"So," the old man said quietly, his cloudy eyes resting heavily on the young man before him. "What do you want, Hide Volter?"

The suffocating pressure that had just crushed Hide to the floor was gone, but the ghost of it still lingered in his lungs. The air in the room felt thick.

The old man gestured lazily with one frail, wrinkled hand toward a small wooden chair situated across from him. "Sit down. We have much to discuss, and staring down at me is quite rude, don’t you think?"

Hide remained standing for a long moment, his jaw visibly clenching. He grit his teeth so hard the muscles in his cheeks jumped. Every instinct in his enhanced body was screaming at him to do something...

But his mind, sharp and coldly calculating, held him back.

How foolish was he to just walk right into the den of a sleeping dragon? He had marched into the Sihue estate expecting a den of assassins he could slaughter his way through, but the frail old man sitting in front of him was on an entirely different level of existence. Fighting him wouldn’t just be ’not as easy as he thought’—calling it ’easy’ would be the understatement of the century.

Of course, a wild, dangerous thought crossed Hide’s mind. The Universal Adaptation System. If this old man was an S-Rank powerhouse, and he attacked Hide, the System would generate an S-Rank counter-skill in response. The potential rewards were astronomically high.

If he survived the first hit.

That was the fatal flaw in his reckless gamble. The System could only adapt to damage the host survived. If this old man decided to crush his skull or snap his neck in a single, imperceptible motion, the System wouldn’t have time to adapt. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

There would be no meaning to a shiny new S-Rank skill if he was a corpse.

’Well, fuck that for now,’ Hide cursed internally, forcing his tense muscles to relax. He had to play along.

Hide stepped forward and slowly lowered himself into the wooden chair. He kept his posture straight, his blue eyes locked onto the old man’s milky gaze.

"I want to know how Risa is," Hide said, his voice flat, completely devoid of the polite deference one would usually give an elder of a major clan.

The old man, Risa’s grandfather, stared at him. Hide had expected to see some kind of shift in his demeanor—anger, guilt, or at least a flicker of annoyance at an outsider demanding answers about his bloodline.

But to Hide’s surprise, the old man simply smiled, a soft, almost weary expression, and let out a dry sigh.

"She is being taken care of, as we speak," the old man replied gently.

Hide’s eyes narrowed instantly, a cold prickle of alarm running down his spine. "What do you mean, by being taken care of?"

The old man chuckled, a raspy, dry sound. "You misunderstand me, boy. Or perhaps you understand me too well. Even if she is a complete disgrace to the clan, a failure who could not even awaken, she is still my blood. My granddaughter. It is not easy to order her death."

The old man leaned his chin on his hands, resting them atop his wooden cane. "My son... her father... is such a fool. He is soft. He doesn’t want to do what is necessary. He wants to let her rot away in that hospital bed, wasting our resources and keeping the stain on our family’s honor alive. But his weakness doesn’t matter, does it?"

The old man’s cloudy eyes suddenly sharpened, carrying the lethal weight of an executioner. "I will do it. And no one will stop me." He laughed again, as if discussing the pruning of a dead tree rather than the murder of his own flesh and blood.

Hide’s eyes went wide. The cold knot in his chest instantly ignited into a blazing, uncontrollable inferno.

"You will do no such thing," Hide growled, his voice dropping into a lethal, vibrating register.

He didn’t just speak. He let go of his absolute restraint. Deep, violently dark mana began to leak from Hide’s body, swirling around his chair like a heavy, suffocating fog.

The old man’s dry laughter died in his throat. He fell completely silent. His cloudy eyes suddenly widened, narrowing instantly as shock and sheer disbelief broke his serene facade. He gripped his wooden cane, his knuckles turning white.

"Wh... what the hell are you?" the old man demanded, his raspy voice laced with genuine shock. "That is Corrupted Mana. That’s impossible! I thought your mana had a black color, but this... this is actually raw Dark Mana. Are you in contact with a Calamity Lord?!"

The air in the room became overwhelmingly dense. The old man’s own aura flared defensively in response to the corruption, creating a terrifying, invisible clash of pressures that made the wooden floorboards beneath their feet groan and splinter.

Hide could feel the overwhelming weight trying to crush him again, but he didn’t give in. He refused to be pushed down. His blue eyes, ringed with glowing violet, burned with absolute defiance.

’Come out,’ Hide commanded mentally.

Instantly, the thick, corrupted mana swirling around Hide surged upward, shooting across the room like a shadow. Right behind the old man’s chair, the darkness condensed.

Zenith materialized. The towering, heavily armored phantom stood directly behind the frail grandfather, its massive frame so large its jagged, dark-metal helmet almost scraped the wooden ceiling.

Zenith stood in absolute silence, its featureless, glowing visor staring down at the back of the old man’s neck, its razor-sharp talons resting mere inches from his spine.

Hide waited for the reaction. He expected the old man to summon his weapons, to lash out in fury, or to show dread at the monstrosity looming over his shoulder.

But instead of feeling dread or anger, the old man simply tilted his head. He looked from the dark mist of Zenith back to Hide, and for some incomprehensible reason, he looked amused.

Hide felt a sudden, sharp spike of internal peril. ’Why isn’t he reacting? I literally have a blade to his neck.’