An hour later, Lucien stood inside his dark, quiet cabin. He had taken off his normal clothes. He was preparing for a very special trip. He put on a pair of dark black pants and a simple, dark grey shirt. Over his shirt, he wrapped a thick, heavy black cloak. He pulled the deep hood over his head, completely hiding his face in shadow. He did not tie the God-Slaying Spear to his back today. He left the ancient weapon safely hidden under the floorboards of the cabin. He needed to look like a normal, wealthy rogue. Lucien closed his eyes. He focused his mind deeply. He pulled the [Vein-Concealment Aura] tightly around his soul. He completely locked away his massive, terrifying Abyssal Chaos energy. He made his magical signature completely invisible. If a powerful mage looked at him, they would see absolutely nothing. He was a perfect ghost. Then, he reached into his deep leather pouch. He pulled out three items. They were large, heavy, and incredibly strange. They were the size of

The bidding war exploded. The rival empires threw impossible amounts of resources at each other. They were so desperate for the dark power of the graveyard that they were willing to empty their own armories. Lucien sat in the dark and smiled. Julian had tried to strangle the Cloud-Soaring Sect by threatening local merchants. Julian thought he had cut off their supply of cheap iron and basic medicine. But Julian did not know that Lucien had the entire black market in the palm of his hand. Lucien was using Julian’s biggest political enemies to completely fund his own rebellion. After ten minutes of furious yelling, the third masked buyer—a man wrapped entirely in red silk—stood up. "Enough," the Red Silk buyer said. His voice was calm and incredibly wealthy. "I will end this. I offer thirty thousand master-crafted steel swords. Twenty thousand suits of heavy, magically reinforced plate armor. Two hundred thousand top-tier healing and mana-replenishing pills. And... five hundred exp

Because of the terrible, burning heat, Lucien had taken off his grey shirt. His broad, muscular upper body was completely bare. In the orange light of the magma, his skin glowed with that strange, beautiful, obsidian-like shine. Deep underneath his skin, Seraphina could see the faint, pulsing purple-blue glow of his evolved Abyssal Chaos Veins. He looked incredibly powerful. He looked like a god of the forge. Seraphina swallowed hard. She felt a strange flutter in her chest, but she quickly pushed it away. She walked up to the iron anvil. "You called me here," Seraphina said, trying to keep her voice steady. "You said you can make me a new weapon."Lucien nodded. He did not look up from the anvil. On the heavy black iron block, Lucien had placed two very strange items. The first item was a large, heavy block of dark metal. It did not shine in the light of the magma. In fact, it seemed to swallow the light around it. It was completely pitch-black, and it felt incredibly cold just

The dead, mechanical rat lay on the cold stone table. Its glowing red eyes were dark. The tiny tracking rune carved into its skull was broken. Lucien and Seraphina stared at the dead machine. They were standing in the quiet, dusty library of the Cloud-Soaring Sect. They had just forged the ultimate sword, Winter's Howl, but the victory felt heavy. A mysterious, incredibly rich enemy from the Black Market had found their secret mountain. But before Lucien could even make a plan to hunt the spy, the heavy wooden doors of the library slammed open. BANG!Lucien turned around. His purple-black eyes narrowed. Kai, the brave seventeen-year-old disciple, fell through the doorway. He hit the stone floor hard, breathing rapidly. His clothes were covered in mud and fresh red blood. He had been running for hours. "Kai!" Seraphina shouted. She ran forward and dropped to her knees, helping the boy sit up. "What happened? Are you hurt?"Kai coughed. He shook his head, wiping the sweat from his

Seraphina smiled a fierce, dangerous smile. She reached down to her waist. She grabbed the dark, freezing handle of Winter's Howl. She drew the sword from its scabbard. SHRIIIIING!The sound of the blade was not a normal metallic ring. It sounded like the screaming of a terrible winter blizzard. The moment the pitch-black, ice-blue sword touched the air, the temperature in the entire valley plummeted. The massive bonfires in the camp instantly flickered and died, freezing into solid blocks of red ice. Seraphina stepped off the cliff. She did not fall. She used the Cloud-Piercing Step. She turned into a blur of white mist and shot directly down into the center of the panicked war camp. She landed softly on top of a large wooden wagon, right in the middle of a group of fifty heavily armored Iron-Fang elite guards. The guards saw her. They recognized the beautiful, pale face. "It is the Ice-Sword!" a guard captain yelled. "She is alone! Kill her!"The fifty men raised their heavy