Free Web NovelChapter 7: [7]: Herald of the Hollow, A Blind Man’s Trial
Levi walked out of the Weeping Woods and made his way back to Novice Village 404. It had only been a few hours since the servers opened, but the Hamlet of Oakhurst was already unrecognizable.
Thousands of new players had logged in, turning the quiet, rustic starting zone into an absolute madhouse. The dirt roads were packed shoulder-to-shoulder with people wearing identical coarse peasant tunics. Dozens of players were crowded around the basic NPC quest-givers, jumping up and down, yelling over each other to click the interaction prompts.
Just outside the wooden palisade walls, a massive crowd of players was aggressively fighting over the basic Level 1 Slime spawns. The moment a blue jelly materialized in the grass, ten people would dive on it, swinging their rusty swords and screaming at each other in the proximity chat.
"Bro, stop stealing my spawn!" a guy yelled, wildly swinging his club.
"Party up or get out of the way, idiot!" a girl shouted back.
Levi just shook his head. He kept his head down and pulled the hood of his tunic up to hide his face. He didn’t want any attention. More importantly, he kept his Silver-tier Arachnid’s Fang Scythe unequipped and stored safely inside his digital inventory. If this mob of desperate newbies saw a Level 5 player carrying a massive, glowing silver weapon on day one, they would swarm him like piranhas begging for gear, tips, or party invites.
He slipped past the main square, completely ignoring the merchant stalls and the village elder giving out the main storyline quest. He knew exactly where he needed to go, and it wasn’t on any beginner map.
Levi navigated the tight, muddy back alleys of the hamlet. He passed a few stray NPCs doing basic idle animations. sweeping dirt, carrying boxes until he reached the ruined chapel at the far northern edge of the village. The chapel had a collapsed roof and was surrounded by overgrown weeds.
Behind the chapel sat a dilapidated, forgotten graveyard. Most players wouldn’t bother coming back here because there were no monster spawns and no obvious quest markers.
Sitting on a crumbling, moss-covered tombstone near the back fence was an old man. He wore ragged, dirty robes. A grimy blindfold covered his eyes, and he held a chipped wooden begging bowl in his lap. To anyone passing by, he was just a flavor-text NPC. A piece of background dressing for the graveyard.
His name was Silas.
Levi stopped a few feet away from the tombstone, letting out a slow breath. In his past life, a massive lore-hunting guild had spent six real-world months trying to figure out this specific NPC. They had to grind obscure trust quests, bring him rare items from the other side of the continent, and piece together fractured lore books just to unlock his true dialogue tree.
Levi didn’t have six months. He didn’t even have six minutes to waste. He was going to skip the entire grind.
He walked straight up to the blind man. Silas didn’t move. He just held out his wooden bowl, his voice raspy and weak. "Spare a copper for a man who cannot see the sun?"
Levi leaned in close, making sure no other players were wandering around the chapel ruins. He spoke clearly, triggering the hidden voice-recognition prompt in the game’s code.
"The Black Sun wanes, but the harvest remains."
The reaction was instantaneous.
Silas stiffened. The wooden begging bowl slipped from his hands and clattered onto the dirt. The pathetic, hunched posture of a beggar vanished entirely. The old man stood up tall, his spine snapping straight. The ambient temperature in the graveyard plummeted by ten degrees.
A chilling, deathly aura bled out from the NPC, turning the edges of Levi’s screen a faint, frosty gray. Silas turned his head, his blindfolded eyes locking directly onto Levi’s face!
"You know the words of the old world," Silas said. His voice was no longer raspy. It was deep, echoing with a strange, metallic resonance. "I have sat in this dirt for a hundred years, waiting for someone who remembers."
Silas raised a hand, and a dark, necrotic energy swirled around his fingertips. He revealed himself not as a beggar, but as the last living acolyte of the Hollow King. a forgotten, exiled deity of the underworld.
"The Hollow King requires a new herald," Silas continued, stepping closer. "One who does not fear the dark. One who understands that death is not an end, but a harvest. You carry the stench of the reaper on you, boy. But knowing the words is not enough. You must prove you have the teeth for it."
A golden system prompt violently flashed in front of Levi’s face.
[Hidden Class Quest Triggered: The Hollow’s Inheritance.]
[The SSS-Rank Hidden Class ’Herald of the Hollow’ has been offered.]
[Condition: Travel to the Ashen Crypts and retrieve 100 Undead Cores within 24 hours.] [Penalty for failure: Permanent ban from accepting this class and a permanent 50% reduction in all NPC reputation.]
[Do you accept?]
Levi stared at the prompt. The Herald of the Hollow class was a legend in his past life. It was designed specifically for execution-style combat, heavily synergizing with scythe weapons and raw physical damage. It was the perfect puzzle piece to combine with his Supreme Harvester talent.
However, the trial was no joke. The Ashen Crypts was a Level 8 to Level 10 dungeon zone. It was mathematically designed for a fully coordinated 5-man party consisting of a tank, a healer, and three DPS players.
The game’s Level Suppression mechanic was brutal. For every level an enemy was higher than the player, the player suffered a damage penalty. A Level 5 player fighting a Level 8 monster would deal 20% less damage outright, while taking significantly more damage in return. For a normal player, this quest was an absolute death sentence. Going in solo meant you would get farmed until your durability broke and your XP hit zero.
Levi didn’t even blink. He tapped ’Accept’.
"I’ll be back before tomorrow," Levi said.
Silas gave a grim, humorless smile and sat back down on the tombstone, instantly reverting to his hunched, beggar posture. The freezing aura vanished.
With the quest locked into his log, Levi turned and walked back into the village. He needed basic supplies before diving into a dungeon. He headed to the general store, pushing past a group of players arguing over the price of bread.
He opened the NPC merchant menu. He didn’t have much money, just the handful of copper coins he had looted from Vance’s PK drop and the silver he got from the Broodmother. He didn’t need health potions anyway. His high Agility meant he planned on dodging, and his base Vitality of 10 gave him a massive 200 HP cushion.
What he needed was fuel for his skills. Reaping Arc cost 10 Mana per cast. With his miserable base 50 Mana pool, he could only cast it five times before running completely dry.
He spent all his remaining copper and silver on basic mana potions. He bought exactly three dozen of them. They only restored 20 Mana over 10 seconds, but it was enough to keep his rotations flowing.
He slotted the potions into his quick-use belt, closed the shop interface, and left the village through the northern gate.
The Ashen Crypts were a long walk away, situated at the base of a jagged mountain range that loomed on the horizon. Levi spent the journey organizing his inventory grids and running the combat math in his head.
His stats were highly anomalous. Even with the 20% Level Suppression penalty, his Silver-tier scythe and artificially inflated attributes meant his Base Attack was sitting at an absurd 85. A normal Level 10 player wouldn’t even hit that hard. He was walking into a party zone, but mathematically, he was an entire party compressed into one avatar.
He reached the coordinates marked on his map. The scenery changed from grassy plains to scorched, barren earth. He stood at the edge of the objective marker, looking down.
.
.
A/N: [Power Stones makes me release more Chapters faster]
