With his Shade class bonuses and the Agility boost from his Bronze-grade ‘Corroded Dagger,’ Ethan Quinn’s Agility had climbed to a staggering 34 points. In the world of Godsfall, speed wasn't a simple linear scale, but the difference was night and day. A standard player with 10 Agility could sprint at roughly 9.5 meters per second; Ethan was currently tearing through the undergrowth at nearly 18 meters per second.
He was a blur, moving at twice the speed of any other novice player—a pace that finally allowed him to match the terrifying velocity of a ‘Blitz Stalker.’
Good enough, Ethan thought, his eyes narrowing. It won’t be able to outrun me.
Shrouded in the treeline's gloom, Ethan watched the scene ahead. The Blitz Stalker was currently dismantling a six-man party. At the front, a mountain of a man braced himself behind an Inferior-tier shield, gritting his teeth as he absorbed the beast's relentless percussion of blows.
Ethan recognized him instantly: Victor, the second-ranked player in Shellcroft.
Behind Victor, five players with hidden classes were frantically cycling through skills. A Ranger and a Mage—one male, one female—were dumping everything they had into the fray, but their projectiles whistled harmlessly through the air where the Blitz Stalker had been a micro-second before. It was a mismatch. The beast was a whirlwind of rotted claws and jagged fangs, shredding Victor’s health bar despite his ‘Holy Vanguard’ specialization.
The Holy Vanguard was a fortress of a class, boasting thirty percent more health and defense than a standard tank. This team had coasted to Level 2 on Victor’s broad shoulders, but the Bronze BOSS was proving to be a wall they couldn't climb. The Blitz Stalker still sat at ninety percent health.
"Dammit! It's too fast!" the Sharpshot Ranger barked, his face pale as another arrow buried itself in a tree. "I can't lock on!"
"Keep the pressure on!" Victor shouted, his voice strained. "Even if we wipe, we can chip it down. We’ll corpse-run if we have to!"
Victor’s optimism was misplaced. The commotion had drawn unwanted guests.
Three humanoid shapes, coated in thick, foul-smelling brown muck, emerged from the shadows of the surrounding trees.
[Sludge Defiler (Lv. 2)]
[Rank: Common]
These were ranged attackers. Before the party could react, the trio launched a Sludge Barrage.
A glob of filth caught the party’s healer—a girl with a staff and frantic eyes—square in the chest. The force of the impact knocked her back, the stench nearly making her gag.
-32!
"God, it’s disgusting!" she cried out, spitting.
It was the beginning of the end. Sludge began raining down on the backline. If the casters moved to dodge the filth, they’d leave Victor’s back exposed to the Blitz Stalker. If they stayed, the sludge would melt their health bars. The party was trapped in a death spiral.
Ethan watched Victor from the shadows, a ghost of a memory flickering in his mind.
In his past life, Ethan had been a legend—one of the top hundred players in the world. He had achieved that status as a ‘Common’ Warrior, a feat that made him an icon for the masses. Victor had been one of his most ardent admirers. Despite Victor’s superior ‘Holy Vanguard’ class, he had never quite matched Ethan’s raw combat instinct.
Eventually, Victor had become the official liaison for the Daxia Realm government, handling trade and logistics with Ethan’s ‘Godsever Guild.’ He was a man of his word—reliable, professional, and backed by the deepest pockets in the realm.
Last time, I built a guild to protect Evie, Ethan mused. This time, I don’t need the baggage. But a man like Victor? He’s a bridge worth keeping.
Ethan needed a way to turn his excess loot into Tradeable Lifespan, and Victor represented the perfect sales channel.
I might as well save them the trouble.
Ethan didn't shout a greeting or offer a deal. He simply vanished into the brush, circling behind the first Sludge Defiler. The creature was too busy hurlng muck at the healer to notice the shadow growing behind it.
The Corroded Dagger flashed like a streak of cold moonlight, plunging into the creature’s neck.
-441! (Weak Point Critical!)
The Sludge Defiler didn’t even scream; it simply dissolved into a heap of foul-smelling mud.
[You have slain ‘Sludge Defiler (Lv. 2)’.]
[You have gained 20 EXP.]
[You have gained 1 Evolution Point!]
[You have gained 4 Days of Lifespan (Tradeable).]
Ethan raised an eyebrow. An Evolution Point from a Common mob? That was a stroke of luck. He immediately triggered ‘Greedy Grasp.’
[Skill ‘Greedy Grasp’ triggered successfully!]
[You have gained an additional 4 Days of Lifespan (Tradeable).]
No extra Evolution Point, but that was expected. Common mobs rarely dropped them, and Greedy Grasp functioned as a secondary loot roll, not a guaranteed duplicate of rare rewards. Bosses are still the only reliable source for Evolution Points, Ethan noted.
He didn’t linger. Before the party—or the remaining monsters—could register his presence, he slipped back into the void of Stealth.
"What the hell?" Victor yelled, glancing back as one of the threats behind them vanished. "What happened to the Defiler?"
"Someone’s here!" the healer gasped. She had only seen a flicker of black before the monster died. "It just... it was there, and then it was gone!"
The team was shaken. They had spent ten seconds chipping away at Level 1 Crawlers, yet a Level 2 mob had just been erased in a single heartbeat.
The pressure on the backline eased significantly. The girl with the staff—her face smeared with mud but her eyes wide with excitement—looked around wildly. "Is it him? Is it Shade? The guy at the top of the leaderboard?"
"Focus!" Victor roared. "Divine Bulwark!"
A golden aura erupted around the big man, granting him three seconds of invulnerability. He used the window to reposition, buying his team a few more breaths of life.
Ethan struck again thirty seconds later. Another Sludge Defiler fell, its back opened up by a strike so fast it seemed to happen before Ethan even appeared.
No Evolution Point this time... Ethan checked the loot. Wait.
He picked up a weathered book from the pile of sludge.
[Virulent Dart (Common)]: Assassin Class Skill. Launch a toxic dart at a range of up to 12m. Deals 40 base damage and applies ‘Virulent Toxin.’ Cooldown: 5s. Requirement: Level 2.
[Virulent Toxin]: Deals 30% of Attack Damage per second for 5 seconds. (Does not benefit from Weak Point modifiers. Non-stackable.)
Finally, a ranged attack. For a Common player, this was a game-changer. For Ethan, it was a blank canvas.
He didn't hesitate. He poured his 3 banked Evolution Points into the skill.
[Virulent Dart (Common -> Bronze -> Silver)]
Range: 12m -> 14m.
Base Damage: 40 -> 120.
Toxin Damage: 30% -> 50% per second.
The damage output had effectively doubled.
The final Sludge Defiler turned, sensing a threat, and prepared to spit a barrage of filth. Ethan was faster. With a flick of his wrist, a dark projectile streaked through the air, burying itself in the monster’s eye socket.
-237! (Weak Point!)
Ethan didn't wait for it to die. He immediately re-entered Stealth. As he vanished, the creature turned a sickly shade of green.
-158!
-158!
The Defiler collapsed.
Ethan noted the numbers with clinical interest. The toxin damage doubled because of the Shade passive. As long as I stay out of their line of sight, the damage-over-time keeps the 'unseen' bonus.
Only the Blitz Stalker remained.
Victor was drenched in sweat, his shield arm trembling. "I'm out of cooldowns! I can't hold it!"
The party's Cleric was spamming heals, but it was like pouring water into a cracked bucket. Victor’s health was a sliver of red. They were Level 2, but they lacked the gear to bridge the gap between players and a Bronze BOSS.
Then, the shadow returned.
As the Blitz Stalker lunged at Victor’s throat, a Virulent Dart hissed through the air, striking the beast directly between its eyes.
-845! (Weak Point! Backstab! Hidden Bonus!)
The massive chunk of health vanished instantly. Victor froze, his mouth hanging open. "Holy sht!"
They had been fighting this thing for minutes just to scrape away ten percent of its health. This stranger had just erased half of it with a single throw.
The horror didn't stop there. The Blitz Stalker turned a violent, neon green.
-324!
-324!
-324!
-324!
The BOSS didn't even get a chance to scream. It buckled, its legs giving way as the poison liquefied its internals. It crashed to the scorched earth at Victor’s feet, stone-dead.
The silence that followed was heavy.
"Is... is he even human?" the Ranger whispered, his bow lowered.
"The damage is one thing," Victor said, his voice low and full of awe. "But look at the precision. The BOSS was mid-leap, moving like a lightning bolt, and he hit the eye-socket without blinking. We couldn't even track it with our eyes, and he... he just hunted it."
They watched as a pile of loot erupted from the beast's corpse. None of them moved to touch it. In Godsfall, loot belonged to the individual or party that dealt the majority of the damage.
Ethan Quinn owned every scrap of it.