Rain splashed against Lucien’s skin like acid from the heavens, stinging his nerves awake. The mud around his feet slithered with leeches and worms, but he didn’t flinch. He studied the forest, memorizing every twisted root and crooked tree, every unfamiliar bird cry and rustle of monstrous life in the underbrush.

  He was a naked man in an alien world.

  And yet he felt more powerful than ever.

  Lucien crouched and dragged two fingers through the wet soil. It was rich with spiritual energy—dense, untamed, raw. This wasn’t a simulation. It wasn’t coded, crafted, or controlled. It was real, and the energy in the air confirmed what he already suspected: this world had no idea what kind of predator had just arrived.

  Good, he thought. They’ll learn soon enough.

  A screech cut through the forest—a blur of motion followed.

  A creature pounced from the trees. A grotesque fusion of wolf and bat, with four crimson eyes and a jaw that split in two. It aimed straight for his neck.

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  Lucien didn’t move.

  In the split second before impact, he reached inward. Instinctively. No HUD, no menu—but there it was. A flicker. A presence within him, like an echo of his game-bound mastery. Residual knowledge—not stats, not skills, but truths burned into his soul after ten years of absolute domination.

  He moved.

  His hand shot up, fingers curling into the beast’s gaping maw.

  With a sickening crunch, he crushed its skull midair, bone and brain splattering across the mud. The body collapsed in his arms, spasming.

  He stood over it, panting once, then still.

  “Primitive,” he muttered, licking a speck of blood from his cheek. “But useful.”

  He skinned it with sharpened stone. Crafted rough leather around his limbs. Created twine from its sinew. He wrapped claws into makeshift gauntlets. Within an hour, the once-bored billionaire was dressed in blood and bone like a war-god reborn.

  Then he hunted again.

  Not for food.

  But for practice.

  Hours passed. Maybe days. Dozens of beasts fell. He studied their movements, how the essence in their cores reacted to pain and death. He experimented. Absorbed. Manipulated.

  He was learning the system of this world.

  Magic and martial arts weren’t separate. They were intertwined—forces born of intent, shaped by will.

  He meditated under a waterfall of blood. Broke his own bones to test healing limits. Practiced until his muscles screamed for mercy, and then denied them.

  This world has rules, he realized. But they are soft rules. Malleable. Weak.

  He would not be a player here.

  He would be a king.

  No… not a king.

  “Kings are mortal.”

  He looked to the sky, where dark clouds swirled around a crimson moon.

  “I will be Sovereign.”

  He turned toward the nearest signs of civilization—smoke, torches, and the unmistakable scent of human blood.

  It was time to introduce this world to its future ruler.

  End of Chapter One