Ethan held the scroll, the warm leather pressed against his palm, and glanced around at the faces of his team. One by one, they gave him a firm nod, a quiet and unwavering sign that they meant what they had decided.

"Well, if you're sure," he said, the words coming out with a hint of awkwardness. Accepting something this monumental felt strange, almost embarrassing.

"Just take it, boss," Leo said, never one for ceremony. "If we find another one, we call dibs."

"Exactly," Ryan added, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. "We'll all get ours eventually."

Ethan let out a dry, helpless smile. "You guys think Divine Abilities just grow on trees?"

Their confidence was almost reckless. They talked about collecting the rarest powers in Ethereal as if they were filling a shopping list. Still, finding one here, of all places, was something he never could have predicted. Not in this life or the last. He wondered if the Drunken Wanderer from his past life ever learned what he had missed. Knowing that fool, he would have walked into a wall and kept walking.

---

Springhaven.

"Useless, the whole lot of you. Eight thousand players and none of you could handle a team of ten. What is the point of having you here?"

The furious voice echoed through the great hall, sharp enough to cut stone. It belonged to Zachary Steele, the man Ethan despised more than anyone, in any lifetime. Standing before him was the same person who had acted as the connection between the Blade Syndicate and the eight major guilds in Blackridge.

"Sir, perhaps we should consider terminating their contracts," the person said carefully, watching Zachary's expression as though it might explode.

"Terminate? Are you an idiot? We finally secured deals with the eight strongest guilds in Blackridge, and your suggestion is to let them go?" Zachary's voice turned quiet, which for him was far more dangerous. "If that is the extent of your strategic thinking, you can go to Logistics and count arrows for the rest of the month."

Despite his anger, Zachary had never planned to cut ties with the guilds. Even the threat about contract penalties, which the liaison had delivered on his behalf, had been the liaison's own panicked improvisation, a clumsy attempt to push the guilds into acting against Ethan. When the liaison realized Ethan's team was the unknown force interfering with the operation, he had lost his nerve and sent word back in fear of being blamed.

Zachary had indeed ordered them to kill Ethan if they could, but it had been a side objective, not something he obsessed over. He knew that the so called Druid God was Ethan. The revelation had shocked him at first, which led to a few rushed and poorly executed sabotage attempts. But after that, Ethan had not made any earth shattering moves, and the name Druid God became something distant and symbolic rather than an immediate threat.

The guild clash in Harmony City had been humiliating for the Blade Syndicate, the organization Zachary supported, and Marcus Skeiner had been forced to relocate the entire guild to Springhaven. Yet once they arrived, the Blade Syndicate rose quickly, carving its way through rivals until every guild in Springhaven ended up under their banner. The Blade Syndicate itself reached Level 8, the highest power in the Northern Frontier.

Meanwhile, Zachary watched Harmony City from a distance. The Renegade Alliance was stable, growing, but painfully complacent. They controlled around half the region, yet they let the rest scatter into weak and uncoordinated minor guilds. To Zachary, the lack of unification was laughable. It looked like weakness, a sign of someone too timid to seize what was clearly available.

In his mind, Ethan was still the earnest younger student he remembered. No vision, no sharp edge, nothing that made him dangerous. His early fame in Ethereal had been a fluke, a lucky coincidence that would never repeat itself. Zachary had long stopped considering him competition.

With the Fortress Wars approaching, Zachary believed the Northern Frontier was already in his grasp.

Or so he thought.

Then the Inhibitor Chamber was destroyed, and everything began to shift. The speed run dungeon with ridiculous rewards appeared and Ethan claimed it before anyone else. The Bone Abbey, the first conquerable dungeon in all of Ethereal, also fell into his hands. Six months of passive income, completely unchallenged, landed in his lap, along with a massive guild wide burst of levels.

And then the leaderboards. NotADruid, Level 68. The number hung there like a taunt, staring down at Zachary from the top of the rankings. He had been stuck in second place for what felt like forever. He had even made an attempt once to catch up, hoping to overwhelm Ethan through grinding and raw levels, but Ethan's sudden, absurd surge upward crushed that ambition instantly. Zachary had abandoned the level race after that humiliation.

As far as he knew, the next highest level player in the world was at level 59, somewhere around ninety percent experience, a player from the Sablon Republic who was rumored to be grinding ten days for a single percent. Zachary had only recently reached 59 himself, with zero progress, and had stopped leveling altogether.

Annoying, yes, but manageable.

What was not manageable was the Divine Ability scroll.

Another one.

How many had spawned worldwide? This was the second in the Northern Frontier. The first, Teleportation, had gone straight to Ethan. Now Sundering Shot was in his possession as well.

Zachary knew exactly what these abilities meant. He had eleven himself, all of them Basic tier, and every one had demanded a staggering amount of time, planning, and guild resources. The grind had been punishing.

So the question hung in the air. Try to steal it?

A small strike force would be useless. A large scale attack across that distance was practically suicide.

Zachary pressed his fingers against his temples, a dull pain forming behind his eyes when the notifications hit.

[System Notice: Fortress Wars commence in… 30 minutes!]

[System Notice: Fortress Wars… commencing. Terrain alteration begins in 10 minutes. All players are advised to return to a Capital City. Any player caught in a fortress emergence zone will be flagged as an attacker and engaged by NPC defenders.]

His eyes snapped open. The frustration drained away at once, replaced by something cold and sharp.

"So it is time," he said quietly, a slow, measured smile forming. "Then we will settle it on the battlefield. One ability will not decide anything."

The real war was approaching.

---

Inhibitor Chamber.

Ethan's team read the same notifications. The tension that had filled the chamber only minutes ago melted into a restless excitement.

"Ethan, maybe you should just stay put for a while," Leo said as he cracked his knuckles. "No one can get in here. We can handle the start of the Fortress Wars."

"Stay put?" Ethan raised an eyebrow. "Why would I do that?"

He walked toward the far corner of the chamber, where the prismatic glow that had produced the scroll had vanished. In its place, a soft white pillar of light now shone steadily. Everyone who had ever cleared a dungeon knew what it meant. It was the exit, a one way escape from the instance.

"But boss," others echoed, sharing Leo's concern. Playing it safe meant staying here for twelve hours, binding the ability, and only then stepping outside. A self imposed exile, but an easy guarantee that no one could take the scroll from him.

"Twelve hours sitting in a corner? I will pass," Ethan said, a small grin tugging at his mouth. He turned to face them again, his expression calm and sure. "With all of you here, who exactly is going to take this from me?"

He never boasted about his own power. He never pretended to be unstoppable. He simply trusted his people, and that trust was the shield he walked with.

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