Marcus walked through the treeline and stopped.
A small village lay ahead, dozens of wooden huts packed together with dirt paths running between them. People were everywhere, shouting and grabbing weapons from racks and barrels. They had gear, swords and bows, and some carried glowing wands. Players, Marcus realized. New ones, judging by their basic equipment.
What caught his eye were the creatures flooding in from the other side.
Green skin, short, twisted faces with yellow eyes and sharp teeth. They carried crude weapons and moved together like a pack.
"These aren't Velnias." Marcus's voice was flat, carrying no emotion, just fact.
He'd fought beasts for years, and these were different. Smaller. Looked weaker. But there were a lot of them.
"Protect our homes with your lives!" someone screamed from the village center.
The green things crashed into the defenders and the dirt paths became chaos. Blood everywhere, people screaming, bodies going down faster than others could fill the gaps.
Marcus watched with cold detachment. Not his fight. Not his village. He didn't know these people and had no reason to care about them.
But standing around accomplished nothing.
He walked over to a dead defender and grabbed the spear lying next to the body. An old thing, worn out, the shaft cracked near the head. Still a weapon, and still better than nothing.
Someone screamed to his left. A man went down with one of the green creatures on top of him, claws tearing into flesh, blood spraying across the dirt.
He gripped the spear and moved forward, looking for an opening. One of the creatures spotted him and charged with its weapon raised and teeth bared. Marcus planted his feet and thrust the spear forward, but the point hit the thing's chest and bounced right off. No damage. The wood was too weak, or his body was too untrained. Probably both.
The creature snarled and swung its clawed hand at his face, sharp claws with bits of teeth stuck between them.
A sword caught the blow and shoved it aside. A girl stepped in front of Marcus, her blade already moving for the counter, and she took the creature's head off in one clean cut. Green blood hit the dirt.
"Trying to get yourself killed?" She didn't look at him, keeping her eyes on the battle. "First day and you're already charging in with broken gear?"
Marcus said nothing. His face stayed blank, showing no gratitude and no embarrassment, just cold assessment. He'd needed help, that was a fact. His body was too weak, another fact. Getting angry or ashamed changed nothing.
The girl glanced back and took in his empty expression. "Oh. The emotionless type. Great." She kicked a dead creature away. "Try not to die in the next five minutes . My name's Liz."
Marcus didn't respond. He was watching the battle, counting creatures and noting how they moved. They fought like animals with no strategy, just numbers and aggression.
The defenders were winning. Slowly. Barely. But winning.
Ten more minutes of brutal fighting later and the last creature dropped. The survivors stood among the corpses, breathing hard, some bleeding, all exhausted. Then they cheered, celebrating like this victory meant something.
Marcus sat on a wooden crate with the same blank face he'd worn throughout. He'd done nothing, contributed nothing, gotten saved by a stranger. In his old life he would've been furious at his own weakness. Now he just felt cold analysis settling over him. He was weak. This has to change.
"Hey." Liz walked over and wiped her blade on a strip of cloth. "You seem new. What's your class, newbie?"
Marcus looked at her but didn't answer.
She waited, then sighed. "Right. Strong silent type. Look, it's your first day, so don't beat yourself up. Everyone struggles at the start. I would've died three times in my first hour." She sheathed her sword and tilted her head toward the nearest hut. "Come on, let's go inside. I'll explain how things work and maybe get you some gear that isn't falling apart."
RAWRRR!!!.
The sound came from the forest, deep and guttural and way louder than anything the creatures they'd just killed could have produced. Everyone stopped at once, stopped celebrating and stopped moving, every eye turning toward the trees.
Four massive shapes came out of the shadows.
They looked like the green creatures but wrong. Eight feet tall at least, with muscles bulging under thick green skin and crude armor across their chests. Real weapons in their hands, axes and clubs, and one of them carried what looked like a whole tree trunk stripped of its branches.
Behind them a fifth figure stepped out, taller and broader than the rest, with scars covering its body like trophies displayed on a wall. It wore actual armor pieced together from metal and leather, and a massive sword rested casually on its shoulder.
The leader.
"You pathetic worms." Its voice was rough but clear, and it spoke with the patience of something that had never needed to hurry. "You refused to surrender this village and serve me like the peasants you are. Seems I've been too nice, sending only my babies to test you."
"Babies?!" someone yelled, looking around at the corpses and the dead friends scattered among them. "Those were just babies?!"
"Kill them all." The leader said it the way someone might order a meal. "Leave nothing alive."
The four massive creatures charged and the defenders threw everything they had at them. Mages launched fire and lightning. Archers loosed arrow after arrow. Swordsmen met them head on with everything they had.
Nothing worked.
The creatures walked through the attacks like they were pebbles. Fire splashed off their skin. Arrows bounced off armor. Swords scraped across thick hides without drawing blood. Then the real killing started.
The first creature grabbed a defender by the head and bit down, teeth going through skull and brain. The second swung its club in a wide arc and three people went flying, bones shattering on impact. The third opened its claws across a group of archers and guts hit the ground along with the screaming.
"Help! Someone help!"
"We're going to die!"
"Run! Just run!"
Panic spread faster than the killing itself. Defenders broke and scattered, some bolting for the forest, and the creatures hunted them down like animals chasing prey that had nowhere to go.
Marcus watched with the same blank face, no fear and no horror, just observation. These things were strong, far stronger than the small ones. His current body had no chance against them.
"Shit!" Liz grabbed her sword and charged forward.
"I'll protect you all, stay behind me!"
She got three steps before one of the creatures backhanded her without even looking. She flew backward into a hut wall and the wood splintered around her. She didn't get back up.
"We're dead." Someone was crying somewhere behind Marcus. "We're all dead."
Marcus stood slowly, his face calm as if nothings happening . But something moved inside him, not fear and not anger, just cold calculation working through the problem.
One of the creatures spotted him and grinned, showing rows of sharp teeth, then started walking over with the slow confidence of something that had all the time in the world to kill one weak human.
Marcus felt the pull.
His body moved on its own, not controlled but guided, like muscle memory from a life he hadn't lived yet. His hands came together in a gesture he didn't know and his mouth opened and words came out, not words he'd learned but words from somewhere deeper and older than anything he could name.
"Hear me, betrayed one. I call upon your rage. I offer you vengeance. Answer me."
The creature's head left its shoulders before the echo of his words died.
It hit the dirt with a wet thud and the body stood for one impossible second with the club still raised, still threatening, before it crumpled to the ground.
The air split open.
Not like a wound but like a curtain being pulled back. Shadow and dust poured through the gap and from inside it came weight, the kind that pressed against your lungs and made every instinct scream old and dangerous and do not run.
The knight stepped through.
Tall and broader than a man had any right to be, wearing armor the color of a starless sky etched with marks that hurt to look at directly. A sword in one gauntleted hand, still dripping green. A visor sealed shut, revealing nothing.
Marcus didn't move. Couldn't.
Then the knight turned to face him and knelt.
The ground shook with the weight of it. One massive knee pressed into the dirt, head bowed, sword planted before him like an offering with both hands resting on the pommel.
The voice that came from behind the visor sounded like stone grinding against stone, low and certain, the voice of something that had waited a very long time for this exact moment.
"You summoned me, Master."
Silence swallowed the field.
Marcus stared at the armored figure kneeling at his feet, at the green blood soaking into the earth, at the gap in the air slowly stitching itself shut behind his summon. His face remained blank.
But inside, something clicked into place.
This was his power.