Ethan could feel the gap between the two classes more clearly than ever, even at this early stage. Ryan was strong now, but the difference would only grow wider later, which was a frightening thought on its own.

"Attack!" Ethan shouted. He didn't hesitate. He sprinted toward the exit, blades raised, forcing the others into motion.

A moment earlier he had tried using a Free Teleport Stone, but the system had blocked it. There was no escape, no shortcut out of this place, the only path forward was through the enemy.

Ryan's earlier attack had blasted down the entire corridor in one straight, devastating line. More than ten thousand players had been wiped out in that single strike, and now his name floated over his head in a deep, blood-red glow. Markham eyed it with a strange, almost jealous look, as if wishing for that kind of notoriety himself.

Ethan's shout snapped everyone else back to focus. Their blurred vision cleared, and the team rushed out after him. Ryan alone stayed back, sitting on the ground and stuffing himself with food and drink to recover his mana as quickly as possible.

They were nine people facing sixty thousand.

No, ten, counting Ethan's Rogue Second Avatar.

The terrified Mage who had sprinted ahead reached the entrance to the sixth level first. Just as he placed a foot on the stairs, a faint, swift shadow flickered in front of him. A pair of daggers sank deep into his chest. Blood spattered across the stone, and his body folded silently onto the steps.

The Blackridge Guild's eight Presidents were gone. Wiped out.

The seventh level of the Uncharted Catacombs erupted into chaos. With their leaders dead, the sixty thousand players barely reacted before Ethan's party crashed into them.

"Yaaah! Move, let me kill a few more! My Blood Fury is about to awaken!" Markham yelled as he tore through bodies with wild excitement.

Ethan glanced at him, confused along with the others. Blood Fury? No one had any idea what he was shouting about, so they simply ignored him and kept moving.

Their lowest-level member was Level 55, cutting through Level 42 players as if they were made of paper. It was a massacre.

In truth, if Ethan's group had rushed into the heart of the enemy earlier, the Sharpshooter had been right, sixty thousand players could have overwhelmed them with sheer numbers. Even at Level 68, Ethan would have died to a flood of forced one-point damage. That was why his first priority had been to assassinate the command structure, then let Ryan's overwhelming strike stun the rest. Only then did the slaughter begin.

But even with the team carving their way through the horde, their pace couldn't match Lyla's pet dragon. The small creature was drifting overhead, spewing purple mist in wide sweeps. Anyone touched by it screamed, collapsed, and dissolved into chalk-white bone. Whatever was in that mist, it was lethal beyond reason.

"I have awakened! Get back, boss!" Markham suddenly roared.

Ethan turned, startled, and froze for a moment. A thick, blood-colored aura was pouring off Markham, curling around him like smoke. A beam of crimson light shot upward, and behind him, the faint outline of a sword hilt appeared, floating in the air.

Markham's twin blades became a blur, each slash leaving a red afterimage. He cut through the crowd like a reaper.

Then he grabbed a Blackridge player by the head. They all saw it, the pull of some strange force draining the player's Life Force, turning it into a cloud of bloody mist that drifted straight into the floating sword hilt behind Markham.

Slowly, the hilt extended, forming the first section of a blade.

A blade made of blood.

"Markham, what skill is that? What class are you?" Ethan finally focused on him, startled by the change. He had never seen anything like this before, not even from the Level 180 Berserkers he had known in his past life.

Markham let out a rough, crazed laugh, his eyes shining with excitement. "Heh… my quest is finally done, twelve thousand player kills, and my class has awakened… Blood Fiend Overlord!"

Ethan's eyes tightened. Another class he had never heard of, and standing right beside him no less. The name alone sounded arrogant, but looking at Markham now, wrapped in a storm of crimson aura, it fit him a little too well.

"Die for me! Soul-Sealing Demon Slash!"

Markham shifted both of his blades into his right hand, then thrust his left forward. A violent suction tore through the battlefield, pulling every player in a ten meter fan around him into the air and locking them in place, completely Stunned.

His right hand flashed.

One slash. A crack like stone splitting. Every one of the stunned players dropped to zero health, sliced cleanly in half. Blood poured out in streams, all of it gathering and spiraling upward into the floating sword behind him.

"Damn it! Someone give me a two handed sword! This class doesn't dual wield!" Markham shouted.

"Here," SeraphWarrior called out and tossed him a greatsword.

"Oh, Williams, good stuff! Reinforced +30, even if it's low level!" Markham caught it with one hand. His original blades vanished, replaced by the greatsword that he lifted as if it weighed nothing. SeraphWarrior, a Paladin, needed both hands to swing it properly, and Leeroy, a Warrior, needed both hands for his own skills as well.

"Give it back if you don't like it!" Williams snapped.

The greatsword was only Level 15, but Ethan had reinforced it to +30 back when Williams used it. Williams now carried a Level 45 Gold-tier blade reinforced to +5, which outperformed Markham's Silver-tier weapons despite the lower reinforcement.

With the greatsword in hand, Markham launched himself forward again. To everyone's surprise, a second identical weapon appeared in his left hand, a ghostlike blade made entirely of blood. Two greatswords, one real and one a crimson phantom, swung in wide arcs as he ripped through the Blackridge players. The floating sword behind him continued to grow, section by section.

"Boss, move! Stay clear of me!" Markham yelled suddenly.

He reached back and grabbed the hilt of the floating weapon.

"Demon Realm… Lava… Eruption!"

The blood-forged blade roared to life in his grasp, swelling larger and larger. When he finally raised it above his head, the weapon had expanded to nearly twenty meters in length, pulsing with thick red light.

"Holy hell! Run! Get back into the corridor!" Ethan shouted.

He recognized this sight instantly. He had seen it before, long ago. A Level 280 Demon Realm boss that had dragged itself out of a fissure, the Imperial Blood Demon King. The moment it appeared in that past life, the entire Survivor Faction had thrown everything they had at it, but…

Ethan remembered what came next.

And the memory chilled him.

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