Of course, sometimes even the weakest players could get lucky.

Take the legendary player Little Horn, for example. Before he stumbled upon the Fatal Strike (Divine) Ability, he had been nothing more than a laid-back solo grinder, drifting through the game without any grand ambitions. He happened to discover the Ability by chance, and then, purely by accident, crawled into a remote cavern. Once he was inside, the group of players who had been hunting him had no way to drag him back out.

In this life, however, the reason Little Horn managed to acquire the Divine Fatal Strike Ability had a great deal to do with Ethan's interference. Ethan had been the one who pointed him toward that hidden cavern and reminded him to bring a gas mask beforehand.

In the previous timeline, Little Horn had been smoked out by his pursuers, coughing and miserable, but refusing to leave no matter what. He had set himself up with a sniper rifle and promised that anyone who dared to enter would get a bullet to the forehead. When the twelve-hour countdown finally ended, he simply used the scroll, activated a Free Teleport Stone, and secured the Divine Fatal Strike Ability with absolute perfection. That single Ability was what laid the foundation for his rise as a Divine-tier player in the future.

What Ethan truly longed for, though, was the legendary Divinity Ability. He found himself wondering what kind of attributes could justify a name like that.

As Ethan finished explaining the secrets of Divine Abilities to his team, the last Soul-Reaver in the chamber collapsed into dust.

"Why did only one piece drop? We still can't complete the set!" Leo complained loudly.

"There should be more of them further in. We'll finish the set," Ethan replied with calm certainty.

He knew that the first seven layers of the Uncharted Catacomb would disappear once someone cleared them for the first time. After that, every war zone would gain a new structure, a massive and eerie castle called the Bone Abbey.

The Abbey was filled entirely with skeletal monsters and had ninety-nine layers. Each cleared layer granted an enormous amount of experience, and completing all ninety-nine layers provided rewards on a completely different level.

The catch was that the progress reset every week. If a team failed to clear all the layers before the reset, they had to start from the beginning. The skeletal monsters inside used a dynamic leveling system, matching the average level of the players who entered.

In Ethan's past life, Bone Abbey had been considered a mandatory weekly dungeon.

If Drunken Wanderer had managed to clear this place and obtain the full Soul-Devouring Set, Ethan felt certain he could do the same.

Soon, the last two Soul-Reavers fell, and the area fell silent. As expected, only a single Soul-Devouring Gauntlet dropped.

"We go this way, right?" Leo asked as he stepped out of the corridor. Only one path continued deeper into the Catacomb, while the other direction led back toward the sixth layer.

"Yeah…" Ethan replied.

The moment the word left his mouth, Leo blasted forward, shooting down the hall like a fired bolt. The sharp whoosh of his Energy Burst echoed behind him, and he chained two bursts together, instantly putting a dozen yards between himself and the others.

"You idiot. Kiara, go after him," Ethan muttered under his breath.

The Brewmaster class really was a better fit for Leo than Shield Tank ever had been, because the man behaved like a monkey trapped inside a human body.

A soft swoosh followed as a small, pink panther darted out from the group the moment Ethan finished speaking. Kiara had already activated Swift Stride.

Ethan could not help feeling a stab of envy. Swift Stride was an active movement skill for Druids, and he still did not have it. His only speed boost came from his boots, so if he could acquire the skill, he would have two mobility buffs, something that often meant the difference between life and death.

Sometimes he wondered whether Morzan had chosen the wrong person when he made him a Druid. Kiara, the quiet little healer, felt like the one who truly embodied the Druid path. She seemed to pick up skills automatically whenever she leveled, as if the class itself wanted her.

And honestly, how lucky was that?

Ethan knew exactly how valuable a skill book was in Ethereal, because they were worth more than most pieces of gear and had an incredibly low drop rate. If he had not been fortunate enough to visit that particular quest map during the Prismatic Stone Quest, he would hardly have had any skills himself. That map, for some mysterious reason, had a skill book drop rate far higher than anything else in the early game.

He had even brought back several extra books and handed them out to Leo and the others. Victor's Resurrection skill, for example, had come directly from Ethan.

At this stage of the game, a Priest with Resurrection was extremely rare. Without it, a full team wipe meant everyone had to run all the way back from the dungeon entrance. A Priest who had Resurrection, when paired with a Paladin who possessed Shield of Intervention, could save the entire run. The Paladin would protect the Priest during a wipe, wait for the boss to reset, then drop the shield so the Priest could revive the team safely.

And being revived by a Priest meant losing only five percent of the usual experience penalty instead of ten. That was a massive advantage. Otherwise, the constant back-and-forth and repeated wipes would cause players to lose levels, forcing them to grind those levels again before returning. For that reason, a Priest with Resurrection was considered the second most important member of any serious team, right behind the Tank, because they saved time on corpse runs and allowed teams to attempt bosses repeatedly without drowning in experience loss.

…

Kiara's pink Panther form slipped into the darkness ahead, and Ethan pushed the others to follow her at a brisk pace.

They had barely taken a few steps when the panther came racing back toward them, her fur bristling and her eyes wide with alarm.

"Kiara, what's wrong?" Ethan called out.

"Run!"

Her voice cracked with urgency, and she did not slow down, sprinting past Ethan and the others without a glance.

The team stopped in their tracks, confused and unsure what they were running from.

Kiara disappeared into the darkness behind them, only to immediately whirl around and dash forward again. She rounded a corner and dove straight into the narrow corridor they had just passed through.

Her behavior made no sense, and everyone stared after her, ready to ask what she was doing.

"Ethan, get in here!" Kiara shouted from within the corridor.

Her desperate tone only deepened their confusion.

Then, a second later, the answer arrived.

A sharp whoosh echoed from the path ahead, the sound unmistakably Leo's Energy Burst. He came scrambling back toward them, tripping, sliding, and sprinting all at once.

Roar, roar, howl!

A furious wave of roars thundered behind him.

"Ethan, run!" Lyla cried, her Dark Vision letting her see what the others could not.

Ethan instantly shifted into Panther Form, and his senses sharpened in an instant.

"You have got to be kidding me, Leo, how many did you pull?"

In his enhanced vision, the long corridor behind Leo was a nightmare. It was completely filled with Soul-Reavers, dozens upon dozens of them, their pale faces twisted in rage. The front ranks kept getting knocked back by Leo's Drunken Sphere, but the horde behind them shoved forward with the pressure of a tidal surge, packing the hallway so tightly it looked like a subway car at rush hour.

"I ran to the end and saw a Golden Gate, then I came back! I think I activated all the prison cells!" Leo yelled, bounding toward them like a panicked monkey until he skidded to a stop beside Ethan.

"You are truly fearless… Everyone, back into the corridor!"

Ethan spun around and charged into the narrow passage first, trusting the others to follow before the horde swallowed them whole.

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