The Anomaly's Path-Chapter 91: Volt and Void

[Leo’s POV]

I stood frozen for a second longer than I should have, my fingers still ghosting the hilt of Tempest. The air where that tall hooded man had been standing felt cold. Not winter cold, but a static, artificial chill that made the hair on my neck stand up.

"Leo! Are you deaf?"

Mia’s voice was sharper this time.

She stepped into the light of a nearby lantern, her shadow stretching long and jagged across the cobblestones. She had her arms crossed over her chest, and her eyes were narrowed in that specific way that meant I was about to get a lecture on responsibility.

"Coming," I muttered, shaking my head to clear the fog. I took one last look at the alleyway where the three shadows had vanished.

Nothing moved. They were gone.

I walked over to her, and she fell into step beside me as we headed back toward the orphanage. The kids were already ahead, their voices fading into the noise of the crowd.

"You have been weird all night. Is something wrong?" she said.

"I have been thinking about something."

"About those people? The ones in the cloaks?"

I nodded.

She sighed and shook her head. "Leo, people like them come every year during the festival. I have seen it many times. Travelers, merchants, wanderers. Some people just do not like showing their faces or their bodies. It does not mean they are dangerous."

"I know..."

"It is not bad to be cautious, but you might be overthinking." She glanced at me, her eyes soft but firm. "If they had any ill intent, Roran would have sensed it. You know how he spreads his mana. He would have eliminated them before they took three steps into the village."

She was right.

I had felt Roran’s mana in the air—thin and faint, but everywhere, like a spiderweb stretched across the entire village. A net. A warning. If those figures had been a real threat, Roran would have known.

"...Yeah," I said finally. "Maybe I am overthinking."

She smiled. It was small, but it was real.

"Good. Now stop brooding and help me get the kids to bed. They are going to crash any minute, and I am not carrying all of them by myself."

I laughed and followed her into the crowd.

The days passed.

The festival continued, the banquets still being held, the music still playing, the people still laughing. Children ran through the streets with sticky fingers and tired eyes. Adults drank and danced and told stories of the ones they had lost.

The lanterns floated up into the sky every night, a river of golden light that stretched from the village to the horizon. The smell of roasted meat and fresh bread filled the air from morning until midnight. The taverns never closed, and the old men never stopped singing.

It was peaceful in a way that Wayford rarely was.

...And I barely noticed the days slipping by.

I trained in the mornings, fought monsters in the afternoons, and spent my evenings with the kids and Mia and Marta. I ate too much, slept too little, and forgot to keep track of time.

Soon, I did not even realize that the last day of the festival had come.

_

The sun was high when I entered the jungle.

Tempest hung at my hip, the black scabbard warm against my leg. My body was loose and ready, the stiffness from three days of eating and celebrating already fading as I moved through the familiar paths. I needed to shake off the rust.

I needed to feel the weight of my sword in my hands again. I did not have to look far for a fight.

A pack of Thorn-Hides was waiting for me in the clearing where I usually trained.

Five of them. Grade 2, Low to Mid.

Their bark-like armor was cracked and scarred, and their eyes were wild in a way that I had not seen before. Wilder than I remembered. There was no fear in those eyes, no caution, no survival instinct. Just hunger and rage and something else that I could not name.

They were not hunting. They were waiting.

The moment I stepped into the clearing, they charged.

The first one lunged at my throat with its claws extended, its mouth open wide and dripping with drool.

I triggered Starlight Steps and slid to the left, my feet moving across the damp earth like water over stone. Tempest hissed out of its scabbard with a sharp click, and the blade caught the monster across its side, cutting deep into the soft flesh beneath its armor.

Black blood sprayed across the grass, hot and foul.

But the Thorn-Hide did not fall.

It turned and lunged again, faster than before, its claws raking toward my chest with a desperation that should not have been there. I twisted my body at the last second, the claws passing an inch from my ribs, and brought Tempest down on its neck with all the strength I had.

Crack!

The head rolled into the dirt. The body took three more steps before it realized it was dead. Then it crumpled.

What the hell...?

Suddenly, two more came at me from opposite sides, their movements jerky and uncoordinated but fast, too fast.

I did not have time to think. I pushed mana into my legs and teleported five feet to the left, the world twisting around me for a split second. The monsters crashed into each other where I had been standing, snarling and snapping at the air.

I appeared behind them and swung Tempest in a wide arc. The blade cut through the first monster’s spine and lodged in the second’s ribs. I pulled it free with a wet, sucking sound, black blood spraying across my face.

I swung again, and again, and again, until both of them stopped moving and lay still in the grass.

The last two Thorn-Hides looked at the bodies of their pack. For a moment, I thought they would run. Their tails twitched, and their legs tensed like they were about to flee.

But they did not.

Something in their eyes changed. The wildness grew brighter, hotter, like a fire that had been given more fuel. They did not run. They attacked again, both at once, charging at me with no regard for their own safety.

I killed them both in the next few seconds, my blade cutting through their armor like it was nothing.

I stood in the center of the jagged clearing, my chest heaving as I watched the last of the five Thorn-Hides twitch and go still. My mana was already humming at a low, vibrating frequency, a dull ache starting to throb behind my eyes.

Five down, I thought, wiping a smear of dark blood from my cheek with the back of my hand. I’m getting faster. If I can just keep this rhythm, I might actually—

A sound stopped the air in my lungs.

It wasn’t a roar. It was a dry, rhythmic scratching—thousands of sharp claws dragging against bark. From the shadows of the massive ferns, they emerged like a nightmare coming to life.

Stalkers. Grade 1-High.

Individually, they were fodder, but as I looked around, my heart hammered against my ribs. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. They moved with a hive-mind precision, their spindly, chitinous limbs clicking as they formed a perfect, suffocating circle around me.

"Oh, shit... fuck," I hissed, my grip tightening on Tempest until my knuckles turned white. "Thirty?! Really?!"

My Instinct wasn’t just whispering anymore, it was screaming.

It was a high-pitched siren in the back of my brain that made my vision sharpen until every twitching monster limb was etched in crystal clarity. I was surrounded. One wrong move and I’d be shredded before I could even blink.

"Fine," I muttered, a wild, desperate grin tugging at my lips. "I’ve been working on some things. Might as well see if they actually work before I die."

I dropped into a low stance and took a deep breath, pushing mana into my legs. Black Lightning crackled along my calves and thighs, the electricity dancing across my skin like living fire. My feet felt lighter. My muscles felt tighter. The world around me seemed to slow down, just a little.

"Volt Step."

I didn’t just move, I vanished.

To the Stalkers, I became a blur of silver and blue. This was a combination of my Starlight Steps and my Black Lightning.

Instead of just moving fast, I left a jagged, crackling path of electricity hanging in the air behind me like a physical scar. Three Stalkers tried to pounce on my afterimage, only to slam into the lingering lightning.

Their bodies jerked, muscles seizing as the current fried their nervous systems, leaving them as twitching heaps on the forest floor.

But more were coming.

The Volt Step was keeping me alive, but I needed more than speed. I needed to take them down faster or to switch tactics.

I took a breath and steadied my heart.

My Flash Instinct was still screaming, but now it was guiding me, showing me the gaps in the swarm, the openings I could exploit. I reached out with my senses and felt the space around me—every tree, every blade of grass, every monster. The folds were there, waiting.

Time to try the other one.

A Stalker lunged from my blind spot, its serrated claws aiming for my neck.

I didn’t turn. I didn’t even look. My brain was working at a fever pitch, calculating the distance, the weight of the air, and the fold of the world itself.

"Spatial Slip."

I swung Tempest in a wide, horizontal arc toward a monster in front of me.

But mid-swing, right before the blade connected, I reached out and folded the space around the steel. The sword vanished from my hand.

The Stalker in front of me blinked, its claws hitting nothing but air. Simultaneously, the blade reappeared three feet to the left, teleported mid-swing to bury itself deep in the neck of the monster that had been trying to ambush my flank.

Teleporting my whole body was still too hard and cost far too much mana, but the sword was smaller and lighter. It made my attacks completely unpredictable, they blocked where they thought the blade was going, only for it to hit them from a completely different angle.

"Argh!" I gritted my teeth, feeling my mana reserves getting low.

It was still a work in progress. I hadn’t mastered it yet.

I felt my grip on the hilt falter for a second as the sword reappeared at a jagged, awkward angle, nearly spraining my wrist. Sometimes the blade didn’t reappear exactly where I wanted, and I almost lost my hold as it vanished from my palm.

I wasn’t done. Another group of five charged.

I used the momentum of the slip, twisting my body. As a Stalker’s claw swept toward my chest, I didn’t parry. I reached out with my mind, using the spatial technique to twist the very space in front of the attack.

The claw entered a pocket of distorted air and emerged inches away, slamming into the skull of the Stalker standing right next to it. The monster killed its own kin, confused and shrieking as I redirected the force of its own strike.

I was a whirlwind.

I was flickering across the clearing, the Volt Step leaving a maze of electrified traps that bottlenecked the swarm while my Spatial Slip allowed me to move my sword—and even a few thrown daggers—from one spot to another in a heartbeat.

I was moving so fast the air began to whistle. Volt Step—swing—Slip—kill.

"Not... yet..." I gasped, my vision blurring from the mental strain.

I leaped into the air, the soles of my boots sparking with mana. I looked down at the remaining twelve Stalkers huddling together. I swung the blade down, pouring the last of my Black Lightning into the steel.

The blade vanished from my hand.

A split second later, it reappeared in the very center of the pack, vertical and screaming with electricity. It didn’t just hit one, the spatial reentry caused a vacuum of mana that exploded outward.

BOOM!

Silence returned to the jungle.

I hit the ground hard, sliding across the dirt until I thudded against a mossy root.

I lay there, staring up at the canopy, my lungs burning and my head feeling like it was being squeezed in a vice. Around me, the clearing was a graveyard of scorched chitin and folded shadows.

I reached out, my fingers brushing the cold steel of my sword, which had landed a few feet away.

"Peak shit..." I coughed, a tired, genuine laugh breaking through the exhaustion. "That was... fucking awesome."

I wiped the blade on the grass and sheathed it, my hands still shaking from the mana depletion. That was when I noticed Roran standing at the edge of the clearing. He had been watching the whole thing.

"Their movements are strange," I said, trying to steady my breathing. "They are coming toward the village more frequently too."

"They are," Roran replied, his face unusually grim.

He walked over and knelt beside one of the charred Stalker corpses. "Their cores are unstable. Something is tainting them, making them more aggressive. Harder to kill. I heard from the merchants that monsters in the northern territories have been rampaging and wiping out whole towns overnight."

I felt a cold knot form in my stomach. "That is not normal."

"No, it is not."

We stood in silence for a moment, surrounded by the bodies of the monsters. The sun was still high, but the air felt heavier than it should have, thick with something I could not name.

"I have a bad feeling about this," I said.

Roran grunted. "So do I."

Then he changed the subject. His voice was lighter, almost casual, like he was trying to push the darkness away. "So," he said. "Are you sure about that? leaving the village."

I stopped. The words hung in the air between us, heavy and final.

"...Yes," I said finally. "I am planning to leave after the festival. In a day or two."

Roran nodded slowly. He did not look surprised. He had probably known for a while, longer than I had, maybe since the day I first picked up a sword and refused to put it down.

"...I figured," he said.

I sat down on a fallen log, and Roran leaned against a tree across from me. The bodies of the Thorn-Hides lay in the grass between us, but neither of us looked at them.

"I have learned a lot from you," I said. "More than I ever thought I would. I know I could learn more. There is still so much I do not know. About swords, mana and fighting. But I cannot stay here forever."

Roran did not say anything.

"Mia, Marta, the kids... they have done so much for me. I owe them everything." I looked down at my hands. "But I have to leave. I cannot stay stuck in one place my whole life. I already received too much help. I do not want to be a burden."

"You are not a burden," Roran said.

"I know. But I need to see the world. I need to get stronger. I need to find my own path."

Roran laughed, a short, sharp sound. "Of course you want to leave. Who would want to stay with an old drunken man like me?"

I opened my mouth to argue. "No, that is not—"

He cut me off with a wave of his hand. "Relax, brat. I am kidding."

I closed my mouth.

Roran pushed off from the tree and walked toward me. His face was serious now, but there was something soft in his eyes, something that looked almost like pride.

"Honestly?" he said. "You are right to leave. Your growth will be restricted here. I was actually planning to tell you the same thing. Being stuck in one place limits your potential. You have a lot of talent, and you have proven how much you can grow in just a few months."

He stopped in front of me.

"I knew you had talent from the start. But I never saw anyone as stubborn as you." He shook his head, almost smiling. "The training I put you through... most people would have given up. Hell, even I would have given up. I never trained myself as hard as I trained you."

I laughed. "You are a sadist."

"And you are a masochist. We are a perfect match." We both laughed, standing there in the aftermath of the fight like old friends. "You never called me master, you brat," Roran added with a smirk.

I stuck out my tongue. "Who would call a drunkard like you master?"

He reached out and ruffled my hair, hard. I tried to push his hand away, but he was too strong, and his fingers dug into my scalp like iron claws.

"Let go, old man!"

"You are still weak," he said, grinning. "That is why you need to leave. So you can get stronger and come back and finally beat me."

He stepped back and looked at me with something that looked almost like pride. His eyes were soft, and for a moment, he did not look like the broken drunk who had spent years drowning in grief. He looked like the man who had killed a Grave-Steel Behemoth with four moves.

"I know there are a lot of things I can still teach you," he said. "But do not restrict yourself. Go see the world with your own eyes. The world is big, Leo. There are strong people out there, and weak people too. I am sure that with your talent and potential, you will learn a lot. You will find great teachers."

He paused.

"Let the whole world be your teacher. Learn from nature. Learn from the world itself. Go wild, my boy."

I did not know what to say. My throat felt tight, and my eyes were stinging, but I blinked it away.

Roran turned and started walking toward the village. His boots crunched on the dead leaves, and his shadow stretched long behind him in the afternoon sun.

"Oh," he said over his shoulder, "I know you will train more. But make sure to come back. It is the last day of the festival, and you will have to tell the others you are leaving. I am not going to tell them for you. You have to do it yourself."

He waved his hand and kept walking.

I stood there, watching his back as he disappeared into the trees.

He was not a perfect man. He was broken and bitter and drunk more often than not. He had spent years drowning in guilt and grief, and he still carried Clara’s memory like a wound that would not heal.

But he had given me something I could never repay.

A second chance.

I bowed my head.

"...Thank you," I whispered. "For everything."

The wind carried my words into the jungle. I did not know if he heard them.

But I liked to think he... did.

_