The northern edge of Western Zenas looked like someone had drained all the life from the land and forgotten to put it back.

  Where the rest of the region around Zenas City sprawled with dense woodland containing thick oak and pine pressing close to the roads, undergrowth tangling in layers of green, this stretch just... stopped. The trees ended in a ragged line, like they'd hit an invisible wall and decided growing any further wasn't worth the effort.

  Beyond that line, the earth turned gray and cracked. Sparse patches of dead grass clung to dirt that looked more like ash than soil. No birds called here. No insects buzzed. Even the air tasted different, carrying a faint metallic bite that made the back of my throat itch.

  This was the dungeon's influence.

  When the old Zenas cemetery transformed into the Graves (becoming a dungeon in the technical sense, a place where monsters spawned endlessly and magic warped reality) the corruption spread outward like a stain. It poisoned the land around it and created this dead zone that stretched for maybe half a mile in every direction from the cemetery gates.

  The road leading toward the dungeon entrance cut through the wasteland, unpaved but surprisingly firm underfoot. Unlike the perpetual mud-slick streets of Western Zenas proper, this path stayed dry. The same drain-magic that killed the vegetation apparently sucked moisture from the ground too, leaving packed earth that crunched slightly with each step.

  I kept walking, boots kicking up little puffs of dust.

  Other travelers shared the road, though we all maintained careful distances from one another. Most of them were adventurers, obvious from the mismatched armor and well-used weapons they carried. There was a woman in a dented breastplate with a longsword strapped across her back. Two men in reinforced leather hauling packs that clinked with the sound of glass vials passed me by. A younger guy, maybe nineteen or twenty, nervously adjusted the shield on his arm while a more experienced companion walked beside him, offering quiet advice.

  Adventurers. The mercenary class of this world, basically.

  In Path of Exemplar, they served as a gameplay option if things went sideways. Get expelled from Allstone Academy? Join the Adventurers Guild. Decide you didn't want to deal with noble politics and classroom drama? Join the Adventurers Guild. Want to grind levels in a more freeform way without following the main quest? Join the Adventurers Guild.

  They weren't exactly prestigious, but they weren't bottom-feeders either. The guild operated out of a decent hall in Eastern Zenas, and despite their sometimes rowdy reputation (too much drinking, too many bar fights, occasional property damage during enthusiastic "monster extermination" jobs) most citizens held them in decent regard.

  It made sense, honestly. Adventurers kept the monster population under control. Without them, creatures from places like the Graves would multiply unchecked, eventually spilling out onto the roads and making travel through the Duchy borderline suicidal. Every dead skeleton, every cleared nest of dire rats, every pack of feral ghouls put down meant safer highways for merchants and farmers.

  Public service through violence. Very efficient.

  The guild divided adventurers by rank, shown through colored bandanas tied around their arms. White for absolute beginners, fresh-faced kids barely trusted with goblin extermination. Green for those who'd survived enough to learn the basics. Blue for competent fighters. Violet for veterans. Orange for specialists. Red for elites. Gold for legends.

  Jobs got distributed by rank. Higher danger meant higher pay, which meant higher rank requirements. A Gold-rank could take any job they wanted. A White-rank got stuck with herb gathering and pest control.

  As I walked, a group of returning adventurers came down the road from the opposite direction. Four of them, all sporting blue bandanas on their right arms. Mid-tier, then. Competent enough to handle the Graves without getting slaughtered.

  They spotted me.

  Their expressions shifted immediately. Casual conversation died. Hands drifted toward weapons. Eyes hardened, lips curling into sneers of pure contempt.

  One of them, a broad-shouldered man with a scarred jaw, actually spat to the side as they passed. Deliberate. Making sure I noticed.

  I kept walking, not breaking stride, but every muscle in my body coiled tight. My left hand stayed near the saber's grip, ready to draw if this turned violent.

  They didn't attack. Just glared with that burning hostility, radiating disgust like I was something they'd scraped off their boots.

  What the hell was their problem?

  Then it clicked.

  The bandana covering my face. The distinctive appearance, even partially hidden: pale skin, white eyes visible above the cloth. The reputation that clearly preceded me.

  They knew who I was. Or at least, what I represented.

  Skullface Roxam. Enforcer for the Viper gang. Criminal. Murderer. The kind of scum who made their jobs harder, who created the very chaos they got paid to clean up.

  To them, I was the enemy. Not in the "we'll fight you in this dungeon" sense, but in the broader moral sense. Adventurers positioned themselves as the good guys, the protectors. And I was one of the predators they couldn't quite touch, protected by the thin shield of Western Zenas's unofficial criminal governance.

  They hated me on principle.

  Fair enough, I supposed. From their perspective, I deserved it.

  The group continued past, boots crunching on the dry road, muttered curses floating back on the dead air.

  I exhaled slowly, forcing tension from my shoulders.

  No fight. Good.

  The last thing I needed was to start a war with the Adventurers Guild three years before the main plot even kicked off. That would complicate everything in ways I couldn't predict, potentially derailing the entire narrative structure I was trying to preserve.

  I kept walking toward the cemetery gates, visible now in the distance.

  The road split into three directions at the base of the dead zone's deepest point.

  Straight ahead, maybe two hundred yards, the gates of the Graves dungeon waited. Iron bars, once black, now crusted with orange-brown rust that flaked like diseased skin. The gates hung crooked on their hinges, one leaning inward at an angle that should've made the whole structure collapse. Yet they stayed upright, suspended by something other than physics.

  The wrongness hit me even from this distance. Not a smell, exactly, though the air tasted stale and rotten. More like a pressure against my skin, a psychic weight that increased with every step closer. The dungeon's aura, seeping through the barrier between the real world and whatever twisted pocket dimension spawned the undead inside.

  My stomach clenched just looking at it.

  The leftmost branch of the road continued north, winding away from Zenas entirely. That path led to other villages, other towns scattered across the Duchy. Travelers used it daily during safer hours, though never after dark. Not with the Graves so close.

  The rightmost branch curved east, skirting the cemetery's perimeter before climbing a gentle slope. Overgrown. Barely visible beneath layers of dead grass and brittle weeds that crunched under my boots as I stepped onto it.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  I took that route.

  Nobody used this path. That much became obvious within the first few steps. Where the main road showed signs of regular traffic (packed earth, cleared debris, the occasional dropped item or discarded waterskin) this trail looked abandoned. Forgotten.

  Perfect for what I needed.

  The incline wasn't steep, but the footing turned treacherous quickly. Dead vegetation concealed loose stones and hidden dips in the ground. Twice I nearly twisted an ankle on rocks hidden beneath the mat of dried plant matter. My breathing came harder as I climbed, thighs burning from the sustained effort.

  The hill wasn't tall. Maybe a hundred feet of elevation gain, if that. But after twenty minutes of careful navigation through the overgrowth, I reached the top.

  The Shrine to Xiatas sat in a small clearing.

  Shrine might've been too generous a word for it.

  A box. Roughly two feet on each side, constructed from sticks lashed together with twine that looked like it'd been soaked in something dark and organic. Mud packed between the gaps in the wood, dried to a cracked gray finish. The whole structure tilted slightly to the left, primitive and crude, like something a child might build while playing in the woods.

  Except no child had built this.

  Power radiated from the shrine in waves. Cold power. Hungry power. The kind that made my skin crawl and my breath catch in my throat. Standing this close felt like pressing my face against a window into someplace I absolutely should not look, someplace that would look back and see me.

  Darkness and evil, unmistakable and absolute.

  This was a shrine to Xiatas, one of the game's dark gods. The deity of vengeance and dark contracts, worshipped by necromancers and those desperate enough to bargain with forces that demanded terrible prices.

  In Path of Exemplar, shrines like this dotted the landscape, hidden in out-of-the-way locations where only players willing to explore off the beaten path would find them. Each god had multiple shrines, and praying at them unlocked specific subclass options tied to that deity's domain.

  Xiatas granted access to the darker caster classes. Hexer. Witch. Necromancer. Warlock. Diabolist. Cultist.

  Exactly what I needed.

  I approached slowly, boots crunching on dead grass, until I stood directly in front of the crude wooden box. The pressure intensified, pushing against my chest like an invisible hand trying to shove me backward.

  Ignoring the instinct screaming at me to run, I dropped to my knees.

  The ground beneath me felt cold despite the afternoon sun. Wrong. Like kneeling on a grave rather than hilltop dirt.

  I clasped my hands together, lowered my head, and spoke the words I remembered from the game's player interaction.

  "Xiatas, give me strength."

  For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

  Then the world tilted.

  Not physically. The hill stayed solid beneath me, the shrine remained exactly where it was. But something shifted, reality bending around the focal point of that primitive wooden box. The air turned heavy, thick, pressing down on my shoulders with suffocating weight.

  The status window erupted in my vision.

  Green light blazed across my field of view, so bright I had to squint against it. The familiar interface, but different now. Changed. Options scrolled past, text glowing with that eerie luminescence that only existed in this game-world.

  The list appeared, each option pulsing with dark energy.

  I didn't hesitate.

  My mental cursor (did I even have a cursor? or did I just will it to move?) slid to Necromancer and selected it without a second thought.

  The world exploded.

  Power flooded into my body like liquid fire poured directly into my veins. Cold fire. Burning ice. Every nerve lit up simultaneously, pain and pleasure and something else entirely, something that transcended both into pure sensation.

  I gasped, back arching, hands clenching into fists as the energy coursed through me. It filled my chest, my limbs, my head, spreading into every corner of my being and rewriting something fundamental at the core of my existence.

  The sensation lasted forever.

  But also, the sensation lasted three seconds.

  When it ended, I collapsed forward, catching myself on my hands, breathing hard. Sweat dripped from my face despite the cold wrongness still emanating from the shrine. My heart hammered against my ribs.

  The status window remained, but changed now. Updated.

  I forced myself to focus through the lingering disorientation.

  The subclass slot, previously empty, now glowed with that sickly green light. And below it, the changes:

  My Wisdom had jumped from a modest 30 to 35. Not spectacular for a dedicated caster, but decent for someone primarily focused on melee combat. The Charisma drop hurt, though. -55 to -60. Even more terrifying to look at now, apparently. It was a boon in disguise, though.

  But the real prize came next, listed under traits and abilities:

  The basic starter package for any Necromancer. Three summoning spells to raise undead minions, plus two direct-damage spells for when I needed to blast something personally.

  In a normal playthrough, this would be where I'd start building an undead army. Raise skeletons to fight beside me, zombies to tank damage, spirits to harass enemies from range. Standard necromancer tactics, flooding the battlefield with disposable bodies while staying safe in the back.

  But I wasn't building a standard necromancer.

  I smiled at the glowing screen.

  My build was finally taking shape.

  Back on Earth, while playing Path of Exemplar, I'd discovered something most players missed. A synergy so unconventional that the game's forums had called it useless when I first posted about it. "Why would you waste a subclass slot on Necromancer if you're not even going to use the summons?" they'd asked. "Just pick something that actually boosts your primary class."

  They didn't understand. Hadn't found what I'd found.

  Rancid the Unbowed, my most powerful character, had run a Black Knight/Necromancer hybrid. Black Knight was the advanced evil-aligned evolution of the Knight class, a heavily-armored melee powerhouse with massive defensive stats and powerful offensive abilities. Pairing it with Necromancer made zero sense on paper. Knights wanted Constitution and Strength. Necromancers needed Wisdom and Intelligence. No overlap. No synergy.

  Except for one item.

  Jorn's Amulet.

  A unique legendary artifact that completely changed how a Necromancer worked. Instead of summoning minions to fight alongside you, it converted them into stat buffs. Sacrificed them, essentially, transforming their essence into raw power that enhanced the wearer.

  Summon a basic skeleton? Gain +2 Strength. Summon a basic zombie? Gain +2 Constitution. Summon a basic spirit? Gain +2 Intelligence.

  And it stacked.

  Ten skeletons meant +20 Strength. Twenty zombies meant +40 Constitution. The buffs accumulated, turning a Necromancer into a self-buffing monster who could match or exceed dedicated melee classes in pure stats.

  Rancid had been unstoppable with that build. Black Knight's heavy armor and defensive abilities were combined with the ridiculous stat boosts from sacrificed undead. He'd waded through armies without taking meaningful damage, hit like a siege weapon, and had enough resources to keep the buffs running indefinitely.

  The only problem? Roxam wasn't a Black Knight.

  He was a Duelist. Lighter armor, focused on speed and precision rather than raw tanking ability. Less defensive power overall.

  But the synergy should still work. Duelist relied on Dexterity and Strength, both of which I could boost through sacrificed summons. It wouldn't be as tanky as the Black Knight version, but it'd still transform me into something far more dangerous than a standard Duelist could ever be.

  First, though, I needed Jorn's Amulet.

  That was the catch. The item was locked behind a level 35 boss in a mid-tier Act 1 location. Too strong for me right now. Way too strong. Walking in there at level 27 would get me killed in the first encounter, boss fight aside.

  I needed levels. Experience. Better equipment. Training.

  I closed the status window and pushed myself to my feet, legs still shaky from the power infusion.

  The Graves waited below.

  Time to get stronger.