"Stop him! Block him! Kill that brat!"
The Furious Three were shouting themselves hoarse.
Just seconds ago, they had been savoring the mont, waiting for their Knights to encircle Marcus so they could crush him slowly and publicly. They wanted him helpless. They wanted him cornered. They wanted to savor revenge.
Instead, the battlefield twisted in a single breath.
Marcus had not rely slipped past their Knights. He had torn their formation open. Their proud Iron Wall now had a jagged rupture carved straight through its center, and he was already inside their backline before they fully understood what had happened.
Watching the way he moved, fluid and precise, reacting to threats almost before they ford, the Furious Three felt a familiar chill crawl up their spines. It was the sa suffocating sensation they had experienced in the Newbie Village. The sa helpless disbelief.
No matter how many n they brought, this one player refused to follow the script.
Their earlier confidence dissolved into sothing far uglier. Dread. Their commands, once crisp and theatrical, beca sharp and frantic.
But It was already too late.
Now that Marcus was inside Inferno’s core, he abandoned any pretense of traditional combat. He did not stop to duel. He did not hold a line. He kicked his Fla Charger into a violent, zigzagging sprint through their ranks, cutting unpredictable angles that made it impossible to pin him down.
At the sa ti, he repeatedly activated Taunt on the massive wave of Highland Jackals pouring in behind him. Each activation sharpened their aggression, locking their fury onto his path. He was not rely leading them anymore. He was inciting them, pushing their pack instincts into overdrive.
"Help!" "They’re in the backline!"
The eight Inferno Knights he had crippled monts earlier beca the jackals’ first targets. Already sitting at half health, they had no chance against fifty frenzied predators.
The pack moved with brutal efficiency. Riders were dragged from their saddles, armor torn apart under snapping jaws. In seconds, the eight Knights were reduced to scattered flashes of death notifications.
The Iron Wall did not just crack, It collapsed.
What had once been a disciplined front beca a widening breach nearly two ters across. Through that opening, the remaining jackals surged forward like floodwater bursting through a broken dam.
The monsters did not care about formations or rivalries. The nearest targets were Inferno’s mages and archers, lightly armored and packed tightly together.
The backline, the very heart of Inferno’s damage output, was suddenly engulfed in teeth and claws.
Chaos erupted.
Shouts collided with curses and panicked spell chants cut short. Players tripped over one another in their scramble to retreat, only to find their escape blocked by teammates or lunging beasts. From a distance, the scene might have looked surreal, almost absurd, like so violent spectacle spiraling out of control.
But for Inferno, it was a disaster unfolding in real ti. Marcus’s single maneuver had shoved them to the brink of collapse.
Across the field, Soulfire stood frozen for a breath.
"He’s a monster," SoulSync murmured, unable to look away.
He watched as one man reshaped a hundred player battle with a handful of decisions. In seconds, the entire tactical landscape had flipped.
"Is it really him?" SoulSync said quietly. "Is Stonehaven the one at the top of the Leaderboard? The player who broke past Level Twenty Nine and hit the Level Thirty cap? The top ranked expert?"
It had to be.
Who else could orchestrate sothing like this?
Marcus had kept his level and stats hidden even from his own party. They had been fighting blind, unsure of his true strength. Now, the answer seed to be carving itself across the battlefield.
"Don’t panic!" "Reform! Reform!" "Kill that Knight!"
The Furious Three were still trying to salvage control. On paper, they still had the numbers. Nearly seventy high level players remained. Fifty jackals alone should not have been enough to wipe them if they could stabilize.
But they were no longer fighting only monsters.
"Soulfire forever!" "Push them back!" "Send them to respawn!"
Freed from the jackals, Soulfire surged forward.
The ambush had ignited sothing fierce in them. Rage at being cornered. Fury at the attempted humiliation. And now, exhilaration. Marcus had given them an opening that should not have existed.
His sequence, the kiting, the breach, the chaos, had been flawless. It was not reckless bravado, it was calculated aggression executed at the exact mont Inferno overcommitted.
Watching him had lit a fire in Soulfire’s ranks.
Led by their remaining Knights, they charged. Behind them, mages and archers unleashed every high damage spell they had been holding back. Fire, frost, and lightning rained down indiscriminately. They did not care whether their targets were jackals or Inferno players.
If it stood in front of them, it fell.
"No, wait—!" "Argh!"
Trapped between the frenzied jackals tearing through their rear and the vengeful Soulfire players pressing from the front, Inferno’s formation disintegrated.
One by one, players were cut down and sent back to the respawn point. Equipnt dropped. Levels were lost. The ground beca littered with fallen bodies and scattered loot, a silent testant to how quickly fortune could turn.
Ten minutes ago, Inferno had owned the field.
They had the numbers. They had the ambush. They had envisioned forty rival corpses and a tidy pile of loot. In a lawless zone like this, it should have been easy profit.
It should have been a feast.
Instead, the hunters had beco prey. They were losing experience. Losing gear, and losing face.
"I’ll kill you!"
"I’ll gut you myself!"
Ash001 and Rock001 had gone past anger into sothing feral.
One remained mounted. The other had been forced to dismount in the chaos. Both locked onto Marcus as the source of everything unraveling around them.
If they lost here, how would they explain it to InfernoRider001? How would they survive the ridicule on the forums? They could already imagine the threads dissecting their failure in painful detail.
The thought burned worse than any damage number.
Even knowing how dangerous Marcus was, even suspecting he might be the strongest player in Dominion, they had no retreat left. Pride would not allow it. If they were going down, they would drag him with them.
"Heh."
Marcus watched them approach, a thin smile touching his lips. He respected courage, but skill was another matter.
’Fine,’ he thought calmly as he adjusted his grip on the Skeleton Blade. ’If you insist.’
He had taught them a lesson in the Newbie Village. Clearly, it had not been enough. They had tried to kill him back then simply because they believed they could. They had tried again today for the sa reason.
To Marcus, people who treated others as disposable, who saw PK as nothing more than sport for the powerful, did not deserve rcy.
This ti, he would not just defeat them. He would make sure they rembered it forever.
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