Dungeon King: The Hidden Ruler-Chapter 113: [Throne War: Parallax Protocol 4] The South Node Falls

Chapter 113: [Throne War: Parallax Protocol 4] The South Node Falls

Adrian Voss stepped out into the street just after the morning rush.

The shopping district had begun to quiet, the tide of office workers already swept into their buildings, leaving only the scattered rhythm of delivery carts and the occasional pedestrian sipping coffee.

He walked alone, hands in his pockets, savoring the rare feeling of motion. Real motion. Pavement beneath his shoes, sunlight broken by skyscraper shadows. He liked this part of his day—not because it was exciting, but because it kept him from vanishing.

He arrived at the CloudSpire Lounge fifteen minutes later. A sleek capsule hotel retrofitted into a VR immersion lounge, popular with streamers and remote execs. His usual.

After a quick check-in at the glass-panel terminal, he took his capsule key and made his way down the hall.

The pod was clean. Dark. Familiar. He lay back into the reclined VR seat and exhaled. The hiss of the seal. The warmth of the biometric sync.

For a man who rarely left his apartment, this routine was his oxygen.

[Launching Primordial Abyss...]

His vision went black.

Then came the ash, the system alerts, and the familiar virtual feeling of his character.

Raven was back.

Emberwatch had changed overnight.

The outer wall was still gone. The breach still open. But now, the fires had reached the inner ring—where defense meant alleys, doorways, stairwells.

Duskrunner appeared beside him with a cold shimmer of mist. No flair. No system fanfare. The wolf growled once and padded forward.

The two of them moved like ghosts through the ash-blown streets. No squad. No plan. Just the rhythm of hunt and silence.

They circled flank routes—striking lone infiltrators, disabling spore mines, collapsing routes with spike traps. Each movement was clean, calculated.

But it wasn’t just them this time.

A young healer in white-gold cloth armor—tagged [Sunveil_Mira]—trailed them with steady steps, staff in hand. Her group had wiped minutes ago, but there was no panic in her posture. No fear in her eyes.

When she spotted Raven and Duskrunner clear the alley, a crooked grin lit her face. "Thought I was gonna have to solo kite my way to Sanctum," she said, half-laughing.

"Don’t fall behind," Raven muttered without turning.

"Wouldn’t dream of it," Mira replied, eyes already scanning for wounded targets.

A thornback bruiser rounded a corner, its eyes burning green and bark-covered fists pounding the ground in warning.

Duskrunner lunged without instruction, slamming into its legs. The beast shrieked and staggered.

"Get back!" Mira cried out and stumbled, nearly tripping on a cracked cobblestone.

Raven was already moving—Spirefang in his grip.

He chained the creature’s arm, yanked it off balance, and dove beneath its swing. Duskrunner tore into its hindquarters as Raven slashed across the bruiser’s exposed neck. It screamed, toppling like a felled tree.

Mira flinched at the sound, then opened her HUD to queue a buff burst.

Too late. The fight was already over.

Enemy deleted.

[+1 Resource Token]

She let out a breath, then grinned. "Guess I can stop leeching your XP now," she joked, lowering her staff. "My party just pinged. They’re all up at Sanctum."

Raven didn’t reply, just cleaned his blade, smiled back, "You’re welcome".

"Thanks for not letting me die on the way," she said, already turning toward the side street that led uphill. "Stay alive, dark-and-edgy."

She waved once and jogged off into the smoke.

Above it all, on the tallest watchtower Emberwatch still had, Fairyblade stood perfectly still.

She’d said nothing to Raven that day. Didn’t party up. Didn’t wave.

From the peak, she recorded everything—but not the fighting.

Elara had been assigned to QA field deployment just last week ever since the esport team sponsorship program applied—a routine part of Titan Corp’s live audit cycle. Her job was simple on paper: monitor how the world reacted to newly applied policy shifts inside the game. Record metrics. Flag anomalies. Observe without interfering. She wasn’t here to fight. She was here to witness what happened when you corrupted a war with spectacle.

Her role was different.

She wasn’t watching Raven or the defender effort. She wasn’t watching the mobs. She was watching player behavior.

Her HUD was cluttered with scroll feeds—guild chat logs, kill-feed surges, forum repost alerts, market volatility graphs. One panel showed chat velocity spikes every time the Parallax Vanguard logo appeared on screen. Another tracked stream engagement versus in-game complaint tags.

It was all data.

And the data wasn’t looking good.

She muttered to herself: "Engagement’s rising. Approval’s tanking."

"But all of that are negative."

Another popup bloomed in the corner of her vision.

[Parallax Vanguard: East Gate Victory Reels – LIVE]

She sighed. These popups were annoying. What was the compamy thinking to create promo this intrusive? Did they still think players are cash cows to suck on until dry?

No enemies had even reached the East Gate.

Her hand hovered over the capture key.

She recorded the silence.

The ash-routes were slick with soot and half-melted signage. Duskrunner moved like a shadow beast through them, Raven following just behind—eyes narrowed, blades reversed in a low guard. The breach had turned the city’s outer streets into kill zones, and somewhere ahead, the rhythm of battle surged again.

They found it fast.

A corrupted elite unit had broken off from the main assault, heading straight for a shield node that anchored one of the few still-active city defenses. The creature wore barkstone armor infused with red glyphs, and three smaller thralls trailed it—each one belching green flame with every step.

Raven gave a single nod.

Duskrunner lunged.

Chains flew.

Spirefang hissed through the air.

The first thrall never saw the wolf coming.

But just as Raven slashed through the second and flipped away from a fire cone blast, a popup bloomed across his vision again.

[LIVE NOW – Parallax Vanguard Defense Highlight: "Standing Guard at the Plaza"]

The overlay flickered over half his UI.

"Off," he muttered, swiping—but the system required a full tap-through to mute the stream.

That delay was enough.

The elite barkstone unit struck him—just a glancing hit, but enough to throw him off balance. Duskrunner dove in with a retaliatory slam, biting into the glyph core before it could recharge.

Raven recovered with a backward roll, blood streaking down his arm.

[Shield Node Integrity: 72%]

They killed the last thrall seconds later.

Up above, Fairyblade saw the spike.

Chat logs surged. A new flare of arguments, sarcasm, screenshots.

[Ironhost_Captain]: "Bruh! What’s next? Getting a paywall to kill my enemy?"

[Rootfang_Vetra]: "Curse these bloody popup promotional shitshow! Nobody goves a fuck on these bloody idiot team."

Fairyblade then notice something on her admin panel.

Rootfang_Vetra has been suspended from chat for 24 hours.

Reason : Profanity chat.

Fairyblade sighed, her voice low behind a muted mic line.

"That’s how you treat paying players now? Real classy, boss."

Meanwhile below on city street, Raven wiped his blade on his arm and moved forward again. He never even looked up.

Something is weird in this month’s Throne Wars. Something about it makes him want to puke.

Something worse than just server lags.

And all that during the time he wants to enjoy the game, like everyone else.

By midday, the east side was trending globally.

Not because of a battle. Not because of a win.

Because Parallax Vanguard had filmed a slow-motion group emote under a sky pyre and called it a defense.

Fairyblade—Elara—sat alone on the crumbled spire of a ruined chapel, her lens set not on Raven or the mobs this time, but on the discrepancy between screen and blood.

Player complaints stacked like error logs:

[Krant_SB]: "TF they’re defending? the air??"

[Glasspoint_Lucia]: "someone just died in south market and a streamer got kill credit lmao."

[ArdentStitcher]: "do u still get full exp for tagging a deadman?"

Raven didn’t see any of it.

He and Duskrunner were two blocks deep into what remained of the southern barracks, their movement honed into a vicious loop—strike, reposition, chain pull, finish. A corrupted vinecaller had fused with two AI beast units, forming a stitched-together miniboss that oozed toxins as it advanced.

No backup. Just a pair.

A single miss could end the node defense.

They didn’t miss.

Back at the tower, Fairyblade clicked through trending topic overlays. The system was auto-highlighting clips with Vanguard’s logo.

Her own report, stacked with kill/death ratios, timestamped feed interruptions, player drop-off zones—it barely registered.

She bit her lip. Not out of frustration.

But because she realized no one in the company had turned the overlay off.

"Even internal staff..." she murmured, "don’t watch the war. They watch the brand."

She minimized the trend tracker. And kept recording the chaos.

The south node fell just after sunset.

Raven had been halfway through binding a wounded AI archer when the screen shuddered—an earth-rippling tremor that announced a mass shift in aggro. A corrupted siege brute emerged from the rubble of a collapsed guardhouse, dragging half a staircase with it. Three caster units flanked it, channeling rot-mist into the corridor.

Duskrunner bared his fangs and leapt without hesitation, snarling with fury. His claws tore through the nearest caster’s chest in one clean rip, but another rot spike clipped his hind leg.

He howled—loud, guttural, a sound that echoed like a cry for help and defiance all at once. The brute turned and brought down its arm like a battering ram. Duskrunner tried to dodge, limped mid-lunge, and took the hit squarely.

There was a sickening crunch. He skidded across the stone floor, his body twisting unnaturally.

Then came the whimper—sharp, confused, desperate.

Duskrunner’s form shimmered once in pain, then dissipated in a flicker of broken light.

[Your Summon Has Died – Cooldown: 1 Minute]

Raven lunged forward, Spirefang flashing in his grip. He leapt at the lead caster, dagger aimed for the throat. But the caster twisted at the last second—Raven’s blade grazed its collar instead of plunging deep.

It was enough of a delay.

The brute slammed into him from the flank, full force, and sent him crashing through the debris.

[You have died.]

He respawned in the Sanctum again.

Alone.

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