Chapter 554: The First Blood
San Lorenzo Town.
Once a backwater no one cared about, today it was flooded with players after the opening of Ethereal. The narrow streets overflowed with bodies, the press of people so thick that even seasoned players who knew the town well stopped and stared in disbelief.
"What the hell is happening today? Why are there so many people here?" one player muttered.
"No clue," another replied. "But look over there—the Cloudwing Guild just rolled in!"
"Cloudwing? Please. When I was trying to get into town, I ran into Judgment Guild. Thousands of them. I had to wait half an hour on the roadside before the gates even cleared."
That made the crowd stir. "Judgment’s here too? Forget this. Whatever’s about to happen, it’s not going to end well."
"Yeah," a weary traveler sighed. "I spent half of yesterday trekking here because I thought this would be a quiet leveling spot. Now I’ll have to start over somewhere else."
For players under the Carnage Faction, leveling was always harder than it was for others. Especially if you were solo. Running into organized guild squads out in the wilderness usually meant you weren’t grinding monsters—you were the monster they ground down for easy experience.
That was because the Carnage Faction ran by different rules. Here, killing another player didn’t earn you a penalty. On the contrary, it rewarded you: every kill granted a chunk of the victim’s experience bar.
The result was chaos, a brutal free-for-all where every stranger was a potential ambush. And while that sharpened Carnage players into ruthless killers, far more dangerous than the coddled Survivor Faction, it also made survival in their ranks a constant battle.
Even so, sheer numbers told a different story. Survivor players outpopulated Carnage ones by a wide margin.
Back in San Lorenzo, the streets had finally gone quiet. Every major guild in the Carnage Faction had assembled, and their elites now surrounded the town’s only tavern. Inside, the air was thick and still. Conversation was sparse, the tension sharp enough to cut.
If an ordinary player had walked in, they would have dropped their jaw.
Seated at various tables were more than twenty figures, each flanked by their most trusted lieutenants. These were the leaders of the twenty-five top guilds of the Carnage Faction.
At the largest booth sat Judgment Guild, and when the last straggler arrived, a broad-shouldered man in his forties stood. His username floated above his head: IronSeraph.
"Gentlemen," he said evenly. "You all know why we’ve gathered in this neutral town."
IronSeraph was no ordinary leader. In the previous life, he had been the man to seize the Divine ability Immortality within Blood Castle. His words carried weight.
But not everyone here was willing to listen.
"We’re wasting daylight," snapped one man. His tag read Worldly Indifference, commander of the guild Desert Sands, ranked second only to Judgment. "When Fortress Wars begin, how are we splitting the territories?"
"Yeah, cut the speeches," another chimed in. He was Unworthy of My Pain, leader of River Empire, ranked third. "If we can’t agree, we’ll just settle it the usual way. Whoever’s stronger keeps more ground."
The two guilds had always been rivals, fighting each other on sight. Now, they immediately undercut IronSeraph’s authority, making it plain they weren’t here to bow.
The atmosphere in the tavern turned brittle.
...
Meanwhile, far from San Lorenzo, Ethan emerged from the ruins of Blood Castle and took a moment to orient himself. He opened his skill menu and marked a fresh coordinate with Divine Teleportation.
The ability was powerful in theory, but in practice it had more limits than freedom. He couldn’t cast it during combat, and after a fight with another player, there was a mandatory five-minute cooldown before it could trigger. Still, compared to low-tier teleport spells—which only carried you a single kilometer and had half-hour lockouts—five minutes was practically merciful.
That restriction, he recalled grimly, only applied to player combat. Fights against monsters didn’t trigger it.
Ethan pruned away old coordinates that had gone gray—most of them in the now inaccessible Sea of Death—then closed the panel, only to slam to a halt a heartbeat later. His instincts flared. Without hesitation he shifted into Panther Form and melted into Stealth, his Dark Vision sharpening.
And there, barely three meters ahead, stood a Shaman with a heavy hammer. The man blinked in confusion, staring at the spot where Ethan had just been.
"This is a Corrupted Deer spawn zone," the Shaman muttered to himself. "I swear I just saw a rare one. Fast as hell... and now it’s gone?"
Of course, what he had seen was Ethan’s Stag Form rushing past. Unfortunately for the Shaman, the monsters here really were deer-shaped, which led him to believe he had stumbled upon a lucrative rare spawn. He had been ready to chase it down for the drops—until it vanished.
Crouched in stealth, Ethan’s jaw clenched. This idiot had mistaken him for a beast, planning to kill him for loot.
"Rake. Shred," Ethan whispered under his breath.
He padded silently behind the Shaman. Two quick strikes ripped through the man’s back.
The Shaman gave a strangled gasp and buckled to his knees. By the time Ethan raised his claws for another Shred, the man had already collapsed, dead before his body hit the dirt.
"What the... already?" Ethan blinked, lowering his hand.
A chime rang in his ears:
[System Notification: First kill of an opposing faction player. Honor System activated. Honor Value +1! Bonus Honor Value +1000!]
[Global Announcement: Dragonspire player NotADruid has achieved the first kill of an opposing faction player. Honor System enabled!]
Golden light flashed three times in quick succession as the notifications stacked.
Ethan’s stomach sank. A global announcement was the last thing he wanted. His position had just been broadcast to every player in the Ethereal World. Stealth was meaningless now—he was exposed, and he knew Carnage guilds would be mobilizing even as he stood there.
"Goddamn system," he spat.
In that instant, the Ethereal World’s chat—normally a flood of banter, boasting, trading, and flirtation—went dead silent, as though the entire server had been muted. The hush lasted half a minute.
Then, without warning, messages poured in ten times faster than before, too rapid to even scroll through.
Every line of text boiled down to the same two words:
Druid God.