If Kiera had to name her most broken ability, Shadow Sense won without contest. Like Vael's Spatial Awareness, but sharper—she didn't just see shadows within her radius, she felt them. Every shift, every tremor. Prey might as well have been screaming their locations.
'Two north. Five east. One south.'
The analysis took less than a breath. She locked onto the nearest shadow—human, twitchy, oblivious.
Mind mana crackled along her limbs as she launched forward. Not the crude enhancement most used, but something far deadlier. Her attributed mana bent to her will like liquid thought, propelling her at double speed while leaving no trail.
Where others had a single core refining raw mana, Kiera's was split in two equal parts—each half specializing. One for Shadow's deceit, the other for Mind's precision. Ambient energy became weaponized thought in her veins.
The first mark died mid-step. A shadow tendril—needle-thin and harder than steel—punctured her occipital bone from thirty meters away. The head toppled before the body knew to fall.
Kiera didn't bother moving. Six more tendrils unspooled silently. Six more kills registered in her peripheral vision before the last corpse hit dirt.
Her screen flickered. Top 100.
*Progress.*
Twelve hours bled away in a haze of slaughter.
While lesser candidates scrambled for berries or risked smoke signals to cook monster meat, Vael chewed another protein bar from his Spatial Pocket. His stockpile—weeks of rations, purified water, even spare daggers—made hunger someone else's problem.
Another advantage. Another edge.
Let the desperate build fires. Let them cluster near streams. More beacons to hunt by.
His killing rhythm required no rest—just blink, stab, rinse and repeat. The military rations even eliminated meal breaks; he ate between teleports, barely slowing. Only exhaustion could curb his spree, and even that concession would be minimal—maybe an hour's sleep when the moon peaked.
Two straight days of murder? Impossible.
But forty-seven hours? That he could do.
The third-stage beast collapsed with a wet crunch, its chitinous abdomen split open by spatial shearing. Vael watched its death throes dispassionately—six segmented legs scraping furrows in the dirt, mandibles clicking uselessly—before checking the rankings:
- **Total remaining:** 702
- **Serpes:** 2nd place (4,850 pts)
- **Arconis Von Dratona:** 1st place (5,120 pts)
That damned name again.
"Arconis Von Dratona," Vael muttered, rolling the aristocratic syllables like a bitter lozenge on his tongue. For twelve straight hours, the bastard had maintained his lead with infuriating precision—always 200-300 points ahead, as if he could predict Vael's every kill.
The memory surfaced unbidden: that lean figure sitting cross-legged at the courtyard's edge, tracing arcane symbols in the dirt with his stick. Not a single muscle tensed despite the chaos around him. Not even when the bells rang.
Vael's fingers tightened around his rapier. His blood sang at the thought of testing that calm against his blade.
*Lure him. Make him bleed. Take his points and his pride.*
The fantasy shimmered—Arconis's scythe whirling in moonlight, spatial edges meeting cursed steel—but he forced it down. Premature.
His calloused finger dragged down the rankings until—there. **Elana: 34th place (1,890 pts).**
A smirk tugged at his scar. "Still in the fight, huh?"
Spatial Awareness pulsed—two voids, absent of all mana, hunched over a small, contained campfire thirty meters east. Another desperate pact between cowards. Normally he'd have already teleported behind them, but tonight...
Vael blinked into the branches above their clearing, boots settling silently on an oak limb. The scent of charred monster meat and nervous sweat rose to meet him.
Let them whisper. He'd take their points soon enough.
A glance told Vael everything.
The pair sat just far enough apart to suggest caution, just close enough to imply trust. Two boys—one dark-skinned and broad, his too-fine silk tunic straining over his stomach, a serviceable sword strapped awkwardly to his hip. The other…
*Him.*
The white-haired "pant-wetter" from the courtyard.
Except now, the boy lounged against a tree like a king on a throne. No weapon. No tension. Just eerie, unshakable calm. The transformation was so complete it prickled Vael's instincts—like watching a rabbit peel back its fur to reveal wolf's teeth.
"You're *amazing*, Sylas!" The swordsman's voice was too loud for the forest, his grin too wide. "Your magic's just… ridiculous! At this rate, we'll coast into the top 20!"
Sylas didn't react. His fingers traced idle circles in the dirt—Like none of this mattered.
*Wrong.*
Everything about this was wrong.