His exam score, already colossal from the S-Tier quest, skyrocketed into a realm of utter absurdity. The players outside the mine, checking the public leaderboard on their interfaces, saw something that broke their understanding of reality.
The top rank...Valeria's turf for ages, vanished under a stranger's name: Alvian. No one knew who he was. His score didn't just pass hers, it rocketed upward, tens of thousands at a time, climbing like someone had strapped the leaderboard to a runaway elevator.
Right as his two-minute boost thinned out, Alvian crushed his fifth golem. Level 8 now. He slipped into a narrow crack in the rock, breathing steady, pulse buzzing with fresh strength. Three minutes to cool down. He waited, eyes drawn toward the deeper tunnels, as if something down there had whispered his name.
The three-minute cooldown dragged on, stretching far longer than it had any right to.
Alvian didn't move inside the narrow crack of rock. He lingered there like some half-formed shadow trying not to exist. Power pulsed through him. It reminded him of what it felt like to actually hold the knife instead of the begging bowl.
In the life he crawled through before this one, he never got more than scraps. A rat chewing on the edges of other people's victories. They crushed him for even daring to want more.
Now the balance had flipped. He wasn't prey anymore. The entire world lay out there, unaware it had already been marked.
His exam score, a number he barely glanced at, had already mutated into something monstrous. The S-Tier quest had given him a foundation, but the five golem kills had launched him into a completely different stratosphere. He was no longer just leading; he was breaking the very concept of the leaderboard.
He pulled up his status panel, his eyes immediately locking onto the blinking notification.
[You have 28 Unassigned Stat Points.]
A cold, calculating light filled his eyes. In his previous life, stat distribution was a matter of intense debate and theory-crafting. Players would agonize over every single point. For Alvian, there was no debate. There was only the perfect, optimized path he had seen others walk, a path he would now sprint down.
His 'SkillBurst' class had no modifiers, no innate strengths. This meant every point was pure potential. He needed to be a phantom, an assassin who ended fights before they began. That required two things above all else: the speed to close the distance and deliver the blow, and the strength to make that one blow count.
'System, allocate 15 points to Speed and 13 points to Strength.'
[Ding! Stat allocation complete.]
A fresh wave of energy, more refined and potent than a simple level-up, flooded his body. His muscles coiled with a new, wiry power. His senses sharpened, and he felt a profound lightness in his limbs, as if the very laws of gravity had lessened their grip on him.
┏━━━━━━[ Attributes Updated ]━━━━━━┓
│ Strength: [1] -> [14]
│ Speed: [1] -> [16]
│ Physique: [1] -> [5]
│ Energy: [1] -> [5]
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
He had poured almost everything into his offensive capabilities, leaving his defensive stats laughably low. A single unblocked hit from a golem would still turn him into paste. It was the ultimate glass-cannon build, a choice that would be suicidal for anyone else. But they didn't have [Shadow Weave +2]. They couldn't become untouchable at will.
The final second of his cooldown ticked away. The icon for [Shadow Weave] on his interface pulsed, ready.
A predator's smile touched Alvian's lips. It was time for the harvest to continue.
Meanwhile, at the entrance of the Crystalvein Mines, the atmosphere was one of stunned, terrified disbelief.
"No… No f*cking way," Jax, Valeria's shield-bearer, stammered, his finger trembling as he pointed at the holographic leaderboard projected from his interface. "Look at that! Look at the score for number one!"
Valeria's gaze was already locked onto it, her grey eyes narrowed into icy slits. The name 'Alvian' was enthroned at the top, but it was the number next to it that defied all logic. It was a figure with so many digits that it looked like a system glitch. And it was still climbing.
[1. Alvian - 135,400 Points]
[2. Valeria - 28,650 Points]
[3. Kael - 21,100 Points]
Her meticulously planned, ruthlessly efficient grind had been rendered a complete joke. The gap wasn't just large; it was an insult. It was a chasm so vast it suggested they weren't even participating in the same exam.
"How is he doing that?!" Lia, their mage, whispered, her voice a mixture of awe and fear. "Is he… is he in the mine?"
"He has to be," Kael, the rogue, hissed, his face tight with envy. "We saw him walk in. But it's impossible. The golems in there are Level 10. We tried to fight one. Jax's shield barely dented it, and its stomp attack nearly wiped us out!"
Valeria remained silent, her mind racing, processing data like a supercomputer. She had replayed the encounter with the strange, unnervingly calm player over and over. Level 1. No gear. No party. He had spoken to her with the dismissive air of a god observing an insect. She had brushed it off as arrogance. Now, she was forced to confront a horrifying possibility: perhaps it was justified.
"There's an exploit," she said finally, her voice low and tense. "It's the only explanation. A safe spot. A terrain glitch. He's found a way to kill the golems without engaging them in combat. It's dishonorable, but it's the only logical conclusion."
Her logic was flawless. It was also completely wrong.
"[Shadow Weave +2]."
Alvian's form dissolved back into the intangible fabric of the darkness. He was a whisper once more, a phantom of vengeance. He pushed deeper into the mine, his newly enhanced speed allowing him to glide over the uneven stone floor without a sound.
The layout of the mine was a perfect map in his head. He bypassed the main, wide-open caverns, instead slipping into a series of narrower side tunnels...places where the golems' patrol routes converged, creating a perfect chain of assassination targets.
He found his first victim within seconds. A Crystal-Infused Golem, its stone body overgrown with jagged, glowing blue shards. It was a variant, slightly stronger, its core better protected. For Alvian, it was just a slightly more interesting puzzle.
He flowed behind it, the sharp golem shard he'd picked up earlier held tight in his hand. This time, he didn't need to put his entire body weight into the blow. His 14 points of Strength, while still low by warrior standards, was more than enough when applied to a single, perfect point of failure.
He moved with the liquid grace his 16 points of Speed afforded him. He was a blur of motion, a living shadow.
Shnk.
The sound was barely audible. The shard slid into the micro-fracture in the golem's matrix with surgical precision. The construct froze, its crystalline growths flaring with a final, brilliant burst of light before shattering into a thousand glittering pieces.
[Ding! You have slain a Level 10 Crystal-Infused Golem! +51,750 EXP!]
[You have leveled up!]
"BOOM!"
The rush of power was even more intense this time. Level 9. The notifications were a blur, the experience points a tidal wave. He didn't pause. He didn't celebrate. He simply moved to the next target.
This was no longer a battle. It was a disassembly line.
He became a ghost haunting the mines, an engine of pure, unadulterated efficiency. He flitted from one lumbering giant to the next, a phantom reaper harvesting a crop of stone and crystal. The process was burned into his muscle memory.
Approach. Identify weakness. Strike. Vanish.
Another golem turned a corner, its heavy footfalls shaking the tunnel. As it passed, its [Stomp] ability triggered, sending a shockwave of force rippling through the ground. The wave washed over Alvian's semi-ethereal form.
A damage number appeared above his head, visible only to him.
[-45 HP]
A direct hit would have dealt over 150 damage, instantly killing him. His 30% damage immunity had turned a fatal blow into a scratch. The synergy between his skill and his glass-cannon build was flawless. It was a dance on the edge of a razor blade, and he was the only one who knew the steps.
[You have slain a Level 10 Earth Golem! +45,000 EXP!]
[You have leveled up!]
Level 10. In less than an hour, he had gained nine levels. The sheer absurdity of his growth rate would have broken the spirit of any other player. For Alvian, it was merely the first step. It was the bare minimum required to begin his true preparations for the apocalypse.
The two-minute duration of his skill was a relentless clock. He moved faster, his strikes becoming more economical, more certain. He was a machine calibrated for a single purpose: extermination.
He cut down a third golem in that wave. A fourth followed soon after. The cavern looked ruined now—splintered bodies of stone everywhere, little sparks of fading light blinking out one by one. His name on the leaderboard outside didn't rise anymore; it twitched and stuttered like the system couldn't keep up.
When the last few seconds of [Shadow Weave +2] thinned out, he crushed his fifth golem of the run—his tenth overall.
[You have slain a Level 10 Earth Golem! +45,000 EXP!]
[You have leveled up! You are now Level 11!]
The stealth peeled off him while he slipped behind a broad pillar of stone. His physical form settled back into place, heavier, more real. The cavern finally went still. No footsteps. No patrols. Nothing but dust.
He stayed there a moment, lungs pulling in the cold air, every new level humming under his skin. A whole guild was meant to handle this place. Somehow, he had turned it into a personal playground.
He felt less like a player and more like something people warned each other about.
The silence didn't last. A faint noise drifted through it—soft, strained. Not stone grinding. Not mana humming. A human sound.
A weak groan.
His gaze snapped toward a collapsed corner at the far end. Shadows clung to the rubble, but his eyes picked out slight movement. His memories contained countless details, yet gaps still existed. This… sat in the gaps.
His body shifted instinctively, low and controlled. The shard in his hand angled forward. Whatever waited in that pile of rock wasn't part of the exam. It didn't belong here.
What could it be?