On the morning of the third day, Lister finally reset his internal clock.
No more night-hunting. No more waking at dusk. He was aligned again-and already mounted, bound for the Cerberus dens before the sun finished rising.
The questions surrounding Quent, the Duke, the duel… they were multiplying. And Lister could feel it: the web tightening around him.
But questions meant nothing without strength.
Not politics. Not intrigue. Not whispers in the noble courts.
Only power could protect him now.
And so the Cerberus dens would suffer again.
Some of the outer caves had begun to repopulate with a handful of fresh Cerberus spawns. Not many.
Enough to confirm what Lister had started to suspect:
This world didn't respawn like the game.
When a monster was slain, it stayed dead.
This wasn't a sandbox with infinite mobs and twenty-four-hour resets.
It was a real world.
And every battle thinned the population.
CLANG-SHHK!
A flash of steel cut through the damp cavern air, followed by the dull thuds of collapsing bodies.
Cerberus blood steamed on the rocks.
Lister didn't slow. He lunged forward, blade sweeping in precise arcs, finishing off the stunned beasts with clean, practiced slashes to the neck.
He knew their tells now.
The wind-up of their charge.
The snap of their heads before they struck.
The hesitation when flanked.
They weren't coordinated.
They weren't smart.
And they certainly weren't ready for someone who had soloed them for two straight days.
And even if his Merrick Blade Art wasn't the flashiest sword style, one technique alone was enough to earn him a legend among martial path players:
Draw Slash.
Sharp. Fast. Brutal.
It didn't matter how graceful it looked. It killed things.
Over the next two weeks, Lister turned Kayas into a slaughterfield.
He pushed deeper into the region than any native class-holder had likely dared in decades.
By the time he took a moment to rest, the results were staggering.
[EXP: 310,000]
He took a breath, then opened his menu.
Time to level.
"Congratulations. Level up!"
[Level 20 (0/20,000) - Awaiting Class Advancement]
+3 Stat Points
"You have reached the threshold for Class Advancement. Begin now?"
→ Declined.
Lister didn't even hesitate. He clicked No.
He might've been average in the old game-never cracked the top PvP rankings, never made it into elite guilds-but he wasn't stupid.
He had watched how the real players operated. He'd studied the min-maxers, the grinders, the guide writers.
He knew how class advancement worked in Divine Revelation.
The system ran on four milestones:
Level 20 – First AdvancementLevel 60 – Second AdvancementLevel 120 – Third AdvancementLevel 180 – Final Advancement
Only from the second stage onward did it require passing a class trial.
Level 20 was just a trigger point. A soft wall.
Once you classed up, your level cap unlocked. But your base stats became locked-in-you could only raise them with items, not natural growth.
If you hit class-up with 15 STR?
You'd be stuck starting from 15 until the next advancement.
Even if you leveled to 60, that attribute would lag behind.
The power ceiling was built off your foundation.
And Lister had no plans of starting from behind again.
He opened his stat screen and dumped all three points into Strength.
[Strength: 14 → 17]
Then he moved to his passive:
"Upgrade Merrick Breathing Style?"
→ Yes.
[LV3 → LV8: +8 Strength]
[Overall Rating: F → D]
He stared at the screen.
For a long moment, Lister didn't move.
D-Rank.
The corners of his mouth twitched into a slow, disbelieving grin.
D-Rank!
Before crossing over, his character had reached Level 180.
A final-stage, 4th Advancement class.
"Voidblade of the Astral Edge."
Sounded cool. Meant nothing.
His actual build?
Strength: 122.
Intelligence: 88.
Agility: 93.
Endurance: 85.
Barely made it through content. Always playing catch-up.
Never broke past E-Rank in his career.
Seventeen years of grinding, and his power was paper-thin.
Now?
Now, he was twenty levels in and already at D-Rank.
He wasn't just catching up.
He was sprinting ahead.
In the system's eyes, D-Rank wasn't just a letter.
It meant elite-class combatant.
It meant your presence couldn't be ignored.
It meant the system itself would grant you more information in combat-allowing deeper analysis of enemy abilities, attributes, and threat levels.
You didn't just hit harder.
You knew more.
Elite-level monsters started at D-Rank.
Bosses were C to B-Rank.
And Lords-the real threats-were A-Rank and above.
In this world?
He could finally close the gap.
"HSSSSHHH…"
A low, guttering hiss broke his thoughts.
The air thickened.
The blood scent… intensified.
Then came the tremors.
THUMP.
THUMP.
THUMP.
Rocks vibrated. Trees quivered.
Somewhere nearby, something massive was approaching.
Lister stood instantly. His pupils shrank.
The pressure in the air wasn't from a spawn.
This was a field boss.
Wind sheared across his face-razor-sharp, stinging.
He didn't need to look.
Cerberus Charge.
He shifted-body leaning, muscles bracing-and sidestepped the impact before the shadow even landed.
CRACK!
Three ancient trees exploded as the hulking figure smashed through.
A blur of black fur and snarling teeth.
One of the lesser Cerberi wasn't so lucky-it got flattened beneath a falling trunk. No kill credit. No EXP.
But Lister wasn't concerned with scraps anymore.
[Target Identified: Cerberus Knight – Elite Variant]
[Level: 26]
[HP: 15,019 / 15,996]
[Stats:] STR 24, AGI 17, INT 7, STA ???
[Skill: Cerberus Charge (D-Class) – LV17]
[Threat Rating: D – Elite]
[Advised Action: Avoid direct engagement]
He smirked.
So this was the true boss of the Kayas Cerberus pack.
Level 26.
A solid five levels above him. A full class advancement ahead.
But Lister had one thing the system didn't factor into its "Advised Action":
Player instinct.
His stats had just peaked. His health was full. His momentum was surging.
He didn't need to run.
He wasn't outmatched.
In fact, his Strength stat was higher than the boss's by a single point.
The only wild card?
That Charge skill. Level 17. It would hit like a freight train.
But he'd survived worse. And this wasn't his first boss fight.
Not in the game.
And not here.
He tightened his grip on the hilt of his blade.
"Let's see what 'elite' really means."
"Because I'm not the same as yesterday."