Damon's words struck the entire field like a meteor. Silence blanketed the three hundred thousand chaotic players. Then Damon slowly lowered his hand. "But let me make one thing clear."

A pulse of blood aura exploded outward from him. The weaker players collapsed to their knees. The stronger ones clenched their fists, teeth grinding, sweat pouring down their faces.

"You are not my soldiers," Damon said. "Not yet. You are candidates. Applicants. Strays looking for a home. I don't owe you anything."

His smile sharpened into something terrifying. "But if you can survive today, if you can prove you're more than deadweight and background noise, then I will make monsters out of you. I will turn you into something this world fears."

The cat purred ominously on his shoulder, her tail curling like a blade.

A collective shiver ran through the crowd.

"And if you give up, run, quit, or log out…" Damon shrugged. "Then you were never meant to stand with me anyway."

A few players logged out on the spot. A few more straightened with trembling resolve. And thousands, tens of thousands, felt something ignite inside their chests. A spark they didn't know they had. Damon's majestic silhouette dragged it out of them.

He spread his wings wide, blood mist swirling into a storm behind him. "Blood Domain," he declared, voice echoing across the plains. "Your test begins now."

A deafening explosion erupted in the distance as the walls of Nine Rivers City activated their siege arrays. Cannons charged with lightning. Ballistae loaded with enchanted bolts. NPC troops assembled in flawless formation. And above it all, dozens of the top guild elites took to the air, weapons drawn, faces grim.

Capturing a city was never going to be easy.

Arcane Dawn. Eternal Sovereignty. Titanfall. Their banners unfurled across the skyline like declarations of war.

Damon's grin widened. Behind him, three hundred thousand players swallowed hard. Some trembled. Some panicked. Some regretted even coming here. But some felt their blood heat with insane, reckless anticipation.

Damon pointed toward the city. "Run, hide, scream, fight, do whatever you want, but win in the end," he said. "I'm not here to judge you. I'm here to see who can survive chaos."

His wings beat once. A shockwave blasted outward. "Let's start this madness."

And with a burst of crimson light, Damon shot toward Nine Rivers City like a falling star, straight into the heart of three guilds who had prepared their entire armies to stop him.

Behind him, three hundred thousand players stared. Then someone screamed. "He didn't even tell us what to do!!"

Nevertheless, Blood Domain sprinted after their lunatic guild leader. Two more figures shot out of the masses. Aurora and Kate. While Kate's movements were simple and efficient, Aurora was flashy and dominating.

The sight of the fallen angel with her obsidian wings and serpents of darkness coiling around her body sent a visible ripple through the Blood Domain recruits. Aurora descended like a goddess of calamity, eyes sparkling with battle lust, her sword dragging a trail of darkness across the ground.

"Everyone move!" Kate shouted, amplifying her voice with mana. "Stay in groups of thirty! Don't fight each other. Fight the people actually trying to kill you!"

Aurora, meanwhile, pointed her spear at the distant city walls and screamed, "For hubby! Kill anyone who stands in his way!"

That… also worked surprisingly well.

The army surged. It wasn't neat. It wasn't coordinated. It wasn't even remotely sane. It was three hundred thousand half-panicked, half-inspired lunatics charging the city like a tidal wave made of memes, desperation, and blind devotion.

The guilds watching from Nine Rivers City froze.

Thousands of players. Hundreds of siege weapons. Layers upon layers of defensive formations. Elite NPC troops. And three of the top guilds in the Kingdom. But looking at this horde of haphazardness, they couldn't feel confident at all.

Damon shot forward like a rocket towards the first defensive barrier. Powerful currents of mana swirled around him. "I need to test my new 'Perfect' body." He smiled. This was the first time he was fighting after the upgrade, and he wanted to see just how much his new body could perform.

Damon raised his hand, and a poisonous crimson lance appeared in his hand. Hellfire and lightning swirled around the lance, increasing its power even further. The four elements combined made the weapon a nightmare forced into a shape that reality barely tolerated.

Every elite defender on the walls felt it. Their hearts stuttered. Their instincts shrieked.

Damon twirled the lance once. With a big grin, he packed one more punch to the already burning lance. A new ribbon of pitch black now swirled around it. This was it. The lance was barely stable now. It was about to explode any second unleashing utter terror.

Damon sucked in a big breath of air, and as he continued speeding right into the defense barrier, he slammed the lance forward with the full force of his newly reforged body.

The lance shrieked through the air, sending shockwave after shockwave towards the defensive barrier before it finally struck the big golden barrier with a deafening BOOM!

A cataclysmic blast erupted outward. Red, black, purple, green, and white clashed with the gold, creating an unimaginable, blinding explosion. Flames spiraled. Lightning detonated. Poison hissed into vapor. Shadow writhed like a living storm.

All four elements clashed, fused, and devoured each other in a violent implosion, birthing a pressure wave so intense that even players several kilometers behind Damon staggered or fell over.

The defensive barrier, which was supposed to withstand several rounds of assaults from peak C-rank fighters, now shuddered and flickered with a single power-packed attack.

Everyone gaped in shock. They simply watched the scene with a blank look, unable to even process what had just happened.

What did they just witness? Wasn't this a fellow player like themselves? How could he possibly open with an attack like this? How was he even able to put out this much power?

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