Neo ran as hard as his body would let him.
Every step pounded through the forest floor.
His breath came sharp and fast.
He kept one thought locked in place: please hang on.
The system only dropped quests when things were already close to breaking.
That was the rule.
The siege the Dark Lord had set around the Nyx tribe had grown so heavy that the system itself had finally issued the quest.
The situation inside was already past the safe point.
The Nyx tribe had sent five years of food stores to Stormfang.
Neo knew what that left them with.
His women and the fighters still inside the barrier did not have enough food or enough strength left in the army to hold out for long.
He could only hope the barrier itself was still strong enough to keep the Dark Lord’s forces from pouring through.
He pushed harder.
Branches snapped under his boots.
The trees thinned.
Then the open ground appeared and he saw it all at once.
The barrier rose in a pale curve over the tribe grounds.
Dark knight skeletons surrounded it on every side.
Their numbers were so thick Neo could only see the upper edges of the wall.
They climbed over one another, bone stacking on bone, trying to reach the top.
He was glad the barrier still stood high enough that even the mounting piles could not get over.
But he knew it was only a matter of time.
The skeletons kept slamming into the wall.
Each hit made the light of the barrier flicker.
It would not last much longer.
Neo pulled Eva into a thick stand of bushes.
He set her down carefully and looked out at the siege.
Eva stayed close.
She had always carried the same drives.
She wanted to be the strongest and the best thief in the world.
She wanted to become a better person for Neo’s sake.
She wanted to be useful to him and to matter in his eyes.
At the same time she lived with clear limits.
Her thinking ran slow.
Her emotions stayed numb more often than not.
She was easy to push or steer if someone knew the right words.
She wanted Neo to love her, yet she feared that wanting it out loud would only drive him farther away and make everything awkward between them.
She also feared that standing next to him would damage his reputation.
That fear made her want to bury her head and disappear.
She wanted to help him, yet she was sure any real help she gave would only create more problems for both of them.
Beyond the packed skeletons Neo’s eyes found a single figure farther back.
A taller dark knight sat on a black horse.
A long red cape hung from his shoulders.
He stood apart from the rest and looked higher ranked than any of the others.
Neo checked the status.
His eyes widened.
Dark Lord. Rank: Ultimate Peak Level.
The name hit hard.
Neo stared at the size of the armor and the black sword across the man’s back.
The figure looked like a walking game boss.
Neo’s eyes sharpened.
That was the target.
He turned to Eva and kept his voice low and clear.
"Get inside the barrier. The skeletons are dumb. Jump on top of some of them, use them as steps, and go over the wall. Once you’re in, head for the royal castle. Find my women. Tell them I came back. Tell them to stay inside and not come out until I’ve taken care of their army’s boss."
Neo reached to his neck, unclipped the red salamander necklace, and pressed it into her hand.
"Just show them this. It’s strong proof it’s from me."
Eva nodded.
He had already told her the names of his women and that he was chief of both the Nyx tribe and the Stormfang tribe.
That talk had happened one night on the road toward the volcano where the goddess Pyra lived, while he was taking her from behind.
After that night she had become unofficially part of his harem even though Neo had never said the words out loud.
She knew he cared about her.
The knowledge made her grin for a moment.
Then she nodded once more, turned, and ran hard toward the barrier.
Neo watched her go.
When she was clear he looked back at the Dark Lord in the distance.
He lifted his spear and called the special move.
Nuclear reactor.
Power gathered inside the weapon.
He held the charge for a full six minutes.
The spear grew hotter and heavier until he felt it would explode if he pushed any further.
Then he released it.
The spear shot forward so fast it split the air.
The crack left Neo’s ears ringing for a moment.
The weapon crossed the open ground in a straight line and reached the Dark Lord almost at once.
It felt like a divine bolt leaping from Neo’s hand to the target.
The Dark Lord’s reaction came fast, but it still came late.
The spear was already near his head when he raised one armored hand and caught it.
The impact did not move him off his horse.
Neo saw the result clearly.
The spear had burned the hand and the shoulder.
The Dark Lord carried dark-attribute mana.
Holy attacks cut through it hard.
The Dark Lord swung down from the horse.
He turned and looked straight toward Neo’s position.
"You finally came!"
The reason the Dark Lord stood here was simple.
He had only just been revived.
He was searching for the death scroll, and he could feel its presence on this human.
His name was Sebastian.
In life he had been a knight of an old kingdom.
He had died because of that same scroll.
His king had wanted to keep the scroll for himself and never understood that it drew monsters.
Sebastian, loyal to the end, had tried to talk the king out of it.
Nothing he said made any difference.
The king was already obsessed.
One day the king killed him, believing Sebastian meant to steal the scroll.
Ten thousand years later Sebastian had woken up lost.
Then a new goal took hold and burned brighter than anything else.
He wanted to destroy the death scroll that had turned his king into a ruin and destroyed the kingdom he had served.
A deal with a dark mage had let him raise the knights who once worked under him.
Now he looked at Neo.
The dark mage had told him about this man—the weakest fighter in the Stormfang tribe who had risen to take over not one but three tribes, and who had even taken the barbarian chief as his wife.
Sebastian held real respect for that.
In his own time the barbarians had still been a strong enemy.
Taming them meant something.
Sebastian wanted to be an unstoppable force.
At the same time he carried clear limits.
His thinking ran slow.
He clung to honorable combat even when it cost him, and that conflict had already made him pay heavy prices.
He wanted to face the strongest fighters he could find, yet he feared dying in some strange or unfair way every time.
He wanted to be a courageous and great knight for a worthy lord, yet he always carried the fear that he would be replaced or killed.
He wanted acknowledgment from a lord who was worth following.
That drive shaped many of his choices.
He had heard the stories about Neo.
Today he would finally fight him.
Sebastian raised the black sword and charged.
Excitement moved through the old bones.
After ten thousand years he would face another strong enemy.
He was afraid for a moment Neo would think of him weird.
Sebastian was always a battle junky.
Which made even his past life as he served as the royal knight captain hard because everyone he fought hated his obsession with the fight.
But his desire to have an honourable fight with Neo beat his hesitation.
Yes...he felt lonely and wanted redemption but he knew fighting was his ways of living now, and now it already been 10k years for him.
Sebastian fist clenched around his sword tighter while he thought. It already took late on him a walking corpse to change now.
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter