Chapter 6 Chapter 6: Old Enemies, Eyes Blazing With Hatred

The sword erupted in gold.

The moment the SSS-rank upgrade confirmed, the Beginner Rune Greatsword threw off a blaze of golden light that cut across the entire plaza like a signal flare, nearby players stumbled back, shielding their eyes, a wave of startled voices rippling outward in every direction.

Ethan killed the visual effect immediately.

One tap on the equipment interface. The golden radiance snuffed out, leaving only the faint, restrained pulse of violet-silver light running along the blade, subtle enough to pass unnoticed unless someone was already staring directly at it.

He pulled up the full equipment panel.

[BEGINNER RUNE GREATSWORD]

Quality: SSS

Level Requirement: 1-Star Warrior or above

Attack Power: 6

Class: Battle Mage

Special Effect: All attacks by the wielder deal an additional 20 flat damage.

Description: An unassuming beginner's sword, yet it can provide a significant damage boost in battle...

Ethan stared at it.

Then a slow, disbelieving breath escaped him.

He had actually done it. Fused a starter weapon all the way to SSS-rank.

Having spent the equivalent of ten years inside the Shadow Realm in his previous life, Ethan understood better than almost anyone alive exactly how obscene that was. SSS-rank equipment didn't just fall out of monsters. The drop rate from kills was brutally unforgiving, even at the lowest levels, where loot tables were comparatively generous, the odds of a single SSS-rank drop sat at a fraction of a percent. In the mid-to-late game, entire guilds, hundreds of players grinding for weeks straight, might go entire months without seeing one.

Top-tier players in the old servers, people who had been clearing high-level content for decades, still carried mixed equipment rosters. SSS pieces were trophies. Conversation pieces. The kind of gear you mentioned in passing to establish credibility.

And here he was, standing in the opening plaza of a brand new server's beginner dungeon, holding one before he'd fought a single monster.

As expected of an SSS-rank ability, he thought. Infinite Fusion really is something else.

He checked his remaining copper coins. Thirty left.

It was clearly not enough to run another full upgrade chain for a second piece of equipment.

So Ethan made a different call.

He spent all thirty copper coins on Level-1 White Runes, thirty of them, one copper each and stacked them in his inventory.

In the Cataclysmic Front beginner dungeon, damage output was the single most important variable. The faster you cleared each encounter and the less damage you absorbed in the process, the higher your final rating. To achieve an SSS clear, the theoretical ceiling, you couldn't afford to take any damage at all throughout the entire run.

That meant buying armor or health gear was pointless. If you were planning for SSS, you were planning to never get hit. Defense investment was, at that level, an admission of failure.

Thirty runes was more than enough firepower to carry him through.

He was about to close out his inventory when a thought caught him mid-motion.

He paused.

If Infinite Fusion works on weapons... then what about runes?

He pulled two Level-1 White Runes from his inventory, one in each hand, and focused his ability on them.

"DING~ Fusion complete. [Level-2 White Rune] x1 obtained!"

Ethan looked at the Level-2 rune sitting in his open palm.

In the system shop, a single Level-2 White Rune cost 5 copper coins. He had just synthesized one from two inputs that cost 1 copper coin combined.

He couldn't use it yet, Level-2 runes required 2-Star Warrior rank, one tier above his current standing. But the test had confirmed everything he needed to know. The ability wasn't limited to weapons. It worked on any identical items, across every category the game recognized.

And this, this was where the real implications landed.

Every Battle Mage player who had ever reached the mid-to-late game eventually collided with the same unavoidable reality: rune costs were catastrophic. High-level runes weren't just expensive, they were the kind of expensive that broke families. In the old servers, the auction price of a top-tier dark gold rune had been driven up to the equivalent of a luxury penthouse in a major city. Not metaphorically. Literally.

Players with generational wealth could sustain a high-level Battle Mage. Everyone else burned through their resources, hit a ceiling they couldn't push past, and stalled.

If other Battle Mage players across the game ever found out that Ethan's ability could synthesize upward from the cheapest rune inputs indefinitely, producing high-tier runes from stacked low-tier ones at a fraction of market cost, they would not merely be envious.

They would be devastated.

The single greatest financial obstacle that had crippled the Battle Mage class for a hundred years had just become completely irrelevant to him.

Ethan pocketed his remaining 28 runes, made a note to begin synthesis chains the moment he hit 2-Star rank, and turned toward the golden column of light at the center of the plaza.

The Cataclysmic Front was waiting.

He had taken perhaps five steps toward it when a voice cut through the ambient crowd noise and landed directly on him.

"Well, well, well."

The tone was precise. Unhurried. The specific flavor of contempt that only develops in people who have gone their entire lives without facing a consequence they couldn't buy their way out of.

"Isn't this the D-rank reject? Ethan Cole, in the flesh."

Ethan stopped.

He turned around slowly.

Derek Langford was moving through the crowd with the practiced ease of someone who had never once needed to navigate around other people, because other people had always moved for him. And they were moving now, the plaza crowd parting instinctively around his group, clearing a path without being asked.

He was wearing starter gear like everyone else in the zone, but it sat on him differently. He had the bearing of someone who treated even a beginner dungeon like a stage he'd already arranged lighting for. Sharp features. The kind of resting confidence that came not from achievement but from never having seriously doubted his own importance.

His player ID floated above his head in crisp white text: [King's Landing].

To his left, half a step behind in the positioned way of someone who had learned to orbit, Madison Monroe. Long dark hair, mage robes, her ID reading [Crown Jewel]. She was looking at Ethan with an expression that had clearly been calibrated for maximum dismissal, the kind of look that's designed to be seen by the people around it as much as by its target.

Behind them both, a loose formation of players, five or six of them, who had evidently decided that attaching themselves to Derek Langford's group before the dungeon even opened was the safest possible social move.

Derek's eyes moved across Ethan from head to toe. They lingered on the battle mage robes. On the magic sword. On the general picture of a player who, by all visible evidence, had nothing going for him.

A slow smile crossed Derek's face. It didn't touch his eyes.

"Battle Mage?" he said, the word landing like a punchline. "You chose Battle Mage? With a D-rank ability?" He shook his head with theatrical disbelief. "You can't even afford the rune costs on that class, man. You picked the most expensive profession in the entire game and you're broke. That's actually impressive, in a tragic sort of way."

Quiet laughter from the group around him.

Madison stepped forward half a pace, looking Ethan over with open contempt.

"I genuinely don't know what I was thinking," she said, her voice pitched to carry. "Six months. I wasted six months on that." She shuddered performatively. "Thank God I woke up."

Laughter again. Louder this time.

All around them, players who had been minding their own business were now watching. The crowd had a center of gravity, and Ethan was currently standing at it.

Ethan said nothing.

He looked at them both. His expression was exactly what it had been before they appeared: calm, flat, and carrying the particular quality of someone whose attention has not actually been captured.

Derek's smile tightened slightly at the non-reaction. He clearly expected more, embarrassment, anger, a flinch, anything that confirmed this encounter was landing the way he intended.

"How does it feel?" Derek said, his voice dropping into something more personal now, stepping closer. "Knowing she made the right choice? Knowing she's with someone who actually matters?"

Ethan's gaze moved to Madison. One second. Then back to Derek.

"Doesn't feel like anything," he said. "Traded down. That's her problem, not mine."

The casual delivery hit harder than anger would have.

Madison's performance cracked. Color flooded her face and her voice jumped, "Excuse me?! Say that again, I dare you"

"Yue." Derek's hand found her arm. His smile had gone rigid now, the performance held in place by effort rather than ease. He looked at Ethan with something considerably colder living just behind his eyes.

"Kneel down," Derek said quietly. "Apologize to her. Right now. In front of everyone here."

He let that sit for a moment, then added:

"Or I promise you won't find a single foothold in Zone 12. Not a team, not a guild, not a vendor willing to deal with you. I'll make sure of it."

Ethan had already turned away.

He didn't respond. He didn't acknowledge the ultimatum. He simply turned his back on Derek Langford and walked toward the dungeon portal like the conversation had concluded at a natural stopping point.

One step. Two. Three.

The silence behind him lasted about four seconds.

Then Derek's voice cracked across the plaza, loud enough to carry to every player within a hundred feet

"Listen up! Anyone who teams with that Battle Mage is making an enemy of [Crown Court Guild]! That's not a suggestion, that's a guarantee!"

The name detonated through the crowd.

The reaction was immediate and visceral, a collective intake of breath, heads turning, voices dropping into urgent murmurs that spread outward from the announcement like rings in water.

"Crown Court? They're one of the top guilds in the whole country"

"They have branches in all eleven existing zones. All of them. Their Zone 3 chapter alone has three Hundred-Star War Gods"

"Is King's Landing actually their designated Zone 12 rep? That's, that's serious"

"Does anyone know who that battle mage is? Why would he pick a fight with Crown Court"

"I don't care who he is. I'm staying away. I'm not getting blacklisted in a new server before the dungeon even opens"

The crowd around Ethan shifted. Players who had been within arm's reach quietly took steps back, creating a visible empty radius around him, not hostile, exa

ctly, just the careful self-preservation of people who had identified a lightning rod and decided to relocate.

Alone in the center of that cleared space, Ethan walked.