Shortly after Damon arrived at the Crimson Mountains, everyone important to him appeared one after another, stepping out of the paired teleportation gates he had quietly set up. These portals weren't open to the public yet, and they wouldn't be for a while. Damon wanted the weeds to filter themselves out before he let the masses anywhere near the main territory.

But that wasn't even remotely his concern right now.

His heart was still racing, his breath uneven, the ghost of danger clinging to him like cold fog. He had expected retaliation. Only an idiot would drown cities in poison and assume no one powerful would respond. With the abyss tearing half the continent apart and him poisoning chunks of the remaining half, the Light Faction's priorities were obvious.

They would hesitate against the abyss, take their time to actually prepare and mount an adequate response to the threat. But they wouldn't hesitate against him. There was no way they would show him the same respect as the abyssal corruption.

He knew that. He planned for that. He fully expected the super guilds to cut corners and throw every resource they had to fast-track a response.

He also expected a B-rank to eventually show up.

But expecting it and actually facing it were two entirely different things.

The moment that presence brushed against him, his instincts screamed. No amount of arrogance or confidence could drown out the primal warning that thundered through his blood. It was the warning of an instant crushing death with no way out.

He had been completely wrong to assume that he could trade blows and perhaps even manage to escape from the opponent. The reality couldn't be harsher. A B-rank was a force of nature and he was nowhere close to it. He had come within a hair's breadth of facing definite death and there was simply no sugar coating it.

Damon exhaled shakily and dragged a hand through his hair. "…That was too close," he muttered.

The truth was simple. He could crush D-ranks in his sleep. He could devastate C-ranks all day long but when it came to B ranks… A real one? He wouldn't just lose. He would be erased.

Damon sighed, wondering what exactly made the gap between a B-rank and a C-rank so unimaginably vast. How could a single step in power feel like crossing an entire cosmos?

It wasn't just strength. It wasn't just mana. It was… authority. A B-rank warped the world simply by existing. The laws bent for them. Space softened. Elements obeyed. Their presence alone was a declaration, 'You do not belong on the same battlefield as me.'

That was the gap he had just glimpsed and barely outrun.

His pulse still hadn't calmed. His body remembered the suffocating stillness that had pressed against him, the way the miasma had recoiled like a terrified animal, the sensation of standing before something that could rewrite him with a thought. He had underestimated what a B-rank truly meant.

"…I need to grow stronger," Damon whispered to himself.

He opened the system interface and saw that only about 15 hours had passed by. He still had a little over a couple of days to prepare before the system event started. He needed to make full use of this time to work out every little thing he had put on hold until now.

He was now too far in to not go for the big win in this event. Eventually, he would have caught the attention of these B rank monsters one way or the other. There was no going around it but he still had some time but thanks to him trying to get a leg up in this event by pushing everything to the extreme, he had voluntarily cut this time short.

Now he could only make sure that this move would pay out. There was no turning back. Only way was to push forward.

Damon quietly contemplated as more and more people he knew arrived all around him. Everyone looked at him silently wondering what was going on. Finally, when Aurora arrived, she broke the silence by hopping and skipping over to Damon and casually throwing herself into his lap.

"What happened, hubby? Why so serious? By the way, I named this cute little thing, Nox."

"Nitrous oxide?"

"Pffft. No hubby, after the goddess of night and darkness. We are both two beautiful goddesses." She laughed with the cat smushed between her hands.

As soon as the poor thing came close to Damon, she immediately sprung for herfreedom and jumped onto Damon and hid somewhere inside his clothes, as if her life depended on it.

Damon stared at the scene but did not say anything. He simply rubbed his temples and ignored the whole event. "Anyway… is everyone here yet?" He looked around. Ellora, Green eyes, Riven, Kaelthorn and even Arya, everyone and anyone he knew, was important to him and was connected to him had arrived on the dark faction continent.

Sylvara and Nevin arrived next. Phoenix and Blood Wraith also teleported in. Meira arrived as well. Lastly, his family arrived too in their little flying castle, accompanied by Erin.

While everyone was admiring the huge castle in shock, his family members walked out one after the other. Of course, his sister-in-law did not wait for any explanation and barged out right away with righteous indignation on her face.

"What is it? What excuse do you have this time for bringing us in like this? Do you have any idea just how much you are dragging us down? If not for you, by now I would have successfully finished my class change! I was on the verge of something big you know. You are not the only one capable of doing impressive things."

Georgina scoffed and continued. She didn't pause to breathe. "If you are able to do so much, then you should just how much capable are I and your brother. Cut this bullshit already, okay? You can't just throw us into this dungeon whenever you want and drag us to whatever hellhole you please! Honey, say something, won't you?"

***

A special shoutout to Syphatrol for picking the cat's name!

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