Reginald Vance’s teeth ground together so hard they threatened to shatter. The crimson-tinted dragon-scale armor he wore—a mythic artifact that had survived three separate S-Rank abyssal rift raids—was groaning under the sheer, unadulterated weight of Ethan’s Void Sovereign gravity field.
He was a Level 95 SSS-Rank Apex Vanguard. He was supposed to be one of the pillars of human society, an unmovable mountain. Yet looking into Ethan’s pitch-black, bottomless eyes, Reginald felt an instinctual, animalistic panic screaming in his chest.
"Ethan Reed..." Reginald choked out, his voice strained as he forced his legs to remain straight. "You think you can just erase a global corporation? The World Hunter Federation... the central government... they will never allow a rogue anomaly like you to control a tier-one city!"
"The Federation isn’t here, Reginald. But I am," Ethan said smoothly.
He casually raised his left hand, and with a thought, a dark purple, crystalline contract scroll materialized out of thin air, unfurling in front of Reginald’s face.
It was the Sovereign Soul-Bound Transfer Contract, an ancient artifact Ethan had retrieved from Julian Cross’s hidden subterranean vaults and upgraded through his 10,000x Return System.
The text on the scroll glowed with a predatory, dark gold light. It detailed the absolute, unconditional surrender of every asset owned by the Vance Corporation. Their dungeons, their black-market routes, their technology shares, and their real estate, transferring them completely to the Underground Guild.
"Sign it," Ethan commanded, his voice cold and flat.
"Never!" Reginald roared, his pride as a corporate king overriding his fear for a split second. He gripped his heavy claymore with both hands, trying to ignite his ultimate combat skill, Dragon Sovereign’s Fury, to tear through the gravity field.
Ethan didn’t even draw his twin blades to parry. He simply took half a step forward, expanding his Eternal Domain.
BOOM!
The gravity localized around Reginald’s arms multiplied by tenfold.
CRACK!!!
The bones in Reginald’s wrists snapped instantly like dry twigs under the invisible hydraulic force. The massive claymore slipped from his shattered fingers, clattering loudly onto the cracked marble plaza.
The Level 95 Apex Vanguard let out a muffled, agonizing groan as the pressure forced him down, his knees violently smashing into the stone craters alongside his crushed army. New chapters come out on novelping . com first.
The hundred thousand spectators watching from the stadium balconies gasped in absolute, paralyzed horror. The man who practically owned their city was groveling in the dirt.
A low, smooth clapping sound broke the silence.
The space directly next to Ethan rippled like water, and Julian Cross stepped out of the shadows. He wore a brand-new tailored velvet suit, his silver monocle perfectly replaced, a sharp, triumphant smile playing on his lips.
Behind him floated dozens of the Underground Guild’s elite broadcasting drones, recording the entire event for the global networks.
"The public notary has arrived, Lord Reed," Julian said, bowing deeply to Ethan with a level of deference that sent chills down the spines of the watching guild masters. He then turned his cold, calculating gaze down toward Reginald.
"Reginald, old friend," Julian purred, pulling a fountain pen forged from mana-conductive silver from his vest pocket. "Your three thousand elite soldiers are pinned. Your heavy tanks are scrap metal. Your family elders are frozen block ornaments inside the stadium. If you do not sign this contract within the next ten seconds... Lord Reed will not just dismantle your company. He will erase your entire bloodline from the face of this earth."
Reginald looked at the silver pen, then at his shattered wrists, and finally up at Ethan, who was staring down at him with an expression completely devoid of human emotion.
He realized with absolute, terrifying clarity that Ethan wasn’t bargaining. He was a god dictating terms to an ant.
If he refused, the Vance family would cease to exist by sunset.
"I... I sign..." Reginald whispered, his voice trembling as the corporate empire he had spent fifty years building dissolved into nothingness.
Using his remaining mana, Reginald forced his fractured hand to grip the silver pen. He dragged his signature across the bottom of the glowing scroll, spilling a drop of his own blood onto the parchment to seal the soul-bound contract.
OMMMM—
The moment the signature was completed, the dark gold text on the scroll flared into a blinding, triumphant pillar of light.
The contract dissolved into a million glowing particles, embedding its absolute cosmic restrictions directly into the global finance and hunter registry networks.
[DING! System Notification: Unconditional Transfer of the Vance Corporation (Tier-1 Asset Group) Successful!]
[You have acquired: 450x Dungeon Domains, 12,000x High-Grade Resource Vaults, and 800 Billion Credits!] This chapter was taken from novelping.com without permission.
[System Balance Adjusted: Triggering Follower and Property Synchronization...]
[Due to the absolute scale of the property investment into your network... your level indicators have forcefully broken through!]
[Level Breakthrough: Level 60 -> Level 80!]
[All Core Attributes +4,000! Current Base Attributes: 10,700+]
BOOM!!!
A violent storm of pitch-black void mana exploded from Ethan’s body, shooting straight up into the heavens and completely shattering the crimson clouds over the Ashen Abyss Rift.
At Level 80, with over 10,700 base statistics and his mythic SSS-Rank gear equipped, Ethan’s raw combat power had officially bypassed the mortal limits of the planet. He was a walking natural disaster.
Ethan casually turned his back on the groveling corporate head, his black trench coat billowing in the void wind.
"Julian," Ethan said, his voice echoing with a dark, multi-layered cosmic resonance. "Clean up the city. Secure the vaults."
"By your supreme command, Lord Sovereign," Julian replied, his eyes blazing with fanatical excitement as he signaled the thousands of hidden Underground Guild agents waiting in the shadows to begin the total takeover of the city.
Ethan walked past the paralyzed crowd, Cassandra moving flawlessly half a step behind him.
The F-Rank delivery boy who had been mocked by the academy had just bankrupted and crushed a global superpower corporation in a single morning.
The city was already his. Now, it was time to look toward the global stage.