The dragon itself was still alive. Still fighting. Its body wrapped around the mountain's peak, wings tattered and burning, scales cracked and oozing. Three eyes—one in its forehead blazing white-hot—rolled wildly in their sockets. The thing attacked everything. Swiped at boulders, snapped at air, breathed fire into empty space. Whatever had been inside its head was gone now, replaced by pure animal madness.
An army fought it on the mountain. Creatures David didn't recognize, swarming up the slopes, dying in droves under those blind, furious strikes. And in the dragon's claws, held tight against its burning chest, were scores of humans.
He spotted Chloe. The healer. Her body limp in the dragon's grip, arms dangling.
Others beside her. Unmoving.
More he didn't recognize, packed together like cargo.
Jamie was in the dragon's throat. A sword of pure ice driven up through the soft tissue below the jaw, his small body split in half. His head and one arm rested on the sword's hilt, the rest of him jammed between the dragon's teeth.
Fenrir lay dead between those same teeth. His wolf, crushed, lifeless, fur matted with blood and flame.
Rhea fell through the sky above it all. Javelins launched from her hands, streaking like rockets toward the dragon even as her body tumbled, out of control, smashing into the fiery rocks below.
Corbin stood on the ground, halberd raised, alone, fighting against hoards on the mountain.
He saw Harris, clinging to the dragon's neck, one hand buried in its scales, the other arm extended. Purple lightning arced from his fingertips, blasting into the both the dragon and the swarming creatures below.
He saw the horde—a tide of things of too many species, some with too many limbs and others with jagged hides, each baring a mark —hurling attacks at the dragon as it soared. Spells and projectiles and grasping claws reached for it, some connecting, most missing as the beast climbed.
Dungeon fragments fell from the mad creature like rain, small glowing shards tumbling through the smoke and flame. With each second it flew, the third eye in its forehead pulsed faster, more erratic, white light spilling from it in irregular bursts. Its flight became more frayed, more desperate, the madness in its movements more apparent.
And David saw a strange being that looked like a walking star, standing on the dragon's head. He burned, light radiating from his form, arms spread wide, conducting the beast as it abducted and killed, as it killed his allies and enemies alike, razing the dungeon's forest to the ground in its attempts to fly from the mountain and pierce the clouds.
It looked like a war.
Hundreds of creatures swarmed the mountain and the sky, fighting each other, fighting the dragon, dying in droves. People he knew was there, caught in the slaughter. And many more he didn't recognize.
He saw everyone.
But strangest of all, he did not see himself.
David jerked alert with a start, his body lurching forward as if yanked from somewhere else. His heart hammered. His hands gripped the dirt beneath him.
What was that?
He scanned the clearing. Rhea still lay on the ground recovering. The warlock stood watch. Cinder's cocoon sat undisturbed. Everything was exactly as he'd left it.
A dream?
He didn't need to sleep. Not unless he wanted to. And he hadn't wanted to. He'd been meditating, trying to clear his head, and then—
No. Not a dream.
The cursed spear at his side hadn't triggered. That thing reacted to the curse conditions, one he naturally bypassed. If any of that had been happening in his subconscious, the spears curse would have let him know.
A hallucination?
That didn't feel right either. That was vivid. Feverish, but vivid. He couldn't have hallucinated something like that without months of spiraling health and no medication. His head was screwed on fine. As fine as it ever was, anyway.
So what the hell was it?
He sat with the question, letting his breathing slow.
A vision.
That landed. That made a kind of sense.
He was an oracle after all. He accidentally stolen had a sliver of some dead and consumed demonic not-god. Oracle aspect. Seeing things others couldn't. That was supposed to be part of the package.
But why now? And why that nightmare?
The mountain on fire. The dragon at the mountain beneath the sun, the place they all needed to reach to escape this floor. Everyone he knew dying in ways he couldn't stop. Harris hurling purple lightning. The being that looked like a star. Jamie split in half. Fenrir dead between the dragon's teeth. Rhea falling through the sky to crash against rocks and fire.
All of them, dead against the dragon in the mountain.
Everyone but me.
He didn't know what it meant. He didn't know if it was the future or a warning or just some cosmic trick his brain had played on itself.
What did it mean?
David sat with the aftermath of the vision. He had no answers. Only questions and the lingering image of that burning mountain. He turned it over piece by piece.
So that was the wyrm? The dragon? Big, mad, in the burning mountain under the sun. Fits the description. Probably.
He'd seen the survivors fighting it. Most of them dead in its clutches. Jamie split in half. Fenrir crushed. Others limp. Chloe dangling. Rhea falling.
Was that war the marked legion? The horde attacking it, the creatures swarming the mountain. Could be. They've been gathering forces, collecting dungeon fragments. Maybe they planned to hit the floor sovereign.
But the question that kept circling back: why wasn't he in it?
Did I die? Is that what it means?
He ran the timeline. If he died in against the ogre, that would be soon. If he died in his classing, that would be even sooner. Both were real possibilities.
Seriously hope that's not it.
Maybe he was delayed. Or somewhere else entirely when it happened. The vision showed a moment, not the whole sequence. He could have been coming, could have been held up, could have been fighting somewhere else in that burning forest.
If getting a class or facing the ogre kills me, then what's the point of showing me this? To warn the others?
He almost laughed at that.
Pfft. Yeah right. If I die, they're on their own. They'd probably die protecting him. Not as meat shields, of course—cough cough—but as valuable fellow survivors. Same difference in the end.
The other humans bothered him. Who were they? He'd seen quite a few he didn't recognize. More survivors. More people dragged into this hell. Did that mean the wyrm wins? Kills them all eventually?
Does the wyrm win? Is that what I watched? Everyone dead, mountain burning, dragon still flying?
It was concerning. Worrisome even. But at the end of the day, it was all information. He noted what he saw, looked for patterns, tried to make sense of it.
At the very least, I learned the marked legion will assault the floor sovereign's mountain. Probably. Maybe whatever humans and dungeon fragments they've gathered made them brave enough to try.
If the wyrm was dangerous enough to kill all of them—every survivor he knew, plus an army—then the tactic needed to change. Better creatures to pit against it. Better thralls. Better positioning. Better information.
All it really means is I need more information.
That was always the answer. More parts. More intel. More understanding before making a move.
He let the vision settle into the back of his mind, a data point among many, and turned his attention back to the present.
Rhea was cooking a flying imp's wing over the fire David had started a while ago. She turned it slowly, watching the skin tighten and bubble where the heat touched.
"I think the wing's the best part," she said. "Meat's softer. Pulls apart easy."
She watched the fat bead along the edge and drip into the flames.
"Closest thing I've had to a barbecue since we got here." She rotated it again, finding a cooler spot to let it finish. "My family used to do them all the time back home."
David had tasted some earlier. He didn't need to eat, but he'd tried it anyway. Honestly, it wasn't bad. A week ago the thought of eating imp meat would've made both of them balk. One of them probably would've vomited. Which one was anyone's guess. Now they were treating it like fine dining.
They'd both had experience with high pressure environments back on Earth. Life and death situations, the kind that left marks. Nothing they'd been through truly compared to this. They were civilians in a warzone, in enemy territory, given weapons and told to try their best.
It was interesting, watching her change. Noticing how he had changed too, only seeing it too late. In another week, or in a month, who would they be? How much more would each of the survivors change?
How much more had the humans they hadn't met, the other groups, been through? How much had they been changed themselves?
David sat with his back against a redwood, the warmth from the large tree's inner fire seeping into his muscles. Not just comfortable. Literally rejuvenating. His eyes were closed, but his mind was elsewhere.
Through Corbin, he watched the other group. The one he and Rhea had left behind as dead weight. He observed their development, cataloging movements, interactions, habits. Cataloging usefulness.
Wonder if any of them are worth keeping around. For what comes next.
A small part of him noticed how easily he'd started reducing human lives to usefulness and uselessness. Cost and benefit. Assets and liabilities. A much smaller part recognized he was using this place to escape from the pain that would turn him into something else. Something worse.
The rest of him knew soft emotional coddling was anathema to survival. Earth's morality, its codes and ethics, had vanished the moment the plane tore open and dumped them here. That was just reality.
His thoughts scattered as Corbin's vision sharpened, the thrall connection pulling him across miles, sight and senses through his mind like it was happening to him. Miles away, but right there.
David watched through Corbin's eyes as the other group hunted something called Forest Giants to the far west. The things were bulky, meaty, walked on two legs. Tough hides, half muscle and half wood. Branch-like horns and antlers sharp as any sword. Too many arms. Some had four, some had a lot more than four, all of them ending in gnarled fists or jagged claws. Like tree giants made from nightmare, things that would've starred in horror movies back on Earth.
Those things look like they'd hurt. A lot.
He noted Jamie's ice use had improved. The kid's weapons were starting to resemble what Rhea did with her javelins, except instead of spears, Jamie summoned shields and spikes and traps and cages and daggers of ice. It was versatile. Attacking enemies and restricting them at the same time. He'd freeze a giant's foot to the ground, then hit it with an ice spike to the throat while it was stuck. Jamie was becoming useful for crowd control. A ‘useful’ that kept people alive.
Annoyingly impressive. The little twirp actually learned something.
Jamie pranced around their camp like some kind of chosen hero, chest out, gesturing with his hands as he explained his tactics to anyone who'd listen. David watched him hold court by the fire, waving an ice dagger he'd made just to show off. The kid had no idea how annoying he looked. Or maybe he did and just didn't care.
Mia had leveled her Telekinetic Tug. Clearly. Her empty possessed armor—the suit she controlled telekinetically—moved with speed and grace David hadn't seen before. It didn't follow the laws of physics or even the rules of living things. It leaped thirty feet without running start, flipped, pirouetted, and changed direction mid-air, tanked blows that would've crumpled metal. Under her control, it wielded a spear just like David did. Same grip, same stance, same way of thrusting and recovering.
That's odd. She's been watching me. Copying my style. But it works, and it's not my problem. Let her mimic away if it keeps her alive.
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Mia carried her Scottish Fold cat everywhere. The thing rode in a sling she'd made from torn fabric, its squashed face peeking out as she moved. Emotional support, probably. After what they'd been through, David supposed that made some kind of base logic for someone her age. Everyone needed something to hold onto. For Mia, it was a cat that loved demonic energy, and could gut flesh golems like they were fish.
The group had set up a new camp. Looked like they'd moved again. David couldn't piece together why until he heard the large kid whose name he’d almost forgotten—Son—mention finding another stream. Water source. That was the reason. Always the reason. Stay close to water, stay alive.
They even had a system now. Guard rotations posted, names carved into a tree trunk. Theo's tripwires set up around the perimeter for practiced responses—nothing real yet, just drills to make sure they fell in the right direction instead of all over each other when something actually came. It was interesting, watching the two marshals trying desperately to whip the remaining survivors into shape. Corbin barked orders, Evans corrected form, and the kids actually listened.
From the sound of things, Jamie and Corbin were closest to David in level. Both around the seventeen mark. That meant they'd be the first in that group to get a class. Jamie would probably get something flashy. Corbin would get something practical.
Everyone had leveled. That was interesting. They were keeping up, more or less. Not dying. Actually improving.
David pulled back from the thrall sight, letting Corbin's perspective fade from his awareness. He muttered under his breath, the words meant for no one.
"Not bad. But not good enough."
Those levels were paltry. Jamie and Corbin scraping toward seventeen, the rest trailing behind. They would need to step things up if they wanted to survive any of what was coming. The ogre with its ten-day deadline. The marked legion building its army in the south. Whatever that vision meant with the dragon and the mountain and everyone he knew dying in flames.
They're not ready. Not even close. They need more levels, faster progression, better tactics. All of it.
He turned his attention to Fenrir and the warlock. Both stood at the edge of the clearing, waiting.
"Go find something. One creature. Level fifteen or higher. Bring it back."
He handed the warlock his bone spear and the heretic shackle fragment. The old werebeast took both, its gnarled fingers wrapping around the shaft and the chain. Fenrir rose from where he'd been resting, shaking out his fur, the chitin plates beneath catching the light.
They disappeared into the trees without a sound.
David stood and walked to the pile of demon knight armor. He picked up the chest piece first, working it over his head. The plates settled against his frame, still warm from whatever internal fires kept them working, adjusting to his shape like the description said they would. He slid the gauntlets on next, felt them bond to his skin, felt the demonic energy inside him reach toward them like they were already part of him.
He strapped the cursed spear to his back, the familiar weight settling against his spine.
Then he picked up the sword.
Nightcleaver.
The thing was massive. Longer than his arm, wider than his chest. The blade caught the light, gleaming with something that wasn't just reflection, that permanently enhanced cutting layer making it look like it wanted to be used.
Once Cinder wakes up, this goes to her. Whatever she comes out of that cocoon as. The projectiles, the reach, the angle would be better used if he could direct them from a third point through a thrall. But for now, the weapon would be helpful for his immediate plans.
Rhea watched from where she sat eating her imp wing, curious but quiet. Her eyes followed his movements as he adjusted to the weight of the armor, the sword, the new configuration of gear.
David ignored her for the moment and focused on the sword. He got a feel for its weight, shifting it from one hand to the other. Without battle sense guiding him, he started working through the forms the elite hob had tried to teach him before Cinder tore it in half. He practiced minimal movements and small shifts, using different stances to defend different regions of his body. He worked on parries, blocks, ripostes, and footwork, just as the hob had insisted was necessary.
Drill it in. Make it muscle memory. Can't think about every swing in a fight. Can’t rely on Battle Sense for everything.
He moved through the sequences slowly at first, letting his body learn the patterns. The sword felt solid in his hands and responsive, like it wanted to be moved.
He felt it absorb a little of his demonic energy, just a trickle testing him to see if he would feed it more.
On a hunch, he poured energy into the weapon, letting it flow from inside him down through his arms and the gauntlets and into the blade. The sword drank it in without resistance.
He swung.
An arc of energy shot from the blade, dense and complex and hard as forged steel, just like the knight had done against the stagfiend horde. It crossed the clearing in a blink and slammed into a tree about twelve feet away. The impact left a deep scar gouged into the trunk with wood splintered and blackened at the edges where the energy had burned through.
David looked at the sword and then at the tree.
So it works for me too. Now I need to figure out the timing and the aim and the cost.
David studied the sword, trying to figure out how it turned energy into something hard enough to cut. The projectile moved too fast to track, blurring across the clearing before he could get a good look at what it actually was. He shifted his focus to the cutting aura that surrounded the blade, the permanent layer of force that made the weapon what it was.
Through his energy vision, he saw it. The energy compressed and vibrated and intertwined with itself in layers, compressing further with each pass until it reached a density that shouldn't have been possible. Solid force. Sharp force.
Interesting.
His fire spears burned. His death spears burned and decayed. Both did damage, sure, but they were elemental. They relied on heat and rot. If he could add a more physical element to his magic projectiles, make them hit with actual weight behind them, it could increase his lethality by a lot.
Something to work on.
The trees rustled at the edge of the clearing. Fenrir and the warlock emerged, dragging a werebeast between them. Level fifteen, by the look of it. Bleeding but alive. David walked over, pulled the cursed spear from his back, and drove it through the creature's chest. The soul drained into him, the energy followed, and the system ticked over.
[Lvl 22 → Lvl 23]
Still no class.
He waved them off. "Again."
They disappeared back into the forest. David went back to practicing, trying to make his magic constructs more tangible, more solid. He shaped fire spears and tried to compress them the way the sword did. They held form better than before, but they weren't cutting anything physical.
Fenrir and the warlock returned an hour later with a stagfiend.
David walked up to the stagfiend, its chest heaving, blood matting its dark fur. Level eighteen. Bigger than the werebeast, meaner looking, with those curved horns that could gut a man in one pass. It struggled against Fenrir's weight pinning it down, the warlock's curses still sinking into its system.
He raised Nightcleaver, aimed for the spot where the spine met the skull, and put the blade through. The stagfiend went limp instantly, its body slackening as the sword punched through the brain stem.
The soul came first, that familiar cold rush of something leaving the body and entering his. Then the energy followed, demonic essence flooding into his reserves, expanding his pool by that small but measurable increment.
[Lvl 23 → Lvl 24]
Still no class.
He pulled the sword free and stepped back, letting Fenrir and the warlock drag the corpse away. They'd gotten efficient at this. In, out, fresh target every few hours.
So whatever triggers it, whatever quest or trial the system has planned, it's happening on the next kill. Has to be. Twenty-four is the last stop before twenty-five. One more should do it.
He studied the sword in his hands, turning it over, watching the way light slid across the blade's surface. The cutting aura was still there, that permanent layer of compressed force that made the weapon lethal even without his energy behind it. He'd been trying to figure out how it worked since the first time he'd seen the knight use it.
Compression. Layering. That's the trick. The energy compresses and vibrates and intertwines with itself, layer after layer, until it reaches a density that can actually cut physical matter. Not burn or decay. Cut.
His fire spears and death spears burned and decayed. Useful against flesh, less useful against armor, useless against things that didn't care about either.
If I could add that physical element, give my projectiles actual weight behind them, make them hit with force instead of just flame...
He extended his hand and shaped a fire spear. It formed in the air beside him, jagged and bright, heat radiating off it. He tried to compress it the way the sword did, forcing the energy inward, making it denser, more solid. The spear flickered, destabilized, collapsed.
Not there yet. Need more control. Need to understand the layers, the vibration, the way it intertwines.
He let the spear dissipate and tried again with death energy instead of fire. The black bolt formed, cold, and he pushed it the same way, compressing, layering, trying to give it structure beyond its natural state. It dissolved into smoke.
He kept at it while Fenrir and the warlock went out again, practicing the compression technique, trying to find the right balance. His constructs failed every time.
One more kill. Then the class and whatever comes with it.
He settled in to wait, practicing in his head while his thralls hunted for the final kill.
He thought about what he would need to do to gain a class. How strong he would need to be. The stats he would need available. Equipment, skills, weapons. He wondered if he would be given an impossible quest or transported somewhere else entirely. If he was transported, would he be allowed to keep his weapons and armor?
Would his thralls be transported with him?
In either case, he wouldn't have the time. If he spent too long getting a class, the ogre and its people could outlevel him. They could reach levels of power he could no longer stand against. Whatever process getting a class involved, he would have to do it quickly.
Need more research. Need to find out what I'm up against.
He had a free thrall slot now. Information gathering was no longer out of the question. He would keep the slot free for his classing, but he could make temporary thralls for reconnaissance and research. Use them, learn what he needed, release them when done.
His eyes caught something among the tree branches, high up. From this distance it looked like flying fire, something he recognized.
A corrupted naiad. Thumb-sized creatures of pure demonic energy and nature. It looked like a tiny demonic thing with horns and a crown of pure flames.
"Rhea, i need you, Lift me up there," he pointed.
She extended her hand and he rose into the air, her telekinesis carrying him toward the branches. He swiftly grabbed the little thing, felt its energy against his palm. He pushed demonic energy into it, watched it grow from finger-sized to hand-sized, and bound it with his thrall skill.
The thing waved a hand around. The air got a little warmer. A light breeze of soft warmth. It looked proud of itself.
David felt something else too. For the first time, he sensed a profound wickedness from the little thing. It wanted to blow itself up just to spite him. Tiny creature, tiny power, enormous malice.
He shook his head. "That's one twisted little guy."
Also, air conditioning? That's it? That’s all you got?
He looked at the little thing. "Do you know where more powerful naiads are?"
The tiny creature nodded its horned head.
A few minutes later it raced back toward him screaming, chased by something much larger. A corrupted elemental the size of his head, packed with tons of demonic energy. The little naiad had led it straight to him.
He could sense that it hoped the big one would kill him. Seriously, how defective is this thing? He wondered.
David reached out and consumed the little guy first, its energy flowing into him his thrall slot opening. Then he captured the larger one, binding it with his power. He held it in a cage of energy and death, wrapping the heretic shackle around its form. With his cursed spear in hand—the one that could cut through intangible things—he began with great curiosity, to dissect it.
He cut into the naiad with the cursed spear, opening a seam in its outer layer.
David slowed his breathing and leaned a little closer, Oracle sight open, energy affinity doing most of the work.
The naiad’s interior unfolded to him in layers.
Not flesh. Not organs. Not anything biological, really.
Energy.
Pure energy.
But structured.
That was the part that kept pulling his attention back.
Inside the creature ran branching channels, like veins except not really veins—more like conduits. Lines of compressed energy flowed through them in steady pulses, moving along fixed routes that split, merged, and curved back inward.
A circulation system.
Except what circulated wasn’t blood.
Energy flowed from node to node, each node marked by something that looked suspiciously like a symbol. Not a language he recognized, but patterns embedded into the structure itself. They weren’t decorative. They directed flow.
He followed one pathway with his sight.
Energy moved through a spiral formation, compressed, then redirected along three branching routes. Each branch led into a thicker structure further inside.
Processing junctions.
David tilted his head slightly.
“Huh.”
The entire interior behaved like a system.
Not organic. Constructed.
Except nothing had been constructed. The naiad wasn’t built.
It was grown.
Or… formed.
The closest comparison that came to mind was Rhea’s skill, or the demon knights skill-tree.
The branching structures were disturbingly similar: layered pathways, nested formations, energy flowing through predetermined channels.
Skills had architecture.
So did this thing.
Except this wasn’t a skill.
It was a creature.
Sort of.
He watched longer.
The interior pathways adjusted constantly. Some channels narrowed while others widened, redirecting flow depending on what the creature was doing. The structures weren’t static.
Adaptive.
Which meant the creature wasn’t just energy.
It was something closer to—
David squinted slightly.
“…a living skill.”
Yeah.
That was uncomfortably accurate.
If someone had taken the structural logic behind a skill and scaled it up into an independent system, something that could move and react on its own…
This is probably what it would look like.
The inside of the naiad was dense with these formations. Interlocking layers of pathways and symbols, flowing energy redirecting itself through different configurations as the creature moved.
He started memorizing.
Not because he had a plan.
Just because if you were staring at a moving blueprint made of pure energy, it would be extremely stupid not to try.
The symbols especially.
Some repeated in different places.
Others only appeared once, usually at major junctions.
He couldn’t read them.
But he could remember the shapes.
The most interesting part is the outer layers.
He noticed that wherever he pressed the cursed spear into the creature where it could see him doing it, he felt resistance. Like cutting into wood bark. The thing's skin would compress, twist, intertwine, and harden, resisting his cut. A natural defense. But if he cut where it couldn't see, nothing happened. The blade slid through like it wasn't there.
He studied this effect carefully. His survival depended on it. A dissection only he and Mia's adopted cat could see, if the little demonic-energy-loving thing was here.
He learned that the creature was compressing its skin—made of pure energy—then intertwining it with increasingly dense threads, then layering it, continuously, like energy shaping on steroids, until it formed an almost solid shell. All in the space of a second. Because it saw the threat coming.
He switched to an energy he hadn't used in a while. Mana. He had far less mana than demonic energy and far less control, but the reason he chose to try it with mana was specific. Mana was his resource, and the pathways and patterns he'd studied with Rhea during her perk evolution were mana-based.
The naiad had no mana. Or they did, but David could see that whatever mana they possessed was wholly corrupted by demonic energy.
He used mana anyway. Slowly, with difficulty, he channeled it out into his magic field through his energy affinity alone. It took ten full minutes of unbroken concentration to achieve just that. The moment his mana touched his magic field—which was constructed entirely from demonic energy—the energy seized it. Twisted it. Changed it. Corrupted it.
Like a chain reaction.
The corruption raced back along the connection, all the way to the churning engine-like center in his chest. He hastily disconnected his mana, retreating it back into that center of power. It seemed like his demon body perk and his magic field came with a new drawback. If he tried to channel mana outside his body, he risked full corruption.
It could turn him, and all of his skills, into something like battle sense. And if that happened to calm mind, David would no longer be David
Somewhat aghast at what nearly happened with the mana, David switched to practicing something else. Hardening his demonic energy. He pulled together everything he had learned—studying sigils, picking apart souls, watching the system graft skill perks into Rhea's aura, examining the patterns on her skills, dissecting the corrupted naiad's flesh and watching how it manipulated its own energy. All of it went into the next attempt.
He held his hand out, focused, and shaped a ball of demonic energy above his wrist.
There. That's something.
It floated there, dense, compact. He prodded it with his thoughts, tested its resistance. About as hard as a block of wood. Not that hard, all things considered. But it could be sharpened. That was the point.
He stretched the ball, pulling it thin, then threaded it with heat energy, turning it into a flaming spear. The same kind he'd thrown a hundred times before, but different now. Denser. More solid. He shot it at a nearby tree.
The impact exploded. Scorch marks spread across the bark. And in the center, a small hole punched through.
Not bad. Not great, but not bad.
It was nowhere near as devastating as Rhea's javelins or her telekinetic tug. Those things hit like rockets. This was more like a really sharp stick on fire. But it was something. Progress.
What if I added spin to it? Made it drill instead of just punch. Or layered it more, like the naiad did, make it harder. Maybe use the same principles to try making a sigil. Something… permanent.
His thoughts cut off. Fenrir and the warlock emerged from the trees, dragging a bound creature between them. Level nineteen. Marked Legion hobgoblin. Armor dented, weapons stripped, bound in his shackle and completely at their mercy.
Rhea watched from where she sat, finishing her meal, curious.
David walked over, raised his hand, and killed it. The soul flowed in. The energy followed.
And then he saw it. The system message he had anticipated.
[Lvl 24 → Lvl 25]
[Class Trail Available]
[You will be transported to your Class Trail in five seconds.
Your trail type is—The Abyss Sand’s Shattered Treaty
Actions and achievements made before reaching the classing level, and results in the trail will dictate all class options received. Prepare.]