Chapter 1004: Little Horn Chooses a Side

Everyone watched as OneSwordBreaksArmy’s entire squad vanished beneath the Renegade Alliance’s grinding formation.

For a moment, the whole world fell silent, and even Little Horn, the one who had originally developed this formation, was left staring in disbelief. So this was what his idea could truly become. The formation could separate and recombine at will. When merged together, it became an impenetrable fortress. When split apart, it turned into countless blades cutting through the battlefield from every direction. Once it surrounded its target, it crushed everything inside like a giant millstone.

"This is..." Little Horn muttered, completely at a loss for words.

Only moments earlier, when OneSwordBreaksArmy had broken through one section of the formation, everyone watching had assumed the Renegade Alliance was on the verge of collapse. Now they realized the truth. That opening hadn’t been forced open at all; it had been created deliberately, and the Renegade Alliance had chosen to split apart.

From beginning to end, not a single one of them had died.

The battle had already dragged on for nearly an hour, yet the Renegade Alliance still hadn’t suffered a single casualty. Meanwhile, the coalition’s backbone, its ranged classes, had been almost completely erased: four hundred thousand ranged players... gone.

Even if the Renegade Alliance somehow lost this battle from here, no one would dare mock them.

Zero casualties.

Surrounded by 9.6 million enemies, they had already eliminated hundreds of thousands without losing a single player.

Silence spread across the world. The global livestream, watched by millions, was almost completely devoid of comments, with only the occasional message drifting across the screen before disappearing into the emptiness.

Everyone else was simply too stunned to say anything.

Meanwhile, in the Southern Frontier Region, Little Horn sat drenched in sweat. The clip that had appeared during the livestream had thrown his entire region into chaos.

At first, he’d patiently explained himself to everyone who came asking questions. After repeating the same explanation over and over, however, his patience finally snapped.

"Enough! Get the hell out, all of you!" he roared. "You’ve already decided what you want to believe, so why are you even asking me? You want me to turn against them? Fine. I’ll make it official right now."

He slammed a hand onto the table. "From this moment on, Little Horn is allied with the Renegade Alliance. I’m withdrawing from the Three Coalition Alliance. And if it comes to it... I’ll personally support the Renegade Alliance in the Northern Frontier Region."

After saying that, he drove everyone out. The declaration was recorded almost immediately and uploaded online; in a situation like this, news spread faster than wildfire.

Ethan heard about it before long, and a faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. This was exactly the outcome he’d been aiming for.

’Sorry, brother,’ he thought with a quiet chuckle. ’Debts should always be repaid. Back then, I helped you reclaim your Divine Ability, Sundering Shot. Now it’s your turn to return the favor.’

From the very beginning, this had been part of Ethan’s plan; he wanted to pull this legendary figure from his previous life into his own camp.

In his past life, Little Horn had ruled the Southern Frontier Region. During one of the long-distance invasion campaigns, he’d crossed paths with Ethan, who had already fallen from grace. By then, Ethan’s past had long since become public knowledge, and plenty of people looked down on him because of it.

Little Horn never did. He hadn’t mocked Ethan or treated him with contempt; instead, he’d helped him through one of the darkest periods of his life.

The two of them had talked for hours that day, discovering they shared far more in common than either had expected. From then on, Little Horn had always looked out for him, and life became much easier after that.

In this life, Ethan didn’t want to stand behind Little Horn as someone who needed saving; he wanted to stand beside him as an equal.

Deep within the enemy formation, OneSwordBreaksArmy remained standing alone; his entire squad had already been wiped out. Tightening his grip on his greatsword, he slowly looked around at the people surrounding him, and almost every face was familiar.

There was Victor, the Priest who had somehow fought him head-on in melee using nothing but a staff. In terms of raw strength, Victor was definitely weaker than him, but his technique was on an entirely different level. Every deflection, every redirection, every movement that turned his opponent’s strength against them had been executed with flawless precision.

If they fought one-on-one, OneSwordBreaksArmy still believed he could win, and that confidence wasn’t arrogance. As the leader of an entire region, the equipment at his disposal was on a completely different level. He possessed at least two Divine-tier pieces of equipment, while everything else he wore was Dark Gold quality.

Standing beside Victor were Leo and Williams, two names that every player in Ethereal recognized. Skyblade and SeraphWarrior, both of whom possessed hidden classes. Skyblade had once been a conventional Shield Tank, but after unlocking his hidden class, he had become a Grandmaster, earning the nickname Brewmaster.

SeraphWarrior was even more troublesome. As a Divine Judicator, he could deal damage, heal allies, and tank attacks all at once, a true one-man army. He wielded a greatsword in one hand and a small shield in the other, something impossible for ordinary players, making him incredibly difficult to fight.

Normally, greatswords required both hands, but certain hidden classes could ignore that restriction. SeraphWarrior was one of them, and so was that infuriating bastard over there, GetRichQuick.

The difference was that SeraphWarrior could pair his greatsword with a shield, while GetRichQuick’s class allowed him to dual-wield. The sword in his left hand wasn’t a physical weapon but a phantom blade, allowing him to unleash an overwhelming flurry of attacks while still swinging a massive greatsword with his right.

Then there were the brothers, MyBrotherIsAFraud and MyElderBrotherIsADog, famous in their own right. Both had hidden classes. One specialized in fire magic; his casting speed was painfully slow, but every spell automatically tracked its target, and each hit carried devastating power.

The other was a War Stomper, the very same class OneSwordBreaksArmy belonged to, and no one understood its terrifying potential better than he did.

His gaze swept across the encirclement once more, and almost none of them used ordinary classes. For the first time in a very long while, his confidence faltered. He had spent years standing at the top of an entire region, proud of possessing a hidden class that few others could obtain. Yet compared to the people standing around him now, he suddenly felt painfully ordinary.

His own guild, BreaksArmy, had fewer than five hidden class players in total, while the Renegade Alliance had nearly twenty standing here alone. Some of them he had never even heard of before today, and the realization hit him harder than any attack.

If the Renegade Alliance had existed in the Western Frontier Region instead, even BreaksArmy would probably have ended up just like the Blade Syndicate in the Northern Frontier Region, forced to bow its head and compromise.

An unfamiliar sense of helplessness settled over him.

What OneSwordBreaksArmy didn’t realize was that the people surrounding him were thinking almost the exact same thing. More than a dozen of the Renegade Alliance’s strongest veterans had taken turns fighting him, exchanging blow after blow, yet even after all that, he was still standing.

This guy was genuinely terrifying.

Among everyone present, they suspected only Ethan could defeat him in a true one-on-one fight.

Earlier, after Victor had tricked him into losing his mount, many of them had quietly started looking down on him. They’d assumed this so-called regional overlord was just another loudmouth with an inflated reputation, but now they knew better.

The only reason he’d lost his mount was because of Victor’s bizarre flying companion, a creature with absolutely no combat ability whatsoever. It had no attack power, no defense, and contributed nothing in a fight except for its one unavoidable special effect.

Annoying as it was, that trick had come at a cost. Unlike Victor’s mount, the flying companions used by Leo and the others were genuine combat partners, capable of attacking, defending, and even executing coordinated skills alongside their riders.

"Boss is here!"

The tense standoff broke instantly as someone shouted. High above them, Ethan, still in his Eagle Form, circled the battlefield once before folding his wings, then descended straight into the center of the encirclement.