The stones and the whole structure of the plaza vibrated under the shockwave.

Hide reacted on pure, hard-coded reflex. The moment his passive perception warned him of the incoming danger, his heels dug into the marble, launching his body several meters backward in a clean, defensive arc.

He landed lightly, his knees absorbing the momentum as a violent, artificial gale tore across the steps, lashing his face with cold air and kicking up a dense curtain of white limestone dust.

Through the shifting white haze, Hide’s eyes narrowed as he mapped the perimeter.

To his left, Sora stood perfectly upright. She had already drawn a pair of gleaming, serrated combat daggers, her knuckles white around the hilt wraps. Her dark eyes were glowing with a deep, menacing hue as an almost invisible sphere of compressed, high-velocity air rapidly expanded around her form, deflecting the incoming debris like an invisible glass shield.

Directly opposite her, the dynamic was entirely different. The towering, dark-skinned giant had instinctively moved, planting his massive, bunker-like frame squarely in front of the lean, pale-skinned scholar.

His broad back was turned directly toward the source of the blast, acting as a human barrier to completely shield his fragile teammate from the concussive backblast.

’Fast,’ Hide thought, his internal voice deadpan as his fingers hovered just about to summon the twin blades. ’The girl is a wind-attribute specialist. The giant is a pure physical type. None of them froze when the attack happened.’

His Dark Abyssal Core hummed, ready to feed dark mana to the atmosphere to materialize his phantoms, but he deliberately held the command. His True Sight had already pierced through the settling limestone dust, locking onto the distinct biological frequency of the person standing at the epicenter of the commotion.

As the white haze fully dissolved into the morning air, the identity of their attacker became clear.

Standing at the base of the stadium steps was a man who completely defied the gravity of his own position. He possessed a thick mane of rich, untamed auburn hair that caught the pale grey dawn, and his distinctive, deep brown eyes carried an ageless, razor-sharp focus that could paralyze a lesser fighter with a single glance.

Yet, despite radiating the unmistakable presence of a leviathan, he was wearing loose casual shorts and a lightweight, short-sleeved summer shirt. He looked impossibly young—no older than a university student—retaining the exact same youthful features that ran through every federal news feed.

Commander Maddox. The Third commander of the National Exterminator Agency.

The moment the dust cleared, the giant and the scholar instantly snapped their spines straight, bringing their right hands up to their temples in a rigid, military-grade salute.

"Sir Maddox!" they shouted in unison, their voices echoing off the glass domes.

Beside them, Sora slowly lowered her daggers, the compressed air dome around her dissolving into a gentle breeze as she pouted, crossing her arms. "Uncle Maddox! You almost took my cap off with that entrance!"

’Uncle?’

Hide merely let out a slow, dry breath through his nose, keeping his hands comfortably buried inside his pockets. "Old man Maddox. Still dressing like you’re on a beach vacation."

The entire plaza fell into a sudden, highly awkward silence. The giant, the scholar, and Sora all turned their heads simultaneously, staring at Hide with wide, horror-struck eyes. They looked between Hide and the Commander, their minds visibly short-circuiting over the wildly different ways they had all addressed an S-Rank legend.

Maddox stared at them for a beat, his brown eyes blinking once before he threw his head back and erupted into a boisterous laugh that shattered the morning quiet.

"So all you hatchlings actually made it on time, huh?" Maddox chuckled, wiping a speck of moisture from his eye as his gaze swept across the four teenagers. "Pretty good."

Turning on his heel, Maddox gestured carelessly toward the super large and glamorous structure behind him. "Inside. Keep up."

The pressure lifted completely. The four teenagers deactivated their active combat stances, their residual mana lines settling back beneath their skin as they followed the Commander up the wide marble steps. Maddox pressed his palm flat against the central biometric entry panel; the titanium reinforcement beams shifted with a series of heavy pneumatic clicks, and the massive dark glass doors slid open to allow them passage.

The moment Hide’s boots crossed the threshold into the facility’s interior, his entire system violently jolted.

The atmosphere inside the stadium wasn’t what he had thought it would be. Instead of a normal place... this place sent sudden warnings.

A sudden, massive spike of environmental mana slammed into his senses, accompanied by an undercurrent of raw, corrupted dark mana pulsing heavily in the background. Hide’s eyes snapped forward, tracking the frequency down to the very center of the facility.

Spread out before them was a vast, indoor field lined with immaculate, synthetic green grass. And hovering directly at the epicenter of the field was a colossal, swirling rift in space. The portal was a bruised, violent purple vortex, its outer edges curling slowly inward like a living maw that continuously bled cold, dense static into the arena.

The four teenagers instantly went rigid, their postures snapping into an attentive, deeply cautious layout as the raw density of the rift registered against their rings.

Maddox walked out onto the grass perimeter, stopping a few feet away from the swirling vortex, and turned back to face them. He interlocked his fingers behind his back, his expression turning slightly critical.

"So, I suppose you all have spent the morning talking and making acquaintance of each other?" Maddox asked, his voice echoing lightly across the empty stadium.

utter silence met his question. Hide stared at the ceiling, Sora looked down at her shoes, and the giant shifted his weight uncomfortably. Nobody uttered a single word.

Maddox looked at them, his stress-free face twisting into a mask of disappointment. "Boring. Absolutely zero team synergy. Well, now is the time. Everyone introduce yourselves to the class."

He stepped forward, his piercing brown eyes stopping directly on Hide’s face.

"First, my full name is James Maddox," the Commander stated, his voice losing its playful edge, replaced by a heavy, unyielding weight of authority. "I will be your primary trainer for the next month. Next."

The scholarly boy with the thick spectacles stepped forward first, clearing his throat stiffly. "I am Ryan. Rank D, I have a mage class."

The giant next to him pounded his fist against his chest with a heavy thud. "Gideon Vance! Rank C, Warrior class!"

Sora offered a quick, cheerful wink toward the group. "Sora Maddox. Rank C, Assassin class!"

The three boys looked at her in disbelief. Sure enough she had called Maddox her Uncle.

Finally, every eye in the arena shifted back to the end of the line. Hide stood calmly, his expression entirely deadpan as he delivered his lowest in the class metrics.

"Hide Volter. Rank-E and Unique Class."

Ryan and Gideon both flinched slightly... a Unique class. Now they knew why he was here, despite only being an E-Rank. It was because he had a Unique class!

Maddox let out another low, amused chuckle, raising a single hand to point directly at the bruised-purple vortex churning behind his shoulder.

"Excellent," Maddox grinned, his eyes flashing with a dangerous, competitive fire. "Now that the pleasantries are out of the way... this is a certified Three-Star Loop Gate. And our very first training session starts right inside it. Step through the threshold, hatchlings."