Chapter 558: The Battle at San Lorenzo
The guild elites crammed onto the narrow stone wall quickly realized they couldn’t surround Ethan. There wasn’t enough space up here, not with dozens of bodies crowding the rampart. At the front, two barbarian Shield Tanks charged at him with their massive shields raised.
"Charge?" Ethan’s deep voice rumbled with scorn. "Let me show you what a real charge looks like."
He crouched and launched himself forward, the ground shuddering beneath his colossal frame. Dust exploded upward in a choking cloud as he rocketed across the wall and smashed straight into the Shield Tanks. His enormous arms swung out, fists clenched like hammers.
"Heavy Strike!" he roared.
The blow landed with a pair of bone-rattling cracks. Both Shield Tanks were lifted off their feet and hurled backward, flailing helplessly through the air like broken kites before slamming into the players massed behind them.
Ethan’s eyes narrowed. By all rights, that strike should have thrown them completely off the wall and into the streets below. No matter. Their defenses were broken, and the fragile targets behind them lay exposed.
"Cleaving Tempest."
His voice was calm, almost casual, as he swung. The arc of his attack carved through the crowded line, and six players crumpled in an instant. For the first time since landing on the wall, Ethan spoke again, his words sharp with disdain.
"Is that all?"
[Ding... System Notification: San Lorenzo Town is under attack by hostile faction players! Carnage Faction members, provide immediate support! Successful defense will reward 500 Honor Points!]
The notification echoed across the battlefield and into every Carnage Faction player’s interface. A moment of silence followed, then an eruption of excitement. After Ethan had activated the Honor System, all players had access to it. And every one of them had been salivating over the rewards.
The Carnage Faction in particular lived for PvP. They’d been fixated on Honor gear ever since the system appeared—especially the Resilience stat, which reduced incoming player damage. But until now, they hadn’t been able to earn any points. If not for that restriction, Carnage players would have been slaughtering hostile guilds nonstop.
The cheapest set available cost 500 Honor Points per piece, each piece providing 30 points of Resilience. Stat-wise, Honor gear was roughly equivalent to Silver-tier equipment, but Resilience changed everything. Higher-tier Honor sets offered more Resilience, though the other stats didn’t scale as steeply. Even the pinnacle Warlord’s Set, available only to Carnage Faction, was equivalent to Gold-tier equipment in raw numbers—but with fixed affixes that increased accuracy, boosted crit rate, and shaved off incoming damage. PvE gear might offer more variety, but Honor gear had its own brutal edge.
Of course, Gold-tier gear was already priced out of reach for most players. Even Silver gear was usually locked away in guild vaults, traded only for contribution points, and reclaimed if the player ever left. Most ordinary players had to make do with Bronze, or sell anything better to their guilds for the sake of survival. That was why Ethan’s steady stream of Silver, Gold, and even Dark Gold drops had drawn so much attention—he’d been hunting over-leveled monsters, and first kills almost always dropped rare loot. But after the first kill, the odds plummeted, making every high-tier drop an object of frenzy.
Which explained why, the moment the system announcement went out, Carnage players were already sprinting toward teleportation arrays. They were hungry. They didn’t even stop to consider what Resilience truly meant.
Ethan knew. A player with no Resilience stood no chance against someone with even a single point. Their attacks would be reduced by up to eighty percent, creating an unbridgeable gulf between "having" and "not having." Against opponents without Resilience, even one point was enough to render you nearly invincible. But when two players both had Resilience, only large differences began to matter.
Another notification appeared before Ethan’s eyes.
[Ding... System Notification: Special Quest triggered! Objective: Conquer San Lorenzo Town. Kill the Town Mayor. Reward: 50,000 Honor Points. Honor Title upgraded by one level!]
His heart pounded. Fifty thousand Honor Points—for perspective, that was equivalent to fifty thousand player kills. The Honor Title upgrade was even rarer. Titles required not just kills but maintenance; higher ranks decayed every day if you failed to fight, and dying could demote you instantly. Keeping a title stable meant constant bloodshed. Yet the benefits were tremendous.
But Ethan had no time to linger on the rewards. The guild players before him were already panicking, trying to fall back and regroup with the city guards. They had no choice but to retreat. In mere moments, his onslaught had reduced a force of more than a hundred to barely forty. Among them, twenty-five were guild leaders themselves, equipped with high-level gear—but even they couldn’t withstand Ethan’s strikes. At level sixty-two, he towered over their average level of forty to fifty, making every clash an instant kill. Only the heavily armored Shield Tanks had managed to stall him, and only because the narrow wall let them block his advance with their massive shields.
"How can this be? My Advanced Analysis won’t even show his level!" a level 45 player cried.
"You think you’re alone? I’m 46 and I can’t see his stats either!" another shouted back.
Advanced Analysis could only identify enemies up to fifteen levels above. Beyond that, all it returned was a wall of question marks. Ethan was well beyond their reach.
"The forums said he was only level 60... has he already leveled again?" someone yelled.
"That was three days ago! Who knows how high he is now? Retreat!"
"Fall back! We’ll regroup with the guards. He can’t be higher level than them."
"Yeah, and don’t forget—we all got the system notification. Reinforcements are on the way. Once more players arrive, we’ll bury him under sheer numbers!"
The guild elites who had strutted onto the battlefield like conquerors now scrambled like stray dogs, tripping over each other in their rush to escape. Their arrogance had vanished, replaced by raw survival instinct.
At the rear, IronSeraph, guild master of Judgment, remained quiet. A strange glimmer lit his eyes as he occasionally glanced back. Every time Ethan hurled another Tank aside, killing one or two more players in the chaos, IronSeraph’s lips curled into a faint, unsettling smile.