THE GILDED LEGEND (Enternity Online)

Chapter 4 Fast—Moving Shadows

Zara Blaze let out a long breath as the golden streak faded into the distance, leaving behind only the rustle of wind that still shook the leaves around where she stood. Her hands, clad in light leather gloves, still gripped the violently vibrating transmission panel.

"He wasn't just running," she whispered into the humid silence of the forest. "It was as if... he was erasing the distance between every step."

"Miss Zara, anomaly detected at coordinates 44.91." The flat system voice hummed softly through her earpiece, "Energy output from the player shows a constant spike exceeding the Level 15 upper limit algorithm."

Zara smiled faintly, her sharp eyes fixed on the direction of Axel’s disappearance. "It's not impossible, AI. It's just that this server has never seen anything like him. Send the intel report to the analysis unit, but conceal his true identity. I want to follow this 'ghost' personally."

"Understood. Initiating passive simulation satellite monitoring."

Three days had passed since the incident at the Rotten Swamp, and a new name began to crawl up the secret forums of Eternity Online. Not a player ID, but a moniker: Gilded Ghost. Rumors about a beginner player who could complete high-level quests in mere minutes began to spread like wildfire across dry grass.

On the outskirts of Ironwood Grove, a group of mid-level players were resting while polishing their weapons. Their faces looked tired, typical of players who had just been defeated by an area boss.

"I swear, I'm not lying!" a young Wizard exclaimed, swinging his staff excitedly. "I saw it myself in the southern valley this morning. A golden flash, that's it! Then ten Level sixty Trolls instantly collapsed. By the time I tried to approach, the person was already gone."

"Ah, it's probably just a visual bug or an admin testing something," replied a soldier with a wooden shield, sipping a recovery potion. "No way a low-level player can slice through a Troll like cutting butter. That's the most basic logic in this game."

"But there are lots of witnesses, man! Not just me," the Wizard continued, his voice rising. "Even the guys from the Vanguard Guild are scrambling to find out who that person is. They said the daily boss in the iron mine was wiped out in five seconds."

"Five seconds?" The soldier laughed cynically. "Even if Ghostwalker came back at Level 1, he wouldn't be that fast. This world doesn't have physics like that."

However, just behind the bushes near their campfire, Axel Steele was sitting in silence. His beginner clothes had now been replaced by a sturdier black leather tunic, loot from the elite monsters he had quietly dispatched. His eyes were fixed on a holographic status panel that only he could see.

“Level 22. It only took three days to get here,” Axel muttered. He slid the panel toward the Gilded status.

[Available GP: 2]

[Gilded Stat: Agility (Max Phase 1)]

[Synchronization Capacity: 92%]

"Efficient, but too conspicuous," Axel whispered softly. His hand gripped the hilt of his new, sharply gleaming dagger. "I need the next GP to gild the Strength stat. Otherwise, I'll keep relying on attack frequency without enough striking power."

"Attention!" The system voice suddenly resonated directly into his sensory nerves. "Five player signals detected within a ten-meter radius with aggressive intent."

Axel didn't turn around, but his body tensed reflexively after hearing the system warning. He slowly stood up, brushing the dust off his pants as if nothing had happened.

"Just come out," Axel said coldly. "The smell of your sweat and weapon rust was detected by my system ages ago."

From behind the shadows of the Ironwood trees, five figures in ragged gear but armed with sharp weapons stepped out. One of them, a swordsman with a sword tattoo on his neck, stepped forward with a wide grin that showed a row of yellow teeth.

"Well, here's the ghost kid," said the tattooed man, whose ID 'Razor-Eye' floated above his head. His status was deep red—the mark of a killer who had slaughtered many players.

"He looks pretty soft, Boss." One of his subordinates, a thief who kept fiddling with a dagger between his fingers, laughed. "Is this really the guy who's making the server go crazy?"

"Listen up, kid!" Razor-Eye approached, dragging the tip of his greatsword on the ground until it sparked. "There's a rumor you've got a new cheat. Something that makes your movements impossible. Hand over the code info, or all the elite loot you got today is going to be ours the hard way."

Axel looked at them one by one. All five players were Level 50 or higher. For an ordinary Level 22 player, this was a shortcut to a digital grave. But Axel felt something that had long been missing from his chest: The thrill of battle.

"I don't have a cheat." Axel replied, stretching his neck. A quiet click was heard. "I just have a system that you guys will never understand how it works."

"You're arrogant!" Razor-Eye yelled. "Guys, break his arms and legs first! We'll interrogate him until he talks!"

Two archers from the back immediately unleashed a chain of shots. Four arrows whizzed with a sharp whistling sound, simultaneously targeting Axel's vital points. The players near the campfire had already gotten up and were preparing to flee, not wanting to get caught in a PK war.

“Too slow,” Axel thought. In his eyes, the arrows seemed to move lazily through the air.

[Gilded Reflexes: Active.]

Swoosh!

Axel vanished in a thin puff of smoke. Not a teleportation skill, but pure motor acceleration. The four arrows slammed into the tree exactly where he had been standing a second ago. Before Razor-Eye could even blink, he felt a cold gust of wind right beside his ear.

"What are you attacking?" Axel's whisper sounded right behind the P-Killer leader's back.

"WHAT?!" Razor-Eye spun his greatsword frantically, a wide horizontal attack that should have cut down anyone within a two-meter radius. But Axel was no longer there. Axel crept low, almost parallel to the ground, then leaped toward the two archers in the back.

Thwack! Thwack!

With just two strikes of the dagger hilt to the back of their necks, the two archers fell to the ground in instant stun status. They weren't dead, but instantly paralyzed because their simulated nervous systems couldn't render an attack that fast.

"Bastard! Use an area attack right now!" Razor-Eye roared in fury.

The Wizard on their team immediately cast a massive fire spell that engulfed the ground around them. Flames soared high, creating a suffocating curtain of black smoke. The P-Killers were wary, watching every inch of the fire with wide eyes.

"Where is he? Come out, Ghost!" The Thief screamed hysterically.

Then, in the middle of the dancing flames, a golden silhouette began to appear. Not Axel entirely, but lines of light residue forming a winding attack path. In a simulation that should have been governed by statistics, Axel's movements were a system failure to his opponents' logic.

Axel lunged forward through the center of the fire, his hair fluttering from the heat, but his face remained calm like a surface of water at night. His dagger struck like a cobra, hitting the connecting point of the Thief's shoulder guard.

"A Level 22 can't possibly have this much Agility!" the Thief yelled as his HP plummeted drastically in just one second. "This is impossible! The game is broken!" he continued to scream. They didn't know that Axel's Level 22 Agility status was equivalent to a Level 100 player, despite the high risks involved.

"The game isn't broken," Axel retorted, his hand now at the Thief's throat, ready for the finishing blow. "This world is just too slow for me now."

Before the attack landed, a dark purple warning notification flashed in the corner of Axel's vision. The message didn't come from the P-Killers, but from his own Gilded system.

[DANGER : External Interface Hijack Attempt. Anti-Glitch Protocol triggered by Higher Observer.]

Axel suddenly froze at the warning. His face looked panicked, and his body now trembled violently as his system felt as if it were being forcibly pulled from two directions. He quickly turned his head toward the top of a large tree towering several dozen meters from his position.

There, hidden within a transparent optical filter, a female player was staring at him with a data scanner device in her hand. Zara Blaze was no longer hiding. She revealed herself on the end of a branch, holding a mechanical bow aimed directly at Axel's digital core.

"Don't kill them, Axel Steele." Zara's voice echoed softly through a forced private message system. "If you perform a fatal finishing move in public now, the server will automatically trigger your account deletion process as a corrupted file. Follow my instructions if you still want to survive here."

Axel was utterly shocked to hear that, his heart pounding. Who was this woman? Why did she know my real-world name?

Razor-Eye, sensing Axel was distracted, raised his greatsword again with a face full of vengeance. "DIE, KID!"

Axel was in a critical position. In front of him was a bloodthirsty enemy, and above him was a mysterious ally who could become the most lethal enemy if he made the wrong move.