Chapter 122: You Want to Fight Me? Do You Even Have the Strength?

"Understood."

A voice answered from the shadows behind the mounted commander, and moments later, twenty elite players broke onto the field with an eerie, surgical precision that no ordinary guild could ever hope to replicate.

Hand-picked from millions, every one of them. Four cells of five, named for the order given: Raven, Wolf, Viper, Ghost.

Each individual carried a hidden talent rated B-grade or better, genuine one-in-a-million anomalies.They were not professional gamers by trade; they were professional soldiers first.

Their reflexes and squad coordination had been honed long before they ever touched a terminal, refined through brutal weeks of dedicated training until their in-game execution matched the apex predators of the server’s actual top ranks.

State backing had afforded them resources nobody else could touch: gear meticulously optimized to the limit, and skills tuned by strategists who had clearly studied exactly this kind of engagement.

Officially, their levels remained artificially suppressed, keeping them entirely invisible on the public leaderboard.

Yet measured by real combat output, none of them had anything to prove against the titans sitting atop the Ascendant Rankings.

All four cells converged upon a single objective: Kael’s companions.

The Wraithlord drew first blood as a target, still tearing freely through the enemy formation on his skeletal charger.

An archer clad in crimson leather drew and loosed in a single, fluid motion. The shot arced true, striking home dead center on his breastplate.

Ordinarily, a level gap this wide worked heavily in the Wraithlord’s favor. Control effects landing on something fifty-plus against an average player barely touching forty should have missed more often than not.

These were not ordinary players. Their proprietary hidden class carried a guaranteed-hit clause on every control effect, with skill power scaled up considerably on top of it.

The Wraithlord staggered violently under the impact, locked rigid mid-stride.

The absolute instant that stun landed, the remaining three cells chained their own control effects straight into it with mathematical perfection, leaving no gap at all.

A handful of melee operatives closed the distance, their blades already igniting with skill light.

More bodies piled onto the assault the moment the opening showed, concentrated fire converging from every angle at once.

The Wraithlord had never possessed the grotesque durability of the Void Cataclysm. His entire design leaned on lifesteal through Grim Harvest, not raw resistance.

Locked down continuously, with no window left to land a single hit of his own, the healing simply never triggered.His health collapsed in under fifteen seconds.

The Threshold Seal flared to life, bringing him back instantly with full health restored, only to send him straight back into the same chain of control and the same concentrated fire. A second collapse followed almost as fast as the first.

This time, nothing waited to catch him. He dissolved into a streak of light and withdrew to the Rest Sanctum, out of the fight entirely.

"They got him! Unrivaled’s companion just went down!"

Chat exploded the instant the clip hit the feeds.

"That thing hit like a level-50 Legendary boss. Who even has the raw numbers to take that down?"

"Has to be those mystery operatives everyone’s been speculating about. The gear’s immaculate, has to be official."

"One coordinated burst and they already took out a companion that size. Makes sense if the government’s been quietly developing talent this whole time."

"Unrivaled’s finally met something that actually bites back. Egg against a rock, this time."

"There, they’re already retargeting. Thunder Roc’s getting locked down right now."

"They’re picking his roster apart one piece at a time."

The commentary kept climbing while, below, Kael’s expression had already gone razor sharp.

His gaze swept across the chaos of the valley and found them: twenty figures moving with an economy no normal player squad ever showed.

Recognition hit instantly.

Raven, Wolf, Viper, Ghost. The same four cells that could end careers just by showing up, remembered from a life already lived once.

"Full deployment, all four teams." A cold, humorless smile touched his lips. "Leadership really does think highly of me tonight."

"Guess they genuinely want this fight."

As a man carrying memory from that same prior life, these four units needed no introduction.

They were legendary names, feared across the entire server for exactly what they had just demonstrated.

Very well. Even if their own king walked onto this mud-choked field, taking one of his would still cost something.

"You want a piece of me?" The words hissed out, cold and flat, and he launched himself off the Winterwatch Legion’s line without another word.

His right hand snapped up, aimed at the Void Cataclysm still tearing through the crowd at a distance, and triggered the fusion.

Warden’s Mandate.

The Void Cataclysm let out a sky-shattering roar and dissolved into a dense column of violet light.

The light crossed the battlefield in an instant and folded down over Kael’s frame, condensing into cold, barbed armor that radiated raw, concentrated menace.

Power surged through him the moment the fusion settled, strength flooding every muscle at once.

A Westfall NPC, utterly oblivious to what had just landed on the field, charged in with a leveled spear.

Kael answered with a single contemptuous flick of his wrist, drawing the Bloodscale Reaver’s fused blade from storage and bringing it down in one brutal, decisive stroke. Rider and horse fell in the same cut.

He did not slow down. Momentum carried him straight into a full sprint, cutting through anything still standing between himself and the four closing teams.

The feeds erupted the moment the full picture registered.

"Wait, he’s going in personally?!"

"He’s a Beastlord. Why isn’t he sitting back and letting the companions do the work?"

"Because that’s not just armor he’s wearing. Look closely, that’s a fused companion."

"Fusion’s a Beastlord-exclusive mechanic. It pulls a percentage of the companion’s own stats straight onto the player."

"At this point calling him a Beastlord is a polite understatement. That’s a walking boss fight wearing a person’s face."

"And don’t forget, Unrivaled isn’t the only name attached to that face. Silversong’s standing right there too."

"Watching him draw a blade again, after everything, honestly gave me chills."

"Is this it? The comeback the whole server’s been waiting on since launch?"

"Would everyone stop typing and actually WATCH?!"