POP! The heavy gravity in the sewer tunnel vanished the second Sebastian turned off his skill. The air snapped back to its normal pressure with a loud, popping vacuum sound.
The fifty Golden Lion guild members did not spring back to their feet. They remained exactly where they were. They were pinned to the cobblestones by their own mangled armor and shattered digital bones!
A few of them were still gurgling.
HP: 5/500 - Critical Condition]
Their health bars hovered dangerously close to absolute zero. The game physics engine was practically weeping. It was desperately trying to calculate how to render fifty instances of catastrophic structural collapse simultaneously.
Sebastian stood amidst the sea of defeated players. He casually tossed the high tier agility ring of Baron_K into his bottomless inventory. He let out a slow and bored exhale.
It was almost too easy.
"Little boss..."
Sebastian turned his head. Grog the massive Level 20 Ogre mercenary was pressed flat against the moss covered sewer wall. The hulking NPC was clutching his heavy iron shield to his chest like a security blanket. His piggy eyes were wide and darting from the flattened guild members to the unassuming human in the ragged cloth tunic.
"You broke them," Grog whispered. His voice trembled with a mix of awe and absolute terror. "You didn't even smash. You just made the floor smash them."
" I just showed them what happens when you hit the floor too damn fast," Sebastian replied.
He walked over to the terrified Ogre and patted the massive and trembling kneecap of the mercenary.
"You did good today. You carried my loot, and you didn't accidentally chop my head off. Consider your contract done for the day."
Instantly Sebastian accessed his interface and tossed a small pouch containing ten gold coins at the feet of the Ogre.
Gold Transferred: -10G]
"Head back to the Broken Tusk tavern. Buy a roasted cow. Drink a barrel of ale. Wait for me there. I have things to do. Where I'm going, a big guy like you will just get in the way."
Grog eagerly snatched up the gold. His fear was momentarily eclipsed by the promise of unlimited roasted meat!
"Grog will eat the biggest cow! Grog will wait for the little boss!" The Ogre gave a clumsy salute and immediately began lumbering back down the tunnel. He was desperate to put as much distance as possible between himself and the terrifying human.
Sebastian watched him go. He then pulled the Rusty Iron Shard from his belt.
To the untrained eye it was garbage. To Sebastian it was the City Core. It was the foundational anchor that would allow him to carve out a slice of reality and protect it from the impending cosmic horror of the Great Merge. He had the core and he had the location. It was the cleared out Crypt of Silence.
But as he stared at the glowing, jagged metal, he hit a hard wall.
Shit. He couldn't plant it yet.
[System Error: Territory claim requires active Guild framework.]
A City Core needed a guild system to actually work. It wasn't just magic. It was a claim on the land. The rules of the game demanded that a territory be owned by a recognized faction or guild. If he planted the core now, the system would just spit out an invalid entity error.
In his past life, players hadn't figured this out until it was far too late. They had tried to build walls with bricks and mortar only to watch Level 50 Phase Spiders casually walk through the concrete and devour their families. To build a true Sanctuary that bent the laws of physics to keep the monsters out, you needed a Guild Token.
And Guild Tokens didn't drop from regular monsters. They didn't even drop from dungeon bosses. They were exclusively tied to World Bosses.
Fuck me," Sebastian groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"I just left the damn tutorial zone," he muttered to the empty, sludge-filled sewer. "I don't want to go back. I hate that place."
Suddenly the ambient lighting of the Ethereal Plane violently shifted!
The dim and sickly green glow of the Ironhold sewers was washed out by a harsh and pulsating crimson light. The ground beneath the boots of Sebastian trembled. It was not from a localized gravity spell but from a server wide event script executing its code.
BING! BING! BING!
A booming and ethereal chime echoed in the minds of every single player currently logged into the game. It was a sound designed to evoke epic wonder but to Sebastian it sounded like a dinner bell for a slaughterhouse.
══════════════════════════════════════
[GLOBAL ANNOUNCEMENT: THE HEAVENS TEAR ASUNDER! THE FIRST WORLD BOSS HAS DESCENDED!]
[ENTITY: THE DOOM HOWL WOLF (LEVEL 30)]
[LOCATION: THE VALLEY OF ECHOES (ADJACENT TO NOVICE VILLAGES)]
[REWARD: THE FIRST GUILD TOKEN OF THE ETHEREAL PLANE!]
══════════════════════════════════════
The massive and glowing blue text hovered in his vision for five full seconds before slowly fading away.
Sebastian stared at the empty air. A dark smile slowly crept across his face.
The developers of The Ethereal Plane had a sick sense of humor. Dropping a Level 30 World Boss right next to the Level 1 beginner areas was a deliberate trap. It was a shiny piece of bait designed to lure thousands of overconfident and under geared players into a meat grinder just to see how the server handled mass casualty events.
Normally the top guilds would spend weeks organizing a raid for this. They would meticulously farm gear and coordinate tank rotations and stockpile healing potions. But right now the game had been online for less than a day. The average player level was barely pushing Level 7.
It was going to be an absolute bloodbath!
"Well," Sebastian sighed softly, cracking his knuckles. "If the universe is handing out free groceries, I guess I should go pick them up."
He didn't bother walking back to the central plaza of Ironhold. He didn't have the time to deal with the inevitable crowds of players panicking in the streets. He opened his system interface and navigated to his fast travel menu. He selected the teleportation waypoint he had unlocked at Novice Village 109.
"Teleport," he commanded.
Vwoooosh!
His physical avatar dissolved into a stream of bright blue data particles. He bypassed the stone ceiling of the sewer and shot into the digital ether.
[Fast Travel Executed: Novice Village 109]
The transit was instantaneous. Sebastian materialized on the cobblestone fountain square of Novice Village 109.
The moment his boots touched the ground he was hit by a wall of sheer auditory chaos. The village was in a state of absolute unhinged madness!
Thousands of players were sprinting through the streets. They were tripping over each other and screaming into the localized voice chat. The peaceful and idyllic medieval music of the starter zone had been entirely muted. It was replaced by an ominous low frequency war drum that thumped in time with the racing hearts of the players.
"LFG WORLD BOSS! NEED HEALERS! NEED TANKS! LEVEL 5 ROGUE LFG!" a player screamed. He was frantically waving a rusty dagger in the air.
"Where is it?! The map says the Valley of Echoes! Follow the main road east!" another player yelled. He rallied a group of friends dressed in identical dye stained starter clothes.
Sebastian casually stepped off the teleportation dais and adjusted his ragged cloak. He looked at the eager and flushed faces of the players rushing past him. They looked like kids running toward an ice cream truck. They had no idea that the ice cream truck was rigged with explosives.
"They have no fucking idea," Sebastian muttered to himself.
In exactly one year the Great Merge would tear the sky open and real monsters would pour into the streets of Tokyo, New York, and London. These people wouldn't be cheering then. They would be crying for their mothers. They treated this like a game and an escape from their dreary lives in 2077. They didn't realize they were currently participating in the most brutal live fire military drill in the world.
Sebastian began to walk. He didn't run. He didn't shout for a party. He moved with a slow and heavy momentum.
His mind was already shifting gears and cycling through the tactical data of his past life.
The Doom Howl Wolf. It was a massive and highly mobile beast that specialized in area of effect physical damage and magical fear debuffs. It was designed to shatter shield walls and instantly execute squishy backline mages.
[HP: 350/350 - Warning: Low Base Defense]
His current stats were heavily skewed. He was Level 10 and technically the highest on the server. But his base health pool and physical defense were still laughably low. He was a glass cannon. If the Wolf actually managed to hit him his HP would instantly evaporate.
But that was the beauty of his new build. He didn't plan on getting hit. He didn't even plan on participating in the raid mechanics.
He had absolute stealth. He had absolute severance. He had a 10,000 times skill proficiency multiplier that allowed him to rewrite the fundamental laws of the server reality.
He was going to walk into the Valley of Echoes and let the arrogant guilds throw their bodies at the beast until they were nothing but digital fertilizer. And then he was going to simply delete the boss from the game code.
Sebastian navigated through the throng of panicked players and headed toward the eastern gates of the village. The sky above the treeline was already swirling with dark and ominous clouds of corrupted magic.
He needed that Guild Token. It was the key to his survival and the key to his Sanctuary and the first true step toward preparing Earth for the apocalypse.
"Let's see who brought their dog treats," Sebastian said, his eyes locked on the horizon.