Kale didn’t wait for the girl to finish her smile. His survival instincts, honed through a million failed simulations and a literal regression from death, screamed at him to move...
He scooped up Neo, the three-headed hydra currently disguised as a palm-sized lizard, and shoved the creature onto his shoulder. With a single, explosive burst of Beast Force, he pivoted and vanished into the dense undergrowth...
The forest floor blurred beneath him as he sprinted at nearly forty meters per second, his Hexarion physiology screaming under the sudden demand for maximum output. He was smart enough to recognise a trap before the jaws snapped shut...
From what he could sense, most of the group was theoretically weaker than him, yet the power radiating from the Artificer female was wrong. It wasn’t the natural mana of a researcher; it was a borrowed, crushing weight...
Kale gritted his teeth, the blackened soul sigil on his forehead pulsing with a dull, throbbing pain. "The Church’s power... damn it, it’s probably Dragon Authority," he muttered, his voice a low growl against the wind...
Behind him, the peaceful ambience of the Tigerwood Forest shattered. Seven distinct auras erupted simultaneously, each one surging with a sickeningly bright golden energy that turned the forest’s green starlight into a sickly yellow...
The four unknown figures in the group shed their disguises of mediocrity, their power levels shooting up to Peak Master rank within seconds. They were oozing with the golden energy of a Church blessing...
More shockingly, the three familiar faces followed suit. Paula, the girl from the Master recruits, and the Artificer receptionist were suddenly engulfed in the same divine radiance, their mana signatures stabilising at the absolute peak of the Master tier...
The seven entities dashed after him with a ruthless, singular intensity that made the surrounding foliage wilt. They moved with a synchronised grace that spoke of a collective hive mind fuelled by religious fanaticism...
Kale realised within seconds that he could not outrun seven Peak Masters on open ground, especially not when they were reinforced by the inexplicable speed of the Church’s "blessing"...
He veered sharply to the right, diving deeper into the ancient canopy where the giant Tigerwood roots created a labyrinth of shadows and damp irrigation ducts. This was his territory... the dark cradle of his training...
"System... initiate complete concealment," Kale ordered mentally. "Mask Neo’s signature and my own. Utilise the 200-meter sensory map for terrain occlusion..."
[CONCEALMENT SUBROUTINES ACTIVE]
[TERRAIN MAPPING INITIATED... SECTOR 5 NORTH-EAST]
[CHURCH SIGNATURES DETECTED: 7 TARGETS... RAPID CLOSING]
Neo sensed the shift in the bond and unsummoned itself from Kale’s shoulder, merging into the pitch-black shadows of a protruding ironwood root. Master and beast became separate phantoms in the dark...
The first "church dog" entered the shadow-zone, his golden aura acting like a lighthouse in the gloom. He was a tall man with a silver-plated shield, his eyes vacant and glowing with a zealot’s fire...
He didn’t see Kale until it was too late. Kale dropped from a high branch, his daggers coated in a high-frequency mana edge that hummed with a silent, deathly song. He didn’t use brute force; he used structural grounding...
The dagger slid through the gap in the man’s golden armour, piercing the central nervous node before a single shout could escape. The zealot’s body went limp, his golden blessing flickering out like a guttering candle...
Twenty meters to the left, Neo struck. One head bit into the throat of the second pursuer while the other two heads snapped the legs of a third. The Hydra moved with a predatory grace that ignored the constraints of its palm-sized form...
The slaughter was systematic and cold. Kale and Neo moved like twin executioners in the dark, deleting the four unknown Master rank agents one after another. They were seasoned killers moving through a slaughterhouse of their own design...
However, the cost was far higher than Kale had anticipated. Every time his daggers touched the golden energy, a pulse of "Dragon Authority" travelled up his arm, burning his mana pathways with a bizarre, discordant heat...
By the time only the three women remained, Kale felt a heavy, hollow ache in his chest. Neo was also hissing in irritation, its shimmering green scales dulled by the constant contact with the Church’s unnatural divinity...
The shadows finally retreated as the three women surrounded him in a triangular formation, their golden eyes glowing with a terrifying, unified light. Paula stood at the apex, her Prism Hornet wreathed in yellow flames...
Kale stood in the centre, his white coat stained with the dark blood of the church agents. He stared at Paula, his green eyes flashing with a manic, vengeful fury that he could no longer suppress...
"So you were a spy of the Church all along, you damned bitch," Kale shouted, his voice echoing off the massive root walls. "I should have let the shadow-wasps have you back then... you fucking bastards..."
He gestured vaguely toward the rest of her mercenary group. "Are the rest of them traitors too? Including the team leader? Did you lead them all into this filth?"
Paula wore a complicated expression, her grip on her weapon tightening for a brief second. She shook her head slowly, a single tear reflecting the golden light before evaporating in the heat...
"No... they don’t know anything. This is my doing alone, and I apologise, Kale," Paula said, her voice steady but hollow. "Even though you saved our lives, I have no choice. You are a heretic of the highest degree..."
"You are a threat to the Church itself... a biological discord that cannot be allowed to exist," she continued. "You must be destroyed... until not even your ashes remain to pollute the world, Will..."
The other woman, the noble recruit whom Kale had humiliated in the training arena, interjected with a shrill, mocking laugh. "You were so haughty before, country bumpkin... and now look at you? Scared... heh!!!"
Last was the female Artificer from the Association gate, her face twisted into a mask of pure religious fanaticism. "It is time to pay the price, cursed Blasphemer... you have lived long enough on stolen time..."
Kale didn’t bother replying. He let out a low, vibrant whistle, and Neo erupted from his shadow, no longer hiding its strength. The Hydra’s aura ballooned, its three heads arching in a display of draconic arrogance that pushed back the golden gloom...
The battle that followed was destructive and violent beyond anything Kale had faced. The three women attacked in a synchronised dance of light and fire, their powers boosted by the Church’s borrowed divinity...
Paula’s Prism Hornet fired high-frequency stinging strikes of golden light, while the noble girl commanded a massive, crystalline lizard that had been mutated into a holy monstrosity...
Kale brushed against death multiple times in the first minute. A golden spear of light grazed his cheek, and the Artificer’s specialised mana-suppressing tools almost froze his internal circuits...
He survived only through every ounce of his might and intelligence. He used circular movements to deflect the spear strikes, his daggers humming as he poured his entire mana pool into a desperate defence...
"Neo... Flame Form! Maximum output!" Kale roared, finally unleashing the beast’s full power. The Nemesis Hydra transformed into a shimmering spectre of incandescent orange energy, its three heads unleashing torrents of refined fire...
The refined fire breath clashed with the golden shields of the Church agents, creating a shockwave that shattered the ironwood roots beneath their feet. The forest floor was turned into a molten crater of glass and ash...
Kale blurred through the steam, using the chaos to isolate the noble girl. He activated Gaze of the Monarch, his pupils turning into black slits that momentarily froze her zeal-filled mind...
He drove his dagger into her solar plexus, ignoring the golden lightning that charred his left arm. The girl’s eyes widened as her "blessing" failed to stop the Dragon Slayer’s blade...
As she fell, the Artificer female shrieked in rage, launching a barrage of explosive alchemical orbs. Kale used the Octagon trait, feeling the green starlight of Neo’s regeneration mending his charred skin even as he lunged through the fire...
He slammed into the Artificer with his shoulder, his Hexarion physique delivering the kinetic force of a falling mountain. Her bones shattered under the impact, the golden radiance around her dispersing into cold mist...
Only Paula remained. She stood at the edge of the crater, her Hornet buzzing frantically as she stared at Kale... a boy who had survived a coordinated assassination by seven Peak Masters...
Kale stood among the cooling glass of the crater, his breath coming in ragged, bloody gasps. He looked at her not with the stoicism of a researcher, but with the cold, ancient hunger of a predator that had finally found its mark...
Neo landed beside him, its three heads rubbing against each other in a show of pure, unadulterated joy. The shadow of the capital had reached for him... and he had cut its hand off...
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