Markham still had one last job to finish after this little performance. It felt like he had stepped onto a road paved with corpses, one he could no longer turn back from, and that crimson name floating above his head made things even clearer. He would probably be stuck with it for the rest of his life.

"You Blade Syndicate little shits," he shouted, laughter rough in his throat. "Grandpa Markham's here!"

He burst out from behind the boulder, the greatsword already halfway free of its scabbard, steel screaming as it came loose.

After taking the fortress, the Blade Syndicate had stationed sentries along every stretch of the wall. Even if Markham had tried to sneak closer, it would have made no difference. The moment he showed himself, eyes locked onto him from all sides.

"Holy shit… it's that 'RapidFortune' asshole!" "This fucker again, he's everywhere…" "Archers! Light him up!" "Don't kill him too fast!"

The guards instantly recognized him. His character name was impossible to forget, RapidFortune, the kind of name only a gold-crazed lunatic would proudly wear.

"What's he doing?"

"What else can he do besides show off?"

"Wait, look at that…"

"You idiots, stop gawking and kill him, ranged units, now!"

A sharp, commanding voice cut through the noise. A man shoved his way forward, glaring at the guards who were still pointing and laughing as Markham lifted his massive blade overhead.

But by the time the order was shouted, it was already too late.

Shiiing…

The crimson greatsword began to change. What had already been five or six meters long suddenly stretched, lengthening as if the air itself were being pulled apart. In the blink of an eye, it reached a hundred meters, and as Markham started his swing, it continued to grow, faster and faster.

"No…" "Ah!" "Run!" "What kind of skill is that?!"

Panic finally set in, raw and uncontrollable, but there was nowhere left to run.

By the time the titanic blade had reached over four hundred meters in length, it crashed down toward the fortress wall.

The sturdy mid-tier ramparts might as well have been made of tofu. The colossal sword carved through stone and steel as if they were paper.

BOOOOM!

The world seemed to roar in response. The ground lurched violently, and a spiderweb of cracks burst outward from the point of impact, racing across the earth.

---

In the central square of the fortress, Marcus Skeiner, Guild Leader of the Blade Syndicate, was in high spirits. He was making his way toward the command post, surrounded by a circle of flatterers who trailed after him, praising his leadership and vision. Marcus accepted every word with a smug smile, soaking it all in.

Then a sickly, blood-red glow flared in the northwest.

Marcus froze.

He looked up just in time to see a sword that seemed to touch the sky itself. His mouth fell open, his thoughts grinding to a halt.

Before he could even begin to understand what he was seeing, the sky-piercing blade fell.

The gargantuan sword slammed into the ground in front of him, its tip stopping just inches from his nose. For a split second, Marcus couldn't even breathe. Cold sweat poured down his back as he stared at the crimson steel, his heart pounding so hard it felt like it might tear out of his chest.

Then the blade dissolved, breaking apart into countless motes of red light before vanishing completely.

A wave of overwhelming relief washed over him.

'One more step,' 'he thought, and I'd be paste.'

That relief lasted exactly one second.

CRACK-THOOM!

The ground beneath his feet erupted upward. The stone split open violently, and a massive fissure tore through the square, racing straight toward him.

"Son of a—!"

The world dropped away.

Marcus was falling, his body tumbling helplessly into the newly formed chasm. He flailed wildly, fingers grasping at empty air until they caught on something solid, someone solid. He twisted his head to the side and saw one of the sycophants from his entourage, face pale with terror.

The man hadn't escaped either.

In fact, no one near Marcus had.

"Aaah, I don't wanna die!"

To Marcus's horror, the man he had grabbed onto began thrashing wildly, panic driving him completely out of his mind. Arms flailed, legs kicked, and then a boot slammed hard into Marcus's stomach. The impact knocked the air out of his lungs, and combined with their downward momentum, it sent Marcus shooting away like a cannonball.

Fwoosh!

"You motherf—! I'll get you for this!" Marcus screamed into the rushing air, but his voice was instantly swallowed by the roar of his fall.

He clenched his teeth and braced himself for the bone-shattering impact with the bottom of the chasm.

It never came.

Instead, a wave of blistering, bone-dry heat surged up to meet him. Whoosh. The air itself burned. Every hair on his body was instantly singed away as the heat wrapped around him like a furnace.

Marcus forced his eyes open and looked down.

Below him churned a vast, rolling sea of fire.

His pupils shrank. His mouth opened, some final curse clawing its way up from his chest, but the molten rock rushing upward denied him even that small mercy.

SPLOOSH.

---

From the outside, the scene looked like the end of the world.

After the ground split apart, magma erupted violently into the sky. The entire northwest quadrant of the Blade Syndicate's newly claimed fortress had become a lake of fire, molten rock swallowing walls, towers, and streets alike. The lava plume shot hundreds of meters into the air, glowing red and orange, visible from miles away.

Zachary Steele had just received confirmation of the fortress's capture in Springhaven and was already on his way to inspect it. He had barely passed through the West Gate when he saw it, a towering pillar of fire burning against the western horizon.

His heart dropped.

A deep, instinctive dread seized him before he could even put it into words.

"Contact Marcus. Now. Find out if they're under attack," he ordered sharply, his voice tight, cutting off his subordinate before the man could move.

But the report arrived before any message could be sent.

"Boss… we have a problem," the subordinate said, his face drained of color as he stared at the incoming report. "The fortress is under attack. The entire northwest sector… including the command post… it's gone."

"What?" Zachary's voice trembled. He couldn't tell if it was rage or something far worse. "Who did this?"

He stared at the still-erupting lava plume in the distance. What could cause the earth itself to vomit fire like that? For a brief, desperate moment, he wondered if the game was mocking him. He refused to believe a player could wield such power. A thin sliver of hope clung to him as he waited for the answer, maybe it was a natural disaster, or the emergence of a Divine-Tier world boss.

Reality crushed that hope without hesitation.

"Boss… it was a player," the subordinate said quietly. "Name's 'RapidFortune'. He used some… some unknown skill. He… he…"

The man's voice faltered, breaking into a stammer.

"He what?" Zachary snapped. "Spit it out!"

The moment he heard it was a player, and saw the hesitation, a very specific silhouette appeared in his mind, one that made his blood boil.

"He… he used to be just a drifter," the subordinate continued. "A nobody bouncing between Blackridge and Springhaven. But now… he's joined the Renegade Alliance. He's… he's become one of Druid God's men."

The last words came out barely above a whisper.

The subordinate was part of Zachary's inner circle. He knew the history. He knew the long, bitter feud with Druid God. And he remembered Ethan all too well.

Because he was that guy.

The one Ethan had humiliated back in Combat Training class. The bully who had finally picked the wrong target. He still remembered the moment Ethan snapped, calmly accepting his challenge, then, to his shock, offering a formal dueling salute before the match. And out of habit, he had returned it.

That salute marked the beginning of a nightmare.

A relentless chain of blows followed, precise and merciless. Stinging slaps cracked across his face again and again, each one sharper than the last, until the final kick landed, crushing five ribs and rearranging his internal organs.

He spent six months in the hospital.

In a way, those six months weren't entirely bad. He'd lived full-time in Ethereal, rebuilt himself there, and slowly carved out a respectable reputation of his own.

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