The hallway outside his room was dead silent.

Hide stood perfectly still, his back pressed flat against the wall just beside the heavy oak door. His right hand was locked in a vice-like grip around the pitch-black hilt of one of swords the dark mana already beginning to bleed subtly into the air around the blade.

Tap. Tap. Tap. There it was again. A slow, deliberate, unhurried knocking.

Hide’s blue eyes narrowed into lethal slits. The faint, glowing ring of violet surrounded his pupils. He slowly reached out with his left hand, his fingers brushing against the cold metal of the electronic handle. In one smooth, explosive motion, he ripped the door open and pivoted into the doorway, his short sword raised to strike.

He stared out into the plush, brightly lit, carpeted hallway. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

It was completely empty.

Hide froze, his blade hovering in the empty air. He looked left, down the long expanse of the opulent corridor toward the elevators. Empty. He looked right, toward the emergency stairwell. Empty. Not a single shadow was out of place. There was no retreating sound of footsteps, no residual trace of hostile mana, no subtle hum of a cloaking artifact.

Just the soft, ambient drone of the hotel’s central air conditioning.

Hide stood in the doorway for another ten seconds, his eyes darting across the patterned carpet for any sign of a disturbance. Finding absolutely nothing, he slowly lowered his sword.

"Damn it," Hide sighed out loud, dragging his left hand down his face as he stepped back and pulled the heavy door shut. The electronic lock engaged with a solid, reassuring click. "Must have been some kind of prank. Who the fuck does these kinds of pranks at this hour?"

He dismissed the sword, the blade dissolving into a wisp of black mist that sank seamlessly back into his palm. He turned around and trudged back toward the center of the lavish suite.

But as he walked, a sudden, nagging frown creased his forehead.

"Wait," Hide muttered softly to himself, stopping at the foot of his king-sized bed. "It’s a high-profile luxury hotel. We are in the capital of Ufrifa. This place is currently housing dozens of elite, international Exterminator squads. The security downstairs is military-grade."

He looked back toward the reinforced door. No normal civilian could even bypass the lobby elevators, let alone reach the twenty-eighth floor to play ding-dong-ditch. No one should be doing such cheap, childish pranks here. It made absolutely zero logical sense.

Hide stood there, his mind racing through tactical possibilities.

After thinking about it for a solid minute, he let out a heavy, exhausted breath and simply shrugged.

"Whatever..." Hide mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck. "I should sleep back."

Yes, he desperately needed the rest. The old man Maddox was going to come in the morning, and knowing the S-Rank Commander, he was going to drag them all out to some god-forsaken wasteland for his final, one-day intensive training. It would be pure hell.

He crawled back under the thick, expensive duvet, shifting his weight until he was comfortable. He closed his eyes, forcing his breathing into a slow, rhythmic pattern. The room plunged back into absolute darkness and silence.

Five minutes passed. Then ten.

To any normal observer, the silver-haired boy lying in the bed was deeply asleep.

But beneath his closed eyelids, Hide’s True Sight was completely, aggressively active.

He hadn’t dropped his guard for a single second. The knock on the door hadn’t been a prank. It had been a misdirection. The moment he had opened that door and stepped into the threshold to look out into the hallway, he had basically broken the seal of his room. And in that one-second window, a slight, almost imperceptible shift in the air pressure had brushed past his shoulder.

Something had stepped inside his room.

Hide lay perfectly still, listening. He didn’t rely on his eyes. He listened to the micro-currents of air circulating from the vents. He felt the minute, microscopic vibrations in the floorboards.

There. It was a faint, nearly non-existent sound. The soft compression of the carpet fibers just three feet away from the left side of his bed. Someone was standing right over him.

Not long after, Hide’s eyes suddenly flung open.

A wide, terrifying, utterly sadistic grin curved up on his face.

Instead of jumping away, Hide’s left hand shot upward with the speed of a striking viper, his fingers violently clamping shut around empty, invisible space.

GACK—!

A choked, wet gasp erupted from the void. Hide’s hand hadn’t grabbed air. His fingers had completely locked around a thick, muscular human throat.

Without missing a single beat, Hide’s right hand whipped toward the nightstand and slammed against the master light switch.

The suite was instantly flooded with blinding, sterile white light.

The sudden illumination overloaded whatever advanced optical camouflage the intruder was using. The empty space in Hide’s grip violently distorted, the air rippling like a mirage before pixelating into a flurry of failing light. Slowly, a human body took form right in front of Hide’s face.

It was a tall, heavily scarred man. His eyes were bulging out of his skull in pure, unmitigated shock as Hide’s iron grip crushed his windpipe. The man’s hands flew up, desperately clawing at Hide’s arm to break the hold, his legs kicking wildly in the air.

Hide looked at the struggling figure, his grin turning into a sneer of profound disgust. He released his grip, carelessly tossing the man backward.

The intruder hit the floor hard, coughing violently, dragging ragged, desperate gasps of air into his bruised lungs.

It was only then, under the harsh light of the room, that Hide noticed the most jarring detail about his midnight assassin. The man was completely, undeniably naked. Not a single shred of clothing, weaponry, or gear was on his body. Hide’s analytical mind processed it instantly—the man’s stealth talent likely required direct skin contact with the environment to bend the light, meaning clothes would have given his position away.

But logical or not, it didn’t make the sight any less revolting.

A deep, dark scowl surfaced on Hide’s face. He sat up slowly on the edge of the bed, resting his elbows on his knees as he looked down at the wheezing intruder.

"So..." Hide drawled, his voice dripping with lethal, mocking contempt. "What do I have for you, Mr. Creep?"

The naked man stopped coughing just long enough to shoot Hide a venomous glare. "My name is not Creep," the man grumbled in a low, raspy voice, planting his hands on the carpet to push himself up.

His sentence was violently cut short.

His eyes widened into massive, white orbs as his entire body suddenly convulsed.

BOOM! An invisible, catastrophic weight slammed into the room. It felt as though the atmospheric pressure had suddenly multiplied by a hundred. The floorboards beneath the man literally groaned, the heavy wood buckling under the force. The naked man was brutally flattened against the carpet, his chest completely pinned to the floor as if an invisible truck had just parked directly on top of his spine.

"Did I ask you what your name was?"

Hide’s voice was no longer mocking. It was a cold, hollow, deadpan whisper that completely froze the blood in the man’s veins. Hide hadn’t moved a single muscle. He was still just sitting casually on the edge of the bed, his blue eyes glowing with that terrifying violet authority.

"And as far as I know..." Hide continued, tilting his head slightly, "sneaking into people’s rooms completely naked is a creep’s act. In a man’s room, no less."

The assassin opened his mouth to reply, desperately trying to draw upon his own mana to resist the crushing weight. But he couldn’t. The sheer, suffocating density of the aura pressing down on him completely severed his connection to his core. He couldn’t say anything. Only pathetic, wet coughs resounded from his mouth as his ribs threatened to snap under the pressure.

Hide looked down at him and scoffed, entirely unimpressed.

"What? Can’t speak?" Hide sighed, rolling his eyes. "Such a shame."

Hide mentally flicked a switch, completely cutting off the Mana Press.

The crushing gravity vanished as quickly as it had appeared. The man gasped, his chest violently expanding as air finally rushed back into his deprived lungs. He lay there for a few seconds, trembling uncontrollably, before slowly craning his neck up to look at the teenager sitting on the bed.

The assassin’s eyes were wide with terror.

His mind was screaming, frantically trying to reconcile the data he had been given with the monster sitting in front of him. The international intelligence reports had listed Hide Volter as a newly awakened rookie. A D-Rank.

What the fuck is this?! the assassin screamed internally. That wasn’t D-Rank pressure. That wasn’t even C-Rank. To paralyze a veteran operative without even lifting a finger, forcing them to the floor with sheer aura alone... that was the power like those of Calamity Lord. The intelligence was completely, fatally wrong.

"Here," Hide said smoothly, crossing his arms. "Now let’s see what you have to say."