---
The forest held its breath.
Kaito's fingers curled around his sword hilt, the leather grip creaking under his tension. That laugh—too sharp, too 'knowing'—had no business coming from a monster's throat.
Then the pines moved.
A blur of matted fur and needle-teeth dropped from the canopy, claws extended toward Mira's exposed throat. The elementalist froze, her totem slipping from numb fingers.
Yuriko didn't even glance up.
Her left hand flicked outward, a casual gesture, like shooing a fly.
Crk-thoom!
A spire of glacial ice erupted from the ground, skewering the creature mid-leap. Frost radiated outward, encasing its snarl in a crystalline tomb. The frozen corpse hung suspended for a heartbeat before Yuriko clenched her fist—
—Shatter.
Ice and monster disintegrated into glittering dust.
Normal-rank. Neutralized in 1.7 seconds.
Kaito whistled. "Showoff."
Yuriko's glacial eyes didn't waver from the treeline. "That was a scout." Her breath didn't fog. "The pack knows we're here."
---
Mira pressed her totem to the earth. The carvings pulsed like a dying man's heartbeat as whispers slithered through the roots beneath them.
"T-Two elites… northwest," she stammered. "N-Normals flanking east. They're… 'herding' us."
Jiro hefted his greatsword, the steel singing as it cut the frigid air. "Bait time?"
Dain and Kael stepped forward in unison—golden radiance and crimson malice swirling around their respective hands. The snow at their feet melted and boiled simultaneously.
Kaito exhaled through his nose. "Stick to the plan. And try not to kill each other."
Then the woods exploded.
The Hunt Begins.
---
Yuriko Yukibana fought as if she was a Frozen Calamity. Emotionless, efficient and Scary surgical.
The first elite-rank wolf came at her like a blizzard given flesh—a half-ton of muscle and matted fur, its breath reeking of rotting meat.
Yuriko stepped into the lunge.
Her palm connected with the beast's shoulder. Frost spiderwebbed across its body, slowing its muscles to a crawl.
Frostbite Palm: First Touch. It is a technique made by the Yukibana clan.
The wolf's snarl turned sluggish. Yuriko pivoted, her other hand tapping its forehead with the delicacy of a lover's caress.
Second Touch.
The ice inside its skull expanded.
A wet crack echoed through the clearing as its eyes froze solid, then burst like overripe grapes. The corpse collapsed mid-pounce, sliding to a stop at her feet.
Elite-rank. Eliminated in 4.3 seconds
She didn't blink.
---
Dain moved like a hymn given form, golden chains erupting from his sleeves to bind a normal-rank boar. The holy energy seared as it touched the creature's flesh—
"Chains of light, heed my call—bind the wicked and scorch their soul! Radiant Binding!"
—But his third cast sputtered. The chains flickered, their glow dimming. When he tried healing a scratch on Jiro's arm, the magic burned. A side effect of using to much holy energy.
The more he used his holy energy the more Numb and Detached he became.
Meanwhile, Kael fought like a demon unchained. Black flames wreathed his arms as he carved through two normals, his claws extending into jagged blades of pure malice.
A wolf's head tumbled free, its body still running for three steps before collapsing. But with each kill, the crimson streaks in Kael's hair darkened—closer to blood.
Slowly he was accumulating bloodlust because of his demonic energy
By the fifth kill, his laughter echoed through the clearing, raw and unhinged.
---
Mira didn't fight directly. Instead, her totem glowed as she whispered to the wind:
"Guide him. Please."
A gust twisted Jiro's greatsword mid-swing, correcting its arc to cleave through an elite's defensive stance. When a claw came for her throat, the earth itself *rippled*—
Crack!
—A root lashed up, intercepting the blow. One of the elementals within the totem shattered from the impact, its dying scream echoing in her mind.
She collapsed to her knees, vomiting bile onto the frozen ground, but kept her hands on the totem.
Mira as an elementalist was an essential part as a support in a group fight.
---
Jiro fought just like his nickname, The Brute. Unbreakable and Uncomplicated violence.
He fought like a rockslide with a sword—all momentum and reckless power. When an normal ranked monster's venomous tail stabbed toward his ribs, he tanked it with his bicep.
"HA! Tickles!"
The neurotoxin that should've paralyzed him merely made his left eyelid twitch. His counterblow split the monster from crotch to collarbone.
---
Kaito fought as he always does, adaptive and efficient.
At first, he fought conservatively—deflecting strikes, conserving energy. But when two elites coordinated their attacks, he *changed*.
His footwork blurred. Not quite a teleport, but close—an afterimage lingered where he'd stood as he reappeared behind the larger beast.
He used Mirage Step, a beginner tier technique from the Kurogane Clan.
The elite whirled, but Kaito's blade was already moving. For the first time, he *focused* his mana—compressing it to a razor's edge along the steel.
The cut was so clean the monster took two steps before its upper half slid free.
Elite-rank. Bisected in one strike.
Kaito's blade slid through the elite-rank wolf's body with unsettling ease.
Too easy.
He blinked. The monster's body toppled, its body collapsing mid-lunge. No wasted motion. No follow-up strike. Just... perfect.
A tingling sensation crawled up his sword arm—his mana humming differently, like a taut bowstring finally released after years of tension.
Huh.
Around him, the battle raged: Yuriko flash-freezing another elite solid with a touch. Dain's radiant chains scorching through fur and flesh. Kael's demonic claws ripping through monsters with feral glee.
But for Kaito, time seemed to slow. He flexed his fingers around the hilt, feeling the mana flow smoother than ever before—not just in his body, but through the steel itself.
"Oi, Kurogane! Stop daydreaming!" Jiro bellowed as he shoulder-checked a normal-rank away from Mira.
Kaito moved further without thinking.
One step. One slash.
The attacking monster split cleanly down the middle.
No resistance.
No wasted energy.
Just... efficiency.
A laugh bubbled up in his chest. Of course. All those years of being lazy, of conserving energy, of finding the easiest way—it wasn't just laziness. It was efficiency and preparation for this moment.
Expert-rank.
The realization hit him like one of Aiko's practice strikes:
He'd been training for this exact moment his entire life till now.
---
Twelve corpses littered the clearing. The Fractured Six regrouped:
Yuriko was Immaculate. Not a single hair out of place. While Dain, Kneeling, his holy glow reduced to embers. His hands shook—not from fear, but from absence of feeling. And Kael, Panting, the black flames receding. His pupils were still slightly red from the demonic energy. Mira was Cradling her cracked totem, whispering apologies to the dying elemental within. Jiro Flexing his venom-numbed arm. "That all they got?"
Kaito wiped his blade on a dead wolf's fur. "For now." Kaito examined his blade. The steel gleamed unnaturally sharp—not from honing, but from mana so perfectly aligned it might as well have been part of the metal itself.
Yuriko noticed first. Her glacial eyes narrowed. "You're holding back less."
"Not holding back," Kaito corrected, sheathing his sword with a quiet snick. "Just finally stopped wasting energy."
Dain frowned, his holy glow flickering. "That's... not how breakthroughs usually work."
Kael wiped black blood from his claws, grinning. "Demon clans would kill for that kind of efficiency."
Mira just stared, her totem trembling slightly. Even Jiro paused in his post-battle flexing to give Kaito an appraising look.
The moment hung in the frosty air—until one of Mira's remaining elementals shrieked.
The sound that answered wasn't a growl. Wasn't a howl.
It was a roar—a sound that vibrated in their bones, that made the pines tremble and the frost itself recoil.
Something big was coming.
Something old.
Yuriko's ice dagger formed with a sound like a guillotine's drop. "Plans change." Her glacial eyes locked onto Kaito. "Show your new rank isn't just luck."
The treeline exploded.
Commander-rank - Entered the battlefield.
---
End Chapter 11