Five years bled quietly into one another within Castle Hart's walls.
Rush grew.
Not in the noisy, careless way children normally did. He grew in silence—observing, absorbing, refining.
His footsteps lost their sound. His breathing learned patience. His presence learned disappearance.
He spoke multiple languages, mastered mana control, recited histories, and devoured the library like it was his duty. But it was his body that changed most. Hand-to-hand became his true language. His fingers cut like daggers; his palms struck like blades.
Faster, he would tell himself in the dead of night, muscles burning. Quieter.
One morning, Lord Ryanheart summoned him.
"Tomorrow," the Lord said, "you hunt with us."
Rush bowed. "Yes, Father."
Finally.
The border forest of Zephoria was unnaturally quiet that day. Birds held their breath. Mana hung stale in the air. The assassins moved through trees like a shadowed tide, and monsters fell with barely a scream.
By midday, they reached a river. The Lord raised his hand—a silent command to halt.
Across the water, a cave mouth gaped open. Cold air leaked from it like a dying breath.
"We check it," he ordered.
Inside, Rush felt it immediately.
Not power.
Unease.
Something is wrong, Rush thought, his hand drifting to his dagger. The mana here… it isn't flowing. It's stagnant.
Rush and another apprentice were sent to scout. Two shadows slipped into the cave.
The temperature plummeted. The walls glittered, frost growing from inside the stone. Their breath turned white. The air grew thin—wrongly thin—like something was feeding on it.
At a fork, they split. No words. No hesitation.
Then the cave rumbled.
A single impact. Distant. Violent.
Rush sprinted toward it.
The passage widened into an eerie chamber lit by pale blue crystals jutting from the walls like frozen ribs.
And there, in the center, was the apprentice.
He knelt, clutching his shoulder, blood pouring down his side. His severed arm lay several feet away—slumped against the paw of a towering creature with a predator's stillness.
Blood-red eyes burned through the frost.
Rush froze. His mind raced, pulling up the encyclopedias he had memorized.
White fur. Condensed Mana. Environmental manipulation.
His stomach dropped.
That's not a wolf.
It was a Mutated Snow Lycan.
Rank: B.
In the world of Etherion, death was categorized by Letters.
Civilization measured danger from F to SS, a calculated scale of solvable threats. Beyond that lay the Catastrophic and Legendary classes—anomalies that didn't just break the rankings, but shattered the very laws of nature.
A Territorial Beast, Rush realized, the thought ringing like a funeral bell in his mind. The standing order isn't to fight. It's to evacuate the province.
The beast inhaled. The temperature dropped sharply.
Then it moved.
Just vanished.
Fast!
Rush barely had time to throw himself and the apprentice aside before claws tore through the space he'd been standing. The sound of their retreating footsteps disappeared into the maze of passages.
But the cold followed.
The Lycan walked. Slowly. Patiently. The kind of predator that knew the kill was inevitable.
Rush slid behind a boulder and erased his presence. The apprentice trembled, breath uneven. Blood painted the floor.
Rush didn't speak. Words wouldn't help now. He looked at the injured boy, then at the beast stalking them. The math was cruel and simple.
We can't outrun it. Not both of us.
The Lycan's head turned. It sniffed once—long and slow.
Blood.
The death sentence.
The beast inhaled, chest expanding. Mana crackled, and with a cold exhale—
A beam of condensed frost ripped through stone like a blade.
Rush reacted—snatching the apprentice and rolling across jagged ice as the boulder exploded behind them. The apprentice screamed through clenched teeth.
Rush slammed him against the tunnel wall.
"Listen," Rush whispered, voice steady despite the cold slicing his lungs. "Go. Go and don't look back. Tell him."
The apprentice stared, face pale.
Don't argue with me, Rush thought desperately. Just run.
He didn't wait. He threw a dagger—not at the Lycan, but at the wall, drawing a sharp ringing echo.
The beast turned.
The apprentice ran.
Rush ran the opposite direction.
Outside, the apprentice burst from the entrance. "Lycan… inside…"
Lord Ryanheart didn't waste a second. He signaled the strike team and vanished into the dark.
Inside, Rush was dying.
He and the Lycan danced a brutal dance. The beast's strikes cratered the earth; Rush's steps barely skimmed it. But a child's stamina had limits.
A single swipe caught him.
His dagger absorbed the blow but shattered. Shards slashed across his arm and ribs.
Blood stained the frost purple.
Rush hit the ground. Vision dimmed. Frost crawled over his fingers.
The Lycan approached. Claws raised.
Rush tried to move. His body refused.
Move, he screamed internally. Get up!
But his legs were dead weight. The cold was in his marrow.
Is this it? After everything?
Silence.
Then—
"Host survival probability: 0%."
The voice.
It wasn't a whisper this time. It was a statement. Cold. Precise.
"External threat level: B-Rank. Current Host capabilities: Insufficient."
Rush's eyes widened. Help... me...
"Proposal accepted. Initiating Force-Override."
A shockwave of agony tore through Rush's nervous system. It wasn't magic—it was optimization. Beelzebub seized control of the Origin Core, forcing the floodgates open.
What—?!
Violet mana surged through Rush's veins. It didn't feel like fire; it felt like hunger.
"Authority: Absolute Optimization."
Time seemed to slow.
Rush didn't stand up. He was pulled up. His body moved with mathematical perfection, guided by a mind that had watched a thousand worlds end.
The Lycan swiped.
Rush didn't dodge away. He stepped forward, inside the claw's arc, moving millimeters past death.
He didn't make a fist. He didn't summon a blade.
He simply placed his small, open palm against the Lycan's chest.
"Directive: Harvest."
Violet flames—cold, silent, and ravenous—erupted from Rush's hand.
They didn't burn the Lycan. They devoured it.
The massive beast froze in mid-air. Its roar was cut short as the violet light latched onto its essence, breaking down flesh, mana, and bone into something unseen.
"Processing… Preserving… Archiving."
In a single heartbeat, the B-Rank beast didn't just die. It was erased.
The white fur, the condensed mana, the terrifying muscle—all of it unspooled into ash and violet motes of light, swirling into Rush's palm before vanishing inside him.
The Lycan was gone.
No corpse. No blood. Just a pile of fine gray dust and the lingering smell of ozone.
The violet light extinguished instantly. Beelzebub retreated.
"Data acquisition complete. Host survival secured — 100%."
Rush collapsed, his body smoking from the strain.
Moments later, Lord Ryanheart burst into the chamber. He stopped, weapon raised, ready for a war.
But there was no war.
There was no monster.
There was only a pile of strange, gray ash, and his son lying unconscious beside it.
He rushed to him, checking his pulse. Warm. Alive.
But as he lifted his son, the Lord looked at the ash. He looked at the scorch marks on the ground. They weren't black like fire.
They were violet.
And there was no body.
Where is the Lycan? the Lord thought, a chill running down his spine that had nothing to do with the cold. Where did it go?
Hours later, back at camp, Rush stirred.
His eyes opened slowly. And for a brief second—faint violet embers flickered in the reflection of his pupils.