The beginner hunting grounds outside Outpost 404 were a disaster zone.

The forest was choked with thousands of Level 1 players frantically running around in basic cloth shirts.

They were swinging rusty swords and wooden clubs at anything that moved.

The primary targets were Crag-Boars. They were massive and heavily armored wild pigs with stone-like plating over their heads and shoulders.

Right now, there were about ten players for every single boar that spawned.

The moment a boar materialized in a flash of light, a mob of screaming players would descend on it.

They wildly hacked away until it dropped a few copper coins and a chunk of raw meat.

It was entirely inefficient.

People were stealing kills and hitting each other with friendly fire. They were arguing over drops.

Dante didn’t waste his time in the crowded shallow areas.

He pushed past the chaotic mobs and walked deeper into the forest where the tree cover grew thicker and the light dropped.

The further out he went, the fewer players there were. Most people were too terrified of dying to venture into the high-density spawn zones alone.

After ten minutes of walking, the noise of the crowded starter zone faded entirely.

Dante stepped into a wide clearing. The ground was torn up, and the grass was trampled into thick mud.

Three Crag-Boars were rooting around in the dirt near the center of the clearing.

They were the size of small cars. Their gray and rocky armor clicked as they moved.

Their eyes glowed with a dull and aggressive red light.

Dante cracked his neck and stepped out from the trees.

The closest Crag-Boar immediately snapped its head toward him.

It let out a loud squeal and kicked up dirt with its hooves before charging straight at him.

The ground actually shook under its weight!

Dante didn’t flinch. He didn’t dodge.

He tightened his grip on the rusty iron sword and activated his only offensive skill.

[Heavy Slash].

He stepped forward and swung the blade down in a standard vertical arc.

The moment the skill activated, a massive and deafening chime rang in his head.

[Skill Executed: Heavy Slash.]

[Talent Activated: 10,000x Multiplier.]

[Registering 10,000 flawless executions.]

Time seemed to freeze. A pressure drop hit the clearing and made Dante’s ears pop.

Suddenly, a flood of combat knowledge rushed into his brain.

It wasn’t just a system notification. It was the physical muscle memory of swinging a sword ten thousand times.

He felt the exact angle required to bypass armor. He felt the specific way his wrists needed to snap to maximize power.

He felt the perfect distribution of weight across his shoulders and hips.

[Heavy Slash has reached Adept tier.]

[Heavy Slash has reached Master tier.]

[Heavy Slash has reached Grandmaster tier.]

The rusty iron sword in his hand began to vibrate violently. It glowed with a dense and blinding black light.

The sheer output of energy was tearing the cheap digital weapon apart. But the system forced it to hold together for the duration of the attack.

[Heavy Slash has reached Zenith tier.]

[Skill Evolution Triggered.]

[Heavy Slash has evolved into: Abyssal Cleave.]

Dante’s downward swing connected with the empty air roughly five feet in front of the charging Crag-Boar.

He didn’t even hit the beast. He didn’t need to.

A massive and crescent-shaped shockwave of pitch-black energy erupted from the tip of his rusty sword!

It tore through the air with a sound like tearing metal.

The shockwave didn’t just hit the first Crag-Boar. It completely engulfed it and vaporized the beast’s stone armor and digital flesh instantly.

The black energy wave continued forward and expanded to twenty feet wide.

It slammed into the other two Crag-Boars in the clearing. It obliterated them in a shower of polygons.

It didn’t stop there.

The shockwave tore a massive and ten-foot-deep trench through the center of the clearing. It snapped four massive oak trees in half before finally fading into a cloud of swirling black smoke.

Dante stood completely still with his sword lowered.

The clearing was dead silent. A massive crater sat where the boars had been.

[Target Eliminated: Crag-Boar (Level 2) x3]

[Experience Gained. Level Up!]

[Level Up!]

[Level Up!]

Dante stared at the smoking trench. He looked down at his rusty sword.

The blade was glowing cherry red from the friction and was on the verge of snapping.

"Okay," Dante breathed. A slow and dangerous smile spread across his face. "That works."

The 10,000x multiplier wasn’t just a leveling aid. It was a completely broken cheat code!

He immediately looked at his skill menu.

[Abyssal Cleave (Zenith): Unleashes a localized spatial fracture. Deals 5,000% physical damage and ignores 50% of target defense. Cooldown: 5 seconds.]

Five seconds. He could drop a massive attack every five seconds.

"Let us test the other one," Dante said.

He looked across the clearing at the ruined trees and activated his second starter skill.

[Dash].

[Skill Executed: Dash.]

[Talent Activated: 10,000x Multiplier.]

[Registering 10,000 flawless executions.]

The same rush of muscle memory flooded his brain.

He instantly understood the exact movements of movement transfer. He knew the perfect foot placement to minimize friction and the exact angle to cut wind resistance.

[Dash has reached Zenith tier.]

[Skill Evolution Triggered.]

[Dash has evolved into: Blink Step.]

Dante’s body blurred. He didn’t run.

He simply vanished from his starting position and materialized instantly fifty feet across the clearing. His boots slammed into the dirt right next to a snapped oak tree.

There was no travel time. It was instantaneous teleportation within a short radius.

[Blink Step (Zenith): Instantly warp to a target location within 50 feet. Grants 0.5 seconds of invulnerability upon arrival. Cooldown: 2 seconds.]

Dante let out a sharp laugh. This was absurd.

He was Level 4 and wearing a linen shirt. He was holding a rusty piece of iron. Yet he was currently armed with end-game abilities.

He spent the next twenty minutes terrorizing the deep forest.

Every time a Crag-Boar spawned, Dante used [Blink Step] to close the gap instantly. He followed it with an [Abyssal Cleave] that leveled half the local area.

The massive range of the cleave meant he wasn’t just killing one boar at a time. He was wiping out entire spawn groups in a single swing.

System notifications spammed his vision relentlessly.

[Level Up!]

[Level Up!]

[Level Up!]

By the time he reached Level 7, his rusty sword finally shattered into digital fragments. It was completely unable to handle the strain of Zenith-tier skills.

Dante didn’t care. He just equipped a Level 5 Bronze-grade broadsword he had looted from the boars.

It felt significantly better in his hands.

He was carving a path of total destruction through the woods when he heard voices.

Human voices.

Dante immediately halted his hunting.

He slipped behind a massive boulder. His boots made zero noise on the mossy ground. He peeked around the edge of the rock.

About thirty yards away, a group of thirteen players was marching through the dense brush.

They were organized. Unlike the chaotic mobs in the shallows, this group was moving in a tactical formation. They had heavy armor in the front and ranged casters in the back.

But it wasn’t their formation that caught Dante’s attention. It was the two men leading the group.

One was a massive and heavily built man with a shaved head carrying a tower shield.

The other was a lean and rat-faced rogue twirling a pair of curved daggers.

Thorne and Vargas.

Dante’s grip on his new Bronze sword tightened so hard his knuckles popped.

These were Silas’s top lieutenants.

They were the ones who had flanked Dante in the Aethelgard boss room.

They belonged to The Gilded Syndicate. The guild was now rebranded as Vanguard’s Legacy.

Dante didn’t immediately rush out.

He pulled his breathing under control and let his cold focus take over.

If they were out here in the deep woods this early, they were hunting something specific.

He used [Blink Step]. He teleported silently into the thick branches of an oak tree directly above their path.

He crouched on the thick wood and perfectly hid in the shadows of the leaves. He looked down.

It was time to see exactly what Silas had given his dogs.