Chapter 8 Chapter 8: War God of the Shadow Realm, Monthly Salary of One Billion - Reborn After A Hundred Years: The Betrayed War God Returns

Zone 12. River City server. Inside the beginner dungeon, the Cataclysmic Front.

Ethan raised his sword and swung.

Flame Slash.

A burst of critical damage erupted above the creature's head -51! and the Bio-Scorpion in front of him let out a dying shriek before collapsing to the ground in a heap. In the Shadow Realm, a player's initial critical damage coefficient was 150%, and the hit had landed clean.

The moment the scorpion fell, a beam of golden light descended from above and washed over Ethan.

Several system notifications chimed in rapid succession.

"Ding~ You have eliminated a [Bio-Scorpion]. EXP +1!"

"Ding~ Congratulations! You have advanced to 2-Star Warrior level! Attribute bonuses gained: HP +10, MP +5, and 3 free attribute points! Next level requires 50 EXP!"

"Ding~ Congratulations on clearing the beginner dungeon [Cataclysmic Front]! You eliminated 20 1-Star Beast Soldier-level monsters in 9 minutes and 12 seconds, SSS rating achieved. Total damage received: 0%, SSS rating achieved. Final dungeon rating: SSS! A server-wide announcement will be triggered shortly. Would you like your player ID to be public or hidden?"

Ethan exhaled slowly.

"Done."

He rested the Rune Greatsword against his shoulder and, without a moment's hesitation, tapped Hidden ID on the floating panel in front of him.

The next moment, three consecutive server-wide announcements rang out across the entire Shadow Realm, heard simultaneously by every player in every server, old and new, across the entire world.

Server-Wide Announcement: "Ding~ Congratulations to player [＊＊] of Shadow Realm Zone 12 | USA | River City server for achieving an SSS-rank clear of the beginner dungeon [Cataclysmic Front]!"

The announcements caused an uproar across the entire Shadow Realm.

Countless players, whether in old servers or new, whether grinding dungeons or resting at base camps, stopped dead in their tracks, completely shocked.

Inside the GDI's high-level conference hall in Washington D.C., the senior officials who had been watching the statistics board erupted.

"After a hundred years! Our country has finally produced its second SSS-rank dungeon clearer!"

"It must be the same person who awakened the SSS-rank ability last night! It has to be!"

"Another SSS-rank ability user who clears at SSS rank, this person will be a rising star in the Shadow Realm! The hope for our country's future!"

"Have you located this person yet?"

"Not yet."

"Find them by any means necessary! Even if it costs us every resource this department has, we must cultivate this person into our country's second Titled War God-level powerhouse!"

The shock wasn't contained to the United States alone.

Overseas players heard the server-wide announcement in their own dungeons and reacted with equal disbelief.

In Zone 7, a 52-Star War Emperor-level white swordsman who was in the middle of hunting a 60-Star Emperor-level monster called a Star-Devouring Crab in the eighth domain stopped mid-swing and exclaimed, "What?! I never thought I'd live to see this, after the human traitor vanished a hundred years ago, and after a super god-level BOSS ambushed and killed an SSS-rank ability user eight years ago, an SSS-rank dungeon clearer has actually appeared again! Truly unbelievable!"

In Zone 5 of another nation, a male elemental mage who was forging a piece of equipment at a weaponsmith shop paused his work and murmured "According to the historical records of the Shadow Realm, every single person who has ever cleared the beginner dungeon at SSS rank went on to become a one-in-ten-thousand powerhouse. It seems a new generation is about to rise."

For nearly a century, countries around the world had racked their brains trying to cultivate SSS-rank dungeon clearers.

It wasn't just about the prestige of triggering a world-class server announcement and putting your country's name on the global stage.

More importantly, clearing the beginner dungeon at SSS rank rewarded the player with an SSS-rank Beginner Dungeon Gift Pack, a package containing various top-tier early-game items that provided an enormous head start, allowing the recipient to rapidly ascend and establish themselves as a dominant force in the new server long before anyone else got their footing.

In the Shadow Realm, a country's strength was determined entirely by the strength of its players.

The more powerful individuals a country could produce, the stronger that country became in both the game world and the real one.

Therefore, countless veteran experts across every server had painstakingly researched beginner dungeon strategies over the decades. National leaderships had even organized rigorous pre-launch training programs before new servers opened, bringing experienced players from old servers to personally coach strategy teams on combat techniques for facing Shadow Realm monsters.

And yet, despite all of that effort, across the entire history of the United States' involvement in the Shadow Realm, only the Phantom from Zone 5 had ever achieved an SSS-rank clear.

Until tonight.

---

Inside the Cataclysmic Front, River City server.

Having completed the dungeon challenge, Ethan pressed the touchscreen on his Shadow Realm Bracelet.

A semi-transparent status bar popped up in front of him.

He tapped Exit.

His body dissolved into specks of starlight and disappeared from the dungeon.

Based on how the game had always worked, in his previous life and, apparently, in this one too, the beginner dungeon was always opened at 10 PM on the same night a new server launched. Regardless of whether a player cleared it or not, everyone was forcibly logged out of the Shadow Realm afterward and could not re-enter the main game world until 9 AM the following morning.

Dungeon completion rewards would be distributed at that time, when players officially entered the Shadow Realm proper.

Ethan was already thinking ahead to what the SSS-rank completion gift pack would contain when the server went live tomorrow. Based on the track record of every previous SSS-rank clearer in history, the rewards inside that package would give him a significant early advantage, enough to accelerate his climb through the opening stages of the new server far faster than any other player.

In the blink of an eye, Ethan returned to the place where he had logged into the Shadow Realm, the rooftop of the abandoned school building in Slum District 180.

The whole run had taken barely ten minutes.

When he opened his eyes and looked around, his first thought was that something was wrong.

Lily, who had been asleep beside him when he entered the dungeon, was gone.

He stood alone on the school rooftop, the night wind moving through the empty space around him, and felt a flicker of unease.

He had spent very little time with Lily since waking up in this body. But already, without being entirely sure when it had happened, she had become something real to him, a presence he didn't want to imagine being without.

Then, the sound of uneven footsteps on the stairwell.

A figure climbed onto the roof and made her way toward him with a familiar swaying gait, leaning on a cane.

Lily.

The moment she saw Ethan standing there, her face broke into a wide smile of relief and surprise.

"Brother! You're back already!"

She made her way up to him and immediately looked him over with concern.

"You didn't eat anything last night, and you just finished the dungeon, you must be starving, right?"

"I slipped down to a little shop at the edge of the slums and bought some food while you were inside. Here, eat something quickly!"

As she spoke, she held out a red plastic bag toward him, filled with packaged snacks.

Ethan took the bag. He reached in, pulled out a piece of bread, tore the packaging open, and held it out to Lily first.

Then he took one for himself.

The two of them settled down together on the rooftop floor and ate in the quiet of the night.

After a moment, Lily looked at him with bright, curious eyes.

"So, brother, how was the Shadow Realm? Were the monsters terrifying?"

"It was fine," Ethan said calmly, chewing. "Not as scary as I expected."

Lily's eyes lit up. "Really? Then you must have cleared the beginner dungeon, right?! Even a D-rank clear gives you a thousand dollars in reward money, that would help so much!"

Ethan paused.

Then he let his expression fall slightly, just enough, and said with manufactured disappointment, "I... failed to clear it."

Lily's smile froze.

She knew what that meant, no clear record, no reward money. Nothing.

"I'm sorry, Lily," Ethan said, his voice dropping. "I let you down."

The truth, that he had cleared the dungeon at SSS rank, and that there were ten million dollars in reward money waiting to be claimed, could never reach the outside world. Not yet. Not even to Lily.

Ethan understood this completely.

This world was ruthless in ways that had nothing to do with monsters.

If word got out that he had awakened an SSS-rank ability and cleared at SSS rank, the consequences would be immediate and severe. Every major high-level guild in the Shadow Realm would come looking for him, to recruit him, to pressure him, to use him. Those who couldn't get what they wanted through persuasion would try other methods. It had happened before. When the Phantom's SSS-rank awakening became public in Zone 5, there had been people, unhinged, resentful, consumed by envy, who had actually attempted to harm him before the government could intervene. The Phantom had survived only because officials had located him in time.

And the government itself couldn't be fully trusted either.

Ethan remembered all too well that it had been the GDI's highest council, manipulated by Ryan Carter's false testimony, that had ordered the execution of his guild's senior officers a hundred years ago. Those same institutional structures existed today, and Ryan's influence over them had only grown stronger in the century since.

The moment Ryan Carter learned that Ethan Cole was alive, that someone with an SSS-rank ability had appeared in Zone 12, he would mobilize every resource available to him to find and eliminate that person before they became a threat.

Ethan was not yet strong enough to face a Titled War God.

Until he was, patience was not a virtue. It was a survival requirement.

Ten million dollars was nothing to a man who, in his previous life, had lived in the most exclusive district of the most prosperous city in the country and earned the equivalent of one hundred million dollars a month.

In today's terms, accounting for a century of inflation and economic restructuring, that would be closer to one billion a month.

He could afford to leave the reward unclaimed.

"It's okay, brother," Lily said, the smile returning to her face softer and more reassuring now, her earlier disappointment set aside with the practiced ease of someone who had long since learned not to need things too much. "You did your best. Don't be hard on yourself, there's always tomorrow!"

"Oh, actually" she brightened, switching topics with sudden energy, "I met the nicest landlady at the little market downstairs. I asked her about the room she had available and she said she'd rent it to us for six hundred dollars a month! We have somewhere to stay tonight, brother, no more sleeping on rooftops!"

Ethan looked at her.

He knew, through the other Ethan's memories, that the two of them had almost nothing left. The original Ethan and Lily had been surviving on the edge of empty for a long time.

"How much money do we actually have left?" he asked quietly.

Lily waved a hand with deliberate nonchalance. "Enough! Don't worry about any of that, brother. Leave the household stuff to me. You just rest up and go in strong tomorrow when the server opens."

She looked at him with complete, unshakeable confidence.

"You're going to become a top player in the Shadow Realm. I know it. Even the Infinite Sword God started somewhere, and you're going to surpass all of them, brother. I believe in you."

Ethan looked at his younger sister, this girl who had been abandoned by everyone who should have protected her, who walked with a cane and never complained about it, who went out in the middle of the night to buy bread for a brother she thought had just failed his first dungeon, and who still looked at that brother like he hung the stars

and felt something tigh

ten in his chest.

He reached out and rested his hand gently on top of her head.

"Don't worry," he said quietly. "I'll make it better. Soon."

Lily nodded vigorously, eyes bright.

"Okay!"