with the Frostwraith a Silver-tier boss in her own right feeding him a full eighty percent of her stat sheet on top of everything he’d already built.
His panel numbers right now outpaced both of his own companions combined.
A level 13 player in Bronze gear was never designed to eat a hit like that and stay standing.
Ryan reeled, more from disbelief than the damage itself, staring at the quarter of his health bar that had simply ceased to exist.
Worse than the number frost was already crawling across his skin where the arrow had struck, movement speed bleeding away in a slow, creeping ten percent.
Kael didn’t let up. Agility stacked high enough to outpace anyone in that crowd, he skated backward, widening the gap while the bowstring kept singing three more arrows in the span of a few seconds, every one finding meat.
"That the top-tier operation you promised?" Kael’s voice carried easy contempt through the filter. "Because from here it just looks like standing still and getting shot."
Something in Ryan’s chest came apart at that. He wanted to scream back, wanted anything that wasn’t silence and had nothing, because he genuinely hadn’t laid a hand on Kael yet and was already staring down a health bar in freefall.
Priests scrambled to pump heals into him, dragging the bar back up inch by inch.
Cynthia’s voice cracked across the graveyard like a whip.
"What are you all WAITING for?! Swarm him! End this NOW!"
The order broke the standoff. Every blade, every bow, every readied skill turned on Kael at once.
"Then die trying."
Kael’s eyes went cold, and he threw out the command without hesitation both companions surging forward, aimed straight at Ironclad’s exposed back line.
The Void Behemoth and Skeleton General sat at level 13 apiece, class passive stacked on top, their combined stat sheets brushing against what a level 15 Silver-tier boss could field.
Against anyone in this graveyard, that wasn’t a fight. It was a foregone conclusion, and Ironclad’s own analysts knew it.
Which was exactly why they didn’t try to fight it head-on.
The formation split on command a handful of players peeling off to use headstones and dead trees for cover, buying distance from the two companions while the rest converged entirely on Kael himself.
Three Archers loosed at once from three separate angles, each shot threaded to close a different escape lane. No amount of footwork was going to slip all three clean.
Kael dodged what he could, took the weakest hit on the chin, and kept his eyes moving.
That was when he caught it twin daggers catching the low graveyard light for half a second before both Assassins vanished into stealth, gone like they’d never existed at all.
Every hair on the back of his neck stood up at once.
There it is.
Somewhere close, hidden, two blades were already closing the distance and unlike Ryan, these two had never trained under him. He had no idea which way they’d come from.
"Hold the line!" someone shouted from Ironclad’s ranks, voice sharp with something that sounded almost like hope. "We’ve got him boxed!"
Kael’s grip tightened on the bow, pulse steady despite the blind spot closing in from somewhere behind him.