Becoming the Dark Lord [LitRPG]

Charlie had done it, she had reached the cap of her Class at Rank F and unlocked her long-awaited Epic Skill.

"Lady Charlie, you fought very well," Anne said softly, watching as Charlie practiced a few elegant swings with her sword. She even clapped, quietly but sincerely.

"What about me, Anne? Did I do well too?" Jack asked hopefully.

Anne turned to him and shook her head. No hesitation.

They kept walking through the forest, a truly peculiar group: Luke, Charlie, Anne, and Jack.

The reason the two healers were tagging along was simple. Their class could level faster if they healed or used support spells during combat. Practicality over preference.

"You're still the one lagging behind, Jack," Luke said as they made their way along the path. "Even Eleanor hit level sixty in her profession already."

Eleanor had reached level sixty and evolved her class from Archer to Bounty Hunter. According to her, it made perfect sense. She had been hunting down rogue criminals, and her obsession with magical items apparently sealed the deal. Bounty Hunters tracked down monsters too, hoping for rare drops or valuable parts to sell.

"Yeah, well, I hit level sixty in my class before she did," Jack grumbled.

Eleanor had even unlocked her Rank Skill. It was odd, but somehow useful. She could control her hair. The utility? She could use it to pull arrows from her quiver and hand them to herself mid-battle.

Luke had no idea how the system decided that reflected her personality, and he wasn't brave enough to ask.

Of their entire team, only two still hadn't reached the peak of Rank F: Allison and Jack.

At least Jack had hit level fifty. His focus now was reaching level sixty to unlock his Epic Skill. But since he had tweaked his Woodcutter build for combat, chopping wood wasn't going to cut it anymore. He needed real fights.

Luke stopped by a slender, towering tree that leaned awkwardly against thicker ones. He flicked a kukri, slicing through a branch. It fell cleanly, scattering a few heavy fruits onto the ground.

"You and your weird hobbies," Jack muttered.

Out of all the fruits Luke had collected since arriving in the capital, this one was the most valuable. Extremely rare, so much so that this patch of forest was the only place they grew.

"This little hobby of mine," Luke said, picking up one of the fruits, "is going to pay off when I retire."

He inspected it closely.

[Midnight Cacao]: Dark and heavy pods with black seeds that release a warm, rich aroma. The taste is deep, slightly bitter, yet smooth and faintly sweet, powerful enough to leave a craving after every bite.

That fruit could be turned into chocolate. Not just any chocolate, a delicacy made from ingredients of the First Universe. Something unlike anything his world had ever tasted.

Whistling contentedly, Luke stored the fruit in his inventory.

"Cool... hobby," Anne said with a small nod.

"See, Jack? She gets it," Luke replied, walking again.

The truth was, Anne only liked it because she loved cooking. Anything related to food fascinated her.

"My hobby... is cool... too," Anne said, holding up the heart of a minotaur like a trophy.

"Oh… gods," Jack muttered, looking away. For a healer, he wasn't great at handling organs being waved around.

"Yes, very cool," Luke said, playing along with his doll-like companion. "You'd do great in a horror movie."

Jack dropped his axe beside a tree, panting.

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"I can't walk another step," Jack groaned, leaning against a tree.

"Man, you really need to work on your stamina," Luke replied.

"I'm a healer. I don't level up stamina," Jack shot back.

That was one of Jack's biggest problems. His class basically turned him into a mage who specialized in healing and barrier magic. Every single free point he earned went straight into Intelligence or Vitality, more mana meant more healing power and stronger barriers. The downside was that his Woodcutter skills relied on stamina. The more he used them, the quicker he burned out. Add Strength Infusion on top of that, and he was gasping for air after just a few swings.

Luckily, Luke had given him the minotaur axe. Its blade carried a heating enchantment that boosted its cutting power when charged with mana.

Anne, meanwhile, was playing with the minotaur's heart. "This one has a core," she murmured, eyes glinting faintly.

That was her real hobby, collecting monster cores from her kills.

"The myth is true," Luke said, watching her. "Every psychopathic serial killer has a thing for trophies."

"Thank you," Anne replied without hesitation.

For her, that wasn't an insult, it was genuine praise. Coming from a family of assassins, being called a killer or a psychopath was practically a compliment.

In the last few days, Luke had learned something fascinating. Magical beasts didn't level up like humans or other intelligent races. They evolved through ranks. From level 0 to 49, they remained in Rank F; from 50 to 99, they stepped into Rank E. When Luke used Identify, the system didn't show their true level, it converted their relative strength into something he could understand within his own rank scale.

Knowledge like that was almost unheard of among the people of the modern world. Only because of the shared insights from Erza, Anne, and Mason had they begun to understand how the ranking structure worked. Especially when it came to something crucial: monster cores.

But one question kept gnawing at the back of Luke's mind. The Ant Queen he had fought in the mine didn't seem to have a core. Yet she had leveled up mid-battle.

Was it because she was a special kind of monster?

The queen had been humanoid. Luke couldn't help but wonder if she had been more like the orcs, creatures that weren't exactly magical beasts but intelligent beings closer to humans.

Anne was prying open the minotaur's heart, forcing through the thick layers of muscle. From within, she pulled out something that looked like a twenty-sided die, only much larger, nearly the size of a soccer ball. The object pulsed with a deep violet glow. A mana core. A rare material used in alchemy, forging, and enchantment crafting.

She brought it close to her ring, and in a blink, it vanished, stored away inside her pocket dimension.

Luke had learned a few things about those cores. Some monsters could absorb the cores of others, growing stronger or even forcing an evolution to a higher rank. Not every beast had one, though; they were more common among Rank E creatures and above.

"Lucky find," Anne murmured, studying her now-empty hand.

Luke realized that, back when he had lived in the capital, he must have left plenty of cores behind. He had never bothered to check the hearts of the beasts he killed. Hunting had been purely for food, simple low-level boars, not high-tier creatures like minotaurs. He had never been the type to carve open monsters just for fun.

"Mark this location, Jack," Luke said, glancing around the clearing.

A collection team would be sent later to recover the bodies, harvesting usable parts for equipment crafting and, of course, retrieving any remaining cores.

***

The sun was already dipping toward the horizon when Luke and his group reached the outskirts of the capital. The riverbank buzzed with activity. Makeshift tents dotted the terrain, forming a temporary settlement. Men and women hauled lumber, mended weapons, cooked over open fires, and whispered strategies in tense, tired voices. The air was thick with smoke, sweat, and expectation.

Luke took a slow breath. The place had turned into a human anthill. Bit by bit, people from the Safe Zone were migrating to the capital, preparing for what was coming.

Ronan stood at the head of a small unit, spear in hand, directing soldiers as they cleared the area. Every swing of a blade, every burst of magic followed a steady, disciplined rhythm.

Luke watched in silence for a while, arms crossed. When Ronan noticed him, he raised a hand in greeting.

Jack stopped beside Luke, drenched in sweat, resting his axe on his shoulder. "If I see one more zombie, I swear I'm done. I don't think I'll ever eat jerky again."

"You don't eat jerky now," Luke replied.

"Details."

Anne and Charlie caught up behind them.

"Let Jack rest a bit," Luke told Anne. "Keep an eye on him. I've got a few things to take care of, you know where to find me."

She nodded once. "Yes, Lord Luke."

"No 'Lord'."

A faint smile touched her lips, brief but genuine, before she guided Jack toward one of the nearby tents.

Leaving them behind, Luke headed alone into the forest. The air grew colder, denser, heavy with the scent of moss and damp earth. Each step cracked dry twigs beneath his boots, the sound swallowed by the stillness between the trees.

When the path finally opened to the mouth of a cave, he stopped. The wind that flowed from within seemed to breathe, slow, ancient, alive. A small, knowing smile crossed his face. It was time to choose Princess Charlie's Epic Skill.