Helios didn’t have a blade.
He didn’t have armor, or a skill bar full of options, or anything resembling a plan.
What he had, in the half-second before the Ravager’s claws would have opened his chest, was Affinity, the one stat he’d dumped almost everything into back in a black void that felt like a lifetime ago.
Every instinct screamed at him to run, and his body, for once, ignored every one of them.
He threw his hand up on pure instinct, the same way a person threw an arm up against a car they knew they couldn’t outrun, and something in his chest answered before his mind caught up to what it was doing.
Light erupted from his palm, not a blast, not a beam, just a sudden, blinding sheet of pale gold that flared outward exactly where the Ravager’s eyes would have been if it had eyes at all instead of that sourceless red glow.
The light held for a full second longer than Helios expected, humming faintly against his palm like something alive and reluctant to let go.
The Ravager recoiled, shrieking, claws swiping wildly through empty air where Helios had been standing a heartbeat ago.
[Unregistered ability detected.]
[Analyzing…]
Helios didn’t have time to read further.
Kaelen was already moving, closing the gap while the Ravager was still blind and thrashing, blade driving up under the joint where its foreleg met its shoulder.
The creature’s shriek cut off into something wet and final, and it dropped, twitching once before going still entirely.
Silence, for a moment.
Then the field exhaled, a ragged, collective breath from everyone who’d been watching the fight from the wall, archers lowering bows they’d forgotten they were still holding taut.
“That,” Kaelen said, breathing hard, wiping dark ichor off his blade with the back of one glove, “was either the single dumbest thing I’ve seen a king do, or the only reason I’m not currently missing an arm.”
“Bit of both,” Helios admitted, his own hands still shaking.
[Evo — Ravager, Juvenile: eliminated.]
[EXP acquired: 200.]
Two hundred experience, split between everyone who’d contributed.
Helios braced for whatever fraction of that his own domain redirection was about to eat before he even got to see it.
Instead, a second notification stacked directly on top of the first, and this one made his breath catch properly, chasing away the last of the adrenaline still buzzing under his skin.
[EX Ascension System: effect triggered.]
[EXP acquired: 400.]
Four hundred.
Not two hundred cut down by redirection.
Four hundred, doubled clean before the domain ever got its share.
Helios stared at the number long enough that Kaelen had to physically wave a hand in front of his face to get his attention back.
[Level threshold reached.]
[Character: Helios]
[Level: 2 → 3]
[Evolution requirement reduced. Progress: 40% toward next evolutionary stage.]
Forty percent, off a single kill.
He didn’t have anything to compare that number against yet, no idea what a normal player’s evolution progress looked like after their first fight, but it felt like a number that shouldn’t have arrived this fast.
“You alive in there?”
“It doubled,” Helios said, mostly to himself, still staring at the number like it might change if he looked away and back.
“That actually doubled.”
“Congratulations,” Kaelen said dryly.
“Whatever just happened, try not to get used to it before it happens a second time.”
“No promises,” Helios said, still grinning despite himself.
Seraphina arrived at a near-run from the wall, breathless in a way Helios hadn’t seen from her yet, eyes going straight to the light still faintly glowing around Helios’s fingers.
Behind her, a small crowd of players and elves alike had gathered along the wall’s edge, watching the aftermath with the same wide-eyed uncertainty Helios remembered feeling during his own arrival.
“Your Majesty. What was that?”
“Honestly? No idea,” Helios said.
“I’ve never used it before. I don’t think I knew I had it.”
[Analysis complete.]
[Ability registered: Lumen Ward.]
[Classification: Reactive light-based defense. Evolution potential: unconfirmed.]
Seraphina read the notification over his shoulder, her earlier alarm sharpening into something more focused.
“An unlisted ability, appearing under combat stress, on your very first encounter. Your Majesty, that isn’t standard for any lineage I’m aware of, custom or otherwise.”
“Great,” Helios muttered.
“More things the system can’t fully explain.”
“At this rate,” Kaelen said, “we should just start keeping a list.”
Kaelen sheathed his blade, some of the tension finally easing out of his shoulders, and looked out past the fallen Ravager toward the tree line it had come from.
His expression didn’t stay relaxed for long.
Whatever he saw there wiped the last of the earlier humor off his face almost instantly, replaced by the same flat alertness Helios had seen from him at the very start of the fight.
“Helios,” he said, quiet and level in a way that was somehow worse than shouting.
“That thing didn’t come from nowhere. Look.”
Helios followed his gaze, and felt whatever relief he’d allowed himself drain away all at once.
Past the tree line, where a single Ravager had emerged minutes ago, the shadows between the trunks were moving.
Not one shape now.
Dozens.
He counted, or tried to, before giving up somewhere past twenty.
Pairs of that same sourceless red glow blinked into visibility one after another along the tree line, low to the ground, patient, watching the field the way the first Ravager never had time to.
None of them moved yet.
All of them were, unmistakably, looking directly at the small group standing over the Ravager’s body.
“Seraphina,” Helios said, keeping his voice as level as he could manage.
“Tell me the Council has a plan for this that doesn’t start with ‘evacuate.'”
“Working on it, Your Majesty,” she said, already turning to shout orders back toward the wall.
“Preferably before they decide to stop watching and start moving.”