The notification appeared at 14:37, three minutes after the enemy commander's head separated from his shoulders.
**[WAR COMPLETE]**
**Campaign: The Siege of Blackthorn Keep**
**Duration: 87 Days**
**Enemy Casualties: 12,847**
**Allied Casualties: 203**
**Efficiency Rating: LEGENDARY**
**Personal Combat Rating: LEGENDARY**
**Achievement Unlocked: "The Unkillable Vanguard"**
Darius Thornheart stood motionless in the center of the killing field, his warhammer still raised, as the golden System text burned itself into his vision. Around him, the aftermath of absolute victory spread like a portrait painted in crimson and ash. Shattered siege towers leaned at impossible angles. Enemy banners—the black wolf of House Mordraine—lay trampled into mud that had once been men. The air tasted of iron and smoke and the particular sweetness that only came from massive casualties.
His hands were shaking.
Not from fear. Not from exhaustion. Darius had stopped feeling those things around Level 60, when his Endurance stat had crossed into four digits and his body had become something closer to an elemental force than human flesh.
No. His hands shook because they remembered. Because muscle memory was screaming at him that there should be *more*. More enemies. More threats. More violence to dispense with the cold efficiency that had made him legend.
But there was nothing left to kill.
"Lord Commander!" The voice cut through his dissociation. Captain Verin approached at a respectful distance—ten meters, the exact range Darius's passive **[Combat Spatial Awareness]** had trained his officers to maintain. "King Theodric requests your presence at the command pavilion. He wishes to... personally thank you."
Darius lowered the warhammer. The weapon—a brutal thing called *Worldbreaker*, forged from meteoric iron and enchanted to ignore 80% of structural defenses—weighed 340 kilograms. He held it one-handed like a carpenter's hammer.
"Tell His Majesty I need five minutes."
Verin hesitated. In that hesitation, Darius saw everything: the young captain's suppressed fear, the way his eyes flicked to the warhammer and away, the subtle shift of weight that indicated readiness to flee. Even his own officers feared him. Especially his own officers.
"Of course, Lord Commander. Five minutes." Verin saluted with parade-ground precision and retreated at exactly the pace that suggested urgency without panic.
Alone again, Darius closed his eyes and pulled up his full System interface.
---
**[DARIUS THORNHEART]**
**Level: 99**
**Class: Legendary Tactical Commander (Unique Evolution)**
**Titles: The Twilight Scourge | Breaker of Siege Lines | The Unkillable Vanguard | He Who Walks Through Walls**
**CORE ATTRIBUTES:**
- **Strength: 9,847** (Rank: Natural Calamity)
- **Endurance: 8,932** (Regeneration: Ancient Troll-Class)
- **Constitution: 7,621** (Toxin/Disease Immunity: Absolute)
- **Intelligence: 2,104** (Tactical Analysis: Grandmaster)
- **Dexterity: 891** (Warning: Severe Imbalance Detected)
- **Charisma: 3,567** (Leadership: Legendary | Intimidation: Overwhelming)
**KEY ACTIVE SKILLS:**
- **[Siege-Breaker Impact]** (Lvl 99) – Ignore 80% of structural defenses. Collateral damage +400%.
- **[Vanguard's Advance]** (Lvl 97) – 200m burst movement. Obstacles treated as non-solid.
- **[Battlefield Fortification]** (Lvl 99) – Rapid tactical construction. Durability +600%.
- **[Commander's Absolute Authority]** (Lvl 98) – Allied boost +300%. Commands carry System compulsion.
- **[Titan's Arsenal Mastery]** (Lvl 96) – Proficiency with all weapon categories.
**KEY PASSIVE SKILLS:**
- **[Fatigue Immunity]** (Lvl 99) – Operate at 100% efficiency for 15 consecutive days.
- **[Combat Spatial Awareness]** (Lvl 99) – 360° threat detection. Range: 50 meters.
- **[Threat Assessment Override]** (Lvl 94) – Automatic combat-ready state on sudden movement.
**PERMANENT DEBUFF: [CURSE OF THE CALAMITY CLASS]**
- Fine Motor Control: -95% (Tasks requiring <100kg force)
- Collateral Damage: +50% base chance
- Social Intimidation Aura: -20 Courage to non-combatants within 10m
- *Warning: This character build optimized for strategic destruction. Civilian applications severely limited.*
**NEW NOTIFICATION:**
**[RETIREMENT PROTOCOL INITIATED]**
*Analysis: No civilian skill tree detected. Recommend career continuation or class evolution quest.*
---
Darius dismissed the screen with a thought. The numbers told the story he already knew: he was a walking apocalypse, finely tuned for ending lives at industrial scale. Twenty-three years of war had carved away everything soft, everything gentle, until what remained was this—a weapon in human form.
He looked down at his hands. They were massive, scarred, the knuckles permanently swollen from punching through stone walls and steel plate. These hands had crushed windpipes, shattered skulls, driven siege stakes into frozen earth. They had held dying men and felt their last breaths rattle into stillness.
They had never held anything without breaking it.
The thought arrived with the weight of revelation: *When this is over, what am I for?*
---
King Theodric III's command pavilion occupied the highest point of Blackthorn Ridge, a sprawling canvas structure reinforced with enchanted poles that made it nearly as durable as stone. Inside, the atmosphere was celebration attempting to masquerade as military efficiency. Officers stood at attention, but their eyes gleamed with victory fever. Servants moved through with wine. Someone had started a fire in the central brazier, its warmth pushing back the autumn chill.
Darius entered, and the room went silent.
It wasn't intentional. It never was. But his **[Intimidation Aura]** didn't distinguish between enemy combatants and allied officers. The passive skill simply radiated outward, triggering the ancient hindbrain recognition: *apex predator present*.
Conversations died mid-word. Wine glasses paused halfway to lips. Two junior lieutenants at the far end of the pavilion took an involuntary step backward.
"Lord Commander Thornheart!" King Theodric rose from his campaign chair—a gesture of respect that sent a ripple of shock through the assembled officers. Kings did not stand for subjects. "At last. I was beginning to think you'd vanished into the smoke."
Theodric was young for a monarch, only thirty-two, with the kind of shrewd intelligence that Darius had learned to recognize in dangerous opponents. He wore his crown casually, tilted back on brown hair still damp with sweat from the earlier fighting. Unlike his grandfather, Theodric led from the front. Darius respected that.
"Your Majesty." Darius bowed—a precise thirty-degree incline, the exact protocol for a Legendary-ranked commander addressing royalty. "You summoned me."
"Summoned? No, no." Theodric gestured expansively. "I invited you. To thank you. To honor you. Without your tactical genius, Blackthorn Keep would still be strangling our eastern trade routes, and House Mordraine would be bleeding us for another decade." He turned to address the room. "Gentlemen, I present the man who ended this war. Three times he led the vanguard through enemy fire. Twice he rebuilt our siege engines under active bombardment. And today—" Theodric's voice rose with genuine awe—"today he walked through the keep's main gate as if it were *mist*."
The officers erupted in applause. Darius stood motionless, his expression neutral, while his **[Combat Spatial Awareness]** cataloged every face: Lieutenant Harmon (47, veteran, genuine admiration), Captain Verin (28, ambitious, calculating odds of advancement), General Blackwood (61, old guard, resentful of Darius's non-noble origins), Quartermaster Finn (33, terrified, sweating despite the cool air).
The applause felt like mockery.
"Your Majesty," Darius said quietly. The room silenced instantly—another effect of overwhelming Charisma. "I am honored. But I must request immediate discharge."
The silence took on a different quality. Stunned. Disbelieving.
Theodric's eyebrows rose. "Discharge? Darius, the war is won, but the kingdom needs—"
"The kingdom needs administrators now. Diplomats. Builders." Darius met the king's eyes steadily. "It does not need a siege-breaker. I have served for twenty-three years. I am... tired, Your Majesty."
It was the closest Darius could come to honesty. He couldn't say *I'm broken*. Couldn't admit *I dream of the men I've killed, and they number in the thousands, and I can recite their faces like a litany*. Couldn't confess *My hands shake because they're hungry for violence I no longer want to feed them*.
Theodric studied him for a long moment. The king's **[Royal Insight]** skill was working, Darius knew—analyzing, weighing, searching for leverage or weakness.
Finally, Theodric nodded slowly. "Very well. If the Twilight Scourge wishes to rest, who am I to deny him?" He gestured to an aide. "Draw up the discharge papers. Full pension, naturally. A lordship, if you desire it. Land—"
"No land, Your Majesty. Just the pension."
"No land?" Theodric looked genuinely baffled. "Darius, you've earned an estate. A legacy. You could—"
"I have no heirs to leave it to. And I..." Darius paused, searching for words. "I need simplicity. Not complexity."
Theodric sighed. "You're wasting extraordinary potential, Lord Commander. But I won't force you to war when you've bled enough for three lifetimes." He extended his hand.
Darius looked at the offered hand and felt a spike of anxiety. His Strength stat was 9,847. The king's Constitution was likely around 800—respectable for royalty, catastrophically fragile compared to Darius.
He gripped carefully, reducing his force to less than 1% output.
Even so, Theodric's eyes widened slightly, and Darius saw the royal **[Pain Resistance]** passive activate.
He released immediately.
"Apologies, Your Majesty."
"No harm done." Theodric flexed his hand subtly. "Though that explains how you demolish walls. Safe travels, Darius. And... thank you. Truly."
Darius saluted one final time and turned to leave.
Behind him, he heard the whispers start immediately:
"—mad to walk away from a lordship—"
"—heard his stat sheet, he's functionally immortal—"
"—probably can't even touch a woman without snapping her in half—"
That last one struck closer than the speaker intended.
---
Darius walked through the victory camp like a ghost through a celebration. Soldiers cheered as he passed, but none approached. His personal tent stood at the camp's eastern edge—positioned there, as always, to minimize accidental casualties if he had combat nightmares.
Inside, he began the methodical process of packing. He owned almost nothing: the warhammer *Worldbreaker* (which would be returned to the royal armory), three sets of reinforced armor (soon to be sold for scrap), a campaign journal filled with tactical maps and death counts, and a small wooden box containing letters he'd never sent.
He sat on his cot—built from ironwood to support his weight—and opened the box.
Seventeen letters. All addressed to his younger sister, Mara, who had died of plague fourteen years ago. He'd kept writing anyway, because it was the only time his thoughts felt coherent. The only time he could pretend he was still human.
*Dear Mara,*
*Today I killed 847 men. The System says this was efficient. I broke their siege line in four minutes. Tactical perfection.*
*I can't remember what your voice sounded like.*
*The shaking is getting worse.*
He closed the box without finishing. There was no point. Mara was seventeen years dead, and these letters were just evidence of a broken mind trying to hold itself together with routine.
A new System notification appeared:
**[RETIREMENT PROTOCOL: ACTIVE]**
**Discharge confirmed. Military benefits transferred.**
**Warning: Transitioning Calamity-Class entities to civilian environments carries significant risk.**
**Recommendation: Seek isolated location. Avoid population centers during adjustment period.**
**Estimated adjustment time: Unknown (No historical data available)**
Darius almost laughed. The System, for all its omniscient analysis, had no idea how to retire a living weapon. Because weapons didn't retire. They broke. They were discarded. They rusted in armories, forgotten.
But he would not rust.
He had a plan—fragile, desperate, probably doomed, but a plan nonetheless. He would find the smallest, most forgotten village in the kingdom. Somewhere so remote that his presence wouldn't terrorize children. Somewhere he could attempt the impossible: learning to build instead of destroy.
The merchant had mentioned such a place. Bluevalley. A nothing village in the western borderlands, barely marked on maps. Dying slowly from isolation and decay.
Perfect.
Darius rolled up his maps, secured his pack, and stepped out into the pre-dawn darkness. The victory camp sprawled below, fires burning, men singing songs of glory and conquest.
He walked the opposite direction.
Behind him, the Twilight Scourge vanished into legend. Ahead, Darius Thornheart hoped to find something harder than any battlefield victory:
Peace.
---
**[CHAPTER 1 COMPLETE]**
**[NEW QUEST AVAILABLE: "The Road to Nowhere"]**
**[Atonement Counter: 0/10,000]**