The immediate fallout of the bounty was catastrophic for Vanguard’s Legacy.

As Dante navigated the dense and twisting paths of the beginner forest, his system interface pinged with a steady stream of regional chat notifications.

The entire Outpost 404 zone had completely lost its mind.

[Regional Chat - ApexHunter: Bro, did you guys see that? Dan just offered a Silver sword for the head of Thorne!]

[Regional Chat - IronMage: Syndicate is tearing itself apart. I just saw a group of Vanguard members chasing Vargas through the merchant district.]

[Regional Chat - SilentStep: Vargas logged out. He pulled the plug. He is hiding in his capsule!]

[Regional Chat - GuildlessGabe: Cowards. We will camp their spawn points. No one gets that sword but me.]

Dante swiped the chat window away.

Thorne and Vargas were effectively neutralized.

By logging out to avoid permanent death, their physical bodies on Veridia were now trapped in their VR capsules.

They couldn’t play the game. This meant they couldn’t level up, gather resources, or help Silas build his empire. They were prisoners of their own fear.

Dante checked his map. He was approaching the coordinates the Outpost Elder had uploaded to his interface.

The environment around him was rapidly shifting.

The towering pine trees gave way to dead and twisted husks.

The vibrant violet sky was choked out by a thick and swirling gray fog that clung to the ground like a physical weight.

The ambient sound of the forest vanished completely. There was no chirping of digital insects and no rustling of leaves.

[Zone Discovered: The Whispering Chasm]

[Warning: High-Density Corruption Detected. Continuous exposure will result in a passive HP drain without proper elemental wards.]

Dante stepped over a rotting log and entered the boundary of the Chasm.

The ground slanted sharply downward into a massive and jagged ravine.

The walls of the chasm were lined with glowing and sickly green veins of corrupted ore. The air was freezing cold.

As soon as he crossed the threshold, the fog shifted.

Three humanoid figures materialized out of the gray mist.

They looked like standard players. But their bodies were entirely composed of shifting and oily black shadows.

They wielded long and jagged shadow-blades that scraped against the rocky ground.

[Monster Spawn: Shadow-Stalker]

[Level: 18]

[HP: 3,500] 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

They were fast.

The moment they locked onto Dante, they didn’t charge in a straight line. They teleported short distances through the fog. They blinked in and out of reality to close the gap.

Dante didn’t draw his sword.

He opened his inventory. Back at the clearing after he had looted Thorne and Vargas, he had scooped up a bunch of random junk dropped by the dead Syndicate grunts.

Among the cheap linen scraps and copper coins was a basic Novice-tier skillbook.

He pulled it out and tapped the cover.

[Skill Learned: Guard (Novice)]

[Description: Raise your weapon to block an incoming attack. Reduces physical damage taken by 10%.]

It was the most fundamental defensive skill in the game. Every tank learned it at Level 1.

The lead Shadow-Stalker materialized directly in front of Dante.

It brought its shadow-blade down in a vicious and two-handed overhead chop aimed perfectly at the skull of Dante.

Dante drew the [Crimson Edge] and held it horizontally above his head. He activated the skill.

[Skill Executed: Guard.]

The 10,000x Multiplier kicked in instantly.

[Talent Activated: 10,000x Multiplier.]

[Registering 10,000 flawless executions.]

The rush of enlightenment wasn’t about destruction this time. It was about absolute defense.

Dante felt the microscopic shifts in weight required to completely redirect kinetic energy.

He understood the exact angle needed to catch a blade so that the force transferred safely into the ground rather than shattering his wrists.

He experienced ten thousand perfect blocks, parries, and deflections in the span of a millisecond.

[Guard has reached Adept tier.]

[Guard has reached Master tier.]

[Guard has reached Grandmaster tier.]

A brilliant hexagonal shield of golden light flared into existence just millimeters above the edge of Dante’s sword.

[Guard has reached Zenith tier.]

[Skill Evolution Triggered.]

[Guard has evolved into: Aegis Deflection.]

The blade of the Shadow-Stalker slammed into the golden hexagonal shield.

There was a deafening sound. It was like a massive church bell ringing underwater.

Dante didn’t take a single point of damage. His stamina bar barely twitched.

Instead, the golden shield violently pulsed outward.

The kinetic energy of the attack was instantly absorbed and multiplied. It fired right back at the Shadow-Stalker in a concentrated shockwave.

The Shadow-Stalker was blasted backward. Its oily body completely tore apart from the reflected force.

It shattered into pixels before it even hit the ground.

[Aegis Deflection (Zenith)]

[Description: A frame-perfect parry. Completely negates 100% of incoming physical and magical damage. Reflects 500% of the negated damage back to the attacker. Window of execution: 0.2 seconds. Cooldown: 1 second.]

Dante smiled.

A 0.2 second window was incredibly tight for a normal player. It required superhuman reflexes and a flawless read of the enemy animation.

But with Dante’s experience in Aethelgard and his newly evolved muscle memory, 0.2 seconds felt like an eternity.

The other two Shadow-Stalkers blinked into existence on his left and right flanks. They swung their blades in unison.

Dante spun. He tapped the activation trigger for [Aegis Deflection] twice in rapid succession.

Clang. Clang.

Two golden flashes illuminated the fog. Two massive reflection shockwaves triggered instantly!

Both Shadow-Stalkers were obliterated. Their own attack power was weaponized against them.

"This is going to make things very easy," Dante muttered. He dismissed the loot prompts.

He spent the next hour descending deeper into the Whispering Chasm.

The fog grew thicker, and the Shadow-Stalkers spawned in larger and more aggressive packs.

Dante didn’t even bother using his offensive skills to save his stamina.

He simply walked through the ravine. He flawlessly parried every single attack thrown at him and let the monsters kill themselves against his golden shield.

He hit Level 14 by the time the narrow ravine finally opened up into a massive and cavernous underground arena.

The air in the cavern was completely still.

The walls were lined with statues of old and forgotten gods. Their faces were heavily eroded by time and corruption.

In the dead center of the arena lay a creature that made Dante stop dead in his tracks.

It was a Chimera.

It had the hulking and armored body of a lion. It had the massive and scaled wings of a dragon. Its tail ended in the snapping jaws of a viper.

But its physical form was flickering. It was heavily glitching like a corrupted file.

Its fur was patchy. Thick black chains made of raw void energy were wrapped tightly around its limbs to pin it to the floor.

[World Anomaly Detected.]

[Monster: Phantom Chimera Emperor]

[Tier: Titan]

[Level: 0 (Cursed State)]

[HP: 10,000 / 10,000]

Dante stared at the system prompt.

Titan-tier. It was the highest possible classification for a monster outside of the cosmic endgame.

Even at Level 0, a Titan possessed innate passives and base attack multipliers that could wipe out small cities.

But it only had ten thousand health. The void chains were heavily suppressing its life force.

The massive and glowing purple eyes of the Chimera snapped open. It saw Dante standing at the edge of the cavern.

The beast didn’t roar. It didn’t try to intimidate him.

It simply moved.

Despite the chains and despite being Level 0, the Chimera crossed the fifty-yard arena in a fraction of a second.

It was so fast it didn’t even trigger the standard visual tracking of Dante.

A massive dragon-scaled paw the size of a dining table slammed down toward the head of Dante. It moved with enough kinetic force to shatter the bedrock.

Dante didn’t try to run. He didn’t blink away.

He raised the [Crimson Edge] and smiled.