The clear of the Kraken Matriarch was not merely a victory; it was a seismic event in the rigid power structure of Solaria City. The Grand Guild attempted to suppress the data, but the dozens of terrified Rank A observers had witnessed the impossible: a single hunter sustaining an attack that violated the laws of mana physics and destroying a boss designed to negate brute force.
The whispers about the "Phantom Cleaner" and the "Time Thief" stopped. They were replaced by a singular, resounding declaration across every Guild hall, black market, and tavern: Dax Jackal was a rising star. No, not a star—a supernova.
My reputation exploded instantly. The Grand Guild was forced to publicly acknowledge my clear time, giving me an immediate, mandatory promotion to Rank S, Echelon 1—the highest publicly known rank. Hunters who had previously dismissed me as a well-equipped anomaly now watched my movements with a mixture of terror and obsessive interest. Rank S hunters sent passive probes, trying to gauge my power level, only to recoil from the sheer, unyielding pressure of my continuous Aura Projection.
I had achieved the perfect strategic position: Unquestionable Power coupled with Complete Isolation. No one dared challenge me, and everyone wanted to understand how I did it.
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The guilds' attempts to understand me coalesced into two dominant theories, both utterly wrong:
The Alchemist Theory: That I possessed a Legendary or Mythic grade artifact that provided a massive, sustained mana regeneration boost. (They were close, but missed that I was generating, not regenerating).
The Forbidden Technique Theory: That I had mastered an ancient, lost form of Elemental Transmutation that allowed me to convert environmental energy into internal mana. (They were right that the technique was lost, but wrong about the source—it was the Void Alchemist's chemical conversion of chaotic power).
This widespread speculation was the perfect smokescreen. It allowed me to prepare for my next, most profound act of dominance: exploiting a technique known only to me—a glitch in the system that existed only in this era.
I spent the next two days utilizing my new Rank S clearance to access the Grand Guild's Exotic Artifact Vault, under the pretense of "acquiring tools suitable for a hunter of my new standing." I wasn't interested in their massive swords or armored relics.
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I bring out a heirloom from my Storage Ring. The Summoner's Bell, a Rare-tier artifact. Its simple function was to sound a clear, resonant chime that momentarily attracted all nearby active monsters. In a standard dungeon, this was a death sentence, used only by desperate, self-sacrificing hunters to buy their team time. It was considered the ultimate liability artifact.
However, in the era of my past life, we discovered a glitch in the early Central Authority's respawn coding—a glitch that should have been patched out centuries ago but, due to the stagnation of this managed world, still existed.
The Echo Technique: The Summoner's Bell didn't just attract monsters; its chime, when amplified by a massive, high-frequency kinetic force (a capability only I possessed), momentarily overloaded the local Monster Respawn Node. This overload caused the Node to treat the sound as a premature "boss clear" signal, forcing a rapid, unmanaged, and localized mass-spawn of high-rank monsters outside the dungeon boundary, not inside it.
The technique was simple: I would use the Bell to pull the entire contents of a high-rank dungeon outside and defeat the bosses on my own terms, in the middle of Solaria City.
This was the ultimate display of disrespect for the Central Authority's controlled order. It would prove that the rules of the game were meaningless when faced with absolute power.
My target was the Black Iron Fortress—a heavily fortified Epic-rank Red Gate located in the Solaria Outskirts. Its current boss was the terrifying Ironclad Behemoth. I would bring the Behemoth to the city square.