Chapter 153
The swamp did not release them easily. Even after the last of the undead cores shattered and the mists thinned, the stench of decay clung to their armor and skin, seeping into their lungs as if to remind them of what they had endured. A heavy silence followed the second wave's defeat. No one cheered, no one laughed—there was only the sound of labored breathing, the hiss of healing spells knitting wounds together, and the quiet scrape of boots against mud as the guilds reformed their lines.
Daniel stood apart from them, high upon a ridge of stone that overlooked the battlefield. His expression was unreadable, his eyes cold, calculating. He had not lifted a hand during the fight, and yet his presence loomed over every member as though he were measuring their worth against a standard only he knew.
The survivors stole glances at him, half expecting him to vanish or reveal himself as something other than mortal. Instead, he simply observed, hands clasped behind his back, like a teacher watching children stumble through their first lesson in cruelty.
The three guilds did not linger in the swamp. Mary Kay, voice steady despite exhaustion, urged them forward. "We move. Out of the mire. Find higher ground." And so they marched, boots squelching free of the cursed mud, until the damp rot gave way to firmer soil and the horizon widened.
At last, they emerged from the swamp into an open barren land that stretched endlessly before them. The sight struck them silent for a different reason. Karion's swamplands had been oppressive, its mists choking and its waters foul, but this wasteland was worse in its emptiness. The ground was dry and cracked, an ocean of pale earth that seemed to drink in every ounce of light. No grass grew here, no bird dared cross the sky, and the wind carried only dust and whispers. It was as if the land itself had been drained of life long ago and had forgotten it ever existed. For miles upon miles, nothing moved. Only the flat, broken expanse lay before them, a graveyard without stones.
Here, the guilds paused. This was where they regrouped, tended to wounds, and reinforced their strength. The battle wagons—massive things that had once looked ordinary—now revealed their true worth. Each had been upgraded during the long days of preparation. The wooden frames glowed faintly with runes of protection and concealment, their enchantments doubling both their carrying capacity and their defense. From the outside, they still appeared as plain merchant caravans, but within each wagon was a marvel of magic—dimensional expansion artifacts that stretched the interiors into ten-meter halls, wide and tall enough to carry men, supplies, and even spare arms as though the wagons were mobile fortresses.
The beasts that pulled them were no longer flesh and blood. Instead, ten golem bulls stood hitched to the caravans, each five feet tall and weighing over two tons. Their bodies, sculpted from obsidian stone and plated in hardened steel, were powered by monster cores set deep in their chests.
The magic pulsing within them burned with steady, eternal strength. Should one fall, there were ten more prepared, stored and waiting to replace them. Where once they might have been vulnerable to attrition, now they moved with certainty the golems neither tired nor hungered, and no band of monsters could spook them.
Inside the wagons, shelves groaned beneath the weight of provisions water, dried rations, medicines, spare weapons, and rare potions carefully prepared for a campaign that might stretch weeks. Every guild member bore a dimensional pocket storage bag, expensive artifacts worth fortunes, each capable of holding twenty items without weight. It was a small detail, but it marked the difference between unprepared adventurers and soldiers who marched ready for war.
They had survived the swamp. They had faced death knights and risen undead, and not a single soul had been lost. Some were bloodied, all were weary, but the guilds had come out alive. That mattered. It was proof that their long days of planning, their heavy spending, their sleepless nights of drilling formations and strategies had not been wasted.
But as they sat in the shadow of their battle wagons, armor dented, clothes stained, and silence hanging heavier than the desert air, they all felt it the emptiness of the barren land pressing in on them, the desolation stretching farther than the eye could see. Here, there was no swamp to hide in, no trees to take cover, no rivers to drink from. Only dust, cracked stone, and the oppressive sense that the Empire of Graves had bled this land dry long before they arrived.
And still, Daniel said nothing. He simply turned his gaze toward the horizon, where the barren expanse faded into a haze of heat and shadow. His lips curled ever so slightly, as though he already knew the land would not remain empty for long.
The barren land swallowed sound. Even as the three guilds moved with discipline and care, their boots crunching against the cracked soil, there was no echo, only the unsettling vastness of Karion pressing in around them. When the sun dipped low and bled its last light across the wasteland, silence took full dominion. No insect hummed, no wind stirred, and the horizon looked as though it had been painted with ash.
Here, at the edge of exhaustion and unease, the guilds made their camp. They did not scatter into squads as they might have in safer lands. All three guilds nearly three hundred strong—huddled together, forming a defensive circle with their battle wagons drawn inward like a fortress wall. Their training showed in the precision of their movements, but there was an undeniable heaviness in the air: the knowledge that in Karion, even sleep could be a risk.
Daniel moved apart from them, his presence both reassuring and unnerving. The guild members whispered his name with awe and unease, calling him Netherborn's disciple, Rothchester's heir, or simply "the young lord." He gave them no explanation. Instead, he drew his gunblade, its barrel and edge glinting faintly beneath the dead sky.
With calm precision, Daniel raised the weapon and fired four times. The shots rang out like thunder in the emptiness, but no flame or bullet burst from the barrel. Instead, streams of silver glyphs spiraled outward, vanishing half a mile into the night, embedding themselves into unseen coordinates in the four cardinal directions.
Each shot planted a silent manifestation alarm spell, a construct of both chaos mana and Netherborn knowledge. No enemy would see them, no gatekeeper of the system would mark them but if the undead stirred within that range, the wards would awaken.
The magic linked directly to the guild leaders through the bracelets Custodia had provided earlier. Forged with ancient binding runes, they pulsed faintly with Daniel's mark. If undead crossed into the alarm's net, the silver bands would glow, not loudly, not violently, but with a subtle light, a whisper of warning.
The leaders Charlotte Lazarus, Mary Kay, and Natasha Sokolov , watched Daniel's work in silence. They understood that this was no ordinary spell, no trick they could purchase in a marketplace. What he was weaving was closer to system-level manipulation, a surveillance field masked as ritual. To them, it was both alien and comforting.
Meanwhile, the guilds set their defenses. High-tier barrier artifacts were staked into the ground, their crystals humming softly as translucent domes of protection shimmered and overlapped. It was not one great wall, but many layered veils, each keyed to dispel different types of threats: spectral intrusion, necrotic decay, or brute-force assault. Within the glowing lattice, the wagons stood steady, their cloaking enchantments bent inward, making the convoy nearly invisible from afar.
And still, they dared not light bonfires. Every man and woman wore clothing enchantments tuned to hold warmth, faint runes sewn into fabric glowing faintly under touch. It kept the bitter cold of Karion's night at bay, but it left the camp in an eerie half-darkness. No laughter rose, no stories were shared.
The undead were drawn not only to sound but to the pulse of living warmth itself. Every flicker of flame, every burst of vitality, risked calling them down upon the camp.
So the guilds settled in silence, sitting shoulder to shoulder, some leaning against wagons, others keeping their weapons close at hand. They tried not to imagine what it meant—that life itself was bait in this cursed land.
Daniel stood at the camp's edge, watching the horizon with his heterochromatic eyes: one golden, one blue. In their reflection, the barren land looked like a chessboard awaiting its first true move.
The first night in Karion did not pass in peace.
Near midnight, one of the silver alarm wards Daniel had planted flickered across the bracelets of the guild leaders. A faint pulse of light no louder than a heartbeat, warned of intruders breaching the perimeter. At once, Mary Kay stirred from her seated rest, hand already tightening around the hilt of her weapon, while Charlotte and Natasha scanned the dark horizon with sharpened eyes.
Daniel was already moving. He rose from where he had been crouched at the edge of the camp, gunblade in hand. "Do not rise," he said, his voice low but firm enough to silence the rustle of bodies.
Mary Kay frowned, stepping forward. "We should send a squad with you. You can't—"
He raised a hand, palm outward, cutting her off. His heterochromatic eyes glimmered faintly in the dim glow of the barrier wards. "You need rest. All of you. Tomorrow will bleed you dry, and you know it. This is something I can do—quietly, cleanly. Trust me, not for my sake, but for your own survival."
His gaze lingered on Mary Kay. For a moment, she looked ready to argue, but his hand remained raised, steady, unyielding. "I want no glory from this quest," Daniel said, quieter now, as if confessing. "I only want to fulfill my promise—to support you, to ensure this path leads somewhere worth surviving. When the true war begins, that is when I will call on you. Until then, let me do what I can alone."
Reluctantly, Mary Kay stepped back. The others followed her lead. The camp settled once more into silence, though many eyes followed Daniel as he disappeared into the night.
He moved with purpose, guided by the faint hum of the activated ward. The land stretched before him like a graveyard without markers, cracked soil, skeletal trees, and half-sunken ruins that clawed at the stars like broken fingers. It was there, among the crumbling walls of a long-dead settlement, that he found them.
Undead stirred in the darkness: ghouls dragging skeletal limbs, shades slithering like smoke through shattered doorways, armored husks that once had been soldiers. Their eyes glowed faintly, hungry, though none had yet sensed him.
Daniel crouched behind a shattered stone arch. His breath slowed, his grip on the gunblade steady. Precision and silence were his creed tonight. He drew on the well of chaos mana within him, but not in full only enough to lace each shot with deathless certainty. When he squeezed the trigger, there was no thunderclap. Only the whisper of a spell that bent the bullet into silence, piercing the core within a ghoul's chest. It collapsed without a sound.
One by one, he moved through the ruin. Each shot placed with surgeon's care, each target felled before alarm could spread. He did not revel in the kills, his face was cold, eyes calculating, a hunter dismantling pieces of a puzzle.
Then, as he advanced deeper into the ruins, his eyes caught faint etchings carved into broken walls. At first, he dismissed them as meaningless scars of time. But when he leaned closer, the glyphs began to shimmer faintly in his vision, shapes and sequences that were not of the Cathedral Tower, nor the main system's lexicon. This was older, foreign, and alive.
It was a spell language of the western region, forgotten by most, its logic tied not to structured incantations but to intent carved into runes. As Daniel touched the symbol, his chaos mana pulsed in response, and the glyph unraveled into knowledge inside his mind. His breath caught not in fear, but in recognition. This was a toolset hidden outside the system's gaze.
He spent the rest of the night weaving through ruin and shadow, eliminating every undead he encountered with surgical silence, and tracing more of the glyphs where he found them—door frames, broken shrines, the ribs of fallen statues. Each mark added to his growing lexicon, unlocking fragments of a magic language that blended with his own unstable core of chaos mana.
By the time the horizon paled and the first light of the twin moons bled into Karion, the ruins had fallen silent. Every undead within had been dismantled, their marble-sized cores harvested and reduced to dust. Daniel emerged from the broken settlement, his cloak carrying the ash of what once lived, his eyes shadowed by new understanding.
When he returned to camp, he said nothing of the glyphs he had discovered. He merely nodded once at the guild leaders, and for the first time, Mary Kay did not question him. They could all sense it he had been busy in ways they could not yet comprehend.
And so the first night in Karion ended, not with rest, but with silence bought by one man's hunt in the shadows. Daniel crouched in the shadow of the ruin, ash crunching faintly beneath his boots. The air here still stank of scorched bone and burnt moss where the wandering undead had fallen to his silent trial. He had not drawn attention to the battle, but in truth, it had been less about survival and more about testing the limits of a system only he fully understood.
The old tomes scattered across the ruin whispered of western techniques—how mages had begun layering spells one atop another, weaving effects in sequence until a single casting carried the weight of several. The discovery was impressive, but Daniel saw the ceiling of its design immediately. Five slots. Five rigid anchors into which spells were forced, no matter how complex the layering became. They had power, yes, but no freedom.
His fingers brushed the page of one cracked volume, his mind drifting back to Hyun-Jae. She had been the one to seed the foundation of skill trees in the original game, giving players branches to grow into rather than static lists to memorize. He had thought the mechanic clever back then. Now, inside this world, he realized it was more than clever. It was adaptable. It could bend and conform to the rules he had written… and beyond them, if he chose.
Formless Armor was proof of that.
It had not been born from a single spell but from six, hammered together through trial, error, and blood. Smoke that concealed, metal that shielded, embers that burned, toxins that repelled, lightning that scarred the air, and the strange, translucent ink that bound them all. The result was not armor in the traditional sense. When he willed it into being, it wrapped him in a shifting skin—veins of molten amber flickering like burning coal, shrouds of smoke that refused to disperse, threads of metallic sheen crawling across him like living script. A thing neither cloth nor plate, neither magical barrier nor pure energy. It was all of them, and none.
The guild hunters had seen only the surface when it flickered into being. They thought it invincible. Daniel knew better. It was not perfection. It was evolution in progress.
Every time he drew it out, he felt something respond. A subtle pliancy, as though the armor remembered its fused origins and still sought to branch outward, to fold new skills into its shifting body. The seed Hyun-Jae had planted years ago, the concept of growth was still alive in it. His five slots were not walls. They were gateways. And each new path he tested could be bent, coaxed, and rewritten into more.
The western mages believed they had discovered something revolutionary. Daniel only smiled at the thought. Their stacked spells were a beginning. His armor was already the next step, unstable, dangerous, but limitless.
And limits, he thought, were made to be broken. The ruins had grown unnervingly quiet. Only the wind whistled through the shattered arches as Daniel stood still, his eyes fixed on the faint, shimmering lattice that now hovered before him. It was not a hallucination. It was the shape of his own system his skill tree, no longer abstract code buried in numbers, but a living diagram etched into reality.
Five branches pulsed faintly, each bearing the weight of a discipline he had long since mastered: fire's devouring hunger, lightning's sharp clarity, healing's steady warmth, assessment's cold logic, and the shifting, volatile heart of Formless Armor itself. But he had not come this far to accept limits. He had written those rules once, back in the old world. Now, here, he had the right to tear them open.
Daniel raised his hand. The lattice quivered as his will pressed against it. The five branches bled into each other, their lines twisting, fusing, and refusing to remain separate. Fire wrapped around lightning like molten veins, smoke threaded with healing's pale glow, and metallic ink entwined with threads of pure assessment. The branches shook violently, as though resenting the strain.
And then, like glass shattering, a sixth node bloomed in the center.
It pulsed with a rhythm unlike the others, neither element nor spell nor barrier, but a synthesis of all. A singularity of every path he had walked. His armor flared into existence before he could even breathe, but it was no longer the unstable fusion of smoke, ember, and steel.
The Netherborn new form stepped forth.
It was still him, and yet not. His silhouette was wrapped in armor that flowed like liquid metal, every surface etched with glowing runes that shifted as though alive. Embers pulsed beneath the surface like a burning heart, each breath venting curls of smoke and ash. Veins of lightning crackled faintly across his arms and chest, tracing patterns too precise to be random patterns that resembled the branching of the very skill tree he had just torn apart.
But the most haunting change was the face. The helm of the Netherborn was smooth and formless at first glance, yet when anyone looked too long, they swore they could see a reflection of themselves in it, distorted, judged, and weighed. It was the imprint of his assessment skill, woven into the very mask of his alter ego.
Daniel flexed his fingers. The new armor responded instantly, not as a tool, but as an extension of thought. It did not ask permission; it anticipated. It carried the weight of every spell he knew, not stacked in sequence, but layered as one. The Netherborn was no longer bound by five slots or branching skills. It was evolution given flesh.
And yet, even as he admired the new form, Daniel felt an edge of unease. Power like this was never final. The sixth node had not closed. It pulsed with a slow, deliberate beat, as though inviting him further down a path that had no end.
The Netherborn was born incomplete.
That truth sent a ripple of excitement through him. For the first time, Daniel realized he was not simply rewriting the rules of a game. He was carving out a new law of existence—and this world would have to learn to live beneath it.
The barren camp lay still beneath Karion's starlit sky. Silence pressed heavy over the guilds—three hundred hunters huddled within layers of wards, barrier artifacts, and the faint glow of enchanted cloth for warmth. The swamp was behind them, the wasteland ahead, but no one could sleep deeply. They had seen the dead fight with precision, and they knew more would come.
A ripple of energy stirred the night.
Those who stood watch lifted their heads, weapons tightening in their grip. From the shadows at the camp's edge stepped a figure none of them recognized at first glance—its armor flowing like molten ink, its form threaded with embers and veins of lightning. It was human-shaped, but too seamless, too deliberate. And its mask… smooth, faceless, yet each who looked upon it swore they saw themselves reflected back, twisted, judged.
Whispers broke out immediately.
"Is that?"
"An undead… no, wait"
"Gods, what is it?"
Mary Kaye reached for her blade, half-rising before Daniel raised his gauntleted hand. The motion was unmistakably his, and the guilds froze in unison. He stepped into the fireless circle where their leaders sat, the armor rippling faintly with smoke and rune-light.
"This," Daniel said, his voice carrying a metallic resonance that wasn't there before, "is not a monster. It is not a curse. being the Neatherborn is a title ."
The guild leaders exchanged looks, fear, doubt, ambition flickering in equal measure.
"A… title?" one finally asked.
Daniel nodded. The mask shifted faintly as if breathing with him.
"Netherborn. That is what this form is called. But do not mistake it for a race or a singular being. Netherborn are not bound by one shape, one rule, or one essence. They are the reflection of the bearer, their traits, their core power, their truth given armor and breath."
He let the silence stretch, the truth settling like weight on their shoulders. The embers in his armor pulsed with each word.
"My Netherborn looks like this because of who I am. Smoke, fire, lightning, steel, healing, and the weight of judgment itself. But another" he looked at them, at the guilds whose members had already started shifting uneasily "another would look entirely different. No two would ever be the same. The title is a mantle. What you see is not fixed. It evolves. It reflects."
Some of the hunters shrank back, unsettled by the thought of such power adapting to one's soul. Others leaned forward with naked hunger in their eyes, ambition sparking like flint.
Mary Kaye's gaze never left him. "So you're saying… this form is yours. like others …?"
"meaning Rankers and Dragon blood?"
Daniel inclined his head. "If they walked the path and was chosen. or If they bore the cost. "
"As The Netherborn are not a species you can hunt, nor an artifact you can buy. They are born from within."
"the Neatherborn that made me into its Disciple, came with a purpose, as it mentioned its reason, essence and form was said to return to the endless swirling force of chaos"
" so the young lord, accepted the previous Netherborn blessing and became one?"
" lets just say its simply a coat of arms that i need to wear, and even without this form. i am still me. wearing another piece of armor."
"Bonnie reacted, " a very powerful and deadly looking piece of armor."
Murmurs rippled across the camp. Some spoke in awe, others in quiet terror. To them, it was as though he had peeled back the curtain of the world and shown them a secret meant for gods.
Daniel let the unease linger, then spoke softer, almost human again. "I do not wear this for glory. Nor to claim dominion. I wear it because war is coming, and this is how I keep my promise to stand beside you when it does."
The words carried more weight than any threat could.
The campfire less circle was thick with whispers, yet one voice cut through the silence. A young hunter from the East Lazarus guild, his face pale beneath the cold shimmer of enchanted cloth, swallowed hard and asked,
"So… what will happen to the other Netherborn? I mean, your teacher or master?"
The question struck the group like an arrow. Dozens of heads turned toward Daniel, the embers of his formless armor still glowing faintly against the night. For a long moment, he didn't answer. The only sound was the wind dragging across the barren land, rattling through the bones of the world.
At last, Daniel's masked gaze turned to the speaker. When he spoke, his voice carried both weight and distance.
"There is no master."
The words were simple, but the ripple they caused was anything but. Fear flickered in the eyes of some. Others exchanged glances, suspicion brewing.
Daniel stepped closer, the ground crunching under his boots. The smoky armor pulsed faintly with hidden light as he went on, voice low and resonant.
"The Netherborn do not serve. They are not a chain of command, not an army waiting for a king. Each is its own truth. Each is its own burden. If there are others… they will look nothing like me. They will walk their own path, wield their own powers, and carry their own scars."
He paused, letting the hunters take in his words, the silence of Karion pressing on them like a hand at their throats.
"If you fear that my 'master' waits in shadow, ready to command me, cast that fear aside. No one commands me. No one commands the Netherborn. If there are more… they will not be allies, nor enemies by design. They will simply be."
A hush followed. The guild members were visibly unsettled—some with awe at the idea of multiple Netherborn, others with growing anxiety at what that could mean. If Daniel, who fought like no man they had ever seen, was only one expression of this title… then what of the others who might arise?
Mary Kaye's voice, steady but quiet, broke the tension. "So this… mantle, this title. It spreads. Not by you, not by choice, but by fate?"
Daniel inclined his head. "By truth," he said simply.
"Every Netherborn is born from the truth buried deepest inside them. You cannot copy it. You cannot steal it. And if you try, it will devour you."
The guilds fell silent once more. Some dared not look at him, afraid their ambitions had been read. Others stared harder, determined to understand, to learn, to chase what they had just been told was impossible.
" its chaos mana."
Daniel turned away, the embers fading as he allowed the armor to dissolve back into his human form. Only the echo of that faceless mask seemed to linger in the minds of those who had seen it.
Daniel stood before them, the afterglow of the formless armor fading, the memory of its faceless mask still burning in the guilds' minds. A silence clung to the camp, heavier than any barrier they had raised. The hunters looked to him for truth, for certainty, for something to anchor their fear and awe upon.
But the truth was a dangerous thing.
Inside, Daniel wanted to exhale, to let out the long, weary sigh pressing against his chest. Yet he couldn't, not here, not now. Not when every pair of eyes clung to his shadow like drowning men to driftwood. This, this was why he despised lies. Because one lie always demanded another. A patchwork built on sand. And now, with their gaze fixed on him, he had no choice but to weave another thread into the tapestry he had already spun.
Damn it, he thought, jaw tightening. This wasn't supposed to be. It was a whim… nothing more. A mask born out of survival, not prophecy. And yet here they are, staring at me as though I've carved open the heavens.
He straightened, face unreadable. His voice came low, deliberate, heavy with the cadence of authority.
"The truth you saw tonight," he said, letting his gaze sweep across the gathered guilds, "is not a monster. Nor is it a ghost of some forgotten master. What you witnessed was mine, my burden, my mantle, shaped by who I am.
Each Netherborn is born differently, but do not mistake it as something outside of me. It is not a second being. It is not an invader. It is me, only drawn sharper, honed into form."
There was a stir, relief in some faces, doubt in others. He pressed on before silence could drown him.
"My Benefactor or as you all call my master… he gave me knowledge to harness chaos energy. its just a Tools. But what you saw does not belong to him. It belongs to me alone. A Netherborn is not inherited. It is taught. and It manifests from within. And so long as I breathe, it answers only to me."
The weight of his words settled over the guilds like a new layer of armor. He saw it, the way fear shifted into awe, awe into hesitant loyalty, loyalty into dangerous ambition. Some looked relieved, comforted that their ally was not a puppet of some unseen overlord.
Others, however, had the spark of something hungrier in their eyes. If the Netherborn was not a divine title passed down, but a thing born from within, then… could it be reached? Could it be claimed?
Daniel caught that flicker, the unspoken thought. He hated it. Hated how lies planted seeds, how even the most careful words grew thorns he hadn't intended.
Still, he stood steady. He had to.
Inside, he prayed this carefully crafted story would hold, that this would be the last lie he would need to speak. But deep down, he knew better. The Tower had never allowed easy truths. And this world… was no different.
Those who witnessed Daniel become the Neatherborn a being that no one had ever known were left in disbelief. There were no historical records, no ancient texts, no hints in the dusty libraries scavenged by scholars and avid players alike. Even the most dedicated researchers, who had painstakingly combed through old books and archives, found no mention of such an entity.
The veterans of the virtual game, with their extensive knowledge of its lore, were equally shaken. They knew the gods often changed the game's dynamics to suit their twisted desires, yet this felt different. Perhaps the Neatherborn was a hidden character, deliberately concealed by the developers, now awakened after some secret condition was met, an anomaly that defied both history and expectation.
Among the three hundred guild members who witnessed this, all human players, there was a mixture of new recruits and seasoned veterans. Each had spent countless hours mastering the game, dissecting its mechanics, and memorizing its lore. Daniel could not simply claim that he had created this character on a whim, testing some foolish theory.
The stakes were too high, the consequences too real. This was no longer a game; lives were on the line. Going all out, using every ounce of his power, was the only logical path. Learning the western magic language, as he had done, had been merely a convenient excuse, a secondary benefit that coincided with his plan, not the reason for it.
Daniel understood the harsh reality faced by the non-combatant players, the ones who risked everything for the sake of their loved ones back on Earth, striving to climb higher in the hierarchy thay now in after being awakened.
Their courage, their desperation, their loyalty, it was not lost on him. Every ally he could gain, every friend willing to stand beside him, would be a blessing when the coming trials demanded more than any single individual could endure. For Daniel, this was strategy, necessity, and compassion all at once. The creation of the Neatherborn was not caprice, it was survival, protection, and the forging of bonds that might one day save countless lives.
As everyone listened to Daniel's reasoned explanation and logical reasoning, soon a wave of relief swept over the group. Many had feared their own inadequacy in combat, knowing that their chances of surviving this quest were slim. Yet hearing Daniel speak, not as some distant noble or untouchable figure, but as someone who understood the stakes and had fought alongside them, they felt a spark of reassurance. They sensed that he was a true hunter, one who would not abandon them in the face of danger.
It became clear why Daniel had gone to such lengths to foster camaraderie among this diverse group. His efforts had not been idle gestures; they were preparation for the trials ahead. And now, as Daniel observed them closely, using his keen assessment skills he could see the change. The three hundred strong, once tense and fearful, had shed their dread. Calm settled over them, and hope took root.
Their will to clear the quest burned brighter than ever, bolstered by the knowledge that Daniel. the new Neatherborn was on their side. With him leading and watching over them, they finally believed survival was not just possible, but achievable.