Solomon turned around and spotted three cloaked figures sitting casually around a crackling campfire near the cavern entrance.

He immediately opened his floating stream interface. The current viewer count sat at exactly eighty-two.

Fortunately, his dedicated moderators and remaining fans had left a detailed summary in the chat logs. He quickly scrolled through the history, reading exactly how five masked stream snipers tried to steal his weapon and how these three strangers intervened.

[ Stream Chat ]

GoonLord: BRO WAKE UP! STREAM SNIPERS ARE TRYING TO STEAL YOUR SWORD!

GoonLord: NEVERMIND! THREE RANDOM GUYS JUST SHOWED UP AND ABSOLUTELY OBLITERATED THEM!

GoonLord: one guy just burned two of them to ash with his bare hands.

GoonLord: the swordsman literally chopped the last two into pieces.

GoonLord: THEY ARE JUST SITTING BY A FIRE NOW! PLEASE WAKE UP! 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

User12: Back after 4 hours. Can confirm them sitting by the fire still.

Solomon closed the interface. He pushed himself off the ground and responded to the cloaked mage with a sarcastic grin.

"Thanks for the advice," Solomon said, casually stepping over a severed arm. "However, waking up surrounded by literal trash and uninvited dirt makes a guy question his own reality for a second."

He walked straight over to their camp, completely ignoring the tension in the room. He sat down comfortably beside the three figures, stretching his legs toward the flames to let the warm fire soothe his aching body.

Solomon leaned closer to the campfire and rubbed his hands together to absorb the warmth. "Do you guys happen to have anything to drink?"

The mage raised a skeptical eyebrow and pointed at the bronze owl hovering nearby. "Shouldn’t you possess an integrated system shop function with that streaming drone?"

Solomon nodded in agreement. "I do. However, I used up all my daily purchase slots during the dungeon run, and I cannot buy any more supplies until the system resets."

The mage reached into his cloak and tossed a leather water skin over the fire. Solomon caught it easily and took a long, refreshing sip.

"Dimensional transactions require an absurd amount of magical power," the mage explained, watching the boy drink. "The energy conversion rate is extremely expensive. Using dimensional devices like integrated phones and shop drones actively is a luxury typically reserved only for royalty."

Solomon wiped his mouth and handed the water skin back. He looked directly at the three cloaked strangers. "So, who exactly are you people? Shouldn’t you take off your hoods so you look a bit less suspicious to my viewers?"

The mage let out an amused chuckle and pulled his hood back. He revealed bright crimson red hair and striking red eyes.

Meanwhile, the third cloaked figure finally moved. She reached up and pulled her own hood down. She was a woman with vibrant purple hair, styling her bangs to completely cover the right half of her face.

Everyone around the campfire then turned their attention toward the swordsman. The silent man let out a long sigh and finally pushed his hood back. He revealed pure golden hair and piercing blue eyes.

The floating stream interface immediately lit up with new messages from the remaining viewers.

Solomon took one look at the swordsman sitting across the fire. The striking features and the inherent regal posture made the truth entirely obvious. The man sitting in front of him was undeniably a royal, or at the very least, he possessed a direct royal bloodline.

’What the hell is wrong with my luck? How come I keep running into royals? Never in my life have I ever seen a royal in person. And as soon as I entered the academy, I saw a princess’ panties, attacked another princess, and now I have seemingly been saved by a prince.’

Solomon looked at the purple-haired woman sitting across the fire. She entirely ignored his presence and kept her gaze fixed on the dancing flames. He then shifted his attention to the mage, and the red-haired man quickly offered a cheerful, welcoming smile.

Finally, Solomon looked back at the royal swordsman, only to see the man immediately curl his lip in visible disgust.

’What’s with him? Does he want me to punch him in the face or something?’ Solomon wondered.

An awkward silence settled over the camp for several minutes.

"Thanks for saving me," Solomon finally said, breaking the quiet tension. "I appreciate you guys dealing with those thieves and keeping guard over me while I was completely unconscious."

"An adventurer always helps another adventurer, especially in a forsaken place like this," the mage replied brightly.

The woman simply nodded once without looking away from the fire.

The swordsman let out an exasperated sigh and finally spoke for the very first time. "You are completely mistaken. No one intentionally helped you or actively kept guard over your body. We simply ran into those scavengers and eliminated them. We are currently just waiting for the sun to set so we can proceed further into the kingdom."

Solomon raised an eyebrow in genuine confusion. "Shouldn’t you do the exact opposite? Moving through a dimensional ruin during the day is the standard strategy to avoid encountering the undead and high-tier nocturnal predators."

The mage chuckled and tossed another piece of wood into the fire. "There is no fun in doing things the easy way. We came all the way down here specifically for the thrill and the challenges."

Solomon glanced over at his floating stream interface and noticed the numbers rapidly ticking upward. Word had apparently spread across the academy forums about the three mysterious saviors, and his viewer count was quickly approaching the one-thousand mark.

The chat interface was a complete blur of capitalized letters and frantic emojis as the audience recognized the cloaked strangers.

[GoonLord: BRO WAKE UP FOR REAL! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHO YOU ARE SITTING WITH?!]

[LazyCat: no way... no way they actually came to a dimensional ruin.]

[BloodKnight: Unbelievable. The presence of such high-ranking individuals entirely changes the dynamic of this broadcast. You are very lucky for me. I will learn a lot more watching them fight. It seems I am rewarded for all the gifts I sent you.]

Solomon read the frantic scrolling and turned his attention back to the campfire. "My chat is currently losing their minds over you three," he noted casually. "Are you guys famous or something?"

The red-haired mage offered a humble, disarming smile. "We are just standard adventurers doing our jobs. You can call me Zoro. The grumpy swordsman is Vlad, and our quiet friend over there is Miro. We are officially affiliated with the Under the Dark Cloud guild."

The chat instantly exploded again, completely verifying the mage’s claim, but they were absolutely furious at Solomon’s blank expression.

"I have honestly never heard of that guild," Solomon admitted, shrugging his shoulders.

[User12: ARE YOU LIVING UNDER A ROCK?!]

[LoreMaster: Solo Man, please. Zoro is currently placed 49,786th in the World Ranking! Miro sits at 37,567th, and Vlad is literally ranked 16,969th!]

Solomon stared at the numbers on the screen, and a genuine wave of realization washed over him. The Global World Ranking was not a simple leaderboard. It was the ultimate, undisputed hierarchy of the world’s strongest beings.

Out of the nearly five billion awakened individuals, hunters, and royal knights scattered across the globe, the system only officially tracked the absolute apex predators. Although there were other rankings at higher status than the world ranking, which included people from other dimensions, realms and world.

To even break into the top 100,000, a hunter had to possess catastrophic destructive capabilities, clear A-Rank dimensional gates entirely solo, and achieve feats that fundamentally defied human logic. Getting into those ranks was an impossibly grand feat reserved only for walking natural disasters.

The fact that Vlad was ranked within the top twenty thousand meant the golden-haired royal could likely level an entire city block with a single swing of his sword.

As the gravity of their identities settled into the quiet cave, the artificial sunlight outside the cavern entrance began to fade into a deep, twilight purple.

Vlad immediately stood up and brushed the dust from his cloak. "The sun is setting," the royal swordsman announced, his voice carrying an unquestionable tone of authority. "Let us go."

Zoro and Miro stood up in unison, effortlessly preparing their gear for the night.

Solomon reached down, grabbed the thick hilt of Eden’s Penance, and pushed himself to his feet as well. He rested the massive S-Rank blade against his shoulder and stretched his stiff back.

Vlad paused near the cave exit. He slowly turned his head and shot Solomon a piercing, unwelcoming glare, silently questioning why the weak, sleep-deprived student was trying to follow them into a death zone.

Solomon simply shrugged his shoulders and met the royal’s intense blue eyes. "Relax. I am not trying to tag along to get carried by the world rankers," he clarified, pointing his thumb toward the distant, shadowy ruins. "I just happen to be going to the exact same place."