The concept of "power levels" ceased to exist.
The presence that washed over us wasn't something that could be measured in stages or realms. It was a force of nature. It was the ancient, unified consciousness of the entire Crimsonwood Forest, a genius loci that had slumbered for millennia, and our petty squabbles had finally woken it up.
The two glowing green eyes rose higher and higher in the darkness, revealing a colossal figure made of interwoven wood, moss, and glowing crimson sap. It was a humanoid behemoth easily a hundred feet tall, a walking, sentient ecosystem. The Crimsonwood Ancestor.
Lin Feng, the World-Breaker. Captain Draven, the hero's keeper. Me, the hidden villain. We were all reduced to the same thing: terrified insects before a god.
"The blood of the Anomaly…" the Ancestor's voice rumbled, shaking the fillings in my teeth. It wasn't looking at me or Draven. Its immense, world-sized gaze was fixed solely on Lin Feng. "It stinks of the Void. A weed. A parasite. It must be culled."
The monster wasn't a mindless beast. It was a guardian. And it had identified Lin Feng's Netherworld-tainted soul as a blight upon its domain. Seraphina's 'Scroll of Fated Encounter' had not just attracted a gorilla; it had rung the dinner bell for the forest's immune system.
The Ancestor raised a hand the size of a house. Vines, thick as pythons and thorny as briar patches, erupted from its arm and shot towards Lin Feng with blinding speed.
There was no time for rivalry, no time for threats. There was only instinct.
"MOVE!" I roared, the command ripped from my throat by pure survival instinct.
I used [Imp's Shadow-Step] without a second thought, teleporting twenty feet to the side just as a dozen of the thorny vines smashed into the spot where I'd been standing, pulverizing the earth.
Draven, his heroic training kicking in, tackled the stunned Lin Feng, rolling them both out of the way of the primary assault.
We were alive. For now. The clearing was a maelstrom of destruction as the Ancestor's vines tore through the landscape, seeking their target.
"We have to run!" Draven shouted, hauling Lin Feng to his feet. "We can't fight this thing!"
"Running is a death sentence," I countered, my mind racing, processing the impossible situation. "Its consciousness is the entire forest. Where would we run to?"
I was right. Fleeing would be like a bacterium trying to flee the body it had infected. We were already inside the beast.
The system's directive was simple: SURVIVE. It wasn't a quest with objectives; it was a state of being. But in this chaos, a new, frantic thought process began in the Nexus Codex, an action it took on its own, born of the extreme crisis.
[CRITICAL THREAT DETECTED. SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 0.013%]
[STANDARD COMBAT AND UTILITY FUNCTIONS ARE INADEQUATE.]
[INITIATING 'FORGOTTEN PROTOCOL' SEARCH... SEARCHING FRAGMENTED DATASTREAMS FOR A VIABLE SOLUTION...]
...
...
[PROTOCOL FOUND: 'THE WORKSHOP'.]
A new tab, glowing with a bright, coppery light I had never seen, forcibly opened in my system interface. It was complex, filled with schematics and sub-menus that made the simple store and quest log look like a child's toy.
[THE WORKSHOP]
Description: A core function of the complete Nexus System, designed for the creation, modification, and fusion of concepts, skills, and artifacts. Access to this function in its fragmented state is limited and highly unstable.]
[Current Available Function: 'Emergency Synergy'.]
[EMERGENCY SYNERGY: Allows the host to temporarily fuse two or more compatible concepts or items from their inventory into a new, single-use entity. High chance of unpredictable results. High cost in System Points and raw materials.]
It was a crafting system. A desperate, last-ditch creation engine. My mind seized upon the possibility. Fuse what? I had a few pills, my dagger… and one other, unique item.
[Protagonist's Blood Sample x1]
The system responded instantly, as if it had been waiting for the thought.
[COMPATIBLE FUSION DETECTED.]
[ITEM 1: Protagonist's Blood Sample (Source of the 'World-Breaker' Anomaly).]
[ITEM 2: Shadowfang Dagger (Heaven Grade - Sealed. Thirsts for souls and life force).]
[PROPOSED SYNERGY: 'The Anomaly's Brand'.]
[Effect: Temporarily infuses the Shadowfang Dagger with the 'World-Breaker's' unique karmic signature. For a short duration, the dagger will be perceived by all cosmic and natural forces as a legitimate part of the 'Protagonist's Destiny'.]
[Cost: 500 SP, 1x Protagonist's Blood Sample]
[WARNING: THIS IS A CONCEPTUAL FUSION. THE OUTCOME IS THEORETICAL. PROCEED?]
It was insane. A gamble of the highest order. The Ancestor was hunting Lin Feng because it recognized his soul as a foreign entity. This synergy proposed… a disguise. A way to make my dagger smell like the anomaly it was hunting.
A massive vine slammed down next to us, and we scattered. Lin Feng, finally snapping out of his stupor, summoned his rusty sword, a desperate fire in his eyes. Draven was a whirlwind of steel, parrying and dodging, a valiant but ultimately futile defense.
We needed a miracle. This was the only one on offer.
"DO IT!" I screamed in my mind.
...SYNERGY INITIATED. CONSUMING 500 SP AND 1x BLOOD SAMPLE.
The vial containing Lin Feng's blood shattered in my inventory, and its essence, a single drop of crimson light, flowed into the icon of my dagger. A profound, metaphysical shift occurred. The Shadowfang Dagger in my hand didn't change its appearance, but I could feel it. The cold, hungry void of its own power was now overlaid with a faint, almost imperceptible 'hum'—the thrum of a protagonist's destiny.
The Ancestor's attention was still focused on Lin Feng. It raised its other hand, preparing another, larger assault.
This was my only chance.
"Lin Feng!" I roared. "Your power! The berserk mode! Use it now! You need to draw its full attention!"
He looked at me, his expression a mask of hatred and confusion. "Why should I listen to you?!"
"Because if you don't, we all die!" I snarled. "For once in your pathetic life, be the hero and draw the aggro!"
Whether it was my words or his own survival instinct, he reacted. A guttural roar tore from his throat. A blood-red aura exploded around him. It was 'Heaven's Wrath'. His power surged, his presence becoming a beacon of chaotic, Netherworld energy in the forest.
The Ancestor's green eyes flared, its full, undivided attention now locked onto the glowing protagonist. It saw him as the ultimate threat.
It was the opening I needed.
While the behemoth was focused on Lin Feng, I moved. I didn't run towards it. I ran parallel, circling around its massive form, using the chaos as cover. I poured all of my Nether-attuned Qi into the 'branded' Shadowfang Dagger.
I reached the 'back' of the colossal creature. Its body was a mountain of ancient wood and stone. But I wasn't aiming for its body. My target was one of the massive, root-like legs that anchored it to the earth.
I leaped, my dagger held in a reverse grip, and plunged it with all my might into the root.
I didn't try to cut it. I just stabbed it and held on.
The effect was instantaneous.
The Crimsonwood Ancestor froze.
Its immense consciousness, which had been focused entirely on the 'foreign' threat of Lin Feng, suddenly detected another anomaly. But this new one was… confusing. The dagger embedded in its heel had the exact same karmic 'scent' as the parasite it was trying to destroy.
It was like a body trying to fight off a virus, only for a second virus with the same signature to suddenly appear inside its own foot.
The Ancestor's head, a slow-moving mountain, began to turn, its glowing green eyes shifting from Lin Feng to its own leg. Its simple, ancient mind was thrown into a state of absolute confusion. There were two weeds now? One in front, one inside? Which was the real threat?
Its attack faltered. The storm of vines slowed, then stopped. The entire forest held its breath as the god-beast tried to process the conflicting information.
I had done it. My impossible gambit had worked. I hadn't defeated it. I had crashed it.
I had given the World Boss a system error.
But as the three of us stood in the sudden, eerie silence, catching our breath, a new player made a dramatic entrance.
A figure dropped from the sky, landing silently in the center of the clearing between the confused Ancestor and us. It was a woman, dressed in the green and gold robes of the Jade Scepter sect. She was old, her face a web of wrinkles, but her eyes held the sharp, clear light of immense power. She held a gnarled, jade-tipped staff in her hand.
She was the envoy Valerius had spoken of.
She looked at the frozen behemoth, at the heroic Captain Draven, at the panting, berserk Lin Feng. And then she looked at me, a black-clad figure clinging to the Ancestor's root with a dark, strangely scented dagger.
Her eyes narrowed, and a look of profound understanding and righteous fury crossed her face.
"So," she said, her voice ringing with the power of the Eternal Dao Realm, a power that dwarfed everyone present. "The demonic parasite, the noble knight, the slumbering guardian... and the hidden puppeteer who pulls all their strings."
Her gaze locked onto me. "You must be the one my prince warned me about. The true source of this chaos. Kaelen Ravencrest."
The twist was not that she had arrived. The twist was that in a clearing with a World Boss and a World-Breaker, she had instantly and correctly identified me as the greatest threat.