The mist coiled around the village square like a living thing, grey tendrils reaching between the bound villagers and the four robed figures who had come to slaughter them. The old man—Seyhi, the one who had taught Magna what it meant to be a real man—stood with his axe raised, his weathered face set in grim determination. But he was old, and he was outnumbered, and the blood dripping from a gash on his forehead told me he wouldn't last much longer.
I stepped forward, placing myself between the robed mages and the villagers. The wheel behind my head rotated in its steady, golden cycle, its light cutting through the mist like a beacon.
"Ouga?" Magna's voice was tense. "What are you doing? We need a plan!"
I didn't answer. My grey eyes were fixed on the leader of the robed group—a tall man with sharp features and cold eyes that gleamed beneath his hood. His robe was the same grey as the others, but the pendant around his neck was larger, more ornate. An eye. The same eye I had found in the ashes of Hage Village a year ago. The same symbol that had been seared into my memory before the locks had sealed my emotions away.
The Midnight of the Evil Eye.
"Magna," I said, and my voice was very calm. "Take Asta. Handle the underlings. The leader is mine."
"But—"
"Now."
Something in my tone made Magna stop arguing. He grabbed Asta's shoulder and pulled him toward the three henchmen on the left flank. "Come on, shorty! Let's show these robe-wearing freaks what the Black Bulls are made of!"
"Right!" Asta's sword materialized in his hands, the anti-magic blade gleaming with dark energy. "You want a fight?! YOU'VE GOT ONE! ORA ORA ORA!"
The sounds of battle erupted behind me—Magna's fire bat crashing against ice magic, Asta's sword dispelling spell after spell, the henchmen shouting in frustration as their attacks were nullified. I heard all of it and dismissed it as irrelevant. My focus was entirely on the man in front of me.
The leader hadn't moved. He was studying me with an expression that was equal parts curiosity and recognition. His eyes—cold, calculating, the eyes of someone who had killed many times and felt nothing—traced the outline of the wheel behind my head.
"You," he said slowly. "You're the one Lord Licht warned us about."
"Lord Licht?"
"Our master. The leader of the Eye of the Midnight Sun. He's been watching you, Hasegawa Ouga. Ever since the grimoire ceremony. A grimoire without a clover. A wheel that turns behind your head. The ability to adapt to any phenomenon." He smiled, and it was a cold, predatory expression. "You're quite famous among our ranks. Lord Licht gave specific orders not to engage you. He said you were too dangerous for anyone below the Third Eye to handle."
"Then why are you still here?"
"Because I'm not like the others." He spread his arms, his grimoire floating beside him. "I am Heath Graice. Ice Magic specialist. And I believe Lord Licht is being overly cautious. You're powerful, yes. But power without purpose is wasted. Power without direction is meaningless." His eyes met mine. "Join us, Hasegawa Ouga. Join the Eye of the Midnight Sun."
The offer hung in the air between us. Behind me, I heard Magna's fire bat connect with something solid, heard Asta's battle cry, heard Noelle's sharp intake of breath as she realized what was being proposed.
"Think about it," Heath continued, his voice smooth and persuasive. "The Clover Kingdom is rotten. The nobles hoard wealth and magic while commoners starve. The royal families look down on everyone beneath them, treating human lives as expendable resources. You've seen it yourself. A commoner with a unique grimoire, mocked and dismissed by the aristocracy. Treated as a freak. Treated as less than human."
"You don't know anything about me."
"Don't I? You grew up in a village in the Forsaken Realm, didn't you? A small place, far from the capital, where no one important would ever think to look. And now that village is gone. Burned to ashes. Everyone you knew, everyone you loved—dead." He tilted his head. "You survived. You always survive. That's your gift. But survival isn't enough, is it? Don't you want revenge against the system that let your village die? Don't you want to tear down the nobles who wouldn't have lifted a finger to save your family?"
The words struck something deep inside me. Something that had been locked behind walls of iron and clunks for over a year. The village. Father Aldric. Sister Maria. Elise. Tomas. The children. The bodies in the square. The ashes. The silence.
For the first time since the Wheel had sealed my emotions away, I felt something stir.
"We're going to change the world," Heath said, his voice rising with the fervor of a true believer. "The Eye of the Midnight Sun will create a new order. One where nobles and royals pay for their crimes. One where commoners are no longer slaves to a corrupt system. The arrogant, the greedy, the heartless—they don't deserve to live. We'll sacrifice them for the greater good of humanity. And you, Hasegawa Ouga—you could be part of it. Your power, combined with our cause, would be unstoppable. Join us. Help us build a world where what happened to your village never happens again."
Silence.
Somewhere in the distance, a villager sobbed. A child cried for its mother. Noelle's grimoire fluttered open as she positioned herself between the attackers and the helpless civilians, her face pale but determined.
And inside me, something cracked.
The locks that had held my emotions prisoner for over a year—the clunks that had sealed away my grief, my rage, my love—shuddered. Not breaking. Not yet. But straining. The pressure of what I was feeling was too much for even the Wheel to contain.
I remembered Father Aldric's smile. Sister Maria's stew. Elise's laughter. Tomas's determination. The way the village had accepted me, a stranger in a dead boy's body, and made me one of their own. I remembered the smoke rising from the fields. The bodies in the square. The pendant in the ashes. The promise I had made to myself in the cold void where my emotions used to live.
They have to die. All of them.
The rage that surged through me was not the hot, impulsive rage of a child throwing a tantrum. It was cold. Focused. Absolute. The rage of a predator that had identified its prey and would not stop until every last one of them was dead.
"You," I said, and my voice was very quiet. "Your organization. The Eye of the Midnight Sun. A year ago, a village in the Forsaken Realm was attacked. Everyone was killed. Children. Elders. A priest who only wanted to protect his flock. Was that you?"
Heath's expression flickered. Just for an instant. Just enough to confirm what I already knew. "I don't know the specifics of every operation. But if they had mana worth harvesting, then—"
I stopped listening.
The rage crested, and with it came power. Stage Zero mana—the level of captains and royals, the pinnacle of magical potential—flooded through my pathways with the force of a breaking dam. The pressure I'd been building for months, the threshold that had remained just out of reach during my solitary training, shattered under the weight of pure, undiluted fury. The wheel behind my head blazed with golden light, its rotation accelerating to a blur, its eight spokes becoming a continuous ring of radiance that cast long shadows across the village square.
Heath took a step backward. "What—what is this? Your mana—it's—"
CLUNK__
The sound resonated through my skull. Not the sound of a lock engaging—the sound of a lock releasing. The Emotional Nullification, which had been passive and permanent for over a year, shifted. I could feel it in my status, the word "IMMUNE" flickering and changing, becoming something different. Something that could be controlled.
The mana pressure that exploded outward from my body was not the measured, controlled pressure I had trained. It was raw. Primal. A wave of killing intent so dense it became visible—a shimmering distortion in the air that pressed down on everything within a hundred meters. The ground cracked. The mist evaporated. The remaining villagers, already huddled in terror, fell silent as the weight of my presence crushed the very sound from their throats.
And Heath Graice saw the eyes.
They manifested in the distortion around me—dozens of them, hundreds, spectral grey eyes identical to my own, opening in the shimmering air like windows into an abyss. They stared at Heath. Through him. Into him. And what he saw in those eyes made him take another step backward, his composure finally shattering.
"What... what ARE you?" he whispered.
I didn't answer with words. The Binding Vow activated, its terms crystallizing in my mind with the cold precision of a contract being signed. I sacrifice the range of my Mana Pressure, reducing it from one thousand meters to one hundred meters permanently. In exchange, its density increases fivefold.
The effect was immediate. The shimmering distortion around me condensed, the spectral eyes becoming sharper, more defined, more real. The pressure intensified until it was no longer just a sensation—it was a physical force, a crushing weight that bent the grass flat and cracked the stones of the village square. Heath's knees buckled. His henchmen, already struggling against Magna and Asta, collapsed entirely, their faces pressed into the dirt by an invisible hand.
And then I smelled it. The sharp, acrid scent of urine. Heath Graice, the ice mage who had been so confident moments before, had pissed himself. His henchmen had done the same.
"Magna," I said, and my voice carried the cold, absolute authority of a god passing judgment. "Asta. Stand down. They're mine."
I walked forward. Past the bound villagers. Past Noelle, who was staring at me with wide eyes, her water dragon's cradle still shimmering around the civilians. The defensive spell she had cast—the first spell she had ever cast successfully—held strong, a dome of pure water magic that had protected over two hundred people from the mist and the ice and the killing intent that now saturated the air.
I paused beside her. My hand, moving on an instinct I still didn't fully understand, reached out and rested on her silver hair.
"Good work," I said. "You protected them. You're stronger than you think."
Noelle's face flushed crimson, but she didn't pull away. "I... I just... the spell appeared in my grimoire, and I..."
"Leave the rest to me."
I walked past her, toward Heath Graice, who was struggling to rise against the crushing weight of my mana pressure. His grimoire was still open, his hands still raised, and as I approached, he unleashed a desperate, last-ditch attack.
"ICE-MIST COMBINATION MAGIC: FROZEN NEEDLE STORM!"
Shards of ice, each one sharper than a razor and faster than an arrow, erupted from the mist around him. They struck me in a barrage that would have shredded a normal mage into confetti. My robe tore. My skin, briefly, showed the faint white lines of impact before the regeneration erased them.
But that was all. My Fire Resistance had been built through walking into pyres. My Piercing Resistance had been built through stabbing myself with every sharp object I could find in the jungle. The ice needles, for all their speed and precision, were nothing I hadn't endured a thousand times before.
Heath's eyes went wide. "Impossible—"
I disappeared.
Not teleportation. Pure speed. My body, conditioned beyond human limits and reinforced with Stage Zero mana, crossed the distance between us in a fraction of a heartbeat. One moment I was twenty feet away. The next, I was directly in front of him, my hand closing around his face the same way I had closed it around Salim de Montfort's face in the exam arena.
But this time, I didn't drive him into the ground.
This time, I squeezed.
"Your organization killed my family," I said, and my voice was perfectly calm. "You killed a priest who only wanted to protect children. You killed a nun who spent her life caring for orphans. You killed children who had never hurt anyone. And you did it for mana. For resources. For a revolution that will never succeed because you're nothing but pawns being manipulated by forces you don't understand."
Heath tried to scream. The sound was muffled against my palm.
"You asked me to join you. You said we could change the world together." I leaned closer, my grey eyes meeting his terrified gaze. "I'll change the world. But not with you. I'll do it by erasing every last member of the Eye of the Midnight Sun from existence. Starting with you."
I crushed his face.
The sound was wet and final. Blood spattered across the stones of the village square. Heath Graice's body went limp, and I released it, letting it crumple to the ground like a discarded puppet. The remaining henchmen, still pinned by my mana pressure, stared at their leader's corpse with expressions of absolute terror.
I didn't kill them. Not yet. I needed information, even if I knew—from my past-life memories—that they would commit suicide the moment they regained consciousness. Eye of the Midnight Sun operatives carried suicide spells for exactly this purpose. Still, I bound them with ropes from a nearby cart, tying their hands behind their backs and checking their mouths for poison capsules. If they died, they died. But if even one of them talked, I would have a lead.
The village square was silent.
I straightened, turning to face my squadmates. Magna was standing over the unconscious henchmen, his fire bat still raised, his expression a mixture of shock and something that looked almost like understanding. Asta was staring at Heath's body with wide eyes, his anti-magic sword still gripped in his hands. And Noelle—Noelle was still maintaining her water dragon's cradle, her pink eyes fixed on me with an emotion I couldn't quite identify.
"Ouga," Asta said, his voice uncharacteristically quiet. "You... you killed him. You just... crushed his face. With your hand. That was..." He struggled for words. "Why would you—I mean, he was bad, definitely bad, but—"
"Asta." Magna's hand fell on the shorter boy's shoulder. "Not now."
"But—"
"I said not now." Magna's voice was firm. His eyes, behind his sunglasses, were fixed on me. He had sensed it—the hatred, the history, the personal vendetta that had nothing to do with the mission and everything to do with whatever I had lost before joining the Black Bulls. Magna wasn't stupid. He knew there was more to my past than I had told them.
"We need to check on the villagers," I said, my voice returning to its normal calm. "The old man. Seyhi. Is he alright?"
Magna blinked, as if suddenly remembering why we were here. "Right. Right, the villagers." He turned and jogged toward the old man, who was leaning against the village well with his axe still clutched in his gnarled hands. Seyhi was bleeding from a cut on his forehead, but he was alive. He was alive, and he was grinning.
"Took you long enough, you delinquent," Seyhi rasped, and Magna let out a laugh that was half relief, half sob.
"You're welcome, old man! Next time, don't get yourself captured by evil cultists!"
"Next time, don't take so long to show up."
Noelle finally released her spell, the water dragon's cradle dissolving into a fine mist that settled over the grateful villagers. They were emerging from their huddle now—men and women, children and elders, over two hundred people who had been minutes away from death. They crowded around Noelle, thanking her, praising her, calling her a hero.
Noelle looked completely overwhelmed. "I... it was nothing... I just cast a spell... anyone could have done it..."
"Anyone didn't," I said, walking up beside her. "You did. You protected over two hundred people with magic you'd never cast before. That's not nothing. That's what Magic Knights do."
Noelle's cheeks flushed. "I suppose... I suppose I was rather impressive, wasn't I? A Silva, protecting the common folk with magnificent magical prowess. It's only natural, really. Royal blood will always—"
"You're rambling."
"I am NOT rambling! I'm making a dignified speech!"
"You're blushing."
"THAT'S NOT—I'M NOT—" She crossed her arms and turned away with a huff. "You're impossible to talk to."
But she was smiling. Just a little. Just enough for me to notice.
---
The aftermath took hours. The villagers were untied and given food and water. The wounded were treated—Seyhi's head wound was bandaged, and the other injuries were minor. The henchmen, as I had predicted, triggered their suicide spells the moment they regained consciousness. Their bodies dissolved into grey mist, leaving behind nothing but empty robes and unanswered questions. I hadn't expected anything different, but it was still an inconvenience.
I stood apart from the others, at the edge of the village square, looking at my status screen. The system had updated during the fight, and what I saw made me pause.
(Author note: give me your power stones, NOW! 🔫)