The others stood frozen, staring up at Ethan in stunned disbelief.

Far below, the Stone Giant’s massive body crashed into the ground, sending tremors rippling through the earth. Dust and debris billowed outward, swallowing the landscape in a choking haze, yet Ethan remained suspended high in the air, unmoving, as if the impact meant nothing to him.

He didn’t descend. He didn’t even speak. Hayes and the others couldn’t tell what he was doing.

The truth was, Ethan himself had no idea either. Because a voice had just spoken inside his head.

It was familiar, yet completely out of place, like hearing something from a dream echo into reality.

[System notification: Eastern Sea Trial grounds: Stone Giant eliminated. Eastern Sea Trial grounds activated.]

[System notification: Stone Giant eliminated. Experience gained: 50%. First-kill bonus: double experience.]

[System notification: Linked ID detected: NotADruid. Character level increased to 65.]

Three messages, appearing without warning, each one striking harder than the last.

For a moment, Ethan’s mind went completely blank.

’Where am I?’

The phrasing, the tone, the structure of the messages, there was no mistaking it. This was Ethereal’s system interface.

And it wasn’t in front of him. It was inside his head.

For a brief, disorienting second, he almost believed he had never left the game at all. That everything since then had been some kind of elaborate illusion.

But the memory came rushing back just as quickly. He had been set up, thrown into the Divine Sea Temple’s trial grounds against his will.

Except the notification hadn’t said that; It said Eastern Sea Trial grounds. And the Stone Giant... was that really just a system monster?

"What the hell is going on..."

He checked himself instinctively, waiting for some visible change. A glow, a surge of power, anything that might confirm what he was feeling.

Nothing.

"Open character panel."

"Open friends list."

Silence. No interface appeared, no translucent screens, no response at all.

After a few seconds, Ethan exhaled slowly and forced himself to let it go. There was no point chasing something he couldn’t access.

Morzan. It had to be him. That old geezer must have found a way to connect this place to Ethereal’s system.

Ethan’s gaze drifted downward toward Hayes and the others. They were still looking up at him, clearly shaken, but not in the same way he was.

They hadn’t heard the voice. Which meant something important.

If Ethan was experiencing this through the lens of the game... then to him, these people might as well be NPCs.

"Morzan... where the hell did you go?"

The old man had gone silent. No matter how many times Ethan tried to call out to him, there was no response.

With nothing else to go on, Ethan let himself drop back to the ground.

"Let’s move," he said simply.

There was a new edge of interest in his voice now.

"Right... yeah."

The others snapped out of their daze, though the way they looked at him had changed. There was something deeper there now, something closer to awe.

They continued forward, cutting a direct path toward the entrance of the third layer. Between them and their destination lay eight more red zones, each one marked in their ancestors’ records, each one home to a dangerous beast.

One of them was a four-star celestial beast, a wind-element wolf.

It didn’t last long.

Ethan stepped forward and threw a single punch. The impact crushed the wolf’s skull instantly, the force tearing through its body and obliterating half of it in a spray of blood and shattered bone.

Every time it happened, Ethan’s eyes lit up just a little more. One monster, one level.

He still couldn’t see his stats, but the notifications kept coming, and more importantly, he could feel the difference. Each level brought a slight increase in strength, subtle but undeniable, like a steady climb upward.

He hadn’t logged into Ethereal in over a year and a half. By now, the main player base had long surpassed him. That was why he hadn’t bothered returning. Once a world-first player, reduced to obscurity.

It had been humiliating.

But this? This was leveling.

Eventually, they reached a massive stone door. It stood sealed, smooth and seamless, with no visible cracks or joints. Ethan circled it once, then again, frowning slightly.

You could simply walk around it. Front, back, sides, there was nothing stopping anyone from bypassing it entirely.

"What’s the point of this thing?" he muttered.

Beside him, Hayes was trembling slightly as she raised a jade disc in her hands.

"Five generations... and we can finally enter the third layer."

Ethan glanced at her. "Five generations?"

That meant no one from her clan had made it this far in over a hundred years. And yet they had talked about fighting for the key as if it were within reach. Without him, they likely never would have gotten here.

Hayes stepped forward toward the door, her movements careful, almost reverent. Ethan didn’t stop her.

Instead, he pulled out his own jade token and studied the map again, his eyes lingering on the remaining red zones.

It was tempting. A perfect farming route.

But he forced himself to look away. Time mattered more. The Temple Lord had thrown him into this place out of fear, and that alone told Ethan everything he needed to know.

If he stayed trapped here while Uncle Jed’s group was in danger... He didn’t finish the thought.

"How does this work?" he asked.

Hayes didn’t answer. She had already dropped to her knees, the others following suit as they bowed their heads in silent prayer.

Ethan frowned slightly but said nothing, waiting until they finished.

When Hayes stood again, she turned to him. "The disc is already charged. Your soul energy did that. It just needs to be placed into the slot."

She pointed to a shallow recess in the stone door, shaped perfectly to fit the disc.

"And the praying?" Ethan asked.

"The third layer is different," she said quietly. "That’s where it becomes truly dangerous. Most of our ancestors... died up there."

Ethan gave a small nod. He understood the gesture, even if he didn’t share the sentiment.

Fighters lived. Fighters died. In the end, only the winners remained.

Hayes stepped forward and inserted the disc. A deafening boom echoed across the trial grounds.

A series of heavy clicks followed, one after another, as if some ancient mechanism was awakening after centuries of silence. The ground trembled, and a pillar of light shot straight into the sky.

The massive stone door began to open, its panels sliding sideways, not retracting into the structure but simply vanishing as if they had never existed at all.

In their place, a translucent membrane shimmered faintly, like the surface of water.

[System notification: Eastern Sea Trial grounds, third layer unlocked.]

Ethan’s eyes narrowed slightly. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

’There it is.’

---

Far away, deep within the second layer, a camp of over a hundred people lay scattered across a clearing.

Most were resting. A few kept watch.

Suddenly, a young man burst out of his tent and stared toward the distant pillar of light.

"The third layer door... opened? That’s impossible."

"Zatan? What’s going on? Is it Hayes?"

Zatan didn’t respond. His expression darkened as he stared at the light. He had left people behind to delay Hayes and her group, yet none of them had reported back.

In his mind, Hayes and the others were nothing more than children, even though he himself wasn’t much older.

Arrogance had always come naturally to him.

"Move. Now."

There was no hesitation in his voice.

Around him, people scrambled out of their tents, still groggy, confused, trying to make sense of the situation. But when they saw Zatan’s face, they didn’t question him. Everyone knew his temper. The man barely listened to his own father.

Packs were grabbed in a rush, tents half-folded. A sharp crack rang out, one of the men was sent flying, crashing into the dirt after taking a backhand from Zatan.

"Forget the gear. Move," he snapped.

Without another word, he turned and ran straight into the forest.

"Zatan, wait! That way is a red zone!" someone shouted after him.

If he heard it, he didn’t care. The remaining group hesitated for only a moment.

"You want to get beaten?" one of them muttered.

That was enough warning; one person followed, then another. Within seconds, the entire camp abandoned everything and rushed after him.

---

Back at the door, the entrance stood open. Hayes and the others didn’t move. Instead, they turned to Ethan.

"What?" he asked.

"You go first," Hayes said, her voice tight with emotion. "This only happened because of you. Without you, we wouldn’t have opened it. People would have died trying to fight the soul beast."

"Why?"

"Just go," she said with a faint smile. "You’ll understand."

The others nodded, their expressions carrying the same quiet insistence.

Ethan studied them for a moment, then shrugged and stepped forward, passing through the shimmering membrane.

Hayes followed. Then Brock, Ginger, and Onyx.

The world twisted. Light rippled around them, distorting everything into a blur.

[System notification: Baptism in progress. First participant detected. Allocating 50% of baptism energy to you.]

[System notification: Baptism complete. All attributes increased by 20%.]

Ethan blinked once, realization settling in almost immediately.

’So that’s why.’

They had given him the first position deliberately, ensuring he received the largest share of the reward.

A twenty percent increase across all attributes might not sound overwhelming, but for someone at his level, it was enormous.

The light faded and the he world reformed around them. What greeted them was nothing like what they had expected.

The land was dead.

Barren and lifeless, stretching endlessly in every direction. There was no sign of vegetation, no trace of energy in the air, only a faint, lingering stench of decay that clung to everything.

"This isn’t what I expected," Ethan said quietly.

Hayes stepped up beside him, her voice softer than before.

"...Me neither."

They stood at the edge of a cliff, looking out over a vast, empty expanse that seemed to swallow everything in sight.