The Bone Warden didn't acknowledge Kael's words.
It couldn't. Below Tier 25, undead were little more than animated puppets—no consciousness, no fear, no hesitation. Just a single directive burned into their soul-fire: destroy all life.
Heavy footsteps crunched against rubble. The massive curved blade scraped along the ground, throwing sparks into the darkness. Each step radiated pressure that would send any newbie player into a panic spiral.
But Kael wasn't a newbie.
The Bone Warden? He knew this thing inside and out. Players called it the "Gatekeeper"—the monster that made casuals rage-quit in the first week. One-shot damage that left zero room for error. A single mistake meant a trip back to the respawn shrine.
Low-tier elite. Full of openings.
Too slow.
Especially on its right side. The Warden's main weapon hand meant its rightward turns and attacks lagged by a fraction of a second compared to the left.
That tiny delay? To a top-tier player, it was a death sentence.
The greatsword came down like a guillotine.
Kael moved.
No block. No parry. With a Level 1 body, trying to tank that hit would turn his bones to powder. Instead, he pushed off with his back foot and slid left, using the minimum energy necessary to clear the strike zone.
BOOM!
The blade cratered the ground where he'd stood. Stone shrapnel peppered his legs.
Kael was already counterattacking. His wrist snapped through a motion drilled into muscle memory, and his militia sword found the gap between the Warden's arm bones, piercing the elbow joint.
CRACK.
A clean hit. The creature's right arm stuttered, its next swing noticeably slower.
Don't get greedy.
He disengaged immediately, creating distance. Only amateurs pressed their advantage and lost control of the fight.
The Warden's movements grew jerky, its damaged arm struggling to keep up. The raw damage numbers might be low, but precision strikes to structural weak points accumulated fast.
Kael began his dance.
Always on the left. Always just out of reach. The Warden spun and slashed, a lumbering giant trying to swat a fly.
A horizontal sweep came in. Kael angled his blade upward, bracing with his off-hand, and deflected rather than blocked. The greatsword's momentum carried it high, leaving the Warden's torso wide open.
CLANG!
Sparks flew. Kael's counter carved a deep groove into the monster's knee joint.
Another wild swing. He sidestepped and thrust into the hip socket.
Five minutes. That's all it took.
The Bone Warden—terror of newbies everywhere—stumbled around like a broken puppet. Kael had carved over a dozen precise wounds into its frame, each one degrading its combat effectiveness.
Now.
He baited an opening, deliberately slowing his leftward dodge by half a beat.
The Warden took it. Every ounce of its remaining strength poured into the right arm. The greatsword screamed through the air, aimed at Kael's skull.
Exactly as planned.
Kael didn't retreat. He advanced, diving inside the arc of the swing, into the creature's dead zone.
The blade hammered into empty ground.
Before the Warden could recover, Kael spun and stomped down hard on the flat of the embedded blade.
The monster tried to wrench its weapon free. Instead, the motion launched Kael into the air—he'd used its own strength as a springboard.
Airborne, he twisted, sword gleaming in the firelight. His target: the small bone at the base of the skull. The junction between cervical and thoracic vertebrae.
The game's designated weak point.
A critical hit here dealt 1.5x damage and triggered a three-second "Kneel" stun.
His blade found its mark.
CRACK.
The Warden's soul-fire spasmed. Its massive body buckled, crashing to its knees with a ground-shaking impact.
Kael landed in front of it, perfectly balanced.
The creature's head was finally at striking height. That crimson glow—normally too high to reach—now burned right in front of him.
No hesitation. Strike while they're down.
His plain iron sword spun once in his grip—a flourish born of twenty years' habit—and then punched straight through the eye socket.
SQUELCH.
The soul-fire swelled, fighting the intrusion. For a heartbeat, crimson light blazed bright enough to cast shadows.
Then it died.
The Bone Warden collapsed into a heap of scattered bones.
[Elite Bone Warden slain. +1,200 XP]
"Hah... hah..."
Kael's lungs burned. His arms trembled. Sweat and blood dripped from his chin.
But beneath the exhaustion, something else surged through him—a feeling he'd almost forgotten. Control. Mastery. The indescribable thrill of bending an impossible situation to his will.
He looked down at the bone pile and couldn't help but laugh.
"Good thing you don't have a brain. Otherwise you'd be screaming about hacks right now."
In the distance, atop a ruined watchtower, the crimson lion banner of Aelindor hung limp in the still air.
Memory crashed over him. The last stand at the capital. Freya's bloodstained dress billowing alongside the tattered flag. Her eyes—not pleading, never pleading—just sad. Accepting.
"Live. Remember that we existed."
He'd failed her. Failed everyone. Watched helplessly as the undead tide swallowed everything he loved.
But now, staring at that banner, he realized something had changed.
The flag had never looked so bright.
Because this time, he wasn't too late.
His greatest weapon wasn't his sword. It was knowledge. Hidden quests that could turn the tide of war. Legendary artifacts buried in forgotten dungeons. Future heroes who were currently nobodies, waiting for the right push to achieve greatness.
He knew it all.
Kael's gaze hardened. He gripped his cheap iron sword—the lion crest on its guard worn almost smooth—and felt the rough texture of the hemp-wrapped handle.
Real. Solid. His.
If this was fate's way of offering a second chance, then he'd carve a new path. One where Aelindor survived. One where Freya lived.
He pressed his sword-hand to his chest in the old knight's salute—a gesture he hadn't made in years.
"Aelindor... I'm home."
Not as a spectator this time. Not as a helpless player watching scripted tragedy unfold.
This time, he was part of the story.
He pulled up his status screen, eager to confirm his suspicions.
Base XP for a Bone Warden was 300. The level difference multiplier for a 14-level gap was capped at 2x. That should have given him 600 XP.
He'd received 1,200.
His eyes found the small icon next to his name:
[BOSS TEMPLATE]
There it is.
Boss Template was an NPC modifier. Regular, Elite, Champion, Boss, World Boss—each tier multiplied base stats. Boss Template meant 2.5x everything.
Players had always envied NPCs for this. Now he had it.
The implications hit him like a thunderbolt. He could level like a player—multiple classes, flexible builds—but with NPC-tier stat scaling. He might even unlock those exclusive NPC classes that players could never access.
This template would be the foundation of everything.
Alright. Time to get stronger.
He dumped all his XP into his Militia class.
[Militia Level increased to 2...][...][Militia Level increased to 10!][Total Level: 10 (Militia 10/15, XP: 178/5,000)]
Power flooded through him. The aches vanished. His muscles sang with new strength. Nine levels in an instant—a rush that never got old.
HP refilled and jumped to 260.
The XP well had run dry for now. Level 10 was a threshold; beyond it, experience requirements skyrocketed. But this kind of early-game acceleration was already insane.
Next, he opened his Passive Skills panel. This was the real test.
[Combat Arts] Aelindor Military Swordsmanship (14/15 - Grandmaster) Horsemanship (7/15 - Proficient)
Tactical Command (10/15 - Master)
[Continental Knowledge] Basic Lore (10/10 - MAX) Geography (5/5 - MAX) Regional Knowledge (4/5) Dungeon Knowledge (9/10)
[Life Skills] Cooking (8/10 - Expert) Camping (10/10 - Master) Lockpicking (3/10 - Novice)
His hands shook.
They're all here.
Twenty years of grinding. Millions of sword swings. Countless battles won and lost. All of it—every passive skill he'd painstakingly maxed—had carried over.
Swordsmanship at Grandmaster rank. Even with Bronze-tier stats, his technique alone made him one of the deadliest blades on the continent.
Tactical Command from leading the Sunfire Legion through a hundred campaigns.
Geography and Dungeon Knowledge that would let him navigate anywhere, find any hidden path.
These weren't just numbers. They were proof. Proof that his twenty years in that world had meant something.
His active skills were gone—no more "Starblade" finishing move, no more ultimate abilities. But passives were the hardest skills to level. They required real practice, real experience. And he had all of them.
This is my real cheat code.
The path forward crystallized in his mind.
Militia capped at 15. He needed to class-change to Kingdom Guard, then advance to Kingdom Knight. Meanwhile, he could pick up Mercenary as a secondary class at the Adventurer's Guild in Rosenburg—that would let him eventually transition into his old main class: Warrior.
He'd need to visit a shrine too. Even the lowest priest class gave two aura abilities at Level 15. Massive value for early-game combat.
Magic was out—his MP was stuck at 0/0. "Mana-null constitution," same as always. But he remembered the locations of several artifacts from the 1.0 era that could compensate.
All of that could wait.
Right now, one thing mattered.
Kael turned toward the distant glow on the horizon. Rosenburg. The provincial capital of the Veli Region.
In his memories, Rosenburg fell within the week. Poor leadership, low morale, overwhelmed by an undead flanking force. The city burned. Thousands died.
Everything south of Rosenburg was lost to the Shivan Empire.
But in that city, two people waited. Two future legends who'd never gotten the chance to become what they were meant to be.
The quest lines "The Old Soldier's Last Stand" and "Flames of Vengeance."
Kael tightened his grip on his sword.
Not this time.
Rosenburg would not fall. Those heroes would rise. And the first domino in Aelindor's collapse would never tip.
He started walking.
The night was dark, the road was long, and he was still dangerously weak.
But for the first time in twenty years, Kael Ashford felt something he'd forgotten.
Hope.