Chapter 117: Grave of the Forgotten I...
The air outside the Grave of the Forgotten was thick and suffocating, carrying the distinct, metallic scent of ozone and rotting earth.
Located on the outskirts of the Ares Domain’s sector forty-two, the C-Rank Fracture Zone had materialized in the middle of an abandoned, centuries-old cemetery.
Twisted iron gates loomed under the pale moonlight, overgrown with black, thorny vines that pulsed faintly with corrupted mana.
Zen stood in the shadows just outside the perimeter, pulling the collar of his dark tactical jacket up against the biting wind.
The ambient mana in this sector was foul. It wasn’t the standard magical residue left behind by typical undead dungeons; it was a dense, heavy energy that dragged at the lungs.
It was unrefined Void energy, a lingering infection from the Abyssal Trench that had seeped into the local ley-lines and started mutating the lower-tier rifts.
He raised his hand, inspecting the matte-black iron ring resting on his finger. The suppression runes carved into the metal glowed with a faint, almost imperceptible blue light.
His immense, Low A-Rank mana reserves that could flatten a city block in a heartbeat were completely locked down, compressed into a tight, dense core that emitted the exact signature of a Mid D-Rank hunter.
"System configuration," Zen muttered quietly into the dark and the sleek, semi-transparent interface flickered to life directly within his field of vision.
A tiny, spherical device detached from his belt and floated into the air. It was a heavily modified GE Link-Eye Drone. The silver casing was scuffed and battered, making it look like a piece of cheap scavenger junk, but the runic arrays etched into its core were S-Rank shadow-tech.
The drone hummed softly, its optical lens projecting an invisible, localised distortion field around Zen’s face and upper body. To anyone watching the feed, his identity would be obscured by a high-end digital blur, masking his facial features and any identifying marks.
[System Notice: Omni-Domain routing active. IP address encrypted. Biometric signature scrambled. Core output restricted to D-Rank parameters.]
Zen cracked his neck and drew a pair of standard, military-issue trench knives from the sheaths on his thighs. At D-Rank, he couldn’t afford to waste mana powering a magic weapon; every drop of energy had to be reserved for bodily reinforcement and kinetic movement.
"Stream start," Zen commanded.
The GE Link-Eye Drone whirred, its red recording light blinking on.
Within seconds, the viewer counter in the top right corner of Zen’s HUD began to climb.
It didn’t even start at zero.
Thanks to Nyx’s algorithmic manipulation of the network and the broader streaming platforms, the "Ghost Scrapper" account had been pushed to the front page of every major combat forum.
100 viewers. 500 viewers. 2,000 viewers.
The chat window, positioned discreetly in the lower-left corner of his vision, immediately exploded into a blur of text.
[xX_Hunter_Pro_Xx]: Whoa, wait, the Ghost Scrapper is live?! I thought this guy died in the Trench!
[Mage_Girl_99]: Look at the location tag. Grave of the Forgotten? That’s a C-Rank Void-corrupted zone! Is he crazy? His profile says he’s D-Rank!
[Iron_Fist_Dan]: Fake. Probably a pre-recorded simulation. No D-Rank solos a corrupted C-Rank.
[Ares_Fanatic]: He’s using standard steel trench knives. This guy has a death wish.
Zen ignored the skepticism.
He stepped past the rusted iron gates, crossing the threshold into the Fracture Zone. The sky above instantly shifted from a clear, starry night to a swirling vortex of bruised purple and black clouds.
The temperature plummeted, and the ground beneath his boots turned to brittle, frozen ash.
Suddenly, a massive, golden alert flashed across his vision, accompanied by a deafening digital fanfare that momentarily drowned out the howling wind of the dungeon.
[System Alert: User ’Vanguard_Queen’ has donated 5,000,000 Mana Credits! User has achieved VIP Tier 1 Status!]
Before the chat could even process the ridiculous sum of money, a second alert shattered the screen, this one framed in imperial gold and amber.
[System Alert: User ’Golden_Empress’ has donated 5,000,001 Mana Credits! User has achieved VIP Tier 1 Status!]
The chat froze for a solid three seconds.
Then chaos erupted.
[xX_Hunter_Pro_Xx]: WHAT THE ACTUAL—FIVE MILLION CREDITS?!
[Iron_Fist_Dan]: Who are these people?! Are they guild masters?!
[Mage_Girl_99]: Golden_Empress just outbid Vanguard_Queen by one credit. That is the pettiest flex I have ever seen in my life.
Zen let out a long, heavy sigh, watching the two highlighted VIP names instantly start warring in the chat.
[Vanguard_Queen]: Nice form, Scrapper. Make sure you don’t waste time on the fodder. Go straight for the cores. I’m watching your footwork.
[Golden_Empress]: Ignore her, Scrapper. You are moving perfectly. Do whatever you please. But if any of those filthy undead scratch your jacket, I will personally buy the dungeon and glass it from orbit.
Another user joined the fray.
[Shadow_Mod]: Reminder to all viewers: Any inappropriate, suggestive, or disrespectful comments directed at the Ghost Scrapper will result in an immediate, permanent IP ban and possible real-world retaliation. Have a nice stream..
[System Alert: User ’Cute_Healer_Loves_U’ has been permanently banned by Shadow_Mod.]
[System Alert: User ’Ares_Fanatic’ has been permanently banned by Shadow_Mod.]
Zen shook his head. ’They are completely unhinged,’ he thought. ’They’re going to terrify the entire audience before I even swing my knife.’
Miles away, in the safety of a cramped student dorm room on the Ares Academy campus, Jax was sitting at his desk.
He was hunched over a steaming cup of instant ramen, his eyes glued to his tablet screen.
Jax’s jaw hung open, a clump of noodles dangling precariously from his chopsticks. He had received the push notification for the Ghost Scrapper stream and had tuned in, expecting to watch a gritty, underground hunter fight for his life.
He hadn’t expected to witness an economic war zone.
"Five million credits..." Jax whispered. He looked at his own bank account balance, which currently sat at a depressing five hundred and forty-two credits. "Who are these VIPs? They have to be S-Rank guild leaders or royalty. Nobody else has that kind of liquid capital."
He read the chat, his eyes widening in sheer terror as "Shadow_Mod" systematically wiped out dozens of users for minor infractions. One guy had simply said the Ghost Scrapper had nice shoulders, and the account was instantly deleted.
"This is insane," Jax muttered, shivering slightly. "The Ghost Scrapper just disappeared for how long and he’s got terrifying sponsors? I bet he got contracted as some kind of underworld private assassin. Or does he owe them a blood debt or something? Poor guy. Being owned by crazy, rich psychos must be a nightmare."
Jax took a slow bite of his ramen, feeling a profound sense of pity for the masked streamer. ’I’m glad I’m just a normal student with a normal, boring best friend like Zen,’ Jax thought. ’If I had to deal with women like that, I’d probably jump into a rift.’
As the thought crossed his mind, he immediately opened Zen’s chat window and sent a quick message.
Jax: Hey mahn, Ghost Scrapper is live! You should tune in quickly to see what’s going on.
—
Back in the dungeon, the ground began to tremble and Zen stopped walking.
He was standing in the centre of a massive, ruined courtyard lined with crumbling stone mausoleums. The GE Link-Eye Drone hovered over his right shoulder, capturing the bleak, terrifying atmosphere in high-definition resolution.
The ash at Zen’s feet began to shift.
Then skeletal hands, wrapped in tattered, rotting armour and pulsing with purple Void veins, burst from the frozen earth.
One by one, the corrupted undead dragged themselves out of their graves. These were not the slow, shambling skeletons of a typical E-Rank dungeon. The Void energy had mutated them, fusing their bones with jagged shards of dark metal and granting them horrifying speed.
Within seconds, Zen was completely surrounded by a horde of over fifty C-Rank Void-Knights.
Their empty eye sockets burned with malevolent purple fire as they raised rusted broadswords and jagged spears, their jaws clicking in a horrific, synchronized rhythm.
[Vanguard_Queen]: Fifty-to-one odds. Beautiful. Show me how you break the line, Scrapper.
[Golden_Empress]: You can do it, my... I mean, Ghost Scrapper! Destroy them!
Zen’s expression beneath the digital blur remained completely impassive as he analysed the battlefield in a fraction of a second.
’The Void energy makes them fast, but their joints are brittle,’ Zen noted. ’Standard D-Rank mana reinforcement to the legs for explosive lateral movement. Minimal force on the strikes; use their own momentum against them.’
The first Void-Knight lunged, crossing the ten-foot gap in a blur of purple light and aiming its rusted broadsword directly at Zen’s neck in a sweeping, lethal horizontal arc.
The chat braced for a massacre. D-Ranks didn’t survive hits like that.
Zen didn’t block. Blocking required superior strength, which he currently lacked.
Instead, he simply tilted his head two inches to the left. The rusted blade whistled past his ear, cutting through the empty air.
Before the skeletal knight could recover its balance, Zen stepped inside its guard and simply drove the pommel of his trench knife into the joint connecting the knight’s shoulder to its collarbone.
CRACK.
The brittle bone shattered under the hyper-focused, kinetic impact.
As the knight’s arm went limp, Zen turned, using his other knife to cleanly sever the cervical vertebrae at the base of the skull. The purple fire in the knight’s eyes extinguished, and the skeleton collapsed into a pile of mundane dust.
[Total elapsed time: 1.2 seconds. Total mana expended: Almost zero.]
The remaining forty-nine Void-Knights roared in unison, surging forward like a tidal wave of rusted steel and corrupted bone.
Zen exhaled slowly, letting the cold air fill his lungs. He lowered his stance, the black suppression ring on his finger humming softly as he perfectly managed his limited D-Rank output.
"Let’s dance," Zen whispered before launching himself forward into the horde.