It came out of the dark like a bad idea.

Crack. Crack. CRACK.

The underbrush split open on the far side of the clearing, and the Venom-Spire Mantis stepped into the light.

The thing was enormous. It stood on four spiked rear legs with two more folded at its chest, and those front two weren’t legs. They were blades. Long, serrated, curved like scythes. Its head was angular and flat, with compound eyes that caught the light and fractured it into a dozen separate reflections.

It was at least twice his height. And it was looking directly at him, assessing him as prey.

[Target Identified: Venom-Spire Mantis. Rank 1, 9-Star.]

Holden had been a 5-Star this morning. He had spent fifty thousand credits and

almost exploded himself to reach 7-Star tonight. And the thing standing across the clearing from him was still two full Stars above that.

He exhaled slowly, his face perfectly calm.

"Fifty KP," he said quietly. "That’s all I needed."

The Mantis tilted its massive head.

Then it moved.

WHOOSH.

It covered half the clearing in under a second. The blade arms came down in a lethal, scissoring cross-strike that would have cut him in two if he had still been standing where he was.

But he wasn’t.

Whoosh.

Gale-Step. Ultimate tier.

Holden moved with such impossible speed that he left a perfect shadow of himself, holding his exact shape and posture for just long enough to look real.

The Mantis hit it.

SLASH. SLASH.

Both blades cut through empty air. The shadow dissolved into mist. The Mantis

snapped its head left and right, recalibrating, its eyes scanning the space where the target used to be.

Holden was already behind it.

He drew the Star-Forged sword in one clean pull, channeled everything into a

single strike and swung.

KRACK.

The Mantis fell apart in two pieces, dark blood pooling on the grass.

Then the System chimed.

[Rank 1, 9-Star Beast Defeated.]

[+100 KP]

[Kill Points: 1,050]

And then, a second later:

[Milestone Reached: 1,000 Kill Points.]

[Multiplier Upgrade Available.]

Holden stood over the fallen beast, breathing steadily, with his sword still out.

He looked at the notification for a moment.

Then he thought: Upgrade.

[Confirm expenditure of 1,000 KP?]

Confirm.

The blue light hit him like a tidal wave.

[Multiplier Upgraded.]

[Current Multiplier: 1,000x]

In an instant, the mental processing power he’d been using at its absolute max was expanded, giving him ten times the capability he had before.

He stood there, blinking.

Before he could fully process it, the System chimed again.

[Milestone Bonus Unlocked.]

[Passive Skill: 2x KP Booster.] [All future Kill

Points doubled.]

He stared at that one.

"Double," he said out loud, his voice entirely flat.

The forest didn’t respond. The Mantis was still in two pieces. Nothing had changed except everything.

He mentally called up his full status screen.

[HOST: Holden Voss]

[FIGHTER RANK: Rank 1 (7-Star) ]

[CURRENT MULTIPLIER: 1,000x]

[KP BOOSTER: 2x Active ]

[KILL POINTS: 50]

SKILLS:

- Gale-Step (Ultimate)

- Iron-Cleaver Sword Art (Ultimate)

- Asura’s Ignition (Perfect)

He read through it carefully.

He had Fifty KP left over. Every kill from here on would give him double the normal

amount. His multiplier was no longer a hundred. It was a thousand.

He closed the screen.

And the world changed.

Whoosh.

Everything started moving in slow motion. The breeze in the clearing wasn’t just a feeling anymore; he could see every part of it. He could follow the exact way the air moved between the trees and see how it flowed down from the sky.

A handful of small leaves had shaken loose from the impact of the Mantis falling

and were drifting down through the air.

They weren’t falling fast.

They were barely falling at all.

He watched one of them rotate slowly in place, catching the moonlight on one

side and going dark on the other, and he could see the tiny turbulence it made

in the air around it. He could see the energy of the clearing, the faint ambient

cultivation energy that always existed in natural spaces, as if it were drawn in

thin, glowing lines around every living thing.

The trees. The grass. His own hands.

He raised one hand and looked at it.

The energy inside his own body was much brighter than anything around him. It was thick and packed tight, moving quickly through every channel from his core outward.

This was the feeling of the 1,000x multiplier. It didn’t feel like raw strength. Instead, it was like his mind had finally opened all the way. Everything was perfectly clear to him, and he understood exactly what was happening around him.

He lowered his hand.

Somewhere overhead, one of the loose leaves had nearly finished its slow spiral

to the ground.

He watched it fall.

He wondered what would happen if he swung at it.