Word of Wei Huan's battlefield exploits rippled through the dark beast territories by way of the Challenger System's "chat hall." Thought Parasites were unnecessary; the beasts sifted the open chatter and pieced together a dossier on their enemy. Knowledge of him seemed encoded in their very genes, as though an ancestral memory had stirred and granted them intimate familiarity from birth.
The layered strategy of war fog and total conscription produced nothing like the intended paralysis. Wei Huan obliterated the lord core in five minutes and rolled on to the next stronghold without pause.
Silence gripped the "dark beast chat hall" for a heartbeat. Then a voice bearing the prefix "Royal" cut through. "Continue the sequence. Bleed his soldiers, his underworld power, his bombs. Whatever he hoards most tightly is what he can least afford to lose."
The third territory hoisted its protective shield to Level 4.
The fourth elevated its hero temple to Level 4.
The fifth followed suit.
Wei Huan pressed forward with relentless momentum, while the dark beasts methodically siphoned his strength.
Powerful as he was, he remained a single man with finite reserves.
In random challenges he might have culled a hundred thousand dark beasts across forty-odd days.
Here he had four days to breach thousands of territories, hemmed in from every direction.
The royal orchestrating the defense wagered that four days would strip Wei Huan of every hidden card and leave him broken inside the assessment world.
It marshaled twenty thousand dark beast lords—none below Sequence Four—and refused to entertain the possibility of failure.
Dusk gathered. Night would transform the seas into the dark beasts' native element. The royal fully expected the coming darkness to etch terror into the human's soul.
…
5:50 p.m.
Liu Chengzhi gathered the empty bowls from Wei Huan's tray and glanced through the viewport at the siege raging beyond the hull. "Boss, the sun's almost gone."
Wei Huan dabbed his scarred lips with a napkin and nodded. "The night will test us harder."
"Everyone's giving their all, boss. I can't swing a blade, but the kitchen never closes. Name a dish, and it's yours."
"The restaurant runs around the clock. That's hard work too, Chengzhi."
He waved it off. "It's what I do. If my combat rating were higher, I'd be out there charging with the rest. Just now I passed the infirmary—wounded are starting to trickle in. Things are heating up."
"The deeper we push, the faster their territories mature. Level 4 sites are appearing. Without shaman blessings or underworld fire bombs, every assault grows costly."
"At least we have prayers now. Injuries can be mended. The crew roster feels complete at last."
Wei Huan's tone shifted. "Fetch Dou Lin."
"On it."
Liu Chengzhi departed with a spring in his step and returned minutes later towing a beaming seven-year-old.
Dou Lin had spent the entire day in lessons. Idle veterans adored cornering the boy for impromptu lectures—especially Dou Lin. Anyone who snagged him tried to cram another nugget of wisdom into his head, even while artillery thundered outside and the war itself became the topic.
Born inside the Challenge World, Dou Lin was seven and a half. Before boarding he had scratched out a ragged existence in the War Son Mansion—hungry, threadbare, locked in constant rivalry. Yet the streets had been free, wild, gloriously unstructured.
Now he lived in a proper home with a family that cared. Rules came with the package. He understood the trade-off, but a child's spirit chafed at confinement all the same.
The summons from Wei Huan sent him scampering. "Brother Wei! Is it judgment time at last?"
White gloves hugged his small hands: [Canopy].
The deeper one pondered [Canopy]'s description, the more it resembled a prophet's training crucible.
"Stars" formed the astrologer's heart. From Sequence Two—"Astrologer"—practitioners reached toward celestial bodies. The greater the number and distance, the mightier the gift.
[Canopy] could birth stars from nothing. It could surrender those stars to Wei Huan, transmuting them into death-dark constellations.
Such power beggared belief. One might accept it as a divine relic—yet the name carried no divine marker, no footnote about "gifts from the stars." It refused to behave like equipment.
Still, an artifact tied to the rise or fall of an entire profession would not casually land in a child's grasp.
Dou Lin had never cracked a diamond-tier chest or higher.
Wei Huan studied the soft glow pulsing from the gloves. Only when the boy spoke again did he answer. "Yes. Begin the judgment."
Dou Lin lifted his hands as though conducting an invisible orchestra. Astrologer power flared. He became a puppeteer suspended above reality; the space beneath his palms encompassed the universe itself.
His fingertips danced. Cosmic filaments leaped to the rhythm. Subtle tremors chased causality backward until threads of fate converged.
The threads shimmered, then wove a balance scale that straddled the heavens. One pan cradled a mountain of stars. The other held a doll-sized Dou Lin.
The stellar pan sagged under impossible weight; the doll rose skyward.
Dou Lin seized a fistful of stars from the heavier side with his gloved hand and dropped them onto the doll. The scale crept toward equilibrium.
When the pointer settled dead center, Dou Lin lifted eyes deep as midnight nebulae and fixed them on empty air.
His clear, childish voice rang out. "I judge—great victory!"
At the proclamation the doll stood. It flung the starlight it cradled into the void.
A cascade of silver crashed across the firmament. Streaking meteors painted white scars across the black curtain and rained down in a glittering storm.
Every soul aboard—human and undead alike—felt a warm surge. Mysterious energy flooded their veins. Every attribute doubled in an instant.
[Heavens] guaranteed the astrologer a minimum 0.5-fold attribute blessing with perfect reliability. In humanity's previous desperate cycle, when Dou Lin had been their fragile hope, he had still managed 0.6x for Daxia's legions.
Aboard Wei Huan's vehicle, riding the certainty of triumph, the boy delivered a rock-steady 1x multiplier.
[Judgment] layered atop shaman blessings and Flying Monkey states without conflict.
Territories that had begun to resist now crumpled again. Efficiency soared.
Sustained buffs were mandatory; without them speed would crater and casualties would mount. Tactics had to evolve.
[Judgment] carried no backlash. Its sole constraint was scope: it answered only the petitioner's immediate desire. Victory achieved, the boon evaporated.
A stronger astrologer could widen the prophecy's umbrella.
Could they win this siege? The next hour? Until dawn tomorrow?
Dou Lin's reach spanned slightly more than sixty minutes. He would need to renew the judgment hourly.
An all-night vigil was cruel for a seven-year-old.
"It's fine! I can do it!" The promise of cockpit documentaries through the dark hours lit the boy's face. His head bobbed like a pestle in a mortar. "I won't let you down!"
Wei Huan and Mu Zhong shared a quiet smile.
Choice or no choice, they required the boy's gift.
With Dou Lin's power woven into the assault, the faltering advance regained its irresistible rhythm.
Dark beast chatter carried the update.
[Humans deployed judgment.]
[Casualties critical. We cannot hold.]
[Humans overwhelming, King.]
A royal replied.
[Rejoice, then. Your lives pried loose a human trump. The Beast God and the race will etch your names in memory. Go peacefully into eternal dark.]
Indeed. One trump fewer for Wei Huan.
Sieges ground on without respite until midnight. Dark beast lords funneled reinforcements from every compass point, encircling the vehicle in living walls.
The entire route had become a battlefield. Brush the edge of any territory and hordes boiled out to strike.
Dark beast domains overlapped like scales on a serpent. Advancing one city demanded the firepower to flatten five simultaneously.
The lords' combined armies sprawled across the sea in numbers that rivaled Wei Huan's undead legions.
Wei Huan thanked fate for the full-throttle doctrine set at the outset.
A single day's delay under the old "methodical clearance" plan would have greeted them with Level 5 strongholds.
The pressure then would have dwarfed the present strain.
Level 4 territories remained within tolerable damage thresholds. Progress stayed grueling but viable.
Rotating warriors eventually lost the thrill of glory. Enemies swarmed without end; a single swing reaped dozens. Numbness set in. They returned drenched in gore, collapsed on the plaza, and slept like the dead until the next trumpet.
"Up, lads. Spirit. Our turn again. No griping. You have rest cycles. Colonel Wei and Major Xu have fought without relief since the first shot.
Captains Xue and Liu refuse to yield. You at least drink water and close your eyes.
Rouse yourselves. Die on the field only through carelessness.
I say again—this is no drill. These are dark beast lords! Kill them. Kill. Kill!"
The night wore into a brutal slog. When dawn finally bled across the horizon, the progress bar read 93 percent.
Seven percent remained to the finish line.
At 1:34 p.m. that day the fastest dark beast lord territory would ascend to Sequence Five.
Dark beast solidarity left no doubt: every forward stronghold would hit Sequence Five in perfect synchrony.
To dodge that escalation, Wei Huan had to punch through to the royal enclaves before the clock struck.
Roles would invert. Drag the royals into open combat, and their deaths became inevitable under challenge rules.
Wei Huan tallied the dark beasts' ceiling. The dark beasts tallied his.
From the lords' perspective the campaign had veered far off script.
Three and a half days until assessment closure, and Wei Huan's vehicle had already devoured 93 percent of the gauntlet. The rear echelon now bore crushing weight.
No one had foreseen this breakneck tempo. The original blueprint—cluster high-tier territories, compress cities into a killing net, snare the human midway—teetered on collapse.
Rush or crawl, the iron timer on territory upgrades could not be cheated. Their Level 4 bastions proved paper before Wei Huan's onslaught.
In a blink two more cities crumbled.
At 6:09 a.m. a Level 5 protective shield locked into place.
The royal debating withdrawal could not stomach abandoning the exquisite trap it had woven.
Stay.
Cracking a Level 5 shield demanded a trump card.
And so it did.
Minutes after sunrise Wei Huan shattered two consecutive strongholds and slipped the tightening noose of encirclement.
Only the fortress dead ahead remained. Breach it, and the front rolled forward once more.
He readied the dispatch. Then the forward territory's lackluster shield blazed to life. Color deepened; electric arcs crawled across its surface.
"Level 5 shield confirmed."
Every eye aboard caught the transformation. Murmurs rippled.
Yet where the dark beast lords anticipated panic, Wei Huan's crew radiated calm.
Years of warfare had yielded exhaustive logs: upgrade intervals, resource thresholds, all mapped to the minute.
This ascension aligned perfectly with human projections. It validated intelligence rather than strained it. Wei Huan felt no added burden.
Still, a Level 5 shield was no trivial obstacle.
Airdrops via kobold lost their ease. Pure frontal siege would bleed efficiency dry.
"Underworld fire bombs it is."
Regret colored Wei Huan's thought as his divine sense drifted back to the grand tomb and settled among the floating arsenal.
Over ten thousand bombs hovered in orderly ranks, each elevated to Sequence Four, brimming with underworld essence, eager for detonation.
Ten thousand and counting. At current growth curves, roughly a hundred bombs could level a single city. That equated to a hundred territories.
The final seven percent almost certainly held fewer than a hundred.
Firepower, in theory, overflowed.
Against cunning dark beast lords, however, skimping on reserves bred unease.
He sighed inwardly.
Two months of stockpiling—why only ten thousand instead of a hundred thousand, a million?
With endless ordnance he could steamroll without a flicker of worry.
His own advancement lagged. At Sequence Five his underworld pool would swell again, and the unlocked "undead pasture" would catapult overall might.
Regret for sluggish cultivation faded. Eyes open, Wei Huan issued crisp orders. Ghost Crows snatched bombs in their talons and streaked toward the front alongside the undead vanguard.
Conservation ruled his calculations. Shatter the shield. Nothing more.
"Boom!"
"Boom-boom!"
Emerald fire blossomed against the barrier. A concentrated barrage cracked the dome. The territory lay bare to the undead deluge.
Far in the rear, royal tails flicked with satisfaction.
To their eyes low-tier dark beasts were inexhaustible. Hive instincts hardwired obedience into every cell; subordinates existed to die for the upper strata.
Royals born to rule never squandered sentiment on cannon fodder.
Sacrifice hundreds, thousands—force a human trump. Victory.
Wei Huan's initial sword-like charges had nearly spooked them into tactical retreat. Now equilibrium returned.
Barracks and hero sanctums would upgrade in sequence. Their own "speed miracle" would mature by noon.
The swiftest territory-focused lords would hit Sequence Five around the same hour. Any dream of the human barreling through unchecked became laughable.
The worst had passed. Territories fortified apace. The last seven percent would become humanity's abyss of despair.
…
Wei Huan expended forty bombs to breach the Level 5 shield, then withheld further waste. Kobold portals flared. Shura Horse, Xu Qingqiang, and elite strikers poured onto the field.
Wartime protocols unlocked the vault. Xu Qingqiang, Captain Xue, and a second Sequence Five War King received pinnacle gear tailored to their paths.
Smaller war parties drew platinum kits as needed.
Every platinum piece save diamond-tier had been issued from storage.
The investment paid dividends in assault potency.
Xu Qingqiang and Captain Xue shrugged off arrow towers while dismantling them. Captain Xue claimed a platinum axe broad as a door; seven swings on average felled a structure.
Xu Qingqiang's star burned brighter.
[Criminal Sequence] granted attribute points with every meal. Satiation without expenditure triggered sleep—a simple cooldown.
Xu Qingqiang's innate "blood-return blade" set him apart. Others in the sequence healed through eating, but none matched his excess. Feed him enough and severed limbs regrew; even the debuff from "bloodlust blessing" evaporated.
He appeared to have unlocked the talent's apex.
Each sortie began with Mu Zhong layering attribute blessings—triple stats despite Xu Qingqiang lingering at Sequence Four. That alone explained his battlefield freedom.
He spurned post-feast lethargy, deliberately carving wounds to burn surplus energy while shoveling in constant rations.
Xu Qingqiang verged on perpetual motion.
Attributes skyrocketed in the cycle. A shortcut to ascension glimmered.
At present intensity Wei Huan needed only forty-odd bombs per shield, paired with Xu Qingqiang's frenzy, to sustain peak efficiency and hit the endgame on schedule.
Mu Zhong spoke. "Timelines align. We can reach the royal cluster half an hour early."
That placed arrival thirty minutes before 1:34 p.m.—before the fastest dark beast territories hit Sequence Five.
The buffer was earmarked for dismantling the royals.
Wei Huan's mind turned. "Will half an hour suffice?"
"I know you can accelerate further," Mu Zhong replied, "but remember—the royals can flee."
"Under this pressure, will they?"
"Hard to predict. I might."
Wei Huan closed his eyes, weighed variables, decided. "War is deception. Xu Qingqiang returns to the vehicle and stands down. The assault teams need recovery."
Mu Zhong glanced at the staff officers. Silent consensus passed between them. He nodded. "We concur. Dark beast fodder is infinite. Royals number only 321. Births are rationed yearly; maturation takes time. Letting even one slip away would sting."
Wei Huan's gaze sharpened to ice. "There may be more than one. Kill whichever we corner. None escape."
8:58 a.m.
A fresh wave of obstructing territories—bolstered by neighboring lords—snapped to Level 5 walls in the blink of an eye.
Level 5 walls plus Level 5 shields vaulted defensive values to uncharted heights.
The royals took heart. Human siege tempo slackened palpably—from five to eight minutes per city down to fifteen or eighteen.
A full ten-minute crawl.
Encouraging. Upgrade velocity had finally matched the human sprint. Resistance now carried weight.
Only five percent separated them from the finish line, yet the royals believed that sliver would prove an uncrossable gorge.
The plan that had nearly miscarried now stirred back to life. Cut down the humans—especially the necromancer—before the tape.
Thereafter humanity would know only despair, powerless to rise again.
For the next two-plus hours the three royals stationed at the goal line endured a roller-coaster of dread and hope.
Frontline dispatches arrived in erratic bursts. Wei Huan toppled a stronghold in eight minutes. The next required fifteen.
The erratic rhythm tormented the royals. Multiple impulses to abandon post surged, only to ebb when Wei Huan appeared to falter.
Heated argument erupted among the trio.
"We should withdraw," one insisted. "Wei Huan has reached the 95 line. He is too close. My territory invested solely in miracles for this operation—I am exposed."
"No," another snarled. "We stay. Every outburst costs him heavy bombs and shaman blessings. We have whittled him to the bone. To walk away now is unforgivable. This is the final chance to kill him before he enters a Level 5 world."
"You focused on troops—of course you feel secure. You possess the hordes to withstand him. I do not. You cunning beast, you pushed miracles on me yet bar retreat."
"Brother, my soldiers are yours. Together we fuse into one fist. We bury the human beneath his own walls and carve eternal glory!"
The weight of that final accolade crashed down. Thoughts of flight or fidelity alike fell silent.