Long Chapter
—-
After finishing everything that needed to be done, Ethan brought Micah and Ryan with him as they left the hidden territory of Silverwood and headed straight toward Central Magnolia.
He and Uncle Jed’s group were moving in completely opposite directions. Uncle Jed’s team was pushing south while Ethan led his small group north, the two sides gradually forming a wide arc that would eventually allow them to regroup later on.
Along Uncle Jed’s route there were three remaining energy sphere sites, and Ethan’s path also contained three of them. Aside from the one near Trunk Line that Uncle Jed’s team was currently heading toward, the other locations were all positioned inside densely populated urban areas.
Before they separated, Ethan had given Uncle Jed a very clear instruction. Do not split the team. Stay together, concentrate your firepower, and destroy each site one at a ti.
He had been worried that dividing their forces would only weaken them. If sothing unexpected happened, they would not be able to respond quickly enough.
After all, the Temple Master had managed to escape.
That man had fled even while Vasuki was in his serpent form. He had run so quickly that Ethan, who had been fully focused on protecting Luna at the ti, never had the chance to properly gauge the Temple Master’s real strength.
The only thing Ethan rembered clearly was that the man’s aura had felt terribly chaotic, as if countless resentful spirits were clinging to his body all at once.
It had been a complete ss.
A normal person absorbing that much resentnt would have gone mad long ago.
As that thought crossed his mind, Ethan suddenly rembered the white-robed woman they had encountered earlier. Where exactly had she obtained those wraith spheres?
Lost in that question, Ethan and the others continued traveling until Central Magnolia slowly ca into view.
They had been moving very quickly, but Ethan had intentionally chosen routes that passed through busy residential and comrcial areas. As they moved through the city streets, he quietly observed the everyday lives of ordinary people.
Nothing seed particularly strange.
The streets were lively and full of activity. Office workers hurried along sidewalks while cars crawled through intersections. Cafés were open, stores were busy, and the entire city carried on with a familiar rhythm.
Everything looked calm and peaceful.
It was almost as if the drastic changes happening in the world had nothing to do with them at all.
The only subject Ethan occasionally overheard in passing conversations was Ethereal, the massively popular virtual reality ga that had captured the attention of players everywhere.
That, however, led his thoughts in a different direction. Right now, Ethereal itself was in a strange half-alive state.
Faction wars had already begun.
Across the United States server there were originally four major factions: East, South, West, and North. With the exception of the Northern Frontier, the other three regions had already unified their forces.
After rging together, those three alliances launched repeated assaults against the Central Dominion’s capital, Dragon City, the only true faction capital left in the region.
Several attacks had already taken place and each one ended with heavy losses.
anwhile, the remaining Northern Frontier had turned into sothing almost absurd to watch. This relatively small war zone had sohow ford a bizarre three-way balance of power.
In the early days of the ga, Ethan’s Renegade Alliance had swept across the Northern Frontier like an unstoppable storm. For a long ti they dominated everything in their path.
But eventually their montum slowed.
Part of the reason was that their leader, NotADruid, had not logged in for nearly a year and a half. With the real leader absent, the alliance shifted into a more cautious phase of developnt while the honorary leader handled managent.
At the sa ti, another faction began rising rapidly.
The Blade Syndicate, which had originally been supported by the Steele Consortium, had once been thoroughly crushed by Renegade Alliance. Their early attempts at expansion had been completely suppressed.
However, things changed when they recruited a terrifying powerhouse.
That player had once had a falling out with Renegade Alliance’s leader NotADruid. His na was atball.
atball had obtained a hidden class that allowed him to summon massive undead armies. When he fought seriously, he was practically equivalent to an army of one hundred thousand players.
Wherever he went, cities and territories fell. His arrival was the turning point that allowed Blade Syndicate to reverse their decline.
During the brutal Fortress Wars, without atball’s presence Blade Syndicate would not have been able to hold even a single advanced fortress.
Everyone knew that Renegade Alliance had been watching them closely the entire ti. There was no way they would simply allow Blade Syndicate to peacefully relocate their guild headquarters.
Rumor had it that NotADruid himself had devised a particularly vicious strategy before disappearing. He instructed GetRichQuick (Markham) to form a suicide squad.
However, the mbers of that squad were not ant to die in battle. They were ant to be killed by GetRichQuick himself.
The reason was simple. GetRichQuick possessed an ultimate skill capable of destroying buildings, and every ti he killed a player the cooldown on that skill reset.
That tactic alone made Blade Syndicate extrely cautious.
GetRichQuick was also an incredibly slippery player. Sohow he always managed to infiltrate the areas surrounding Blade Syndicate’s heavily defended fortresses.
Once he got within range, even if he was discovered he would simply unleash his ultimate ability and then flee.
His ultimate skill manifested as a gigantic sword nearly one kiloter long.
Anything it touched died instantly. Even getting close to it ant certain death.
When the blade struck the ground it split the earth apart, causing lava to erupt from the cracks, and the flowing lava continued damaging any buildings it touched.
However, after atball appeared, the situation changed dramatically.
Using a single move called Undead Cataclysm, he directly seized control of an advanced fortress.
Advanced fortresses were very different from ordinary ones. atball simply overwheld the defenders using endless waves of undead soldiers.
Pure numbers won the battle.
The fortress defenses remained almost entirely intact, and once those systems were fully operational, GetRichQuick could no longer get close enough to unleash his ultimate attack.
The last ti he was seen was particularly embarrassing.
He had been spotted by fortress archers from nearly a kiloter away. In a panic he hurled his giant sword prematurely, but the tip of the blade stopped dozens of ters short of the fortress wall.
A mont later, the fortress’s massive ballista fired. The bolt pierced straight through his body.
Instant kill.
After that humiliating defeat, GetRichQuick disappeared completely. Blade Syndicate then entered a long period of stable developnt.
anwhile, another force erged in the city of Blackridge.
The Nocturne Order sohow managed to acquire an advanced fortress through mysterious ans. They began recruiting all the smaller guilds that had previously been abandoned by the Steele Consortium and eventually ford an incredibly powerful alliance.
Under Nocturne Order’s leadership, those guilds were allowed to settle inside the main city itself, ensuring that their organizations would not collapse or dissolve.
As a result, the Northern Frontier now had three major cities and three major powers.
Among them, the most uncomfortable position belonged to Blade Syndicate.
To their south stood Renegade Alliance like a tiger blocking the road. To join the battle for Dragon City they would need to pass directly through Renegade territory.
Originally, players could simply teleport from Springhaven to Harmony City by paying a fee. But because Renegade Alliance controlled four advanced fortresses in the region, they possessed significant authority within Harmony City’s systems.
They actually had the power to shut down Springhaven’s teleportation route entirely.
Players from Springhaven who wanted to reach Harmony City now had to travel on foot.
However, Renegade Alliance had established defensive lines across the border. Any player from Springhaven who stepped into Harmony City’s territory was killed on sight without exception.
The purpose was obvious; they were completely blocking the path.
Because of this, players from Springhaven now hated Renegade Alliance in Harmony City with a burning passion. The two sides slaughtered each other constantly whenever they crossed paths.
Yet Harmony City’s players were strangely unified.
Killing Springhaven players had beco as easy and routine as chopping vegetables.
Ironically, this relentless hostility also forced the Springhaven players to unite against their common enemy.
They gathered together as well.
At one point, Zachary and Marcus Skeiner personally traveled to Blackridge several tis to negotiate with the leader of Nocturne Order, a woman nad Xandria.
Unfortunately, they only received one response.
"Where were you back then? What were you thinking when you abandoned us? Get lost, and stay lost."
Xandria was a tall woman with a mature, striking figure. Whenever she t with Zachary and Marcus, she deliberately removed the veil covering her face.
But when that sweet, baby-like voice ca out of her mouth, both n seed to short-circuit.
Seeing her in person, their reactions were not much better than Ethan’s had been the first ti.
Marcus even blurted out, "Holy mother of—!"
He nearly slid off his chair in shock. That outburst only made Xandria angrier. She imdiately ordered them thrown out.
The two n had barely left the city when thousands of rogues suddenly appeared and ambushed them.
Their entire escort was assassinated within seconds, leaving only the two guild leaders standing in the middle of a silent circle of blades.
Then the rogues began taking turns stabbing them.
For a full thirty minutes.
Only after that long humiliation did soone finally cut their throats.
When Zachary and Marcus respawned, they returned furious and humiliated. From that mont onward, Blade Syndicate and Nocturne Order beca sworn enemies.
More than a year of constant friction followed.
Blade Syndicate now found themselves trapped between two hostile forces: Renegade Alliance to the south and the Nocturne Order alliance to the north.
Of course, Renegade Alliance was not completely comfortable either.
When the war zone borders eventually opened, Blade Syndicate secretly contacted the other three regions and requested their assistance.
Those three regions hoped to unify every war zone, because doing so would reduce Dragon City’s defensive strength by forty percent.
So they arrived in grand fashion, and left in disgrace.
At first they hesitated because they feared Harmony City’s defensive systems might be linked together. However, once they arrived they discovered that Renegade Alliance had not activated any city shields at all.
Instead, the alliance had simply ford battle lines and waited.
As the massive coalition army prepared to charge what looked like a pitifully small Renegade Alliance force, a thunderous explosion suddenly shook the battlefield.
A massive artillery shell wrapped in eerie green flas landed directly in the middle of the advancing army.
A mushroom cloud rose into the sky.
That single shot instantly erased nearly a quarter of the coalition’s forces and shattered their morale.
Then they saw sothing even more terrifying. Within Renegade Alliance’s formation, a massive passage slowly opened.
The ground began to tremble as engines roared. A colossal war machine slowly rolled forward.
"Holy shit... is that a tank?"
Almost every surviving soldier from the coalition thought the exact sa thing.
They stared in disbelief.
The thing looked like a tank, but it was absurdly enormous, nearly thirty to forty ters tall.
Standing on top of the tal giant was a single figure with one hand resting behind his back, looking incredibly smug while holding a microphone.
"Hey! You bastards from the three regions! Co on... try a taste of the Mad Engineer’s Demonic Fel Cannon!"
The coalition army was stunned. They had never seen anything like this before.
Sure, it resembled a tank, but it was far too large to be believable. And the weapon mounted on top, the so-called Demonic Fel Cannon, looked like sothing pulled straight out of a nightmare.
How had Renegade Alliance even built sothing like that?
How were they still this powerful?
Their leader had been offline for so long, yet the guild remained terrifyingly dominant.
The commanders of the coalition forces, every guild leader present, suddenly felt a crushing sense of helplessness. It was as if Renegade Alliance had beco an immovable mountain pressing down on them.
As long as that mountain existed, there would never be room for them on the stage of history.
That realization gnawed at their pride.
"Co on! Face my wrath! Prepare... load!"
The enormous cannon emitted a heavy tallic clank as its barrel slowly retracted and began glowing with an ominous light.
"Retreat! Retreat now!"
The shout spread through the coalition ranks like a spark touching dry grass. Players instantly turned and ran, their courage collapsed in an instant.
So shouted wildly as they fled.
"Holy hell, run!"
"I ca here to fight, not beco cannon fodder!"
"The guy who just got blown up was my friend! He ssaged before logging off. He lost ten levels!"
"What? Ten levels? That’s impossible! You only lose twenty percent experience when you die!"
"No, seriously! I checked! That thing is cursed! RUN!"
The battlefield dissolved into complete chaos.
Alliance commanders scread orders and even killed a few deserters in an attempt to restore discipline.
But it was pointless.
How could a handful of officers possibly stop millions of panicked players from scattering in every direction like frightened monkeys?
The retreat turned into a massive stampede and two unfortunate commanders were even trampled to death by their own soldiers.
More than ten minutes later, the battlefield was completely empty. Only chaotic footprints remained.
The once million-man army had vanished.
Only after confirming that everyone was gone did the figure standing on top of the Fel Cannon finally sit down heavily.
"Damn... good thing that bluff worked. One shell costs seven hundred thousand gold, and this cannon took three months to build. We can’t afford another shot."
The man speaking was one of Ethan’s most trusted subordinates. The Mad Engineer himself; NoPaperOnTheBigOne.
Standing beside him was a woman who also looked deeply relieved.
She was not a stranger; Victor’s wife. The honorary leader of Renegade Alliance.
Tears of the Fallen...
After Ethan disappeared, several of the guild’s original pillars gradually stopped logging in as often. Lyla, Ryan, Victor, and Williams were once the four leaders who held the alliance together.
But their activity slowly declined.
Lyla in particular logged out one month after Ethan vanished and never logged in again. As a result, nearly all of Renegade Alliance’s managent responsibilities eventually fell onto Celia’s shoulders.
She had never expected things to turn out this way.
Originally, she had simply married Victor and moved from Harbor City to Ember City with him. Before finding a stable job in real life, she planned to temporarily help Ethan manage a few logistical tasks in the ga.
That was all.
She thought she would just handle background support.
But the mont she accepted the honorary leader title, Ethan disappeared without a word and effectively beca an absentee boss.
Two full years passed.
During the first half year he occasionally appeared, but afterward he vanished completely.
Celia knew fragnts of Ethan’s situation, but Victor never told her the full story. It was the one subject he absolutely refused to explain.
Several tis in real life she exploded in anger at him. Victor only repeated the sa line.
"The less you know about Ethan, the safer it is for us."
Those words left Celia endlessly complaining, yet when it ca to work she still devoted herself completely to Renegade Alliance’s developnt.
Even while restricted to the Harmony City region, the guild’s inco remained impressive. As honorary leader she had access to everything the alliance possessed, and even if she found another job in real life it would never pay nearly as well.
Of course, won had their moods.
At this mont Celia herself was also staying inside the hidden territory of the Silverwoods. She had already heard about the events happening outside.
Just a mont ago, from the Silverwood residence perched high on the mountain, she clearly watched Ethan enter and leave the area.
Seeing the arrogant, imposing, almost murderous confidence he carried with him, Celia curled her lip slightly.
"Finally back. If he stayed gone any longer... even Lyla would have broken."
She murmured the words quietly to herself. Her gaze then shifted toward Lyla and the other two won nearby, and a faint smile appeared on her face.
She was genuinely happy for them.
After spending more than a year together, won who had no conflicting interests often beca close friends very easily.
Besides, Celia was not much older than Lyla.
Back when she had still been a little girl, Victor had rescued her during an operation. From that mont on she had made a stubborn vow that one day she would marry him.
That promise, and the waiting that followed, lasted more than ten years.
Sotis she even wondered whether Victor would still have rejected her if Ethan had not stepped in to help.
"Go do what you need to do," Celia whispered softly to the empty room. "What you entrusted to ... I’ll protect it."
After saying that, she turned and walked back to her room.
Ethan naturally knew none of this. He had no idea that Celia quietly felt a deep sense of gratitude toward him.
Victor did not know either.
Those angry outbursts Celia had directed at him earlier had never truly been complaints. They had simply been the worried concerns of soone who saw Ethan as the benefactor who had changed her life.
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