It was a jarring change of reality.
One moment, the horizon was a sucking, miserable expanse of marshland; the next, it was a vertical wall of an ancient tropical world.
Percival craned his neck, looking up into the gloom of the Mangrove Battlefield.
Just as he remembered it.
Well, truthfully, his memory wasn’t that clear at all. But seeing it again, he was struck with suck clarity that it felt like he was reliving that day.
The cries. The terror. The slaughter as numbers of Awakeners were killed by lizard men and lizard birds.
All of it has occurred in this chaotic, impossible architecture. The mangrove trees were as tall as the concept of the word, reaching the far sky with thick barks as thick as buildings and roots as massive as castle towers.
There was barely any ground here, just roots and more roots, twisting at every corner, forming a precarious, multi-layered web suspended over the abyss.
The sunlight although strong was blocked by the leaves of the hundred trees, giving this lend a colder feel of dread to it, despite the already terrifying nature of the giant roots.
Percival held Lightpiercer tight as the memories of his past life continued, superimposing themselves over the scenery.
The party he was with had entered this zone with confidence, only to be dismantled piece by piece.
They had been looking at the path ahead, watching for monsters on the "road." They hadn’t realized that in the Mangrove Battlefield, the road was the monster.
The Draconian Stalkers, Percival thought, his eyes scanning the seemingly empty branches above.
He remembered those dreadful beasts.
They had been invisible. Silent.
No one expected the ambush. And when it came, there was barely any escape.
It had started with the Healer choking on a poisoned dart, followed by the terrifying realization that the "moss" on the trees was shifting, peeling away to reveal scales and spears.
They had been flanked from above, below, and behind before they even drew their weapons.
Even as a party of thirty, they had barely survived.
So why the hell was Percival daring to challenge this alone?
Being alone meant he was an easier target: a single point of failure.
But Percival saw it differently.
He didn’t have a panicked party to protect. He didn’t have to shout orders to idiots who wouldn’t listen.
He knew exactly where the blind spots were, and he knew that the only way to survive an ambush was to be the one who struck first.
But first, he needed his army. He needed their eyes in every direction.
"Awake," he summoned.
Thirty-six pillars of cold blue fire erupted from the wood around him, hissing as they met the moisture of the swamp.
The flames swirled and solidified, knitting together bone and steel.
The fire faded, and Percival’s Skeleton Soldiers stood in their place.
All thirty-six of them: new and old.
Their upgraded equipment glistened ready for battle. The Furnace Steel armor, the Blazeforged Blades and Phoenix Bows all blazen with Soulfire.
The lighter Titan Silverwrought armor of some of the newer recruits shone as well with the same determination to battle.
All they needed now was their master’s command.
—---—
Some distance behind Percival, the three Guild Squads finally left the hills and arrived into the humid, stinking air of the Rot-Water Expanse.
After the Unwelcoming Hills, they were all sweating and their boots were caked in sand. Now, in this new zone, the same boots and greaves were sinking into the thick, black muck of the swamp.
"Form the line!" the Iron Guard Captain barked, his voice strained. "The Crocs here have metallic hides! We need the heavy-hitters up front! Don’t let them drag you into the water!"
"Mages, keep the mist cleared!" the Heaven’s Blade Captain yelled, her eyes scanning the dark water for ripples. "I want full visibility! Don’t let them ambush the rear!"
"Heh. What if the Hero has already cleared this Zone as well?"
"What? That would be pushing it, don’t you think?"
"Let’s check then! Ahead!" The Golden Spire leader commanded.
They charged into the first clearing of the swamp, weapons leveled, expecting an attack.
But of course, right away, they met the dead Ironhide Mire-Crocs.
They were scattered across the rot-water like broken stones. Every single one of them had been slaughtered.
The Iron Guard Captain walked over to the nearest beast, a massive Level 40 alpha. He stared at its back, and his face turned a deep, angry red.
"He has to have some kind of party with him."
The Heaven’s Blade leader stood from inspecting a Croc. "He looted all their scales. He must have known that Ironhide is quite expensive."
"He looted all of them?" the Golden Spire Captain demanded, pushing past the Awakeners in front of him.
He looked down and swore. The thick, metallic Ironhide plating—the most valuable resource in the zone—had been meticulously stripped from the carcasses. "He really took it? All of it?"
"He didn’t just take the hides," the Heaven’s Blade Captain said, her voice flat with disbelief as she checked another corpse. "The Cores are gone too. He harvested them. Every single one."
She looked up at the other two, her eyes wide. "We’ve been running at full tilt, and he still had time to stop and skin thirty-six Mire-Crocs? How much inventory space does this brat have?!"
"It’s not possible," the Iron Guard Captain growled, his earlier confidence completely shattered.
He looked at the clean, precise punctures. He saw the same blueish residue from the hills staining the wounds.
"To clear the hills, then clear the swamp, and then loot it all... while we were right behind him? It’s mathematically insane! Especially for a Lvl 28."
"Just how powerful is this Necromancer Class?" the Golden Spire Captain hissed. "To clear two zones in an A-Ranked Gate World at just Lvl 28."
The Heaven’s Blade leader scoffed. "I thought you said it was a glitch?"
Golden Spire glared at her. "Shut your mouth you!"
She sighed, rolling her eyes at him. "At this point, if he’s clearing Encounter Zones like this, he’ll reach the boss before we do. He’s probably miles ahead. He’s not even treating this like an Alpha Gate anymore. He’s treating it like a goddamn farm."
"Hm... you are right," Golden Spire said with a guantleted hand on his chin.
"Move!" the Heaven’s Blade Captain screamed, turning to her party. "We can not return empty-handed!"
"Yes move!"
"March Iron Guard! March!"