The countdown clock in the top right corner of Dante’s vision finally hit zero.

The cramped confines of his VR capsule vanished. They were immediately replaced by a blinding flash of white light.

The transition was always jarring. It was a sudden shift from the stale air of his apartment to the highly realistic feeling of the Zenith Protocol.

His feet hit a solid surface.

The smell of pine needles, woodsmoke, and hundreds of sweating bodies hit his nose simultaneously.

Before he could even look around, the standard holographic character creation screen slammed into his field of view.

[Welcome to Overture. Please select your designation.]

Dante reached out and tapped the floating keyboard.

He typed in the name that belonged to him. It was the name he had built from nothing over the last three months.

V-A-N-G-U-A-R-D.

He hit confirm.

[Error. Designation ’Vanguard’ is already registered to another user.]

Dante scoffed and shook his head. "Of course it is. Silas does not miss a trick."

Silas had likely ordered one of his lackeys to instantly register the name the millisecond the servers opened.

It was the perfect way to secure the brand of Vanguard’s Legacy.

It was petty but highly effective.

"Fine," Dante muttered.

He backspaced the name and typed a new one.

D-A-N.

[Designation ’Dan’ is available. Confirm?]

Dante hit yes. He didn’t care about a flashy name anymore. He just needed to get into the game.

[Please select your starting class.]

A row of holographic avatars appeared. They showcased the standard game classes.

Mages casting fireballs, rogues flipping daggers, and rangers drawing bows.

Dante swiped past them without a second thought.

He stopped on the heavy-armored figure holding a broadsword.

The Warrior class. It was straightforward and brutal. It was entirely dependent on the physical reflexes and timing of the user.

It was exactly what he needed.

[Class Confirmed. Initializing physical synchronization.]

A beam of blue light scanned down Dante’s digital body.

This was the routine check the system performed. It matched the real physical dimensions of the player to their avatar.

But as the scanner reached Dante’s chest, the blue light suddenly glitched. It flashed violently red!

[Alert! Foreign energetic signature detected.]

[Scanning... Scanning...]

[Mythic-Tier Anomaly detected.]

Dante froze.

The system was detecting the residual energy of the [Tear of the Forgotten].

The physical crystal had turned to ash back in his apartment. However, the code of the item had clearly merged with his neural link when it saved him from brain death.

[Attempting to purge anomaly...]

[Error. Anomaly is bound to user’s soul matrix. Purge failed.]

[Recalibrating synchronization parameters. Integrating anomaly into user’s base code.]

The red light faded back to a calm blue.

The system had effectively given up trying to delete the error. It just accepted it as part of his character data.

[Synchronization complete. Welcome to Outpost 404.]

The white void shattered. It dropped Dante into the middle of a massive and crowded village square.

Outpost 404 was surrounded by massive wooden walls. It was built right in the middle of a dense and ancient forest.

The sky above was a vibrant and unnatural shade of violet.

The square was absolute chaos!

Thousands of players were spawning in by the second. They materialized in flashes of light.

People were shouting and shoving each other. They stared at their hands in total disbelief.

Some were crying. They were terrified by the reality that dying in this world meant dying on Veridia.

Others were hyping each other up and eager to start the game.

Dante ignored the noise completely.

He pushed his way through the dense crowd and headed straight for the center of the square.

Standing on a raised stone platform was a massive and floating crystal monolith.

Next to it stood an NPC dressed in flowing gray robes. It was the Outpost Elder.

This was the Talent Draw.

Every player in the Zenith Protocol was granted one innate cosmic talent when they entered a new world.

It was a complete lottery. You could draw a talent that made you a god, or you could draw absolute garbage.

Players were already lined up. They placed their hands on the floating crystal one by one.

"Come on, give me something good," a bulky guy in front of Dante muttered. He slapped his hand onto the monolith.

The crystal glowed green. A holographic prompt appeared above the head of the guy.

[Talent Drawn: Minor Iron Skin. Passive: +5% Base Defense.]

"Are you kidding me?" the bulky guy groaned and kicked the stone platform. "Five percent? That is useless!"

"Move it, loser," a girl behind him snapped. She pushed him out of the way and touched the crystal.

It flashed blue.

[Talent Drawn: Swift Step. Passive: +10% Movement Speed.]

She pumped her fist and ran off into the crowd.

Dante stepped up to the platform.

The Outpost Elder looked at him with hollow and glowing white eyes.

The NPC in Overture was supposed to be highly advanced. But right now, the Elder just looked like a blank slate running a script.

Dante placed his hand flat against the cold surface of the crystal.

For a second, nothing happened.

Then, the crystal didn’t just glow. It violently vibrated.

The color shifted from a pale blue to a deep and blinding gold. Then it immediately snapped into a pitch-black void.

The air around the platform crackled with static electricity. Several players nearby stumbled back and shielded their eyes.

"What the hell is that?" someone shouted from the crowd.

"Is the server glitching already?" another player yelled.

Dante ignored them. His eyes locked onto the massive and jagged prompt that had just materialized in his vision.

[System Error: Anomaly integration triggered.]

[Calculating innate talent parameters...]

[Unprecedented variable applied. Talent generated.]

[Talent Drawn: 10,000x Skill Proficiency Multiplier]

[Grade: Unlisted]

[Description: Every time the user executes a skill, the system registers the action as 10,000 flawless executions. Skill proficiency and evolution are multiplied by a factor of 10,000.]

Dante stared at the text. His heart skipped a beat.

He knew how the skill system of the Zenith Protocol worked. It was a brutal and merciless grind.

Skills ranked up through five distinct tiers. Novice, Adept, Master, Grandmaster, and Zenith.

To take a basic starter skill from Novice to Adept usually required a player to successfully use that skill in combat about a thousand times.

To reach Zenith tier? That took tens of millions of uses.

It was the kind of grind that took years of non-stop combat.

Most players never even saw a Master-tier skill, let alone Zenith.

This talent completely broke the math.

If every single swing of his sword registered as ten thousand swings, he wouldn’t need to grind for years. He could max out an ability in seconds.

"Hey buddy, you done?" a voice snapped from behind him. "We do not have all day. The world is on a timer."

Dante pulled his hand away from the crystal.

The pitch-black void color instantly vanished. It returned the monolith to its normal and dormant state.

"Yeah," Dante said and turned away from the platform. "I am done."

He opened his starting inventory.

Everyone was given the exact same beginner kit. Five basic health potions, a loaf of stale bread, and a rusty iron sword with terrible durability.

He equipped the sword. It materialized in his hand with a dull thud.

It felt heavy and unbalanced. It was completely different from the perfectly crafted broadswords he was used to in Aethelgard.

He checked his skill menu. As a Level 1 Warrior, he only had two innate skills unlocked.

[Heavy Slash (Novice): A slow, downward strike that deals 120% physical damage.]

[Dash (Novice): A quick burst of forward movement. Cooldown: 10 seconds.]

They were the most generic and boring skills in the game. They were the kind of abilities that stopped being useful around Level 5.

Dante gripped the hilt of the rusty sword.

The panic in the outpost was only getting worse. People were arguing over grouping up.

They begged high-level players from previous games to carry them. They fought over the limited supplies at the NPC merchant stalls.

Silas was probably out there right now.

He would be rallying thousands of players under the banner of Vanguard’s Legacy. He would be using Dante’s stolen Aegis Blueprint to set up a massive stronghold.

Silas had an army. Silas had resources.

But Dante had the multiplier.

He didn’t need an army. He didn’t need a guild.

If the system was going to give him a broken and unlisted talent because of Lillian’s pendant, he was going to squeeze every single drop of blood out of it.

Dante didn’t look for a party. He didn’t bother checking the local quest boards.

He just tightened his grip on the rusty sword and walked straight out the heavy wooden gates of Outpost 404. He headed directly into the dark trees of the beginner hunting grounds.