Chapter 43: You Think You’re Unrivaled?

Centuries ago, the Hollow Legion tore its way into the world.

Undead poured out of the Hollow Rift in numbers no one could count, a black tide sweeping south across the continent, swallowing everything in its path.

Entire kingdoms fell in the space of a single season their names surviving now only as ruins half-buried under snow, or as verses in songs nobody bothered to finish singing anymore.

What followed wasn’t a war so much as a slow, grinding bleed measured in lifetimes rather than years, until the Legion finally broke against the northern mountains and withdrew into the cold, more exhausted than defeated.

Out of that victory rose the Bulwark of Ash a fortified line stretching thousands of miles across the north, anchored by three great strongholds.

Highwatch Bastion, Drakemoor Hold, and Skyfall Watch. For centuries, that wall had been the only thing standing between the Hollow Legion and everything living south of the mountains.

A scar across the world that had never once finished healing.

Highwatch sat closest to Frostwatch of the three, and Northvale had poured more into its defense than into almost anything else the kingdom owned the linchpin the entire northern border quietly hinged on.

Generation after generation of rulers had kept building it higher, wider, deeper, until it stopped looking like a wall at all and started looking like a mountain range that had simply decided to grow teeth.

Dark stone fused seamlessly into the natural cliffs around it, an unbroken barrier holding back an entire world’s worth of nightmares.

Tonight, the true weight of that defense belonged to Northvale’s own standing legions hardened soldiers, veteran NPCs who’d bled for this exact wall more times than anyone could count.

Player adventurers had been handed a single stretch of the outer rampart, a small, almost ceremonial slice of a much larger war.

Kael teleported in and followed the guiding NPCs up onto the ramparts, and the sheer scale of it hit him before he’d taken three steps.

The wall ran wide enough to swallow a city whole, and every visible inch of it was already choked with players, shoulder to shoulder, jockeying for position like the fight had already started.

Server-wide, something north of ten million players had crossed the level-17 threshold to qualify.

Strip out everyone who couldn’t make the timing work, and actual turnout still landed somewhere in the low millions an obscene number of bodies packed onto a stretch of stone running for hundreds of miles in either direction.

The horde hadn’t even arrived yet, and the crowd was already at each other’s throats over territory, elbowing for the angles that would farm the most points once the real killing started.

Something almost darkly funny in that humanity’s last line of defense, and the loudest fight on the wall right now was over real estate.

Kael held back from the scramble entirely, and pulled up the event leaderboard instead.

1. Unrivaled — Lv. 20

2. DriftingSnow — Lv. 19

3. GorgeousMenace Lv. 18

4. GrandTactician Lv. 18

5. MyWifeSaidRun Lv. 18

6. EvertideHerald Lv. 18

7. DominionScout Lv. 18

8. GaleForce Lv. 18

9. ShatteredHalberd Lv. 18

10. SnowPetal Lv. 18

Second place trailed him by a full level, and everyone else on the board sat bunched together at 18.

And this was just the regional standings worldwide, the pace climbing this fast meant the real threshold was close enough to taste.

Somewhere out there, players on a dozen other servers were racing toward that exact same milestone, none of them aware how near the finish line actually sat.

If this holds, ten players worldwide hit second advancement before this event even wraps. That’s the trigger. That’s the day everything changes.

Something electric settled behind his ribs at the thought equal parts anticipation and a colder, more clinical readiness.

He pushed the feeling down, locked his focus, and started working his way toward the front of the wall, chasing the cleanest possible angle to farm points and lock the event’s top ranking down outright.

He didn’t get far before two players planted themselves directly in his path, blocking the way with the particular confidence of people who’d never once been told no.

"Move along. This stretch’s claimed."

"The Mourningfall Family holds this position.

No outsiders."

The second one squinted at him, sneering. "And what’s with the mask? A bit of cloth doesn’t make you Unrivaled."

"Let’s see what’s actually under there."

He lunged forward and ripped the mask clean off Kael’s face.

Something cold flickered behind Kael’s eyes.He didn’t waste breath on words. He raised a hand and summoned the Behemoth.

The roar that followed cracked through the stones underfoot like a fault line opening.

Ten-plus meters of purple muscle and jagged bone slammed down onto the wall hard enough to send a visible shockwave rippling through the crowd, a shadow wide enough to swallow both players whole.

Its jaws split open, and the sheer force of the exhale that followed sent hair and cloaks snapping backward across half the platform, the air itself dropping several degrees colder just from proximity.

Both players hit the ground, too stunned to manage anything beyond a strangled, wordless noise, every scrap of their earlier swagger gone in an instant.

"That’s that’s actually him?!"

Kael swept a flat, unimpressed look across the pair, and the crowd already gathering thick behind them.

"Can I stand here, or not?"

"Of of course! Absolutely, whatever you need!"

"This spot was always meant for you, sir! These two just didn’t recognize who they were dealing with please, forgive the misunderstanding!"

A handful from the same guild scrambled forward, tripping over each other to smooth things over.

Kael had watched this exact pattern play out a hundred times before small groups like this one built their whole identity around bullying anyone too weak to push back, then folded instantly the moment someone actually could, sliding from threats to flattery without so much as a breath in between.

Not worth spending words on.

He walked past without a glance, the Behemoth trailing behind him, and the crowd split like water ahead of them, every face turning to track the massive shape rolling through their ranks.

"His pet keeps getting bigger every single time I see it."

"Health bar’s nearly solid black that thing’s got to be past fifty thousand by now."

"No wonder he’s climbing the ranks like a rocket with backup like that."

"I’d sell a kidney for a companion like that."

"Keep dreaming."

Kael tuned the noise out completely, staked out a clean stretch of wall near the front line, and settled in to wait, eyes drifting toward the distant tree line where the first wave would eventually break cover.

A message chimed through before the waiting had time to turn stale.

EvertideHerald "Got two full mage squads assembled pure caster comps, damage output through the roof. Any interest in linking up for this one?"