Chapter 772: The Third Dark Age (Patreon)

Princess Noelle Roses sat before the mirror in her chambers while two maids worked on her hair and the others adjusted the layers of her dress. The routine was always the same: careful hands, expensive fabric, understated jewelry, and voices kept low enough not to seem disrespectful, but loud enough to be overheard.

The servants loved to gossip, and Noelle had learned long ago that gossip was rarely useless. Court affairs, nobles who frequented the palace, lovers, quiet bankruptcies, scandals that had not officially become scandals yet. Most of it was nonsense, but every now and then, someone said something worth remembering. That morning, the maids seemed especially entertained.

“Did you see Lady Lyra at the party yesterday?”

“I heard people are calling her the Title Whore now.”

Noelle raised an eyebrow at her reflection. “Title Whore? That seems a little harsh.”

The maid holding the comb shrugged, trying to hide a smile. “That’s what everyone calls her, Your Highness. Every new lover seems to outrank the last. At this rate, she’ll start aiming for someone at court.”

Noelle gave a faint smile, as though the conversation were nothing more than amusing nonsense. It was better that way. The maids were the best information network in the castle. Always invisible, always overlooked, always standing in corners no one bothered to notice. Nobles talked too freely around them. Knights let things slip. Advisors forgot how far voices carried. And Noelle knew how to listen.

She pretended to be naive because it was useful. Princess or not, the palace was a nest of vipers, and she knew exactly where she stood among them. She was a snake too, of course. She just had weaker venom.

When she stepped out of her chambers, a man was waiting by the door, standing near the wall like a disciplined shadow.

Tristan Blackwell, her sworn knight.

“Good morning, Princess.”

“Good morning, Tristan.”

Noelle started down the corridor, and he fell into step behind her, as always. As they walked, Tristan filled her in on the day’s most important developments. Besides being her sword, he was also her source for military news and, sometimes, the only reliable source she had.

“Your brother Vincent is planning another council meeting. Or so I hear.”

Tristan knew the other knights well. He knew who talked too much, who lied badly, and who carried messages they had no business carrying. Noelle, meanwhile, made a point of attending council meetings even when no one bothered to invite her.

“If there’s a meeting, I’ll be there.”

“Princess...”

“What are they going to do? Throw me out?”

She said it with a small smile and kept walking.

Noelle’s father was old and sick. So far, however, he had refused to name an heir among his four children. Whoever inherited the crown would also take control of the Kingdom Core, and that uncertainty had divided the kingdom’s nobility into four factions. Each faction backed one of the royal heirs. Each had its own interests, promises, debts, and hidden knives. Noelle’s was the smallest. Calling it a faction at all was generous.

To most nobles, she was nothing more than a sixteen-year-old girl with no [Class], no victories to her name, no foreign alliances, no fortune of her own, and almost no one powerful enough to matter. Nothing. All she had was the royal name and a generous allowance.

Tristan was practically her only true supporter. He had sworn to serve her. He was the son of a marquis, talented with a sword, and well connected throughout the nobility. There was no shortage of families offering daughters, nieces, and cousins in marriage, and Tristan turned down every one of them. Until the succession crisis was settled, he remained at Noelle’s side, protecting her from blades both visible and hidden.

As they passed a tall window, Noelle slowed. Outside, in the courtyard below, knights and soldiers moved in formation. Their armor was stained from the road, their banners furled, their horses exhausted. Many of the soldiers were young. Too young.

“They’re returning from the expedition,” Tristan said, following her gaze. “Don’t worry. They aren’t invaders.”

There was a quiet laugh in his voice, but Noelle didn’t smile. “Sometimes I feel like I’m holding you back, Tristan.”

For once, he didn’t answer right away.

“You could be out there with them. On expeditions. In the Beast Forests. Getting stronger. Gaining levels. Doing something that actually matters. Instead, you’re stuck here babysitting a spoiled princess.”

“Princess Noelle, don’t feel guilty.” Tristan’s tone was easy, almost teasing. “If my choices are walking into a forest full of beasts where I might die or staying here with a beautiful young woman like you, I’d say the decision is pretty simple.”

She gave him a sideways look.

“Besides,” he added, his tone turning more serious, “it’s an honor to serve you.”

They continued down the corridor. The easy banter died the moment they passed a pair of guards and several servants pretending to be busy. The palace might have separate wings for each royal heir, but walls did little to stop spies. There were infiltrators everywhere. Noelle’s siblings watched her, and she knew it. She didn’t trust the guards, the servants, or the advisors, tutors, and healers who smiled too much. She trusted Tristan, and Tristan trusted her. For now, that had to be enough.

Her first lesson of the day took place in a small room reserved for private study. When Noelle was younger, she might have attended the academy alongside the other nobles, but since the duchy’s rebellion began ten years earlier, she had rarely been allowed beyond the palace grounds. Over time, even her education had been reduced to private tutors and whatever subjects others chose for her.

The moment she entered the room, an elderly man rose to his feet.

“Good morning, Your Highness,” Professor Horace Dandelion said.

Tristan stepped inside ahead of her. “Professor Horace.”

“Oh, come now, boy. I’ve been walking into this palace since you were a baby.”

“I’m sorry, Professor, but you know how things have been lately.” Tristan approached with professional calm. “I also can’t allow you to carry anything sharp.”

“Anything sharp? I’m a professor.”

“Which means you should know better than anyone that you can never be too careful.”

Tristan began searching the old man for concealed blades, sharp objects, or anything else suspicious. Horace allowed it, though his expression suggested he considered every second of the search a personal insult.

“Wait. Even my wand?”

“Even your wand, Professor. I’ll return it when the lesson is over.”

Horace huffed but handed it over. Once the search was finished, Tristan left the room and took up position outside the door.

“The Duchy of Ironwing may be more irritating than a foul-tempered scaled strider,” Horace grumbled as he straightened his clothes, “but being mistaken for one of their supporters is an insult to my honor.”

“We’re doing this with everyone, Professor,” Noelle said as she took her seat. “It isn’t personal. It’s a royal family directive.”

“A royal family directive. Of course.”

He sighed, then gathered his papers and tried to recover his dignity. “Now then, where did we leave off last lesson, Your Highness? Ah, yes. [Classes].”

Noelle stared at him without enthusiasm. “[Classes]? Again, Professor?”

“Your Highness, this is the best way to ensure the gods bless you with five good options when you turn eighteen.”

Noelle knew. Everyone knew. Of all the [Classes] in existence, the system limited each person to five randomly selected options based on individual compatibility. That was why nobles began training early. They studied [Classes], common starting skills, progression paths, and which choices might open or close future branches.

A massive chart covered one wall, filled with notes, connections, and hints about [Skill] evolutions. It was knowledge accumulated over thousands of years and guarded as a privilege of the nobility. Progression knowledge was power. Real power.

Sword-based [Classes] held no appeal for Noelle. Someone like her couldn’t simply decide to pick up a sword and carve her way through the world. [Archer] interested her somewhat, but it wasn’t considered noble enough. [Mage] would be ideal. With luck, perhaps [Healer].

Healers were valuable. It was the [Class] every noble house wanted somewhere in the family, but Noelle had heard all of this far too many times.

“Let’s do something different, Professor.” She rested an elbow on the table. “You know I’ve known all this since I was thirteen. We only keep repeating it because my siblings would rather keep me away from anything that actually matters.”

Horace closed his eyes for a moment. “Your Highness, I have a curriculum to follow.”

Noelle held his gaze. The silence stretched until Horace finally gave in.

“Fine, Your Highness.” Horace sighed again. “We’ll skip the boring parts. What would you like to discuss?”

“Politics.”

“Politics?” The professor froze for half a second. “Hm. We can begin there. Which reign would you like to discuss?”

“This one. Specifically, recent events.”

His expression changed. Only slightly, but it changed, and his fingers tightened around the papers.

“Your Highness...” He cleared his throat. “I’m not authorized to discuss those matters. My apologies.”

“Thought so.”

Noelle stood and walked to the window. Outside, the palace remained alive with soldiers, servants, nobles, and lies. The lesson continued anyway. Horace turned a page and acted as if nothing had happened.

“Now, let us move on to... the Dark Age.”

Noelle suppressed a sigh. She knew this part by heart. Every kingdom did. Two thousand years ago, the [Rank F] barrier disappeared, allowing people to advance to [Rank E] for the first time. The world changed almost overnight. Kings could live for centuries. People could awaken a second class. Anyone who reached level 100 could stand among the continent’s greatest powers.

“And naturally, everyone decided to kill each other.”

Horace glanced at her over the top of his papers. “Would you care to phrase that more academically, Your Highness?”

“No.”

He sighed. “The great wars began soon afterward.”

Every nation wanted to devour the next. Every [Kingdom Core] sought more territory, resources, and people. Kings who had once treated neighboring rulers as potential allies began to see them as obstacles, or opportunities. One king lived past two hundred without showing any real signs of decline, until his brother murdered him. The traitor gained the crown, the throne, control of the kingdom’s [Kingdom Core], and experience points. Noelle had always thought that last part was the only one that mattered.

Once the world realized what had happened, that people who had once been lucky to live to eighty could now easily live for two hundred years, something inside it rotted for good. The Dark Age began, and anyone who reached level 100 became a prize. Noelle hated that word. A prize sounded almost civilized. Adventurers, mercenaries, talented commoners, soldiers without noble blood, they all became targets. Some were hunted by foreign enemies. Many were hunted by their own rulers.

A weak noble who could never advance on his own could invite a powerful commoner to his estate with promises of gold, titles, a position at court, perhaps even marriage. A few glasses of wine later, the guest would collapse, and someone else would take what he had spent a lifetime earning.

Horace lowered his papers. “And what lesson did the nobility learn from that?”

Noelle looked at him. “That poisoning people is easier than becoming competent?”

His mouth tightened. “Not the answer in the curriculum.”

“It should be.”

Horace stared at her for a moment, then continued.

Many of Rosemark’s oldest military families had risen during that age, and Noelle took no pride in that. Her tutors preferred to focus on another lesson: levels and attribute points meant nothing if someone lacked the skill to use them.

History had proven that much. The strongest people were hunted. Those who awakened valuable professions were captured and enslaved. Entire communities learned to hide anyone who showed too much talent. People fled the capitals, villages emptied, and trust in the nobility collapsed. For a time, even ordinary people began to fear the system itself.

Then came the [Integration]. New kingdoms appeared. Entire peoples arrived, bringing new languages, new armies, and new enemies.

When the wars against those kingdoms intensified, the old nobility discovered exactly what centuries of shortcuts had produced. Their strongest warriors were often strong only on paper: men with high levels and little real experience, men who had advanced through poison, deception, and stolen progress, men convinced that a large enough number next to their name made them invincible. In actual war, they died to enemies with half their levels.

Vincent liked to say there was no such thing as natural intelligence. There was study, and the mind had to be sharpened like a sword. Noelle hated admitting when her brother was right, but unfortunately, on that point, he usually was.

“The second millennium became an age of rebuilding,” Horace said.

More unified nations like Solvar crushed weaker kingdoms. Rosemark lost several wars against them before finally adapting, and eventually the continent found something resembling stability. Not peace. Noelle doubted the kingdoms had ever truly understood the word.

But wars became smaller and more contained, usually limited to two kingdoms and fought on neutral ground rather than consuming half the continent at once. People were tired. They had spent centuries watching ambition turn rulers into monsters. Most commoners stopped caring about levels, and they stopped trusting the people who ruled them, too. That was when the Monarchs made their choice.

Noelle privately called what followed the Age of Greedy Monarchs. Official histories used kinder names. Of course they did. The rulers of that era had survived the great wars and reached the same conclusion: they could never allow their own populations to become that powerful again. So they kept them ignorant.

Knowledge about professions disappeared into noble libraries. Advanced class paths became family secrets. Skill evolutions, mana theory, crafting techniques, training methods, all of it was restricted. In some regions, the nobility even allowed literacy itself to decline.

Horace paused. “And yet?”

Noelle knew what he wanted. “They gave people food.”

“And?”

“Safety.”

“And?”

She leaned back in her chair. “Enough money that starving to death stopped being a normal concern.”

“Crude.”

“Accurate.”

Horace continued anyway. The Monarchs weakened their people slowly and deliberately, but they also gave them stability: food, safety, predictability. After centuries of bloodshed, that was enough. People began trusting their rulers again. The bitter part was that it worked. For ordinary citizens, it became the most stable era in recorded history.

“A necessary evil,” Horace said.

He turned another page.

“A little over a century ago, the system changed again.”

Advancement to [Rank D] was unlocked, and every king already at level 100 advanced almost immediately. Soon afterward, they discovered what the system was offering them: a new level cap of two hundred, and more than five thousand years of life for anyone who reached it.

Noelle didn’t need Horace to explain what happened next. Every scholar on the continent had understood the danger. Another great war was coming. How could it not? If the gap between level 1 and level 100 was already an abyss, what would a level 200 king become with his rivals still trapped at 100?

Every ruler would race for the top. Every rival would become a threat. Every powerful person would become either an asset or a target. But before the kingdoms could tear themselves apart again, something worse happened. The Empire appeared. Not another kingdom. An entire continent.

Another system [Integration] merged it with their world, bringing with it a civilization unlike anything the existing kingdoms had faced. The Empire was larger, better organized, more militarized, and far more powerful.

Its strength wasn’t concentrated in a handful of nobles and rulers. It had armies, institutions, commanders, training, and soldiers who actually knew how to fight.

“They humiliated us,” Noelle said.

Horace hesitated. “Yes.”

That single word carried more weight than most of his lectures. The Empire had toyed with the kingdoms. Centuries of hoarding knowledge, weakening commoners, and allowing noble families to grow complacent had finally come due. The old system had created stability, but it had also created weakness.

And now, before the kingdoms had even figured out how to deal with the Empire, the system had changed again. The final [Integration] between worlds had occurred. Every evolutionary barrier had been removed, and [Rank S] was now possible. For months afterward, rulers, scholars, nobles, and soldiers had argued over what the Third Dark Age would bring. Another continent. Another Empire. Something worse. No one knew.

Noelle looked at the massive [Class] chart covering the wall. All those paths, all those branches, all those carefully guarded answers. In two years, the system would give her five choices. Five [Classes]. And somehow, everyone in the palace still expected choosing the right one to be her greatest problem.

Horace cleared his throat. “Well?”

Noelle looked at him. “Well what?”

“Have you learned anything from today’s lesson?”

She glanced toward the window, where soldiers were still filing into the courtyard. “Yes.”

Horace waited.

Noelle looked back at him. “I think we’re about to find out how much everyone else learned.”

Horace said nothing, and Noelle turned back toward the window.

The Third Dark Age had already begun. The only question was what it would bring this time.

***

It had been a month since Luke first entered the underworld, and a lot had changed. A small village was taking shape on the castle grounds, an improvised home for humans and goblins alike. The kingdom was still young and full of problems, but it was growing. Every human from Otto’s village had officially become a citizen of Luke’s domain, and the Kingdom Core had responded by unlocking a new skill and reaching level 5.

Now, with Norn beside him, Luke followed Pip deeper into the forest. The goblin scout had found exactly what Luke had asked for.

“There, Lord Moon,” Pip said, pointing ahead.

“Thanks, Pip. Norn and I can take it from here. Go back to your friends.”

The goblin didn’t argue. Pip enjoyed exploring the forest, but he wasn’t stupid.

This part of the woods was covered in webs, stretched between trunks and bushes as though someone had draped the entire area in filthy, sticky veils. He had reported seeing spiders and had also been smart enough not to get too close.

Luke and Norn continued alone.

“Boss, these webs are fresh,” Norn said, moving carefully over the damp ground.

“I noticed.”

They pushed deeper into the territory. As the Kingdom Core gained citizens, its reach kept expanding. Every new stretch of forest revealed something useful, such as ore, water, or hunting grounds, or something trying to eat them.

Luke was starting to notice a pattern. All of it went onto his growing map of the kingdom.

Clear this place out, and the territory should expand again.

Good. More territory meant more warning before something reached the castle, and fewer surprises waiting just beyond his borders. Eventually, Luke and Norn reached the place Pip had described. A crater yawned open in the middle of the woods. Webs coated the edges, and cocoons hung from branches, roots, and stones. At the center, a massive tree root pushed out of the earth, thick and twisted, covered in white strands and dark shapes moving too slowly to be mistaken for shadows.

So Illyra was right. There are other places draining her power.

At least one spider as powerful as Norn lived here. Maybe several.

They descended into the crater. The moment Luke’s feet touched the bottom, the spiders began to emerge. Small compared to Norn, but numerous. They crawled from holes in the earth, from behind the enormous root, from within the webs themselves. One by one, they surrounded the pair, their fangs clicking in a dry, repetitive rhythm, like dozens of teeth snapping at once.

Either Norn’s throwing them off... or we walked straight into a trap.

Luke was betting on the trap.

“Can Norn attack, Boss?” the spider asked.

Luke watched the circle tighten around them. “Not yet.”

Norn shifted beside him as Luke kept his eyes on the spiders. He had an idea. Maybe a terrible one, but if it worked, this would get a lot easier.

“Give me a second.”

[Dread Aura activated]

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