The forest fell into a sudden, suffocating silence. Not even the wind dared to stir the canopy above.
The only sound that remained was the rhythmic thud of their boots hitting the damp, mossy earth and the heavy, ragged breathing of the three survivors.
The gravity of the Adjon Leader's departure still hung in the air, a physical weight thicker and more oppressive than the swirling mist that clung to the trees.
Kaito was the first to break the stillness. He stopped in his tracks, spinning around on his heel to face Kenji with a look of pure disbelief. His eyes searched the boy's face for any sign of a joke, any hint that what they had just heard was a fabrication.
"Wait, wait, wait. Back up for a second," Kaito demanded, his voice cracking with urgency. "That monster... that literal god among men... he said you don't have a 'Return by Death' anymore? You're telling me that safety net is gone?"
Kenji didn't look up immediately.
He looked down at his calloused hands, which were still stained with the dark, copper-scented blood of the ghouls he had slaughtered earlier. The grime was deep in the cracks of his skin. "I have no elemental ability," he said, his voice coming out flat and hollow. That power was never mine. It was theirs. And now, they've taken it back."
William let out a low, sharp whistle. The neon green light that had been pulsing through his veins dimmed slightly.
"No powers? In this world?" William muttered, shaking his head in a mix of awe and pity. "Man, you're either a miracle or a curse. To survive even five minutes in the Adjon's grip without a single spark of mana... that's not just luck. That's something else entirely."
"He said we have two years to reach Sehhear Mountain," Kenji reminded them. His gray eyes, usually as dull as lead, locked onto Kaito's with a sudden, piercing intensity. It was the look of a man who had seen the bottom of the grave and decided he didn't like the view.
"How far is it?."
Kaito's face paled, the blood draining from his cheeks until he looked as ghostly as the mist. He looked down and kicked idly at a glowing mushroom growing at the base of a gnarled root.
"Kenji, look at us."
We're barely holding on as it is. Sehhear Mountain isn't just a hike. It's across three major city-territories. We have to cross the sprawling, industrial complex of the City of Oakhaven and navigate the treacherous, half-submerged ruins of the Sunken Capital, and then climb the High Peaks to final see a mountain that is surrounded by water.
It's thousands of miles of hell, all of it crawling with Adjon grunts and mutated beasts that would make those ghouls look like harmless puppies."
"It's impossible for a human with no abilities," William added, his voice turning grim and heavy. He gestured to the glowing green veins that mapped across his neck and arms.
"Even for us, it's a suicide mission."
My Overclock burns through my stamina like a forest fire. I can move mountains and shatter stone, but I can't carry a powerless mentally disturbed kid who can't fight, across an entire continent while fighting for my own life.
I'm a warrior, Kenji, not a miracle worker."
Kenji's grip tightened on the hilt of his sword. The leather wrap was worn and familiar against his palm.
"I don't need to be carried," Kenji said, stepping forward. The atmosphere around him seemed to chill. "Do you know death, William? Really know it? I've died one thousand times. I've been torn apart, burned, crushed, and erased.
I've spent lifetimes beating monsters you wouldn't even dream of fighting in your worst nightmares. I am not powerless. I am the result of a thousand failures turned into a single, sharp edge."
Before Kaito could find the words to argue, the forest reacted. The birds that had been chirping in the high canopy suddenly went silent.
The insects stopped their buzzing. A low, vibrating hum began to pulse through the air, the kind of sub-bass frequency that rattles the teeth inside your skull and makes your heart skip a beat.
From the dense, tangled foliage emerged a Thorn-Back Stalker. It was a nightmare rendered in flesh and stone, the size of a royal carriage.
Its body was covered in obsidian-hard scales that shimmered like oil on water, and jagged, vine-like protrusions grew from its spine, pulsing with a toxic, sickly violet light that cast long, distorted shadows across the forest floor.
"Speak of the devil," William growled, his stance widening as he prepared for impact. He didn't hesitate.
His right arm suddenly flared with a violent, neon-green radiance that illuminated the dark woods.
"Overclock 2!"
The transformation was visceral, his arm cracked releasing the stored energy. The muscles in William's arm surged and rippled, doubling in size almost instantly as the Overclock ability forced his cells into a state of hyper-evolution.
Steam hissed from his skin as his body temperature skyrocketed. He lunged forward with the speed of a falling star, his fist connecting with the Stalker's armored head.
The impact sounded like a cannon blast echoing through the valley.
The beast let out a deafening roar of pain and fury. Its tail, a massive, flexible whip covered in six-inch thorns, lashed out toward Kaito with enough force to snap a redwood in half.
"Shift!"
Kaito yelled, snapping his fingers in a sharp, rhythmic motion.
In an instant, the world tilted. For Kaito, the fundamental law of gravity altered.
"Down" was no longer toward the earth; it became "left." He fell sideways through the air, the thorned tail whistling through the space he had occupied only a millisecond before.
He landed vertically on the rough bark of a massive pine tree, standing as if the trunk were level ground. Without missing a beat, he began to sprint along the side of the tree, defying every physical law the world held dear.
"Kenji, stay back!" Kaito warned from his perch on the tree, but he was talking to a ghost. Kenji was already moving.
Kenji didn't have the luxury of gravity manipulation or bio-energy enhancement.
He had something simpler and, in some ways, far more dangerous: momentum and the cold, calculated experience of a man who had seen his own death repeatedly.
He watched the Stalker's movements not with fear, but with the analytical gaze of a butcher.
He saw the "tell" before every strike the slight twitch in the creature's left shoulder, the subtle shift in its eyes, the way its weight settled before a lunge.
The Stalker, frustrated by Kaito's evasiveness, lunged at the massive figure of William. "Kaito, drop it!" William roared, bracing himself.
"Gravity 10x!"
Kaito shifted the gravitational pull again, focusing it entirely on the beast while it was distracted.
He leaped from the tree, outstretching his palm and making physical contact with the creature's hide.
The air around the Stalker distorted, shimmering like heat haze on a highway. Suddenly, the creature was slammed into the dirt by an invisible weight ten times its own mass. The earth groaned and cracked beneath its weight, pinning the beast in a crater of its own making.
"Now, William!" Kaito shouted.
William leaped high into the air, his green-glowing arm trailing a streak of light like a falling comet. He brought his fist down in a devastating hammer-blow, the force of the strike shattering the Stalker's obsidian back-plates like glass.
Shards of black scale flew in every direction. The beast, sensing its life force fading, let out a final, desperate screech and fired a volley of toxic thorns in a 360-degree arc.
"Kenji!" William shouted. He was grounded, his energy spent and his movements sluggish as the Overclock began its grueling cooldown.
Kenji didn't flinch. He didn't even blink. He moved into the storm of thorns, using his sword not to hack wildly, but to deflect with surgical precision. He weaved through the projectiles, his body moving in a blur of minimal, efficient motions.
Cling! Clink! Clink!
The sound of steel on thorn filled the clearing. He batted the poisonous needles away as if they were nothing more than slow-moving pebbles. He stepped through the chaos, closing the distance until he was inches from the beast's thrashing form.
He reached the exposed, soft flesh of the neck where the armor had been cracked open. With a single, cold-blooded thrust, he found the gap.
ROOOAAR!
The creature gave one last, shuddering cry. Kenji twisted the blade deep into the muscle, severing the spinal cord. The Stalker's body gave a final, violent heave before going completely limp.
Silence returned to the forest, heavier than before. William slumped against a moss-covered rock, his arm slowly returning to its normal size, his skin pale and slick with sweat from the internal heat. Kaito "fell" back to the actual ground, stumbling slightly as his inner ear fought to regain its balance.
They both turned their eyes toward Kenji. He wasn't breathing hard. His heart rate hadn't even spiked. He stood over the carcass, cleaning the thick, violet blood off his blade with a handful of leaves, his expression as unreadable as a stone wall.
"Maybe..." William panted, a small, genuine grin finally forming on his face. "Maybe we actually can make it."
"We're three days from the border of Oakhaven City," Kaito said, checking a small, mechanical compass that whirred in his palm. "It's a neutral trade hub. If we can get there without dying, we can rest and get supplies. But remember, the Adjon have eyes everywhere. Every shadow, every merchant, every bird could be watching us."
Kenji looked toward the horizon, where the faint, jagged silhouette of distant mountains teased the darkening sky. He felt no fear, no excitement, and no hope. He felt only a hollow, driving purpose that had been forged in a thousand deaths.
"Let's move," Kenji said, sheathing his sword with a clean, metallic click. "We have two years, and I don't plan on wasting a single second of them."