"Hermos."

  Mark said, his voice cutting through the silence that had settled after the commanders' arrival. "Report. What happened in the Ziggurat while I... was absent?"

  The bat-butler hesitated at that.

  His ears twitched sharply, and he tilted his head, looking genuinely confused by the scope of the question. The gleam of intelligence in his black eyes wavered for a moment.

  "Everything remained in order. Following your final directives, the Ziggurat operated at minimum capacity for resource preservation." Hermos replied, regaining his composure.

  He looked at the other four kneeling commanders, as if asking for confirmation.

  Karkinos was the first to respond, the sound of his chitin scraping against the floor echoing through the hall.

  "The Vanguard of the First Ring remained immobile, Master. No living creature crossed the defenses."

  "The crypts... the crypts as well." Malphas stammered, without lifting his head. "The bodies of the former invaders remain preserved. Nothing decayed, nothing... nothing awakened without your will."

  "The banquet halls also remain ready for Your return, my Lord." Carmilla suddenly said, breaking the silence with her velvety voice.

  Right after, the little girl Elizabeth squeezed the cloth doll against her chest, her voice coming out in a timid whisper. "The fourth ring... is silent. Everything stopped to wait for the Lord to awaken."

  Mark listened to the reports in silence, keeping Vaelin's expression like a mask of ice.

  He was testing the ground and trying to gather more information.

  In the game, those figures were extensions of his will, tools he pointed in a direction. But now... his commanders were no longer code.

  Each of them was an entity of level 400 or higher.

  Even though Mark was max level, would the resurrection rules of his race — something he used casually in the game — still work? He didn't know whether his abilities retained the same effects.

  The risk that not all of them functioned like in the game was high.

  Besides, if one of those commanders decided Vaelin was weak or harbored second intentions, it would be troublesome. Mark wouldn't have trouble fighting one or two of his commanders, but in this world, dying could be definitive.

  Even for him.

  His gaze wandered between Carmilla, who kept her gentle smile while observing him, then Malphas and Elizabeth, who seemed too intimidated to look at him directly, and Karkinos... well, who was acting like an insect.

  Then there was Hermos.

  Looking into those large eyes, Mark shook his head.

  Could he be overthinking?

  Still, a sense of dissonance began to crawl up his spine.

  Something was out of place.

  Minimum capacity for resource preservation.

  Immobile vanguard.

  Bodies of former invaders preserved.

  His brain processed each report.

  'Former invaders?'

  Mark frowned inwardly.

  Were they referring to the last attack of the Army of Light? For him, the Fourth Division of the Army of Light had struck his gates only a few hours ago, just before he closed the game.

  Sensing something didn't add up, he changed the direction of his questions.

  "The Army of Light." Mark began, looking at each of them. "The Fourth Division that dared to invade this land... do you remember it?"

  The commanders went still, exchanging confused looks.

  Malphas began trembling more visibly, the threads in his scars writhing like worms.

  Carmilla lost her gentle smile for a second, her lips pressing into a straight line.

  Elizabeth squeezed her cloth doll so tightly that the seams of the toy looked ready to burst.

  Hermos stepped forward, his bat-like expression turning somber and melancholic.

  "Sovereign... that was ten centuries ago." He whispered.

  Mark froze.

  'Ten... what?'

  "The invasion happened ten centuries ago. Since then, the Ziggurat has been hibernating, waiting for the Sovereign to awaken." Hermos explained carefully, watching Vaelin's reaction.

  Ten centuries.

  A thousand years had passed since the Army of Light attacked?

  Hadn't he only slept for a few hours?

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Mark tried to steady his breathing.

  The Ziggurat had been hibernating for a millennium.

  That meant that the moment he was reborn inside the game, time had already devoured the outside world he thought he knew.

  "Hermos." Mark called, his voice sounding distant. "The three absent commanders... they still haven't awakened because of that prolonged rest?"

  The butler tilted his head, nodding quickly. "Yes, Sovereign. Following the preservation plan, the Ziggurat shut down almost all its vital functions to conserve mana and resources during Your sacred sleep."

  Hermos clenched his gloved hands, looking anxious. "As Your butler, my essence is directly linked to the vital flow of this hall. I was the first to be reactivated the moment Your Majesty opened your eyes. When I felt the power and heard the disturbance coming from the hall... I feared you were in danger after so long and intruded, ignoring all protocols."

  Mark processed the information.

  The "power" must have been when he tested his explosive abilities.

  He had flipped the main switch of that fortress without realizing it.

  Those level 400 cards had spent a thousand years waiting for him in dreamless darkness, but for him only a few hours had passed from the moment he logged out to being reborn.

  'A thousand years...' Mark thought, feeling strange.

  If the Army of Light and the enemies that used to invade the Ziggurat were gone, who ruled the world now?

  He needed to see it with his own eyes.

  Mark suddenly rose from the throne.

  "Karkinos." He called to the giant mantis, who immediately clicked his mandibles in attention. "Take us to your area, the outer wall."

  The mantis's body seemed to vibrate with excitement. "Yes, Sovereign! It would be an unprecedented honor to guide Your Majesty."

  The metallic tone of his voice betrayed his enthusiasm. Karkinos lowered his red chitinous torso, bringing his serrated forelimbs down to the level of the marble.

  "Climb, my Lord. I will carry you through the rings with my speed." He offered his wide, armored back as a mount.

  Mark evaluated the proposal for a brief second.

  Karkinos was, without a doubt, the fastest unit under his command.

  In the game, Mark had meticulously built him to be a vanguard reaper, a war machine whose entire focus was movement speed and chain attacks.

  Riding that creature's back would mean crossing the kilometers of corridors and stairways of the Ziggurat in moments.

  However, when he looked at that shining red carapace, at the chitinous joints clicking, and at the serrated legs that looked ready to shred anything in their path, Mark felt resistance.

  His gaze rose to Karkinos's face, and the sight didn't help.

  The mantis stared at him with huge multifaceted eyes that reflected the hall's light into hundreds of distorted fragments, making it impossible to tell exactly where the creature was looking.

  Its lateral mandibles, black and dagger-sharp, moved in a frantic, involuntary rhythm, producing a chewing sound that sent chills down Mark's spine.

  No matter how loyal Karkinos was, the human Mark still wasn't fully comfortable with the exotic anatomy of his servants.

  Besides, Vaelin would hardly bother being carried like cargo through a corridor when he possessed far more... dignified ways to move.

  "It's not necessary. Just be our guide when we get there." Mark cut in, his voice sounding cold and uninterested in Karkinos's offer.

  The excitement vibrating through Karkinos's shell seemed to wither instantly at Vaelin's refusal. He froze his movements, and the chewing sound of his mandibles stopped.

  "As you wish, Sovereign..." His head lowered, accepting that his speed wouldn't be needed to serve the master at that moment.

  Watching the scene, Mark felt the creature was less like an insect and more like a dog.

  "..."

  Setting that aside, it was time for him to test something else.

  So far, Mark had used physical and instinctive abilities, but he had ignored something very important due to lack of time.

  Something that defined a high-level player.

  Mark focused his mind, trying to visualize the interface that had followed him for four years.

  'Inventory.' He thought firmly.

  At the same instant, a dimensional rift silently opened in the air, visible only to him. Mark felt a sudden tingling in his fingers as he glimpsed the inside of that infinite space.

  Endless rows of icons shimmered with varying intensities.

  Mark's eyes passed over stacks of chests, weapons, resources, and many other items.

  He didn't have time to explore everything, his eyes quickly catching what he wanted: a Large-Scale Teleport Scroll.

  With a subtle movement of his hand, the item materialized between his fingers.

  The ancient paper exuded a strange scent.

  It was the first time Mark had held a game item in his hands.

  It felt normal.

  There was nothing special about the scroll, like any ordinary page from an old book.

  Without hesitation, he tore the scroll.

  The effect was immediate.

  A complex magic circle, drawn with runes glowing with blinding intensity, appeared beneath his feet.

  The perimeter expanded rapidly, covering several meters of the throne hall and bathing the marble columns in blood-colored light, startling the commanders.

  The surrounding mana began to be sucked in, the glow of the circle increasing. The hall, once dark, was now as bright as day, but red.

  Mark looked at the stunned commanders.

  "What are you waiting for?" He said coldly.

  "We will accompany you, Sovereign!" Hermos exclaimed, acting on instinct. "We would not allow Our Lord to step outside without proper escort."

  Without waiting for a counterorder, the four commanders and the butler walked into the magic circle. They positioned themselves around Mark like an imperial guard, their auras colliding and blending like a single entity.

  Mark felt the spatial pressure rise.

  The air began to vibrate, and the throne hall started dissolving into a blur of red light.

  He was about to see what a thousand years had done to his world.

  The crimson glow reached its peak, blinding Mark's human vision for a fraction of a second, before the spatial pressure released.

  He first felt the cold, thin air slap against him.

  His feet now stood on the obsidian parapet of the Ziggurat's outer wall — the top of the First Ring. Around him, the imposing figures of his commanders emerged from the light, instantly recovering their combat stances.

  Mark didn't look at them.

  His crimson eyes were fixed on the horizon.

  'What...'

  The whisper almost escaped his lips, but he swallowed it.

  Outside, the world was very different from what he imagined.

  His gaze rose to the sky.

  The sky wasn't blue.

  It was a deep, nearly black purple, cut by three waning moons that cast a silvery glow over the world. The stars were so vivid and numerous that they looked like diamond dust scattered across a cloak of deep violet velvet.

  The wind blew hard, making his cloak whip violently and producing a constant white noise that filled his ears.

  Mark walked to the edge, staring at the horizon with a hypnotized gaze.

  There was nothing.

  As far as his vision could reach, an infinite ocean of gray sand dunes stretched out, shifting under the force of the gusts.

  There were no forests, cities, or lights.

  It was as if the Ziggurat were a drifting ship in the middle of a boundless sea of sand.

  'It's real...' Mark thought, feeling a shiver run down his spine. 'I'm really here.'

  Overwhelmed by the immensity of the void before him, he turned on his heels, curiosity pulling him in the opposite direction.

  Rising behind him, the other four rings of the Ziggurat defied gravity and logic. In the game, he had a sense of scale, but seeing them from below, from the outer edge, was terrifying.

  The walls of each subsequent ring were taller and more imposing than the last, climbing toward the sky like an artificial mountain.

  The center of the fortress, where the main palace stood, seemed to touch the clouds.

  The Ziggurat was gigantic. Like a stone abomination that shouldn't be able to support itself, a structure so vast that it made Mark and his group look like ants on an altar.

  "Sovereign?" Mark heard Hermos's voice cut through the roar of the wind.

  The butler stood beside him, but his eyes weren't on the sky or the fortress.

  Hermos was staring at the sand below the wall.

  "Your Majesty... it seems our awakening did not go unnoticed for long."

  Mark followed Hermos's gaze to the base of the outer wall, kilometers below where they stood.

  There, at the edges of the desert, hundreds of small lights were beginning to gather.