“Oh god, I need to do everything to reach first place.”
That was the first thought that raced through Thalion’s mind the mont he saw what first place received.
There Can Only Be One
Reaching first place in my treasure hunt is one of the greatest accomplishnts of your lifeti. The winner will be invited to an epic victory party in my separate dinsion, outside of ti and space. My domain has no restrictions when it cos to granting mortals items and information. While you will not be able to gain experience points, I will do my utmost to prepare you for your life in the system.
As I am not allowed to go into more detail—since it would not be approved by the system—here are a few random rewards to give you a rough idea of what is to co.
The winner of this system event will inherit my strongest title: Hunter of All.
You will receive a skill crystal for every single one of my skills, scaled to your current level.
Furthermore, your future evolutions can never decline in rarity.
This was far more text than the other rewards, and overall it sounded impressive—but that last point eclipsed everything else.
The other rewards were powerful boosts, but evolution was always the real bottleneck. With every evolution, maintaining the sa rarity beca harder and harder. From what Thalion understood, there were only two real approaches. Either you delayed your evolution for centuries in hopes of securing a higher rarity, or you evolved imdiately and accepted the downgrade.
Most Chosen on New Earth wouldn’t give a damn about rarity. They would push forward as fast as possible just to be strong enough to fight other Chosen.
This reward changed everything.
With this title, you could push forward without ever losing rarity. At first glance, that didn’t sound too insane—but in hindsight, it dwarfed every other reward on its own. What were two thousand stat points compared to saving thousands of years spent stalling at C-grade just to preserve rarity?
Losing too much rarity with each evolution was disastrous. A high-rarity class already provided significant advantages in the lower grades—but at higher grades, the difference beca overwhelming. And there was a reason for that. Achieving and maintaining a high-rarity class at advanced levels was brutally difficult and ti-consuming.
During the tutorial, they had practically been gifted Legendary and Mythic classes for almost nothing in comparison.
This single reward could save Thalion hundreds of thousands of years in the higher grades. It was an opportunity to catch up to—and even surpass—the Chosen of this planet, especially since Thalion had done nothing but grind his class relentlessly.
Having a divine class in every future grade was outright absurd.
As a Shapeshifter, Thalion could even add more forms before evolving. Since his rarity could never drop below divine if he succeeded here, those forms would automatically upgrade as well. Future evolutions could beco perfect opportunities to farm skills for his other forms.
And that wasn’t even the end of it.
Thalion imdiately began to imagine countless ways to exploit every single evolution. All of that—from a single sentence.
Then there was the personal training by a god.
Thalion had already experienced the explosive growth inside the Golden Palace, and those instructors had only been D-grade or below. He couldn’t even imagine the progress he could make with a god teaching him directly.
Since he already knew that Ratgul was so kind of beastkin, there was a very real chance that the god could provide brutal, specialized training for the Crippled Eclipsari. A normal god might lack deep knowledge of beast combat—but Ratgul was the perfect ntor.
A fusion of beast and human.
That alone promised unparalleled insight.
And then ca the next part—ti.
He wouldn’t lose any ti while training with the god. That alone was absurdly powerful. But Ratgul wasn’t planning to stop at training. No—he would grant access to treasures normally restricted by the system in the new universe.
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Maybe Thalion couldn’t bring them with him—but if they were consumables, or if he used the materials to forge armor or weapons, that should still work. Right?
Then there were the skills.
If Thalion rembered the statue of the lion-headed warrior correctly, he was confident he would find plenty of use for Ratgul’s abilities.
And finally, there was one more thing.
Sothing absolutely mind-boggling.
Sothing that wasn’t even clearly stated in the reward description.
What if Ratgul possessed a transcended or bloodline skill? What if he even had more than one?
If such a skill existed, Thalion couldn’t see how he wouldn’t be able to use it to its full potential in at least one of his forms. Ratgul’s statue hadn’t depicted him as a god wielding elental powers or anything flashy. No—he looked like a straightforward warrior, soone who excelled at the fundantals.
And for a god to claim that you would inherit his strongest title was insane.
After experiencing the sheer number of advantages his own title had already given him, Thalion knew it had to be sothing special. He couldn’t imagine a god handing out rewards like this only to give a useless title at the end. Thalion hadn’t t Ratgul yet, but judging by the wording alone, he seed like a god who took great pride in himself.
Maybe Ratgul would even consider it a personal failure if Thalion were to die after winning his treasure hunt.
Either way, even if the first-place reward felt a bit more suspicious than those for second and third place, it was vastly more potent. That final sentence alone was worth more than the rewards for second and third combined—and that was just the beginning.
Still, before he could think any further about the payout, Thalion needed to focus on actually winning the treasure hunt. And for that, he had to perform well in this stage.
Until now, he had been so distracted by the system notification that he hadn’t paid much attention to where he had arrived.
White clouds surrounded him on all sides. Snow fell almost endlessly from the sky, swirling around Thalion. He was high up in the air, and between the snowflakes and the fierce winds, he couldn’t even see the ground. That also ant others wouldn’t be able to spot him easily.
After this system notification, everyone would be coming for him. First place was simply too enticing—so absurdly rewarding that no one would dare ignore it. Being first ant skipping thousands upon thousands of years filled with constant, life-or-death battles.
From now on, Thalion would have to be extra careful.
In this stage, he should still be fine. But in the next one, things could beco truly dangerous. Thalion suspected that the chances of running into other trial-takers would be much higher there, compared to massive stages like the one he was currently in.
His imdiate problem, however, was visibility.
He couldn’t see very far, and seeing was kind of a requirent if he wanted to find the great storm. The fact that the entire stage was one massive snowstorm was more than a little annoying. How was he even supposed to locate the coldest point?
At the mont, the icy winds weren’t bothering him much at all—which likely ant he was still far from the grand treasure. The winds weren’t too strong either, allowing Thalion to bring out the skyship and set sail toward a better vantage point.
With no real point of orientation in the snowfall, he decided to descend first. If he could spot landforms or mountain ranges, he might be able to determine where the coldest place of all lay.
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