Logout Error: My NPCs Now Worship Me

The screams from Oakhaven echoed across the plains, a feast of terror for the architect of the city's demise. Inside the walls, it was a glimpse into hell. The Gloomfang Ravagers were not a disorganized mob; they were a tide of razors, sweeping through the streets with chilling efficiency. They didn't stop to feast or revel in their kills. They simply moved, cut, and advanced, their programming brutally simple: eradicate all life.

A mother and father barricaded a wooden door, trying to shield their crying children. A Ravager's bladed forelimb punched through the thick oak as if it were parchment, then tore the entire door from its hinges. The family's screams were added to the city's dying chorus.

A handful of brave adventurers from the guild hall made a stand in the market square. A grizzled warrior with a greatsword managed to shatter one of a Ravager's legs. The creature simply compensated, impaling him with its five other limbs before bisecting him with a casual flick of its primary claw. The adventurers were annihilated in seconds.

Hope was a dying ember. The city was lost.

And then, the temperature began to drop.

It started subtly. A strange, sharp chill in the night air that had nothing to do with the wind. The frantic, sweating guards on the crumbling barricades felt it first, a cold that seemed to seep directly into their bones. The breath of the screaming citizens began to mist in the air.

The Ravagers felt it too. Their relentless advance faltered. They paused, their multifaceted eyes twitching, their antennae swiveling as they tried to process this new, unnatural stimulus.

In the center of the market square, where the slaughter had been thickest, the very air began to shimmer. The cobblestones cracked, not from heat, but from an impossible, instantaneous cold. A layer of delicate, crystalline frost spread out in a perfect circle, racing across the blood-soaked stones and freezing them solid.

From the center of that circle, a figure began to materialize.

It was not a sudden appearance. It was a slow, deliberate fade into existence, as if reality itself was reluctantly making way for him. First, a silhouette of absolute blackness against the fires of the burning city, a void that drank the light. Then, the details sharpened: the obsidian armor that seemed forged from a solidified night sky, the helm of shifting shadows, and the two points of silver light that stared out with an unnerving, cosmic calm.

Kaelus had arrived.

He did not use a Gate this time. He used [Greater Teleportation], a Tier 7 spell, but he had intentionally slowed the manifestation, drawing it out for maximum dramatic effect.

The moment he was fully corporeal, the cold intensified a hundredfold. It was no longer a chill; it was a physical presence, an aura of absolute zero that radiated from him. This was not a spell. It was the passive effect of the legendary divine-class item he wore, the [Mantle of the Void Star].

The frost spreading from his feet exploded outwards, covering the entire square in a thick sheet of ice in seconds. The nearest Ravagers, caught in the initial wave, were frozen mid-stride. Their chitinous bodies, which could deflect steel arrows, became brittle as glass.

One of them, driven by its primal instinct, let out a piercing shriek and lunged at him.

Kaelus did not move. He did not even look at it. He simply… existed.

As the Ravager entered the ten-meter radius around him, it was flash-frozen solid. Its body, still hurtling forward from its leap, crashed into the icy cobblestones and shattered into a thousand glittering, jade-colored shards. The sound of it breaking, a sharp, crystalline tinkle, was the only sound in the suddenly silent square.

Every mortal and every monster, in that moment, stopped. Their terror, their rage, their despair—it was all eclipsed by the sheer, mind-breaking spectacle before them.

A Ravager on a nearby rooftop spat a glob of its corrosive acid at him. The sizzling green projectile flew through the air, and as it entered the aura of cold, it froze solid in mid-flight. The now-harmless, frozen ball of acid clattered onto the ice at Kaelus's feet.

He raised his head, his shadowed gaze sweeping over the ruined city. He could see them all. The terrified citizens peeking from their shattered homes. The few surviving guards staring in slack-jawed awe. The dozens of Ravagers now cautiously circling the square, their predatory instincts at war with a new, overriding command: fear this being.

Kaelus raised a single, gauntleted hand. He curled his fingers into a fist, then slowly, dramatically, opened them.

[Tier 10 Spell: Cry of the Cocytus.]

There was no sound. There was no incantation. There was only the cold.

The aura of absolute zero that had been contained around him exploded outwards. It was not a wave of ice or snow. It was a wave of pure, metaphysical cold, a negation of all heat and energy. It swept through the city streets like a silent, invisible tsunami.

For the citizens of Oakhaven, it was a fleeting sensation, a bone-deep chill that passed in a heartbeat, leaving them shivering but unharmed.

For the Gloomfang Ravagers, it was the end of everything.

Every single monster in the city, whether it was on the walls, in the streets, or tearing down a house, froze instantly. Their bodies became statues of jade-green ice. One moment, they were a tide of screeching, killing monsters. The next, they were a silent, frozen gallery of horrors.

The silence that fell over Oakhaven was absolute. The screams, the chittering, the sounds of battle—all gone. All that remained was the crackling of distant fires and the collective, held breath of a thousand people.

But Kaelus was not finished. The show needed a finale.

He clenched his outstretched hand into a fist.

And across the entire city, every single one of the frozen Ravagers simultaneously shattered. They didn't just break; they exploded into a fine, glittering dust of ice and chitin, a cloud of jade-colored particles that swirled through the streets before gently settling on the ground like a beautiful, deadly snowfall.

The threat was over. Annihilated. Erased from existence in a matter of seconds.

Kaelus stood alone in the center of the market square, the sole dark figure in a city of silent, awestruck survivors. He had not taken a single step. He had not uttered a single word.

A small child, no older than five, stumbled out from a ruined bakery. She had seen her parents cut down just moments before. She was covered in dust, her face streaked with tears. But she wasn't crying now. She was staring at the silent, dark god in the square.

She didn't see a monster. She didn't see a demon. She saw the being that had made the screaming stop.

Slowly, her little legs trembling, she fell to her knees. She pressed her hands together in a gesture of prayer she had been taught in the church, but her prayer was not directed at the sky. It was directed at him.

Her action broke the spell. One by one, then by the dozen, then by the hundred, the survivors of Oakhaven emerged from their hiding places. They saw the glittering dust of their former tormentors. They saw the silent, towering figure who had saved them. They saw the impossible cold radiating from him.

They fell to their knees. The guards, the adventurers, the common folk. They all knelt on the icy, blood-stained ground. They didn't know his name. They didn't know what he was. They only knew one thing with absolute certainty: their goddess had been silent, and this dark, cold being had answered.

A new notification, bright and glorious, lit up Kaelus's vision.

[Massive Influx of Faith Energy Detected!]

[Source: Population of Oakhaven City.]

[Quality: Pure (Awe/Salvation/Worship).]

[Conversion Rate: 10:1]

[Divine Power Gained: +95]

[Current DP: 97.01]

Just as this happened, the thunder of hoofbeats finally reached the city. Seraphina, Sir Kaelan, and their hundred knights crested the hill overlooking Oakhaven. They had ridden their horses to the point of collapse, prepared for a desperate, bloody battle to save whoever was left.

Instead, they skidded to a halt, their faces a mask of utter disbelief.

They saw a city that was burning but silent. And they saw the entire surviving population kneeling. Kneeling before a single, terrifying, dark figure standing in the center of it all.

Seraphina stared, her heart pounding in her chest. The warmth of her holy sword, Dawnbringer, felt like a dying ember against the overwhelming, soul-crushing cold that emanated from the city.

She had arrived not as a hero to save the day, but as a latecomer to witness a miracle performed by a demon.

Kaelus felt her presence. He slowly turned his shadowed helm, his two silver points of light gazing up the hill, directly at her. It was a look that seemed to pierce her soul, a look that said: You are too late. These people are now mine.