The staff was a mockery of power—a gnarled, unadorned branch that looked like it had been snatched from a dead thicket. Yet, the man holding it radiated a pressure so immense it felt like standing at the edge of a bottomless abyss. Ethan Sorel struggled to draw breath. The sheer presence of the figure before him was oceanic, vast, and suffocating.
[Aldric Voss]
Lord of Eastide
Elder of The Draconic Sanctum
Level: ???
HP: ???
(The highest authority in Eastide.)
"Voss," Ethan managed, bowing his head as the weight of the name settled. This was only the second NPC whose stats remained a wall of question marks—the first had been Bramwell.
But why was the master of a Level 1 hub city standing here? The Dracoveil Empire was a sprawling behemoth: one imperial capital, ten Level 1 primary cities, eighty-one Level 2 hubs, and over a thousand Level 3 territories. Every player in the region was scattered across these zones, and Eastide stood at the very top of that hierarchy.
As for the Draconic Sanctum, the game’s database offered nothing. But the man before him was a titan. He hadn't just stumbled upon Ethan; he had come seeking him.
Was it the power of The Death Codex? Ethan wondered, his mind racing. Did the surge of energy from the awakening draw him in like a moth to a flame?
Voss remained silent, his gaze raking over Ethan with an unreadable expression. Eventually, his eyes locked onto the back of Ethan’s left hand, where the brand of The Death Codex pulsed.
"The Power of Death," Voss murmured, a slight nod of acknowledgment accompanying the words. "As suspected."
Suddenly, the crushing pressure vanished. The atmosphere turned light, and Voss transformed from an intimidating deity back into an ordinary old man.
"What exactly is the 'Power of Death'?" Ethan asked, seizing the opening.
"A Law-Realm Force," Voss replied with a faint, knowing smile. The gnarled staff in his hand dissolved into golden motes of light. "You are far too weak to grasp the concept, even if I explained it."
Ethan’s pulse quickened. Laws? He remembered the description of the Tome of Death before its Ascension. It had mentioned Law-Realm Force. But the current Death Codex described its power differently. Voss was powerful, but he couldn't see the full truth of Ethan’s UI.
The things brought forth by the Cataclysm clearly defied the understanding of the Sanctum Prohibitum.
"You're a strange one, little bird," Voss sighed, looking at Ethan with a mixture of pity and intrigue. "I’m not sure whether to call you lucky or cursed."
"Why do you keep saying that?" Ethan frowned.
"Lucky because you’ve stumbled into a Sovereign-Tier Class—a path that shouldn't even exist in this realm." Voss paused, his voice dropping an octave. "But cursed because you are a Death Sovereign. When you finally attempt to take that step, your path will be a thousand times more treacherous than any other Sovereign's."
"That step? What step?"
Voss waved a dismissive hand. "A distance too far for you to see yet." He looked up at the sky, his eyes reflecting the movement of stars Ethan couldn't perceive. To Ethan, there was only the setting sun. "Grow quickly, little bird. Time is running out for 'The Descended'."
A pillar of white light erupted. Before Ethan could ask another question, Voss was gone. He had arrived like a ghost and vanished like a dream, leaving behind only a few cryptic warnings and a single, rusted object floating where he had stood.
Ethan reached out, grasping the cold metal.
“Consider this my test,” Voss’s voice echoed directly in his mind. “Succeed, and I will give you the knowledge you seek regarding the Death Sovereign.”
[You have obtained: Medallion of the Forsaken (Quest Item)]
[Epic Quest Triggered: Situkee’s Trial]
[Objective: Clear 'The Forsaken Reaches' with 100% exploration.]
[Rewards: Unknown]
[Penalty: None]
"An Epic Quest... just like that?" Ethan stared at the rusted medallion.
Voss’s words lingered. If Sovereign-Tier classes weren't supposed to exist here, did that mean they existed elsewhere in the Myriad Realms? And as for the difficulty of the "Death Sovereign" path...
Ethan let out a sharp, jagged laugh. "Other Sovereigns don't have the Cataclysm."
He looked at his stats. Level 10, yet his numbers were already monstrous. He had far surpassed any other player in the game; he was a glitch in the system, a tidal wave waiting to break over the Sanctum Prohibitum.
He didn't care about the cosmic stakes yet. He had a debt to pay. Willow and Marcus Chen were still breathing, and as long as they were, Ethan’s mind would never know peace. They were likely still stuck in some starter village, struggling with low-tier talents.
"I'll finish this quest while they're still playing in the dirt," Ethan muttered.
[Medallion of the Forsaken]
(Quest Item)
Use: Teleports the user to The Forsaken Reaches.
(Note: Single use. Item will self-destruct in 4:52.)
"No time for prep, then." He had wanted to socket some gems in Eastide, but the city was massive; even a carriage wouldn't get him to the forge district in four minutes.
Mindful of his previous experience with Treasure Maps, Ethan decided against trying to 'Ascend' the medallion. This was a specific trial from Voss. If he mutated the teleportation destination, he might lose the quest entirely.
Ethan took a breath and crushed the medallion. White light swallowed him, whisking him away from the bustling plaza of Eastide. He was the first player to ever enter a Level 1 city, and he had stayed for less than ten minutes.
[System: Epic Quest 'Situkee’s Trial' has begun. You have seven days to clear The Forsaken Reaches with 100% exploration.]
"Seven days?" Ethan’s brow furrowed as the light faded.
Voss knew how strong a Sovereign-Tier class was, yet he still allotted a week for the task. That meant even with his broken stats, this place was expected to take days to navigate.
He didn't summon his army immediately. Instead, he scouted his surroundings.
The air was thick with the stench of rot. He stood in the ruins of what might have once been a town, but was now a graveyard of splintered wood and crumbling stone. Rows of jagged burial mounds stretched into the gloom, and the ground was a mosaic of bleached, shattered bone. There was no sun here—only a perpetual, suffocating twilight that slashed his visibility by half.
Most players would have been paralyzed by the sheer gloom of the place. Ethan, however, felt a strange, dark kinship with the desolation. He had spent his entire time in this game surrounded by skeletons; this felt like home.
[Current Exploration: 0%]
Ethan raised the Staff of the Withered Wood. A six-meter-wide rift of pale grey energy tore open in the air.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
The rhythmic sound of bone hitting stone filled the silence. Led by a towering Skeleton Warrior gripping a massive blade, the legion poured out. Marksmen and Mages followed in lockstep, forming a disciplined ranks. Three hundred and forty undead soldiers stood ready, their presence turning the local atmosphere from merely "dead" to "malevolent."
Then, the ground began to shake.
The arrival of Ethan's army had acted like a dinner bell for the Restless Dead. In every direction, burial mounds erupted. Pale, skeletal hands clawed through the soil, followed by skulls and ribcages. Within seconds, a literal ocean of bone surrounded them. Thousands upon thousands of blue soul-flames ignited in the darkness.
"Holy shit," Ethan hissed, sucking in a breath. "There couldn't have been this many people in one town."
[Skeleton]
Level 20 (Normal)
HP: 5,000 / 5,000
ATK: 210
DEF: 120 / 80
(The weak, swarming inhabitants of The Forsaken Reaches.)
They were trash mobs, but the sheer volume was enough to make anyone’s skin crawl. Ethan had spent his career surrounding others; now, he was the one in the center of the swarm.
The two tides met.
It wasn't a fight; it was a harvest.
Ethan’s Skeleton Warriors were a full head taller than the local undead. When their greatswords swung, they didn't just cut—they erased.
-40,580!
-40,326!
-81,220 (Critical)!
The enemies didn't just die; they turned to dust. Even with The Death Codex granting double damage against undead, the numbers were staggering.
"Forty thousand on a basic swing?" Ethan blinked. "I knew I was strong, but this is ridiculous."
He pulled up the stat sheet for one of his frontline Warriors.
[Skeleton Warrior]
(Buffed by Aura of the Fallen: Ascended - All stats +60%)
STR: 5,080 | CON: 5,080 | AGI: 5,080
HP: 381,000
ATK: 20,320
Skill: Crushing Blow (Lv. 9)
"No wonder my Shared Life Pool hit a hundred million," Ethan realized. A hundred of these guys provided 38 million HP alone. With his Calamity Trait doubling that, he was effectively an unkillable god in this zone.
The Warriors formed a phalanx, an unbreakable ring of steel and bone that kept the sea of trash at bay. Behind them, the Marksmen and Mages opened fire.
-15,000!
-20,000!
-40,000!
The damage was lower than the Warriors' because they lacked the Calamity Trait scaling, but it didn't matter. The Marksmen fired with machine-gun speed, and the Mages hurled orbs of Death Miasma that disintegrated anything they touched.
The Level 20 skeletons couldn't even scratch the Warriors. Their rusted blades clattered off Ethan's summons, resulting in 'Completely Resisted' notifications.
Ethan watched as the kill feed scrolled like a waterfall.
[Kill: Level 20 Skeleton. Exp +30. Trailblazer Bonus +6.]
"Wait... thirty experience?" Ethan frowned.
A Level 20 mob giving the same experience as a Level 10 Bison? They were clearly "Normal" grade to an extreme degree—all numbers, no substance. Still, the sheer quantity made up for the low quality. He only needed a million experience to hit Level 11, and at this rate, he’d hit it before the first hour was up.
The soul-flames in the distance seemed infinite, a conveyor belt of experience points marching toward their doom.
But as Ethan watched the carnage, his frown deepened. One of his newest abilities, Soul Drain, wasn't triggering. He had killed hundreds of skeletons, yet his Soul Point counter remained at zero.
Do they not have souls to harvest?
Ethan narrowed his eyes, focusing on a skeleton charging the line.
"Death Gaze," he whispered.