Chapter 169
Far above the mortal stage, where the stars themselves bent like jeweled lanterns against the endless vault of creation, the old gods gathered in their thrones of fire and light to watch the great unfolding of the Dravensk quest, a ruinous city of blackened towers and streets drowned in cursed smoke, meant to be little more than another spectacle, another board upon which pawns bled for the amusement of those who claimed dominion over destiny, yet even in their arrogance they had not foreseen the strange shape of this outcome.
for six of the gods, radiant and vain, leaned forward with delight as Sigma twisted the quest, raising its difficulty, multiplying cruelties, threading sub-quests like snares through a labyrinth of suffering, and they applauded not as rulers but as gamblers hungry for a clever throw of dice, their hollow words of praise echoing with eagerness,
"how clever, how refreshing, how violent," they thought, drunk on the artistry of cruelty, while in the streets below the three Arch Demons tore apart the united guilds, shattering men and women who had trained for years into little more than broken bodies, and in that massacre they at last noticed the figure of Daniel, chosen without their consent to represent the Netherborn, a forgotten race written before even the gods themselves had settled their crowns,
but where the six basked in carnage Sigma alone felt recoil, for where the gods saw brilliance Sigma felt backlash, the marrow of the Tower itself shivering against his hand, the great law older than gods tightening in resistance, pressing punishment and sanction against his meddling, rattling its hidden chains to whisper of violations, and Sigma sensed it clearly, that the anomaly he had unleashed was no longer his to control, that the Tower itself now stirred awake. The six gods did not see it, blinded by their vanity, blind to the shadow rising beneath their gaze,
for they thought Daniel a cripple, a discarded pawn, broken and soon forgotten, and they laughed their hollow laugh, but pride was their blindness and blindness their downfall, for pawns learn, wounds open into doors, and stories twist when bent too far, and even as they wagered like spoiled courtiers the Tower's system stirred with judgment, not laughter, not applause, but cold appraisal that rippled across every floor, a force that reached into the very bones of its design, cross-referencing every archive sealed since the developers' age, and in its deep search it found a scar left behind by an unseen god,
one who had spent its essence to rewrite Damon Lazarus's fate, a scar that now marked Daniel, and the Tower recognized him not as Damon, not as remnant, but as anomaly, a thread woven too deep to be erased, and it plunged further into its vaults, into sealed chambers where unused characters and races lay dormant like fossils, remnants of abandoned intent, and there it found resonance with the forbidden race: the Netherborn, entities first designed by chaos itself to walk the threshold between creation and unmaking, their activation locked for the 70th floor when madness would reign and gods tremble, yet here was Daniel,
a living echo far too early, centuries before his time. The gods leaned forward uneasily as the Tower's light pulsed, their delight hardening into a silence none dared break, for this was not in the script, and Sigma felt the scrutiny of the system fall upon him like a blade, measuring his disruption, weighing his crime, and for the first time he felt not mastery but danger, while the others reclined back in arrogance, blind again to the fracture beneath their feet. And far below, Daniel sat in the void, where silence carried eternity and stars bent like libraries of memory, two days he spent inside, though only heartbeats passed outside, weaving his two selves together: noble heir, commander of men, but also Netherborn, chaos's first child, a race meant for darker stages than this, and in the void he dined with Melgil, sparred with Elaria Syrune, listened to the Duke and Duchess speak of kitchens and farms and ordinary life,
and though artificial, those moments stitched into him as real, shaping him, forging him, until he understood the void was more than a sanctuary; it was a forge where time itself could be bent. Outside, the guilds, once hundreds, now a sharpened one hundred and eighty, marched toward Drasklorn, the Glass City three days away, its crystal spires glinting like knives under the sun, and their silence was heavy, for no one laughed, no one dared even speak Daniel's name, clinging only to his last order like a charm, "do not speak of me," and they obeyed, for to be unseen was to be safe, and in that silence they passed villages cursed, husks wandering, and skirmishes fought without glory, while the priests at the Cathedral Tower tended the wounded and paid gold for the fallen so families would not starve.
And in the midst of this weary march the last six enchanted battle wagons rolled, forged by the hidden Highforge dwarves under Solnara's command, bearing wards so dense even gods struggled to see within, and it was here, in the thick muted air of the lead wagon, that Daniel appeared again, seated on his makeshift bed beneath the illusion of wounds, when Bonnie entered for supplies, bowing with her quiet respect, and Daniel answered only with a nod as he cast his glamour to appear weak, though his eyes glimmered faintly with the chaos deep within, and when she turned to leave he told her simply, "Stay," and she obeyed, though she trembled under the weight of his calm.
He told her then that the quest had shifted not by the tower but by one of the administrator;s own, that manipulated the system to erased lives in irrational correction, and that he had sworn vengeance to feed the Tower more chaos than it could bear, to choke it on its own hunger, and Bonnie's breath caught as if hearing a storm whisper ruin before it broke, and when she asked what role he wished of her he told her to be his messenger, to speak only what they needed, to keep faith with Natasha and Jacob, to never betray what she herself did not know, for silence would be their weapon, while he in secret would hunt the root, the cursed king Halrandir Vaegon Graves,
keystone of the Empire of Graves quest, the crown that bound the land's souls, and if they cut him down the curse would collapse, the Tower's leash broken, the game unmade. Natasha and Jacob, standing just outside, heard enough through the wagon's thin wood to understand the vow and the danger, and though they did not enter they carried Daniel's words into their hearts with silence, knowing three truths:
that Sigma had broken the rules, that Daniel would answer with anarchy, and that every step from this moment onward would tread the edge of absolute ruin, and within the sealed wagon Daniel leaned back into his illusion, whispering to himself that by the time they saw him rise again, their game, the gods' game, even the Tower's game, would already be over.
As they watched the tattered guilds march and the quiet that shrouded Daniel's presence like a shroud, the six gods leaned back in their golden thrones, their patience wearing thin. Now that the reality of his blood had been revealed, they muttered to one another with contempt in every word: Netherborn. The term itself, etched in the oldest records of creation, was older than their crowns and older than the first prayers ever offered to them by mortals. It soured their tongues.
They vividly recalled the dread of that race, the beings created out of chaos and quiet, created by chance rather than design, a people who had experienced realities before reality itself had settled. The fact that one of these echoes should still be present, much less move under their eyes, was an insult to the six, for had they not spent countless cycles destroying the Netherborn, destroying their timelines, and destroying their records from the fabric of memory until nothing was left but shards of myth? The endeavor had almost destroyed even gods, and it had taken them millions of years to mend the cracks in the lattice of creation and fix what that race had destroyed.
Yet here sat Daniel, calm in his silence, cloaked in his illusion, but his gold and blue eyes were still sharp and unyielding, a reminder of the power that once threatened to tear the universe apart. The six knew they could never fully trust him, but for some reason he could hide his presence. Was it because the main tower system acknowledged his existence, and with this he was bound with the tower's main law that even the gods desperately tried to remove and manipulate, and that was the freedom of choice?
For his presence alone was a haunting echo of their past failures. A lone mortal was able to obtain the Netherborn authority and possess a level of control that even the gods themselves struggled to attain.But to them his power was still young, but they could feel and remember the battles they would rather forget, scars that even divinity could not erase.
They told themselves it was impossible, that he was but a mistake, a mis-thread in the Tower's vast design, and yet the unease gnawed at them, for the Tower did not lie. The Tower had named him and recognized him, and the light in its archives had pulsed as if in warning, and so they waited, not with arrogance now but with a tension that cracked beneath their laughter.
They all thought it was another fool that orchestrated the name that they can't fully ignore; the Netherborn just suddenly came to be, and the information flowed into their minds as if they were already in play. These six gods were so arrogant they became blind to the fact they were made fools again by the being that sane Damon and at the same time purged his existence.
At last Daniel moved, his shadow rising faintly within the shielded wagon, a ripple of chaos brushing against the wards until even the gods felt its touch across the veils of distance, and the laughter died in their throats. His glamour cracked like glass under heat, peeling away the false weakness, and the Netherborn truth of him glimmered through, subtle and quiet, not yet unchained, but enough to remind them of what they had buried. And in that instant, as they leaned forward to watch with hateful fascination, they realized the danger was not that he lived, but that he endured. For pawns who endure become kings, and kings reshape the board, and the Tower itself had already turned its eye toward him.
When at last Daniel stepped down from the wagon, the battered remnant of the guilds turned as one, their silence cutting sharper than any battle cry. They had seen comrades fall, friends return home broken, and too many never return at all, forced by death or despair to leave the Tower behind. Faces that had once carried laughter were hollow now, eyes dulled by grief, and their silence pressed upon Daniel heavier than any chain.
The three guild leaders Charlotte, Mary Kaye, and Natasha stood at the fore, their armor dulled, their banners ragged, each carrying the burden of a duty no warrior desired. For in the nights between marches they had written letters to families they would never meet, sealing them with trembling hands, promising compensation in gold that could never balance the weight of a son, a daughter, a parent, or a friend torn away by cruelty disguised as trial.
They had given coin enough to ease hunger, but no coin could ease the hollow left behind, and the letters were written in ink that blurred with unspoken tears. As Daniel emerged, the glamour that had cloaked him fractured like glass under sunlight, and the truth of his being seeped through, chaos threaded into the marrow of his every motion. His eyes, gold and blue, burned with a steady, unyielding light, a gaze that cut through the veil of mourning and reached into the marrow of every survivor.
For a heartbeat, none dared breathe half in awe, half in dread for he was no longer the broken cripple they had followed out of pity, nor merely the noble they had guarded out of duty. He was something older, something the Tower itself had named and shielded, a truth both forbidden and undeniable. And in their silence, heavy with sorrow and laced with fear, Daniel stood among them not as a leader returned, but as a reminder that endurance itself can be more terrible, more defiant, than victory. To the gods above, his survival was a blasphemy; to the mortals below, his endurance was the first spark of hope, terrifying and fragile, in a world built only to break them.
No proclamation left Daniel's lips, no gesture beckoned them forward. He simply stood among the battered columns of guild survivors, and that was enough. Silence rippled outward like a tide, stilling even the weary shuffle of boots on the road, even the murmurs of those who had been speaking in whispers moments before. One by one, the survivors met his gaze gold and blue, piercing and unreadable and each found themselves unable to look away.
They saw their grief reflected there, yet transmuted into something harder, something they could not name but felt in the marrow of their bones. Around him the air bent faintly, as though the Tower itself strained to veil the truth of what he was, yet still his presence leaked through like a fracture in glass that cannot be unseen once noticed. No one dared to speak his name, not Charlotte with her weary steel composure, not Mary Kaye who clutched the letters yet unwritten for the families of today's dead, not even Natasha who had long ago learned to steady others with words.
All three leaders stood, lips pressed shut, hearts heavy with the weight of those who had fallen, and yet they felt it too the undeniable pull that in Daniel's silence lay something greater than command, greater even than vengeance. He was not asking for their loyalty; he did not need to. The silence bound them tighter than any oath, and in that wordless moment the guilds understood that whatever he was, whatever blood burned in him, he would carry their pain with him, and that was enough to keep them marching forward. Daniel saw that the battle wagons were now just eight , Daiel didn't ask why he just assumed those who were too wounded and decided to abandon the quest used the two battle wagon , the confirmed guild players remaining were 185; their numbers started to dwindle as the march progressed. Daniel cant blame them, as most of the new members were lacking in combat experience and they joined just to an earn money.
The march slowed to a halt as the White Devil scouts sent their signal—pillars of colored smoke twisting upward against the gray sky, stark above the jagged line of hills. The land around them was hostile, a broken plain scattered with black stone ridges that jutted like the ribs of a dead titan, the ground itself cracked with old burns where cursed fire had once rained. Dry weeds rattled in the wind, whispering against the steel boots of the 185 survivors, and beyond the ridges the land dropped into a hollow valley choked with mist, the perfect place for predators to hide. It was here, crouched in the shadows of a crumbled outpost, that the five White Devil members watched. Borislav knelt in the ash, his hand hovering over the earth as his poison magic curled faintly in the air, sharp with a bitter stench. Mikhaylov stood beside him, eyes half-lidded, fingers twitching as he prepared his paralytic spell, his breath slow and steady as a hunter readying the snare.
Tamara, the lone healer, clutched her staff tightly, its faint glow an anchor against the gloom, while Mariya's eyes burned with the dark shimmer of curse magic, her lips already murmuring fragments of words better left unspoken. Above them all, Fedorova raised her hand, letting the shifting wind carry their scents away and scatter the smoke upward like a signal flare. In the valley below the threat revealed itself ten undead dire wolves, lean bodies cloaked in rotting fur, each three feet at the shoulder, their bones exposed beneath tattered skin as they tore into a fallen salamander.
The creature, twenty feet long and armored in scales like black iron, should have been a terror in its own right, but now it lay broken, its tail thrashing weakly while fangs ripped into its flesh. The sight chilled even veterans, for the salamander bore no curse and no rot it had come from elsewhere, from a land not yet corrupted, only to stumble here and be devoured alive. And if such a beast could fall so quickly, then what chance would mortals have when the horde that followed pressed in? The guilds knew: the fourth city was only hours away across this fractured terrain, and if they faltered here, the road ahead would consume them whole.
The silence of the march turned into the silence of a hunt. At the valley's edge, the 180 guild members melted into position with a discipline that startled even Daniel no words, no shouted orders, only the crunch of boots softening into stillness as they formed a perimeter around the wagons. Shields angled just enough to catch light, mages pressing their palms against etched wards to reinforce them, archers crouched low with strings half-drawn.
To an untrained eye it looked like weariness, a caravan halting to rest; but to Daniel's Netherborn sight, their minds burned sharp and ready, masks of fatigue hiding a collective focus that could cut like a blade. Farrah walked beside him, lips quirking faintly as if she alone saw his surprise. "I told you," she murmured, her tone casual, almost teasing. "They aren't broken. This is how they answer you. In silence, in steel. They'll fight because you told them to endure." And as she spoke, the White Devil five made their move.
Borislav was first, slamming his palm into the earth, poison magic seeping through the cracked stone, a green-black fog that curled low and silent across the valley floor. Mikhaylov's hand flicked in tandem, threads of paralytic light weaving between his fingers before shooting forward like invisible wires, snapping around the legs of the nearest dire wolf. The beast snarled, snapping its rotted jaws, but its limbs stiffened mid-lunge, crashing it sideways into the carcass of the salamander.
That was Tamara's cue her staff flared, and radiant chains wrapped the wounded salamander's body, easing its thrashing and numbing its pain long enough that the wolves turned fully toward the intruders. Mariya stepped forward, voice rising in a sharp hiss of curse-laced syllables that warped the very air. The wolves staggered under her malediction, shadows crawling like tar across their bones, their growls turning to strained whimpers as her magic sank deep. Then Fedorova raised both arms, the winds obeying with a shriek that tore through the valley, scattering ash into a blinding storm.
From Daniel's vantage, it was like watching a well-oiled machine spring to life five players, five roles, each strike dovetailing into the next with merciless precision. The dire wolves, beasts of rot and hunger, were suddenly the prey, their coordination broken under the assault. Still, their savagery was not so easily quelled.
One tore free of Mikhaylov's snare and lunged through the poison haze, eyes burning green with unholy hunger. Its leap should have ended a life but an arrow took it through the eye before it reached the White Devils, the shot loosed from the perimeter without a sound, no cheer following its kill. The 180 watched, not with fear but with perfect, chilling discipline, holding their line as the battle played out below.
Daniel exhaled, his eyes narrowing, the faint glow of chaos flickering in their depths. He finally understood. This silence wasn't despair it was ritual, a language written in restraint and iron resolve. They were showing him, in their own way, that they had heard him, that his words had planted roots in soil far stronger than he expected.
And for the first time since he had stepped from the void, Daniel felt something dangerous flicker in his chest not just vengeance, not just defiance, but a fragile thread of faith binding strangers to him through silence alone.
The dire wolves were not mindless. At first they buckled under the ambush, snarling as green-black fog burned their lungs and paralyzing cords bound their limbs, but then hunger gave way to something crueler adaptation. Their ruined bodies twisted unnaturally, bones cracking as they adjusted, tendons snapping and knitting again until they could move even under the burden of curse and poison.
One dug its claws deep into the soil, dragging itself forward despite Mikhaylov's binding threads; another opened its maw wider than flesh should allow, sucking in Borislav's toxic haze until its lungs fumed with stolen venom. The pack turned, eyes flaring with dead light, and for a heartbeat it seemed they would break through the White Devil line.
But this was no ordinary guild, and these five were no longer the players they had once been. They had listened to Daniel Rothchester's lessons, not as commandments but as challenges—to bend their own skills, to test the seams of what the Tower said was possible. And now, facing predators that refused to fall, they reached beyond their limits.
Borislav narrowed his gaze, no longer spreading his poison in clouds, but focusing it shaping the venom with ruthless precision. He targeted joints, each claw and tendon, forcing rot into the very hinges of their movement. Where once he poisoned the air, now he poisoned anatomy itself, and the wolves stumbled as if their bones corroded beneath their own weight. Beside him, Mikhaylov abandoned the broad sweeps of his paralysis threads.
He traced them finer, weaving strands so delicate they caught around single muscles, binding necks, jaws, even eyelids. A wolf lunged, only for its throat to seize mid-snarl, its body collapsing in on itself as if its own flesh betrayed it.
Tamara did not simply heal she inverted the flow, channeling her restorative light into the salamander's dying body, forcing it to surge back against death. Not enough to save it, but enough to weaponize its final breath. The beast reared, tail smashing into a wolf's spine with the last flicker of borrowed strength, before going still at last. Mariya's curses deepened, her voice cracking with the strain of words that should not be spoken, lacing her maledictions into layers—one curse to wither the wolves' senses, another to cloud their instincts, and a third to gnaw at their very coordination.
Under her spell, the pack turned on each other in moments of confusion, snapping at shadows and striking their own. And Fedorova, her hair whipping in the gale, no longer used the wind to blind or scatter. She compressed it, folding it into blades of air so sharp they sang when unleashed, slicing through rotted sinew with the precision of steel.
Daniel watched, his eyes narrowing with quiet satisfaction as the wolves faltered. These were not desperate improvisations; these were evolutions, born from his challenge to them: Do not accept what the Tower says your skill is. Break it. Reforge it. Own it. The five fought not as survivors but as innovators, and in their unity lay proof that his words had not been wasted.
Still, the dire wolves refused to fall easily. Even as their numbers dwindled, their hunger drove them onward, bodies breaking and reforming, jaws dripping rot and venom alike. But where once Daniel might have intervened, now he did not. Farrah's words echoed beside him; this was their way of helping him, of proving they were not pawns to be pitied. And so he stood silent at the edge of the field, cloak brushing the ash, watching as the White Devil Five carried his teachings into battle, turning despair into a weapon sharp enough to cut even through death itself.
The battle ended as quickly as it had begun. The last of the undead dire wolves collapsed into a cloud of black dust, their twisted bodies dissolving into the cursed earth. The clearing fell quiet again, save for the faint hiss of poison still clinging to the ground and the sigh of wind dispersing it. Daniel had remained still through it all, standing at the edge with his hand resting lightly on his weapon, ready to intervene if the enemy had shown signs of adaptation beyond what the five could manage. But there was no need; his vigilance remained untested.
The five of the White Devil guild regrouped in a loose circle, their breaths controlled, their postures steady. None of them bore serious wounds, only shallow cuts and exhaustion weighing on their shoulders. A strange silence followed them, almost reverent, until it was Borislav who broke it first, his deep voice carrying the lingering rasp of poison in his lungs.
Borislav:"Did you see it? Every strike landed sharper, every cloud of venom stuck where I willed it. His words were… so simple. Focus on one limb, one tendon, one weakness. Yet " (he flexed his fingers, still faintly glowing with residual green mist) "it felt like I was shaping the beast's death before it even knew it was dying."
Mikhaylov gave a sharp nod, his expression colder but his eyes alive with calculation.
Mikhaylov:"I thought paralysis was just a tool to slow them down, buy time. But when I focused the way Lord Rothchester told us… I froze their lungs, their jaws, even the twitch of their tails. They weren't just slowed. They were dismantled."
Tamara stood between them, her staff still pulsing with faint white light, but instead of pride, her face bore awe.
Tamara:"And I… I wasn't just healing. When I pushed my power as he said, when I thought of control, not just cure, I kept your veins from blackening under the wolf's bite, Borislav. I stopped the corruption before it spread, not after. It's like I was touching time itself, holding it still so the wound never worsened."
Mariya, leaning on her staff carved with sigils of decay, let out a dry laugh, though her tone was edged with honest astonishment.Mariya:"Control. That one word. I always thought curses were blunt doom and rot, nothing more. But when I tightened it, when I aimed it like a needle instead of a flood… their legs rotted first. They couldn't even stand before the poison hit them. I made death walk where I pointed."
Finally, Fedorova let the wind die down from her palms, brushing stray strands of hair back from her sweat-soaked face. Her voice was quiet, almost reverent.
Fedorova:"Wind was always… freedom to me, wild and unbound. But today, when I chained it, when I bent every gust to a single blade, it wasn't freedom. It was command. I carved through their hides as if the wind had teeth. And still, it listened. His teaching turned something wild into something absolute."
The five exchanged glances, the silence heavy again but this time not from fear but from recognition. They had fought together before, but never like this. It was as though Daniel had stripped the excess from their power and forced them to see what lay beneath.
Farrah, standing near Daniel, glanced sideways at him with a faint smile. She didn't need to speak; he had already seen it, just as she predicted. This was their way of showing him loyalty, of repaying his words by turning them into action.
Daniel's gaze swept the horizon, his eyes narrowing as the still air shifted and carried with it the faintest stench of rot. He knew well enough that the dire wolves were only the beginning. Beyond the treeline, shadows flickered where no wind moved, and in the jagged dips of the earth, movement stirred, slow, deliberate, countless. The dead were gathering.
He moved a few paces ahead of the White Devil five, boots crunching softly against the cracked soil. The main force remained behind, silent and disciplined, yet Daniel's senses stretched further, painting the land in stark detail.
The ground before them sloped unevenly, scarred by ridges that looked like old riverbeds, now long dry, cutting across the path in deep channels. Thornbrush and crooked trees jutted from the soil, offering both concealment and danger, their roots twisting into natural traps. The earth itself bore the stains of past battles—patches of scorched ground, broken weapons half-buried in dirt, and bones that had fused into the terrain as if the land itself had devoured them.
A few hundred meters farther, the land shifted again. The ridges opened up into a barren plateau, its surface a gray stretch of hardened earth pocked with glassy shards that caught the faint light. It was here, nestled against a shallow rise, that the Glass City Drasklorn stood.
Drasklorn was unlike any city Daniel had seen. Its very walls gleamed as if carved from translucent stone, though up close one could see the truth: layers upon layers of crafted glass, melted and reinforced until they formed shimmering barriers. Some towers sparkled faintly even in the pale daylight, their surfaces reflecting fractured images of the landscape like broken mirrors.
The city's heart was a forge-town, its economy born from fire and sand. Great furnaces once roared day and night, producing panes, bottles, ornaments, and more recently, battle equipment reinforced with glass composites. Kiln stacks rose above the rooftops, now silent, their once-proud smoke trails replaced by the faint haze of curse-born fog that leaked through shattered alleys.
Around the city stretched fields where raw sand had been quarried. The open pits yawned like wounds in the earth, now half-filled with stagnant water that shimmered unnaturally, catching the reflection of the city's walls. Narrow bridges of hardened glass crossed these pits, treacherous and sharp-edged, forcing anyone approaching to funnel through exposed causeways.
Daniel's sharp eyes caught it all the deceptive terrain, the bottlenecks, the glimmer of movement where the fog thickened. The undead weren't just roaming; they were waiting. And with Drasklorn looming ahead, a fractured jewel in the cursed landscape, he knew the true battle had yet to begin.