My Disciples Grind, I Get 100x Their Progress

—Target’s in the Canelo residential district. I’ll hold him off until you get here.

"Don’t get careless."

—Understood.

Ending the call, Dale Cruise, currently in Canelo’s commercial district, clicked his tongue. This late at night, the commercial area wasn’t exactly dead, still plenty of night-shift workers moving through the streets.

So, in theory, that Invader always causing trouble should be heading straight for a zone crawling with ordinary civilians. Given how bizarrely obsessed most of them were with human death, what if this one didn’t fit that pattern at all?

"Definitely the kind that actually uses its head," and that kind was clearly not something that showed up often. "Haa... didn’t expect to run into another smart, calculating type again."

Dale surged forward, racing toward the Canelo residential district, hoping he’d make it in time. His starting position was a decent distance away, which had him worried he might already be too late.

Because the smart type lived up to its name, genuinely sharp, calculating. They fought using strategy rather than pure feral instinct.

Dale raised his hand, thrusting it downward, and the next second, a powerful gust of wind blasted him upward into the sky. Without a shred of hesitation, he extended his arm again, generating another burst that carried him straight over a tall building.

Under the soft glow of the night’s moon, Dale kept sprinting until the Canelo residential district finally came into view in the distance.

Dale pushed his pace even harder, his face, already lined with scars, twisting with irritation as he clicked his tongue.

"I’ll be there soon, are you okay?" He pressed his communicator, but got no response at all.

No point wasting time asking further, Dale sprinted, and in under ten minutes, finally reached the Canelo residential district.

He immediately spotted the officer, his entire body wrapped in the Invader’s coils. He was about to move in, his skill already primed in his hand, but before he could act or do anything at all, the air in front of him was sliced cleanly through.

Dale froze on the spot, eyes going wide with shock. "Huh? What?"

His skill vanished right out of his grip. He recognized immediately that had been One Slash, but to reach a level of mastery like that...

"What the hell was that?"

Dale gave a nervous smile. His gaze locked onto the Invader, cut precisely apart. One Slash had sliced clean through every tentacle the Invader had gathered together, reaching in and destroying its Core, though not quite enough to split its entire body in two.

Something specific to Liquid-type Invaders. And because of that, the creature dissolved, collapsing into a meaningless pool of shadowy liquid scattered with glittering fragments.

The officer collapsed, and Dale moved fast, catching his falling body.

"Hey! Are you alright?"

The officer coughed weakly, his face grim, then looked up at Dale and nodded. No serious injuries, thankfully, he’d just been left short of breath after getting choked in that grip.

He’d be fine soon enough.

So Dale shifted his focus, turning his gaze toward the man standing roughly seventeen paces away. With the dark night shadows around him, only a silhouette was visible, his face hidden, indistinct.

’Rank-F,’ Dale immediately gauged his rank, but what actually caught him off guard was that reading, Rank-F.

So, was Dale surprised? Yes, he was surprised to stumble across someone this strong purely by accident, but the Rank itself wasn’t what surprised him.

Because reaching D-Grade mastery required time, real time, years of actual living, and someone who’d lived that long while easily faking their rank had to be, at minimum, Rank-A.

So, was this man actually Rank-A?

Dale felt his heart pounding hard. He himself sat at Rank-D, and someone at Rank-A still felt like something almost mythical to him.

But who exactly was this man? What was his real identity?

He was curious, but he knew better than to ask.

"...Thank you for the help, sir!" Dale simply expressed his gratitude, bowing his head, visibly nervous. "And I’m sorry we had to trouble you like this, we must have interrupted whatever you were doing."

The figure didn’t move, standing there in complete silence, leaving Dale feeling increasingly awkward, but thankfully, he soon heard the man’s voice.

"I’m leaving."

The words came out short and clipped, carrying no emotion whatsoever, as though he’d already witnessed everything this world had to offer, leaving any reaction or emotion entirely meaningless to him.

Dale watched the silhouette vanish from view in an instant, hesitated for a moment, then furrowed his brow.

"...Flash Step?" He glanced around quickly, but no matter where he looked, there was no trace of the man anywhere. "Just how high does his Flash Step mastery have to be, to just vanish like that instantly?"

Dale clenched his fist, his heart burning with something he couldn’t quite name. For a moment, his breathing grew heavy before he finally reached into his pocket, pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and took a drag.

Puff!

"Humanity isn’t as unprotected as we thought. There’s got to be some kind of hidden power out there, quietly protecting us from the shadows."

Dale smiled, a little sheepish, silently thanking the man once more in his heart. Then, once the officer had recovered enough, he collected the remains of the Invader’s fluid, sealing it into a small vial.

"...Who was that man, actually?" the officer asked, struggling to speak, his gaze meeting Dale’s.

"Well, who knows? Did you see anything?"

The officer shook his head. "I was just trying to hold onto consciousness at that point."

Dale looked disappointed, though there was no one to blame given how chaotic the whole situation had been. Still, the officer rubbed his chin for a moment. "Actually, there was one thing."

"....?"

Dale glanced at him, and the officer said:

"Well, he was wearing a white glove on his right hand. Yeah, just his right hand."

"A white glove...?"

***

Meanwhile, in a spot neither of them noticed, behind a neighbor’s parked car, Julian sat slumped against it, his face pale and drenched in sweat.

’What? The Invader’s dead? Seriously... is One Slash actually this powerful?’

Julian was genuinely stunned. He’d only planned on landing a minor wound, but the result had blown far past anything he’d expected.

’Or maybe I just got lucky, because the Invader let its guard down? Yeah, that’s got to be it.’

There was no way he could’ve taken that thing down that easily. Even according to what he’d read online, a skill having a higher Rank didn’t automatically mean it could take down an Invader ranked lower than it.

There were far too many variables at play, and Julian, luckily, must have had every single one of them work in his favor this time.

He drew in a long breath, let it out slowly, and peeked through the transparent car window across the way, watching the officer and the tardy hunter finally leave.

Only then did Julian quietly slip back into his house. He could finally feel real relief now that the Invader was dead.

The result wasn’t just Julian finally getting to sleep soundly, but the fact that the E-Rank Invader had apparently carried a surprisingly high progress value. Since Julian himself was still stuck at Rank-F, the energy he received translated to roughly twenty percent of his Rank-F progress.

That was an enormous amount for someone still sitting at Rank-F like Julian.

Feeling considerably better, Julian pulled off his white glove. He didn’t think about anything else, just collapsed onto his soft, comfortable bed and fell fast asleep.

"...I’m sleeping until one in the afternoon. Nothing’s waking me up."

Or, at least, that’s what he thought.

Right at seven in the morning, Julian got a call from the Academy.

—Julian, guardian of student Kiena, is requested to arrive before eight o’clock this morning.

"Urgh.... What now?"

Nothing, absolutely nothing, was ever going to go smoothly for him.

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