"Boss Hun Yuan, can this sewer really get us into Risel City??
That doesn't make sense. No way the beastmen and Risel City would leave such a secret passage unguarded."
Outside Risel City, under the pitch-black night, a group of twenty-three people huddled suspiciously around a rusted manhole cover, whispering back and forth.
Hun Yuan turned and glared at the player who had spoken, the flickering torchlight casting shadows across his face.
"I paid for this info from those greedy mercenaries. Whether it works or not, you don't need to worry.
Those guys wouldn't dare cross Dark Pact."
His tone carried a faint but unmistakable pride. Though they had entrusted their fates to Dark Pact, signing Loyalty Contracts, with account deletion as the penalty for breaking it.
It was absolutely worth it.
The training they received couldn't even be compared to the pitiful grind of other players. Ample resources, high-quality armor, skills taught one-on-one, it was luxury treatment.
And now that Immortal Souls was fully under his command, not only did he have over a hundred Level 5 NPCs under his control, but twenty players too.
That had transformed Hun Yuan's initial reluctance to join Dark Pact into enthusiastic commitment.
He even grew more impressed with the NPC who had recruited him, Stanley. The man clearly saw through their mindset, and the plans he laid out made Hun Yuan follow them without resistance. The most terrifying part? He actually enjoyed it.
If anyone told him to give up developing Immortal Souls and leave Dark Pact now, he'd fight them to the end.
This was blatant, daylight scheming. You clearly knew what the NPC wanted you to do, but you still couldn't refuse it. That kind of openly manipulative strategy was what shocked Hun Yuan most about Stanley.
Sometimes, he even wondered, was this really something an NPC could come up with? Nothing here felt like a game anymore. It felt like a real, living world.
And he wasn't alone. Everyone in Immortal Souls shared that feeling.
But when they tried searching for related posts on the outside, they couldn't find any. Posts they made themselves also sank like stones.
That clued Hun Yuan in that something was wrong, but he still couldn't quite pinpoint what.
This shift only increased his curiosity toward this fog-covered world. He no longer saw Glory as just a game, but as a genuine alternate reality.
And because of that mindset, Hun Yuan was now doing better than ever within Dark Pact.
Before, it wasn't spoken aloud, but players still carried a sense of superiority, an innate pride, when dealing with NPCs. It was obvious and naturally provoked resentment from the natives.
"Trash dares to act superior to us?" That was a major reason so many players had such a hard time.
Many players had been punished with 8-hour logouts just for being slightly disrespectful in conversations with professionals, equivalent to one day in-game.
After months of getting their faces smashed in, most of that player arrogance had been wiped clean. These days, the ones doing well were the ones who had adapted to Glory's rules.
"All right, let's begin. Bighead, you're low-level, go scout ahead. Anyway, Risel City has the Temple of Life. Even if you die, you'll respawn there."
The player named 'Bighead' twitched at the mouth. "Thanks for the blessing…"
Still, he didn't complain. Quickly prying open the rusted manhole cover, torch in hand, he slipped down into the darkness.
And it wasn't just Hun Yuan, Thunderhands, and their group on the move, at the same time, over a thousand players were rushing toward Risel City.
Most didn't have access to secret paths like this, but that didn't stop them.
Many charged directly at the beastman lines surrounding the city. Kill one? Profit. Die? Get killed by beastmen, log off, and revive eight hours later inside the Temple of Life in Risel City.
To claim the massive rewards from the epic quest, these players had thrown all caution to the wind.
Nothing could stop them from grabbing a piece of the pie, this was an official reward-style quest. Too good to resist.
---
Oooooo~!
The blaring of long bullhorns echoed thunderously across the battlefield at Risel City's main gate.
From above, one could see the beastmen army, clad in mixed furs and armor, advancing steadily toward Risel City.
Twenty towering siege towers, each twelve blades high and fortified with shields made from magical beast hides, were being slowly pushed forward by beastman laborers, inching closer to the black city walls standing thirty-five blades tall.
The beastmen on the ground moved like swarming ants, so dense they filled the entire battlefield. The blood had already dyed the earth a deep black-red.
Boom~
The taut bowstrings thrummed sharply. From behind the walls of Risel City, phalanxes of over a thousand archers launched volley after volley of arrows skyward in arcing trajectories.
Whoosh~! The dense rain of arrows tore through the air with piercing howls as they sailed over the walls and slammed into the onrushing beastmen in a fierce assault.
The charging beastmen raised their shields in unison, but many couldn't react in time and were struck fatally. Helmets were pierced clean through, arrowheads emerged bloodied from the backs of skulls, and bodies collapsed with a thud.
Their lifeless corpses, growing cold, were trampled underfoot by the beastmen behind them.
Here, no one spared a thought for fallen warriors. The only command for the living beastmen was, forward! Keep pushing forward!!
There was no such thing as retreat.
Beastmen bearing grappling hooks charged into the storm of arrows, and upon reaching the wall, hurled their hooks upward with great force. The iron hooks with eight barbs shot dozens of blades high before embedding with a loud clang into the battlements above.
The sharp claws of the grapples even cracked the stone walls. The beastmen tugged a few times to ensure stability, then began climbing swiftly with both hands and feet.
Hundreds of beastmen hurled grappling hooks at once, and in an instant, this stretch of wall was festooned with over a hundred ropes dangling straight up to the battlements. The beastmen below clambered up like skewered candied fruits, dense and unrelenting.
The scene was nothing short of epic.