Chapter 79: S-Rank Skill Endless Legion

Light flared, and Kael reappeared in Ebonreach’s great hall.

Stepping out into the plaza, the sight waiting for him was exactly what he’d ordered two thousand Starborn soldiers assembled in disciplined ranks, warriors, archers, mages, and assassins all represented, every single one level 40 or higher.

Raw numbers alone would’ve made that an intimidating force this early into the game.

The Starborn’s bloodline carried its own natural advantage on top of that baseline attributes and skill kits that consistently outpaced ordinary elite monsters at the same level. Standing army or not, this was a force that deserved real respect.

Without Elara’s backing, claiming this city would’ve demanded several more days of grinding on his own before he’d have stood any real chance of cracking it solo. Her guard had cut that timeline down to a single afternoon.

Kael studied the assembled ranks with open satisfaction, then raised a hand and gave the order to march.

The army poured out through the city gates in tight formation, Kael at the head of the column, cutting southeast across open country.

His destination sat several hundred miles out a wilderness territory called Cinderhold, home to a clan of dwarven smiths who’d spent generations carving an underground fortress into the mountainside and filling it with rare ore stockpiled over centuries.

Clear that hold, and Ebonreach’s next upgrade would be most of the way funded in a single strike.

The Starborn fought like a force to be reckoned with. They did not, however, march quickly.

Kael’s patience wore thin within the first stretch. The dwarves garrisoning Cinderhold sat comfortably around level 30 well within range for him to clear solo, and a genuinely efficient grinding opportunity in its own right.

He called several of the Starborn commanders forward, laid out Cinderhold’s exact location and the fastest approach route, and left them with clear orders to bring the army in as soon as they could manage.

Then he summoned Thunder Roc, swung up onto its back, and took to the sky alone, leaving the column to catch up at its own pace.

A soft chime interrupted the flight partway through.

"Notification: The Guild-Founding Token listed at auction has sold. Final price: 1,200,000 gold. After a 10% handling fee, 1,080,000 gold has been credited to your account."

A hundred and twenty thousand off the top? Kael scowled at the fee line. Highway robbery, dressed up as a service charge.

He pulled up the auction’s buyer details out of curiosity. The winning bid had come from a gamertag called DeepPockets a name he had no memory of from his first life.

Which told him plenty on its own. If this account hadn’t existed before, and had just dropped over a million gold on a single item without blinking, the odds of it belonging to anyone outside official channels sat close to zero.

The outcome didn’t surprise him in the slightest. This early into the game, no private force on the server not a guild, not a studio, not a conglomerate’s backing could seriously outbid the government on raw resources.

Put a token on the open market, and it was theirs the moment they decided to want it.

That had been the entire point of listing it there in the first place. Not spite. A message.

Boundaries exist.

Act like they don’t, and this is what happens you still get what you want, but you pay full price for the privilege instead of getting it handed to you.

He wasn’t interested in being difficult for its own sake. Fair trade, mutual benefit, a real partnership all of that remained entirely on the table, and he meant to keep contributing to it in good faith.

But goodwill only ran one direction for so long. Push past a reasonable line, and he had no intention of simply absorbing it quietly.

Measured, not hostile. Firm, not arrogant. That was the only version of this relationship he intended to maintain going forward.

Thunder Roc’s bloodline carried genuine speed to match its raw power, and the flight covered serious ground fast a little over ten minutes bringing Kael to a hidden valley, a massive stone gate set into the rock face ahead, a dozen axe-armed dwarf sentries standing guard in front of it.

The moment they spotted lightning crackling across Thunder Roc’s wings, every face at that gate went pale. They scrambled for the gate controls, far too slow to matter.

Thunder Roc folded its wings and dropped, clearing the sentries’ heads in a single pass and slamming through the stone gate before it had closed an inch.

Beyond it stretched a long, rough-hewn tunnel. A horn blared somewhere deep in the dark almost immediately, alarm spreading fast, and a wave of armed dwarves surged out of the tunnel’s far end warhammers and heavy axes raised, roaring in fury at the intrusion.

Kael swept the oncoming wave with a glance and grinned. Level 36 to 38, every one of them exactly the kind of target worth farming hard.

"Couldn’t have timed this better."

He dropped from Thunder Roc’s back with a short laugh and hit the ground running, already summoning Void Colossus and Wraithlord in the same motion.

Spectral Aspect split Wraithlord into two the instant both companions landed, and all four Kael included fell into a brutal, efficient slaughter.

Sixteen Bonecaster Mages joined the fray moments later, called up from the fractured stone beneath both Wraithlords’ raised hands, staves already lit with necrotic fire.

Between four companions and Kael’s own blade, the tunnel’s defenders fell in waves, the party pressing steadily deeper into the fortress’s heart.

Evolution Points climbed fast with every kill three per elite monster averaged out, by Kael’s own running count, and the pace only accelerated as the dwarves’ average level ticked upward deeper into the hold.

Point costs scaled right alongside that, though.

A skill climbing from one rank to the next had always multiplied roughly fivefold each step six hundred and twenty-five points to push a B-rank skill to A-rank. Pushing from A-rank to S-rank, by contrast, demanded a full ten thousand.

There’s a real wall between A-rank and S-rank, Kael mused, parsing the pattern as he fought. Getting a kit up to A across the board is just time. Getting past that ceiling is a different conversation entirely.

Worth picking one or two core skills per companion and pouring everything into those, rather than spreading thin.

Just over an hour of sustained fighting later, the count finally crossed ten thousand.

Kael opened Wraithlord’s panel without hesitation, selected the skill waiting at the threshold, and confirmed.

"Notification: 10,000 Evolution Points consumed. [Army of the Damned] (A-rank) has evolved into S-rank: [Endless Legion]."

Endless Legion: Summons 8–16 elite-tier undead, matching or exceeding the caster’s level, to fight alongside the user. Mana Cost: 2,000. Cooldown: 30 minutes.

Kael read the new description twice, already running the math on what a fully-loaded cast would look like against the next real threat worth throwing it at.

Sixteen elite-tier bodies, on demand, every half hour that wasn’t a summon anymore. That was a second army, riding along in Wraithlord’s back pocket.

He glanced down the tunnel at what remained of Cinderhold’s defenders, still falling back deeper into the mountain, and let himself grin.

"Let’s see how much deeper this hole goes."