In a clearing deep within a forest in the eastern reaches of the Kingdom of Solren, Evan sat comfortably atop what appeared to be an enormous wolf.

The beast in question showed no signs of life. If anything, it gave every indication of having been brutally massacred rather than simply defeated.

The battlefield surrounding them was a complete disaster. Debris littered the area, deep scars had torn through trees and gouged the earth itself. The clearing, once a small place where the forest’s creatures could rest, had been completely overturned by the human currently sitting at its center.

"About time," he muttered, looking down at the creature beneath him.

A B-rank Early-Stage. His first B-rank.

He had expected a fierce fight, and how could he not, given there was an entire rank and a half between them, but he had been so eager to put his current abilities to the test, and today he had finally gotten the chance.

[Ding! You have killed a B-Rank (Early-Stage) Tempest Wolf!]

[You have gained +140,000 ESS.]

’Holy...’

Evan nearly choked at the sight of that number.

140,000? Was there any chance Bruce had glitched and thrown in an extra zero?

That much ESS for a single Early-Stage B-rank?

He did the math quickly and figured his total ESS had probably crossed 200,000, thirty percent of which would go to his clones.

Evan had been forced to use his life force. The beast had proven far more lethal than he had anticipated.

He knew a B-rank operated on an entirely different level from anything he had faced before, he had seen them in action at Branleaf, but fighting one in person was something else entirely.

They were stronger, faster. Their attacks, magical and physical alike, were more lethal and precise. But all of that faded into the background compared to what actually made them dangerous: their intelligence.

These creatures were nearly as sharp as humans. Speaking wasn’t the only thing they could do,

They could make plans.

And they could see through the ones he came up with.

In short, the fight had been brutal and ferocious, and he had come dangerously close to getting himself torn apart by that thing more than once. But in the end, he had overwhelmed it through numbers, and he had won.

He looked down at the dead beast’s head and couldn’t stop himself from giving it a kick out of sheer frustration for all the trouble it had put him through.

’At least it was worth it,’ he thought, recalling the absurd amount of ESS he had received.

He was about to check how much his rank advancement percentage had increased when a system notification cut him off.

[Ding! The SoulBond is reacting to an excessively elevated stimulus.]

[Ding! The strength of your bond is increasing too drastically. The SoulBond is beginning to experience problems.]

[Ding! Subject Luna has advanced to A-Rank.]

[Ding! Subject Luna has advanced to A-Rank (Advanced Stage).]

[Ding! Subject Luna has reached the peak of the Elite rank.]

Evan: "..."

’Oh, for the love of— what the hell is that lunatic doing?!’

***

The sky above Ravenhold had darkened, and silent lightning had begun to split the clouds. The atmosphere had turned oppressive, and a sense of dread was spreading through every corner of the city.

The chaos from before had already claimed lives and left disorder in its wake, but what was happening now was on an entirely different level.

The people on the ground stood frozen in terror, eyes fixed on the figure that had just appeared high above them.

It was large. Ten meters from base to crown, perhaps more. The head of a winged serpent materialized slowly, assembling itself from fragments of void energy that coagulated in the air like shards of something ancient pulling itself back together.

The moment it formed completely, the air grew heavierl and soon, the people below began losing consciousness, dropping one after another like flies hitting the ground.

Mallory, standing at the center of that pressure, felt as though the sky itself was collapsing onto him.

He knew what he was looking at.

Or at least, he should have.

The outline was unmistakable. The elongated serpentine neck. The regal draconic head. The countless feather-like appendages spreading from its back. The overwhelming majesty that no ordinary beast could ever possess.

’No, T-this... somethig is not right’

It was an Aurora Couatl.

Yet the longer he looked, the more wrong it became.

Its scales weren’t the radiant silver-white described in the ancient records. They were black. Not merely dark, black in a way that seemed to swallow light itself. Crimson fissures ran beneath them like veins of molten blood, pulsing with a slow rhythm that made his skin crawl.

The feathered wings of legend were gone. In their place grew countless blade-like appendages, twisted and jagged, resembling the broken remains of something that had once been beautiful.

The creature’s body was leaner than it should have been, almost skeletal in places, as though the Void had stripped away everything unnecessary and left behind only a perfect predator.

Faint traces of azure light flowed across its body like scars. Not signs of life. Signs of corruption. Signs of something that had survived being consumed and emerged as something else entirely.

It wasn’t an Aurora Couatl.

It was something else entirely.

And somehow, instinctively, Mallory understood one terrifying truth.

This thing wasn’t weaker than the original.

It was worse.

Mallory couldn’t move.

The bloodline within him seemed to want to submit. Like an animal that recognizes something above itself in the hierarchy and instinctively stops fighting.

’W-What is this thing?’ The thought came slowly, his mind growing distant and sluggish.

He had recognized what the girl had done, and it was precisely because he understood it that he was struggling to accept it.

A bloodline manifestation.

It made no sense. It shouldn’t have been possible. Manifesting a bloodline in spiritual form was the exclusive domain of Overlords. Someone who had not yet reached that rank should not have been capable of it.

And yet the girl standing before him had done exactly that, and she had done it while still a B-rank, her power now soaring into the stratosphere the moment her bloodline was unleashed.

"A little girl..." Mallory muttered.

For the first time in the entire battle, something entered his voice that hadn’t been there before.

Something that resembled panic.

"A fucking little girl manifesting a bloodline—"

He couldn’t finish the sentence. He wanted to rage against it, to refuse it, he couldn’t accept that someone like her had obtained the power he had spent his entire life chasing.

He didn’t accept it.

But it wasn’t his place to decide whether to accept it or not.

And the one who possessed the power to decide no longer cared about his complaints.

Luna raised her sword.

A single motion. Simple, almost lazy.

The blade fell.

The cut passed through the clouds above them, passed through Mallory, passed through the hill beneath where once stood the manor, and continued, scoring the city walls further ahead and biting into the edge of the fortress beyond. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Everything touched by the path of that slash yielded in silence.