Chapter 4: Ten Scouting Parties! Gold Skyrockets!

The moment the announcement ended, the entire world fell silent.

John stood frozen in front of the altar.

He stared up at the blood-red words hanging across the sky, his fingers slowly curling into fists at his sides.

"Top ten percent?"

"And a Divine-Tier Chest for first place?"

His heart began pounding.

In his previous life, the rules had been completely different.

As long as a Lord managed to survive the Novice Trial Period and keep their territory intact, they were guaranteed to pass and become an official Lord.

But now—

the system had changed the rules.

Not only would ninety percent of all Lords be eliminated, but the first-place reward had also been upgraded to a Divine-Tier Chest.

On Godfall Continent, treasure chests dropped by elite monsters followed the same twelve-Star ranking system as units.

1-Star through 12-Star.

But unlike units, treasure chests had one legendary rank above 12-Star.

Divine-Tier.

That alone showed just how valuable the reward was.

"They’re forcing everyone to turn on each other..."

John muttered.

After all, what better way to eliminate a competitor than to destroy their territory and strip them of any chance to qualify?

Without realizing it, John opened the newly unlocked chat window in the upper-right corner of his vision.

World Chat had already descended into complete chaos.

Messages were flooding past at a rate of tens of thousands per second.

"What the hell?! Ninety percent of us get eliminated? How is that any different from telling us to die right now?!"

"Exactly! I awakened an F-Rank Logging talent! How the hell am I supposed to compete for the top ten percent against people with S-Rank talents?!"

"HELP! I spawned beside a volcanic field and it’s crawling with Tier-3 Lava Lizards! The second the three-day protection period ends, I’m dead!"

"Anyone from the Judgment Alliance taking this year’s trial? I’m Lucas Whitmore, heir to the Whitmore family in New Avalon. If any senior Alliance members see this, send me your coordinates. I’ll pay five million credits in the real world if you can carry me through the trial!"

"Real-world money is worthless in here, genius! Who gives a damn about your five million credits? Top ten percent means only one out of every ten people makes it! You think the Alliance members don’t need to qualify too?!"

"That Divine-Tier Chest belongs to the Judgment Alliance!"

"I-I want to go home... I don’t want to be a Lord anymore... someone please let me back into the underground cities..."

John tapped the air and closed the interface.

There was no point watching World Chat right now.

The only thing it would accomplish was drowning him in everyone else’s panic and despair.

The system had already made the situation perfectly clear.

Within thirty days, he either became an official Lord—

or he went back underground as a failure.

John still wasn’t sure whether the sudden rule change had anything to do with his rebirth.

A butterfly effect, perhaps.

But it didn’t matter.

He was going to qualify.

No matter what.

"The priority right now is to develop as fast as possible while the protection period is still active."

John immediately raised his hand and summoned a holographic terrain map of his territory.

Only the circular area within five kilometers of his current position was illuminated.

Everything beyond it was hidden beneath thick gray fog.

Unexplored territory.

In the upper-right corner of the holographic map, a line of green text flickered continuously.

Dark-0914.

His coordinates.

John compared the map with the fragments of information he still remembered from his previous life.

"This is the far western outskirts."

He exhaled, and some of the tension in his jaw finally eased.

That was good news.

The farther he was from the center of the Novice Map, the safer his starting position would be.

After all, the Novice Map covered an area of nearly eighty million square kilometers.

Even though John had been a production-type Lord in his previous life and had explored plenty of territory, there was no way he could remember everything spread across such an enormous map.

"First step."

"Reveal the map."

John looked toward the army standing silently on the hilltop and immediately issued an order.

"Form ten scouting squads."

"Fifty units per squad."

"Use the territory as the center point and spread out in ten directions—north, northeast, east, southeast, and so on."

"Avoid any groups of monsters above 1-Star along the way."

"Scout out to twenty kilometers, then immediately turn back."

"Mark every resource node you encounter with a spear."

"If you find a gold mine, mine it on the spot."

"Understood."

The formation split apart instantly.

There was no confusion.

No hesitation.

The five hundred Undead Spearmen automatically divided into ten squads of fifty and scattered in different directions.

John remained beside the altar and closed his eyes.

Deep within his consciousness, the pitch-black map slowly began to light up.

"Shared Vision."

Streams of sensory information from his units poured into the map.

But the range of Shared Vision wasn’t unlimited.

At John’s current level, twenty kilometers was roughly the maximum distance over which he could maintain effective control.

"Twenty kilometers is enough for the first sweep."

John opened his eyes and brought up his personal status panel.

A pale blue interface appeared in front of him.

[Lord Identification Number: Lower City–Sequence 13–9527]

[ID: Tyrant]

[Lord Level: Lv.1 — 0/100 EXP]

[Talent: 10,000× Acceleration — SSS-Rank, Unique]

[Class: Undead Sovereign — Hidden, Unique]

[Vitality: 5]

[Agility: 5]

[Spirit: 5]

[Strength: 5]

[Skills: Undead Conversion, Absolute Dominion]

All four core attributes were at five points.

That was the standard baseline for an eighteen-year-old human entering Godfall Battlefield.

To put that into combat terms—

a fully grown man with professional combat training and a refined iron dagger could probably beat two and a half Johns in a straight fight.

Of course, his attributes would increase as he leveled up.

But leveling as a Lord in Godfall Battlefield was extremely difficult.

There were two primary ways for a Lord to increase their level.

The first was through army feedback.

Whenever units killed monsters, they gained EXP and increased their own levels.

A Lord’s level was tied directly to the average level of all units under their command.

More precisely, the system recorded the highest average army level the Lord had ever achieved.

Once a Lord reached a certain level, recruiting lower-level units would not cause that level to drop.

Their level would simply remain where it was until the overall army average rose high enough for them to advance again.

The second method was for the Lord to kill monsters personally.

But that method was painfully inefficient.

Most Lords had very limited offensive abilities.

Of course, there were always exceptions.

Some absurdly lucky individuals awakened powerful combat talents or offensive skills.

John remembered one such player from the rankings.

That man had dominated an entire region of Godfall Battlefield for years through sheer personal combat strength and fewer than a hundred extremely high-Star units.

But that style clearly wasn’t suited to John.

"Being personally overpowered sounds nice."

John’s lips flattened into a thin line.

"But that’s a gamble for heaven’s chosen."

Before a Lord truly developed, they were nothing more than walking meat in the eyes of the beasts roaming the wasteland.

So for now, staying inside the absolutely safe protection barrier was the only sensible choice.

On the holographic map, ten green trails rapidly extended outward.

Undead creatures did not tire.

They had no stamina to exhaust.

Their pace remained perfectly steady, always hovering at the fastest speed they could maintain.

Dense shrubs were torn apart.

Gray-brown earth gradually appeared across the map.

Two kilometers.

Five kilometers.

Eight kilometers...

Then—

the number in the upper-right corner of John’s interface suddenly jumped.

The Gold counter, which had dropped back to zero earlier, changed instantly.

Gold: 100!

John’s eyes lit up.

One of the squads had found a gold mine.