[Warning: "Territory Data Corruption" Detected]
[Cause: Unknown]
[Do you wish to attempt resynchronization?]
Ethan flinched. "Huh? This was never in any of the previous builds..."
He pressed [Yes]. The screen flickered for two seconds before a dark blue light washed over him. Then, without warning, he heard a faint voice in his ear. It wasn't the usual, sterile System voice. This was a man, exhausted, sounding as if he were calling from somewhere deep within the game itself.
"Is... can anyone hear me?"
Ethan froze. "Who is this? Another player?"
But the System showed no chat window. Instead, a cryptic line of text materialized in the center of his view.
[Entity detected outside the official database.]
[Entity is attempting to bind with host: Ethan Crowe.]
"Damn it! This isn't supposed to happen!"
He tried to disconnect, but the log-out screen was frozen, unresponsive. Then, tendrils of gray static began to crawl from the edges of his vision toward the center, where a distorted face began to form. It was an incomplete image of a man, half-human, the other half...
Ethan tried to force-quit the game, but the System issued a new, chilling message.
[Log-out has been blocked.]
[Security measure activated — "Reflection Protocol."]
Ethan's eyes widened, his anxiety spiking. Even the System itself began spamming a rapid-fire stream of warnings.
[Connection to US-East Main Server: Lost.]
[Emergency transfer to alternate node.]
[Data monitoring has been disabled.]
"Is this part of the beta?" Ethan whispered, his voice trembling. "Or has the game actually gone haywire?"
Then, suddenly, the scene before him fractured and reformed. He was no longer looking at the frozen plains. He was staring at a massive, stone gateway that opened onto a city surrounded by a shimmering barrier. In the city's center, a young man stood amidst a legion of shadows, surrounded by crimson, dark-eyed creatures.
He heard the System murmur a familiar name.
[Shaun Evander – Dark Lord of the Small City]
Ethan's heart stopped. "If that's the real player... how am I seeing him from a different world?!"
A final window popped up, this one a deep, ominous crimson.
[You have been linked to the Experimental Channel: Project Reflection.]
[Welcome to the Second Layer, Ethan Crowe.]
He squeezed his eyes shut, his voice a broken whisper of terror and disbelief.
"Dammit... Is the game actually starting to swallow us?"
***
Oblivious to the chaos unfolding in the world beyond, Shaun was neck-deep in a whirlwind of frenzied hunting, tearing through his dark forests.
Wolves, magical lizards, even a few D-Grade Level 11 monsters—Shaun left none of them alive.
The result?
His territory's level skyrocketed to Level 13 at an unprecedented speed, so fast that the System itself had begun sending him repeated alerts, warning him of "Unusual Activity"!
His "Small City" was growing almost by the hour. Vast expanses of land were added to it automatically, as if the very earth was bending to his will. The irony, however, was that this flourishing city didn't have a single resident.
No citizens, no builders, no merchants. There was only Shaun and an army of shadows that filled the silent, stone streets.
It was a ghost town. Or rather, the city of the Dark Lord, Shaun Evander.
As for him, he had reached Level 13, matching his city's core. With that massive jump, he received 13 full stat points in every one of his main categories: Strength, Intelligence, Endurance, Vitality, and Agility. On top of that, he gained 16 free points to distribute as he pleased.
Levels 1 through 10 had only granted him a single point per level, but from Level 11 onward, the System had begun to reward him generously—two points per level!
He could become an unkillable magical behemoth by dumping everything into Intelligence and mana, or a physical juggernaut by pumping Strength and Endurance. But, in his typical fashion, he decided to distribute them evenly.
In any case, he wasn't worried. He had already become the first player to reach D-Grade!
Chuckling at that ridiculous thought, he glanced at the shadow hordes surrounding him. He had successfully summoned forty new Level 1 Shadow Soldiers and, without mercy or rest, had ground them all up to Level 7 within a few short hours.
He now commanded a special combat unit of one hundred Level 7 Shadow Soldiers.
This force was more than enough to conquer any neighboring village with absolute ease, and perhaps even crush some of the less fortunate D-Grade summoned heroes.
But, unfortunately...
All nearby villages were still under the seven-day protection period. This meant he couldn't attack without exposing himself to the System's lethal penalty.
"Seven days of forced peace," Shaun muttered in annoyance, staring out through the hemispherical protection barrier surrounding his city. "What a torturous punishment for a peaceful player like me."
He smirked, his malice obvious as he spoke the last word. He was anything but peaceful. The System had simply forced him to appear that way.
But that didn't stop him from expanding internally.
While other players were still struggling to build basic huts and recruit hunters, Shaun had already established a proper shadow army, supported by a battalion of hidden archers he'd dubbed the "Shade Archers." He had a full half-dozen of them, all at Level 5, stationed on the city walls like living statues, moving only when they detected the slightest foreign movement.
As for the blacksmiths, their numbers had also grown. Three additional Dark Smithies now worked day and night, smelting the monster bones he collected. Those D-Grade bones were a rare, high-end material for most players, but within his city, they had become the primary resource for forging weapons and armor.
The sound of hammers echoed throughout the empty city.
Clang! Claaang! CLANG!
It was a relentless, mechanical rhythm, mixed with the acrid smell of ash and burning iron.
Shaun stood before the workshop, a faint smile of pride playing on his lips. "A city with no citizens, yet more alive than any other..."
He then added in a mocking tone, "Well, I did open the 'Citizen Summoning Portal' a while ago... but it consumes ten magic crystals to summon just one citizen per hour. Heheh... They'd probably run for their lives the second they saw my execution squads."
He let out a short, manic laugh, just as the System window displayed a new notification.
[Territory Activity Level: High]
[Warning: Your intensive activity may attract the attention of external entities.]
He raised an eyebrow with sarcastic interest. "External entities? Oh, wonderful. I'm famous."
He had no idea that the System's warning wasn't just a random alert.
Elsewhere, far removed from the game world, inside a monitoring center at one of the company's US branches, multiple screens were flashing with consecutive red alerts.
Their sole source: Shaun Evander's territory.
But Shaun, lost in the euphoria of expansion and methodical destruction, knew nothing of this. All he saw was his city pulsing with dark life, his shadows growing stronger, and his borders expanding ever outward.
For a moment, he truly believed he had become the Lord described in the game's lore.
"The Lord who swallows the light, leaving the world to survive in his shadow."