At the most critical mont, a streak of white cut through the chaos and appeared between the priest and the five skeletons chasing her, halting them in their tracks like a wall dropped from the sky. For a split second, it felt like salvation had arrived out of nowhere, because everyone else was already stretched thin and barely holding their roles together.
The mage and marksman were doing everything they could to kite, constantly repositioning to maintain distance while still dealing damage. The rogue had locked one skeleton down in a permanent stun loop, making him the safest person on the battlefield by far. But the shield tank was under imnse pressure. He had shifted his tower shield sideways, no longer guarding just a few lanes but blocking the entire width of the bridge. Earlier, he had only been responsible for three columns of enemies, but now every single skeleton was slamming into him at once.
The difference was imdiate and brutal. His health began dropping at a visible rate, because for tank classes, once enemies bypassed your strongest defensive angles, the damage taken would spike sharply. That was exactly why he had not tried to block the entire bridge from the beginning. He was capable of doing it, but the strain it created was overwhelming, and the healing required to keep him alive would skyrocket. The priest’s mana would burn away at an unsustainable pace, and unlike mages, healers did not have the luxury of rapidly restoring their resources mid-fight.
High-level mages all learned a skill called Evocation, which allowed them to recover a full mana bar even during combat, letting them stay in the fight far longer than most classes. However, the cooldown ca with a heavy trade-off. If used while still engaged in combat, it would lock the skill for a full hour. Only if the mage dropped aggro first would the cooldown shrink to fifteen minutes. Because of that, you could never assu a mage was helpless just because they appeared out of mana. A veteran mage could turn things around at any mont if their timing was right.
All of this flashed through the battlefield in an instant, and then everyone froze when they saw the white blur clearly.
It was Ethan.
Before anyone could even process it, he had already transford into Bear Form and charged straight into the cluster of skeletons. The impact alone knocked all five of them flat onto the ground. It was a clean demonstration of strength suppression. When your Strength stat exceeded your target’s by a wide enough margin, Charge could forcibly knock enemies down. Even a warrior of the sa level would struggle to achieve that, no matter how heavily they invested in Strength.
Ethan, however, was on an entirely different level.
His equipnt was objectively terrible for his level. At level 124, he was still wearing a mismatched collection of level 50 to 60 Silver and Gold gear. By all conventional logic, he should have been underpowered. But none of that mattered here. The dungeon’s monsters were capped at level 90 because of his presence, putting him more than forty levels above them. That level gap alone completely crushed any disadvantage his gear might have caused.
He moved without hesitation. Charge flowed into Smash, then into Sweep in one seamless sequence. The five skeletons were caught in the arc of his attack, and their health bars dropped by a full tenth almost instantly.
"The hell? That’s it?" Ethan muttered, clearly dissatisfied.
The others stared at him in disbelief, their eyes practically turning red from the contrast. They were supposed to be the ones carrying him, yet he had just erased a chunk of the enemies’ health with a single area attack and still sounded unimpressed. It was hard not to feel a little sick watching that.
Then a sharp scream cut through the battlefield.
Even Ethan flinched slightly. The sound was piercing enough to make anyone’s ears ring. It ca from the priest, the only woman in the party. By this point, Ethan had already finished off the five skeletons he intercepted in under twenty seconds, and although the situation was still chaotic, the imdiate danger had passed. Which only made her reaction more confusing.
She pointed at him, her voice trembling with a mix of shock and excitent.
"A Druid in Bear Form... with the Grey Throat’s Might transmog!?"
Her expression was impossible to describe with a single word. It was excitent, disbelief, and nervous energy all tangled together.
The mont she said it, the atmosphere shifted.
Ethan felt his heart skip, because he knew there was no point hiding anymore. The others were simply stunned. Grey Throat’s Might was a one-of-a-kind transmog in the entire ga. There was no mistaking it.
"You’re... the Druid God?!" they blurted out almost in unison.
Ethan did not bother answering directly. Instead, he shifted forms again in a flash, his body shrinking and reshaping into Panther Form, the unique appearance granted by the Soul of the Beast Mother transmog. He moved instantly, leaping toward the rogue’s target and finishing off the stunned skeleton in just a few strikes.
"Let’s deal with what’s in front of us first," he said calmly.
He neither confird nor denied it, but it did not matter. Those two forms alone were enough to identify him beyond doubt.
Seeing his actions and hearing his steady tone, the tension in the group eased. The marksman who led the team could not help but grin, his eyes lighting up with excitent. He had never imagined that a random decision would lead them to crossing paths with a living legend.
A year and a half ago, Ethan had stood at the very top of the ga. First on the leaderboards, unmatched in both equipnt and damage output, present at every major milestone in Ethereal’s early days. Back then, every myth worth talking about had his na attached to it. And then, without warning, he had disappeared.
Rumors from within the Renegade Alliance claid their leader had been offline for over a year. The idea that the Druid God had quit the ga entirely had spread and settled into accepted truth.
And yet, here he was. Standing right in their party.
The marksman could not make sense of it. If Ethan had really been gone for that long, why was he only level 124 now? But then again, nothing about the Druid God had ever followed normal logic. People used to joke that he was practically a living bug in the system, and looking at him now, that did not seem entirely false.
Whatever the case, eting him like this felt like a turning point. Just being able to say he had fought alongside the Druid God would be sothing he could brag about for decades. Any earlier thoughts about using Ethan to climb connections within the Renegade Alliance disappeared completely. There was no one above the Druid God worth chasing.
With Ethan fighting alongside them, the remaining skeletons were quickly wiped out. Within minutes, the enemies harassing the mage and marksman were gone. Throughout it all, the shield tank had been shouting nonstop for healing, his voice growing more strained by the second as the priest’s spells flashed repeatedly over him. Even so, his health continued to drop steadily.
By the ti the last skeleton fell, the tank was left with barely a tenth of his health, and the priest was nearly out of mana.
The mood shifted again as everyone realized the problem. Even with Ethan here, even with his overwhelming level advantage, the situation was not completely under control. When he had charged those five skeletons earlier, his own health had taken a noticeable hit. A single round of attacks from them had shaved off nearly a sixth of his HP. His offensive power was high, but his defensive stats, weighed down by outdated gear, were lacking.
If the shield tank went down, the endless waves of skeletons would flood through the bridge. None of them would survive that, not even soone like Ethan.
Then a jade-green light burst into existence.
It radiated a rich, almost tangible life energy as it settled over the shield tank. In an instant, his health bar shot back up to full.
"Now that’s what I’m talking about!" the tank exclaid, his entire body shuddering in exaggerated relief, his voice slipping into a tone that made everyone else wince.
"Seriously..." Ethan muttered, shooting him an annoyed look.
The rest of the group instinctively turned away, pretending they had not heard that.
When they looked back, Ethan had transford again, this ti into a small sapling-like Tree Form. He stood rooted in place like an ancient tree, though the form itself was oddly endearing, resembling a cartoonish ginseng root brought to life.
"Why are you all staring at ? Get back into formation," he said with a sigh, breaking the awkward silence.
The marksman quickly snapped back to attention, the rogue slipped into position, and the shield tank raised his guard again. A flash of Blind from the rogue restored their control over the battlefield, and the formation stabilized once more.
The priest took the opportunity to recover. Priests relied on Spirit to regenerate mana even during combat, and now that the pressure had eased, her reserves slowly began to climb again. Earlier, when the formation had held steady, her mana consumption had been almost perfectly balanced by her regeneration.
Ethan held the front line long enough for her to regain about a tenth of her mana pool, which was enough to sustain her again. At that point, he stepped back slightly, knowing the situation had stabilized. If things went wrong again, he could always step in, but for now, the crisis had passed.
For a while, no one spoke. The na "Druid God" carried too much weight, and although they wanted to say sothing, none of them were sure how to begin without making things awkward.
Ethan did not seem concerned with the silence.
"Owl Form. Starfall Barrage."
With a soft whoosh, his body shifted into the rounded shape of a chubby owl. He raised his wings, the motion oddly reminiscent of so ritualistic gesture. Above them, the stone ceiling of the dungeon seed to vanish, replaced by a vast expanse of stars stretching endlessly into the distance.
Each star pulsed once, and then countless points of light began to fall.
They descended like snow, each one locking onto a skeleton below. The scale of the attack was overwhelming. Ethan’s area of effect covered nearly the entire bridge, dwarfing the limited range of the mage and marksman’s spells. The falling starlight struck with both crushing force and searing energy, and a sea of red damage numbers filled the air.
-6437!
-5763!
-11243!
The sheer visual impact was enough to leave the others speechless. In another ga, sothing like this might have crashed the client outright.
"That’s way too satisfying... I could just watch this monster all day," the shield tank blurted out, completely unfiltered as usual.
A mont later, the rogue sent him a private ssage telling him to shut up, pointing out that casually calling the Druid God "monster" was a good way to get himself killed. The tank just laughed it off.
Ethan ignored them entirely. He was too absorbed in the rhythm of the battle, enjoying the simple satisfaction of cutting down waves of enemies. It had been a long ti since he played like this, and the feeling had not dulled at all.
As the skill continued, he finally relaxed enough to talk. He started with small, casual remarks, and although the others were stiff at first, the tension gradually eased. By the ti they reached the eighteenth and final wave, the group had loosened up considerably.
Ethan glanced at them, feeling that the mont was right.
At last, he asked the question he had been holding back this entire ti.
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