"My lord!" Doran roared as the explosion rippled outward, sending shards of armor and flesh flying in all directions like shrapnel from a grenade.

The blast wave hit like a wall. Heat and the sharp smell of scorched metal filled the air.

Snowbreath, standing slightly behind Erick, threw both hands over her face, but her helmet was still ripped clean off by the brutal force of the detonation.

Long black hair flew wild into the air, whipping across her shoulders as dark eyes and a pale skin, every bit as beautiful as Alice’s, were revealed. The shockwave staggered her half a step back.

Her full lips parted in a sweet gasp, eyes widening in shock.

Erick laughed with satisfaction and turned to the girls at once. A gleam took over his face as he drank in Snowbreath’s beauty.

"Now that this bastard is out of the way, come on, I’ll give you the prize I promised and—"

The words died in his throat.

"This armor... I was quite fond of it. I hope you’re ready to pay the price." A voice full of murderous intent echoed from behind him.

Erick spun around just in time to see every drop of blood scattered across the floor rush back at an absurd speed, as if reconstructing the entire destroyed upper half of Ethan’s body out of thin air.

Flesh, bones, muscles, everything molding back together like living clay.

What kind of cheat ability was that?

Erick dropped to the floor. Terrified and trembling, he scrambled on all fours behind the girls.

They were players. If they died, they could respawn twenty-four hours later.

But if he died, he was done for!

Ethan’s cold gaze fell on the three girls standing before Erick. Especially the one in the middle.

Snowbreath. The one whose helmet had been torn away by the explosion.

He didn’t admire her beauty. Nor her long, silky black hair flowing down her back. Nor her delicate face, too perfect to be human. Nor her creamy, milk-pale skin. Nor her full, sensual lips.

He noticed none of it.

But she noticed him.

A faint blush spread across the woman’s beautiful face, her eyes locking onto his like a girl who had just seen the white prince of her dreams.

That masculine, deadly handsome face. The perfect muscles of his toned abdomen, each line carved deep and his powerful chest, sculpted as if by divine hands.

Even his cold gaze, dripping with murderous intent, sent a shiver crawling down her spine.

It was as if he were one of the protagonists from the webnovels she liked to read.

How could a man like this exist?

Ethan paid no attention to her. His irritation was too great to admire any beauty, even one who was, without a doubt, comparable to Alice.

Snowbreath took a half step back and heard one of her friends speak up behind her.

"Oh, fuck, this NPC is hot!"

The mage barely finished the sentence before her head was sent flying through the air. Ethan’s blade split the wind without mercy, killing all three players before any of them could react.

Their bodies disintegrated into tiny fragments of light before they even hit the ground.

[Warning: You have killed a player! If you wish to absorb their soul, you must do so within 1 minute of their death!

Absorbing a player’s soul will result in their permanent death.]

Ethan reached out, Mireya’s blood-red pendant still hanging around his neck, but in the end, he let his hand fall.

He should know what a player actually was before doing something like that.

If it was what he was thinking, he’d rather not kill those women.

He sighed, glancing at his blood reserves.

Rebuilding his body entirely from scratch had cost only seven hundred blood points. That pleased him.

It was good he’d brought only Mireya. Evelyn and Alice had stayed behind with Elena, who was supervising their advance.

He didn’t want Alice to see him explode like that.

His eyes landed on Erick, and he intensified the pressure of his Lord’s Aura.

"You’re going to die today."

The words were for both Erick and the trembling Ulric.

The old man tried to attack, but before he could even raise his hand, the Fallen Moon’s blade had already severed his wrist.

His hand flew through the air, trailing a thin red arc of blood.

The wet, meaty sound of severed flesh filled the echoed, chased by a strangled scream.

"W-wait, I can—"

The timer for his mission had already started, so Ethan didn’t waste a single second on their pleas.

Under the horrified gazes and shattered morale of Erick’s army, he poured every last drop of blood in his reserve into the Blood Emperor’s Ring’s offensive ability while activating the Burning Blood body enhancement technique.

His attributes skyrocketed. Only slightly weaker than a third-stage expert, and far superior to even a second-stage warrior with S-rank talent.

"Sixty seconds..."

He counted down in his head and charged.

He didn’t even need his guard.

A sea of blood spread around his feet.

By the time Erick’s second-stage warriors realized what was happening and tried to organize a defense, it was already too late.

Erick was the first to die.

A blood-red spear punched straight through his chest.

The impact lifted him clean off the ground, eyes bulging with shock as blood spilled from his lips and splattered the ground below.

Ulric came next.

Then dozens more crimson spears erupted from the ground, each connected to Ethan’s body by thin red threads that pulsed with a faint, sickly glow.

Blood sprayed in every direction.

The few second-stage warriors who dodged the spears met their end at Ethan’s sword.

His movement technique and physical enhancement pushed his agility past four hundred while a peak second-stage warrior rarely broke seventy or eighty points.

There was no comparison.

Had there been even a single third-stage warrior among them, Ethan would have faced a bitter fight and had to call on Mireya to deal with the specialist.

But against second-stage warriors, he feared nothing. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

His gaze swept upward, landing on the first-stage mercenaries. They stood trembling, watching their entire leadership collapse in a single second.

They didn’t hesitate to run, but sadly for then, Ethan had no intention of leaving loose ends.

No one there would escape alive.