The cosmic vista shattered. He wasn’t transported to a peaceful starter village filled with low-level boars and goblins. There was no gentle tutorial. The world reformed around him with a violent lurch, and the sterile silence of the Hero Lab was replaced by a cacophony of sounds. The scent of pine and damp earth filled his nostrils. The roar of a distant beast echoed through the trees. And all around him, the glint of steel and the crackle of nascent magic signaled that the test had already begun.
Before him stretched a wide, chaotic clearing teeming with activity. Hundreds of newly spawned players, their faces a mixture of excitement and confusion, were engaged in a frantic free-for-all.
"Get the Dire Boar! It’s almost dead!" a player in cheap leather armor screamed, swinging a rusty axe.
"Watch out! Mana Stingers! They poison you!" another shrieked as a swarm of oversized, glowing wasps descended upon her party.
Magic flashed and fizzled. Fireballs popped like sparks from wet wood. Ice shards shattered uselessly against trees. The air trembled with beastly roars, players cheering as their levels ticked up for the first time, none realizing how little it mattered.
This was the Overlords Academy Battle Grid...the first gate, the filter. A brutal test dressed as a tutorial.
To most, it was a playground for experience points. To Alvian, it looked like a field of blind animals chasing numbers. Pointless noise. Wasted motion. They were all running toward the same end without knowing it.
His gaze swept across the chaos, detached, almost bored. Players clashed, mobs screamed, and he saw only clutter. His eyes moved past the mess...to the quiet edges. He wasn’t hunting beasts. He was hunting opportunity.
Knowledge was his blade now, honed sharp by memory. Time to draw blood. He turned away from the crowd, slipping into the trees, calm where the world burned behind him. The hunt began.
The forest swallowed the noise, left only breath and wind. He moved like he’d done this a thousand times...which, in a way, he had. The low-tier mobs, the frantic grinding...they were traps for the desperate. He didn’t even glance at them. The real path was invisible to everyone else.
Branches gave way to silver-leafed trees, their glow faint, dying. Ahead, a crumbling shed sagged beneath the weight of years. He knew this place. Few ever would.
And there...just as before...stood the old man. Bent, slow, clothes faded to dirt, a rake in hand. His movements small, meaningless, clearing weeds no one noticed. Every player who passed had written him off as decoration. A background NPC with nothing to offer.
Alvian knew better.
This was Andre, a master-level examiner for Overlords Academy and a former grand knight. He was here in disguise, tasked with finding students who possessed more than just brute strength...students with perception, intelligence, and cunning.
Walking up to a hidden examiner and declaring "I know who you are" would only trigger suspicion and system protocols against exploiting the game. Alvian’s approach had to be subtle, a key designed to unlock a very specific, very personal lock.
He stopped a respectful distance away, not addressing the old man directly. Instead, he let his gaze wander to the small, wilting flowers at the edge of the grove.
They were Moon Petals, a rare flower that bloomed only in the pale light of a full moon. In this neglected patch, they were barely clinging to life.
"It’s a shame," Alvian said, his voice quiet but clear. "Moon Petals. They were her favorite, weren’t they?"
Andre’s hand froze mid-rake. The movement was almost imperceptible, but Alvian, watching him with hawk-like intensity, caught it. The old man didn’t turn around. His hunched shoulders seemed to tense.
"What’s that, lad?" Andre grumbled, his voice raspy with disuse. "Just some old weeds. Best not to dawdle. There are beasts to be slain if you hope to pass."
Alvian took a slow step closer. "My apologies. It’s just... I heard a story once. About a knight whose daughter loved these flowers more than anything. She would sneak out of her bed at night to watch them open, and she would sing a little song to them."
He started to hum...a thin, trembling sound that wove through the air like smoke. A lullaby. Old, cracked with sadness. The kind that carried stories no one wanted to remember.
In his last life, a guild had found Andre’s journal by accident. That discovery had turned into campfire legend among lore hunters...the tale of Elina, the daughter swallowed by the blight from deep inside the Glimmerwood. The forest had gone quiet ever since, as if mourning her too.
Andre froze. The rake slipped from his hand and struck stone, sharp in the stillness. When he turned, the dull eyes of a groundskeeper were gone. What stared back was colder, older...eyes that had seen too much and never healed.
"Who are you?" His voice carried gravel and grief. "How do you know that song?"
Alvian didn’t flinch. "Wanderers listen," he said. "Some songs never die, even when the forest stops singing. The Glimmerwood’s silence...it isn’t peace. It’s pain that wants to be heard."
His words fell soft, deliberate, each one pressing exactly where it hurt most. Not flaunting knowledge...sharing the ache of it.
Andre studied him for a long while. His gaze dragged over Alvian’s plain armor, his weak stats, the strange calm that didn’t fit. No lies in his face, just something steady, unshaken.
The old man’s shoulders sagged. The tension drained from him like air from a punctured lung. A sigh escaped...long, tired, final. "You are no ordinary examinee."
A blue system panel materialized in front of Alvian, visible only to him.
[Ding! You have successfully passed the hidden perception test of Examiner Andre.]
[You have proven yourself to be a candidate of exceptional insight.]
Andre’s form shimmered, and the drab groundskeeper’s clothes dissolved, replaced by the ornate, silver-and-blue armor of a high-ranking knight. The stooped old man stood tall, his presence now radiating an aura of immense power.
"The DeathWood Arena was once a place of vibrant life, its heart a source of pure natural energy," Andre said, his voice now filled with a solemn authority. "But for weeks, it has been silent. No birds sing, no creatures stir. The life force of the forest is being choked by an unknown corruption. The other examiners believe it is a natural phenomenon, not worth investigating during an entrance exam." His hand clenched into a fist. "I believe otherwise. I believe it is connected to the same blight that... that took my Elina."
He looked Alvian directly in the eyes. "The other hopefuls are chasing boars for points. A meaningless endeavor. I will offer you a true test, a task worthy of an Overlord."
A new notification rang in Alvian’s mind, this one glowing with a regal, golden light.
┏━━━━━━━[ Secret Quest Acquired ]━━━━━━━┓
│ Quest: The Silent Grove
│ Rank: S-Tier (Battle Grid Exclusive)
│ Objective: Enter the DeathWood Arena and investigate the source of the unnatural silence.
│ Discover the nature of the corruption afflicting the Heart of the Grove.
│ Description: Examiner Andre believes a dark presence has taken root within the
│ DeathWood Arena, the same malevolence that claimed his daughter years ago. While others
│ fight for scraps, you have been tasked with confronting a true threat.
│ Rewards:
│ - Massive influx of Examination Points.
│ - High-Grade Skill Tome (Rank determined by performance).
│ - Andre’s Favor (Reputation +500 with Overlords Academy Faculty).
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
Alvian accepted without hesitation. The rewards were spectacular, far beyond anything that could be gained from mindlessly grinding mobs. The skill tome alone was a game-changer.
"The Grove will not welcome you," Andre warned, his voice grave. "The beasts within have been driven mad by the corruption. They are far stronger than anything else in these grounds. This is a path to glory, or a very quick death."
"Glory is forged in danger," Alvian replied, his voice a flat, confident statement.
A flicker of approval crossed Andre’s face. He nodded once.
"Go, then. Let the fools chase their boars. Show me what an anomaly like you can do."