Kei moved with lightning precision, grabbing the trembling man by the collar and hurling him toward the safety of a large oak tree, away from the flurry of blades that suddenly erupted from above. At the same instant, Yejin launched herself backward, her body arcing gracefully through the air as a sword sliced through the space where she had been standing just a heartbeat before.
"Get away from here and go to where we left the horses. We'll save your daughter no matter what," Kei assured the man, his voice steady despite the chaos unfolding around them.
The man's face contorted with anguish, tears streaming down his grimy cheeks. "No! I can't—I want to be here. Please save my daughter! She's all I have left!"
Yejin landed lightly on her feet, her blade already drawn and gleaming in the dim forest light. Her eyes swept over the four figures that emerged from the underbrush—cloaked in dark leather, their movements fluid and predatory. She studied them with cold recognition. "I expected this would happen," she said with a calm and composed voice, "but I did not anticipate that it would actually be soldiers from the south." She raised her blade, pointing it steadily at the assassins. "How long have you been camping here?"
The four assassins offered no response. Their faces were obscured by hoods, their silence broken only by the soft rustle of their cloaks as they shifted into attack stances. They lunged forward in unison, a coordinated wave of steel and shadow.
But Yejin was already moving. She met their charge head-on, her blade singing through the air as she engaged them in a whirlwind of strikes and parries. Though outnumbered four to one, she was far from outmatched. Her footwork was impeccable, her cuts precise and economical. In a single breathtaking sequence, she thrust her blade clean through one assassin while still mid-air, then pivoted and sliced low, catching another across the midsection before he could even register her movement. Both collapsed in crumpled heaps.
The two remaining assassins exchanged a glance of pure disbelief. They had been told the princess was skilled, but this—this was beyond anything they had prepared for. Without a word, they turned and fled, their boots pounding against the forest floor as they disappeared between the trees.
But Kei was faster. His hands moved in a blur, and two daggers whistled through the air with deadly accuracy. They struck the fleeing assassins square in the backs, and both crumpled to the ground, their bodies sliding to a halt in the fallen leaves.
Yejin wiped a thin line of blood from her cheek—a mere scratch from a near-miss—and sheathed her blade. "The SAT soldiers must be camping here. Which could mean they are planning to invade Kyungsuk. We have to get there now!" she said, urgency creeping into her voice.
"Wait," Kei said, stepping closer to her side. His blue eyes were glowing once more, his gaze fixed on the deeper shadows of the forest.
The man ran toward them, his face a mask of desperate hope and fear. "What about my daughter? Please, save her!" he cried, his voice cracking.
Kei's expression remained unreadable, but his focus was absolute. "Someone with a far more menacing presence is approaching us," he said slowly, "accompanied by dozens of others."
Yejin's eyes widened. "You can sense them from this far?"
"Yes," Kei replied. "I can see them clearly. And I can also see your daughter." He turned to the man, his gaze softening just slightly. "She's alive. Someone is guarding her, but she's unharmed."
The man let out a shuddering breath, relief flooding his features. Tears of gratitude spilled down his cheeks as he clutched his chest. "She's alive... thank the heavens... she's alive..."
But Kei's focus remained fixed on the approaching threat, his glowing blue eyes tracking the dark aura as it drew nearer with each passing second. "If you must go to Kyungsuk, go ahead. I'll handle them," he said.
Yejin's head snapped toward him, her expression a mixture of disbelief and defiance. "What are you saying? I can't abandon a member of mine to the hands of enemies. Protect the man, and I'll fight them." She turned to face the direction of the approaching threat, her blade already half-drawn, her stance resolute.
But Kei offered no response. His attention was entirely consumed by the auras ahead, his senses locked onto the presence that grew heavier with every heartbeat. The forest fell silent—no birds, no rustling leaves, only the ominous crunch of boots against fallen twigs and dried earth.
A moment later, they emerged.
Dozens of soldiers poured out from between the trees, their armor gleaming dully in the filtered sunlight. Each wore the insignia of the Great Battalion on their chest—a medallion engraved with the letters "G.B. V". Their formation was precise, their movements synchronized, and they parted like a dark tide to make way for their leader.
He stepped forward with deliberate, unhurried strides. Tall and powerfully built, with grey hair cropped short and a face etched with scars from countless battles, he carried himself with the weight of a man who had never known mercy. His battle axe rested casually on his shoulder, its blade massive and wickedly sharp, dragging a furrow in the earth as he walked.
Yejin's grip on her blade tightened. Her jaw clenched, and her voice came out low and cold. "It's Cogar, the Fifth Commander of the Great Battalion."
Cogar's lips curled into a chilling smirk, his dark eyes gleaming with cruel amusement. "Princess Yejin," he said, his deep voice rolling through the clearing like distant thunder, "we cross paths once again. You got lucky last time—your brother arrived just in time to save you from my axe." He let out a low, rumbling chuckle. "But I don't see the Dae-Ryeong anywhere now, do I?"
He stepped closer, the weight of his presence pressing down like a physical force. With deliberate slowness, he lowered the battle axe, letting its massive blade thud heavily against the ground. The impact sent a tremor through the earth.
"So now..." Cogar's smirk widened, revealing teeth that seemed almost predatory. He tilted his head, his grey eyes locking onto Yejin with murderous intent. "Shall we finish what we started?"
Behind him, the soldiers tightened their formation, weapons at the ready. The man they had saved whimpered softly, shrinking back against a tree. Kei remained still, his daggers hidden but his hands poised, his gaze shifting between Cogar and the soldiers, calculating the angles, the distances, the odds.
The forest held its breath.
Cogar hefted his colossal executioner's axe over one shoulder, his smoldering eyes locking onto Yejin with brutal intention. The massive blade caught the fractured sunlight, gleaming with the promise of death. "Kill the two beside her!" Cogar growled, his voice like grinding stones that echoed through the treeline. "I'll take the Princess myself."
Without a single moment wasted, the stillness shattered into absolute chaos.
Yejin moved like liquid silver, unleashing the full, graceful fluidness of her Hwa-Samurai style. Her body flowed through the air with the elegance of a falling petal and the precision of a striking viper. She closed the gap in a heartbeat, her blade blurring into a blinding arc aimed straight for Cogar's throat. Steel met flesh—or so it should have. But as the edge struck, it did not draw blood. Instead, sparks exploded into the dim light, scattering like angry fireflies as her sword rebounded off Cogar's armor and Prana-reinforced skin with a deafening metallic screech. The experimental cellular reinforcement within his body, coupled with his dense Anima matrix, rendered him an immovable fortress—a wall of flesh and steel that scoffed at mortal weapons.
Cogar simply sneered at the impact, his grey eyes gleaming with contempt. With a lazy, terrifying sweep of his arm, he swung his executioner's axe in a broad, devastating arc. The sheer kinetic pressure of the blow carved through two massive oak trees as if they were twigs, sending them crashing to the dirt with earth-shaking thuds. Yejin ducked beneath the devastating windup, her boots skidding across the forest floor as she felt the displaced air whip past her face. She learned from her previous experience that parrying his raw strength directly would shatter her blade—and likely her arms along with it.
Meanwhile, behind the frontline clash, Kei's eyes flared as his Deathsight snapped into razor-sharp focus.
"Run! Go into the treeline and don't look back!" Kei barked to the terrified father, shoving him forcefully toward the safety of the dense underbrush. The man stumbled, caught himself, and fled without a second glance, his desperate footfalls fading into the forest.
Before the first SAT soldier could even raise a spear, Kei vanished. A flicker of displaced air was the only warning before he blinked directly into the center of the charging ranks.
His movements were surgical, silent, and terrifyingly efficient. Wielding his twin daggers, Kei danced through the vanguard like a specter made flesh. He did not waste energy on broad slashes or flashy techniques; instead, his blades targeted the exact weak points revealed by his vision—slipping beneath pauldrons, piercing unarmored gaps in the neck, and severing key Prana nodes with clinical precision. One blink, one strike, one body falling. The soldiers barely had time to register his presence before their lifeless forms crumpled to the forest floor.
A small unit of four heavily armored SAT vanguard soldiers spotted the fleeing civilian and broke off from the main group, surging into the brush to cut the man down.
"Target secured!" one soldier yelled, raising his blade.
He never finished the sentence. Kei materialized in the space directly between the pursuers and the father, his form appearing as if conjured from shadow itself. In a seamless spin, his left dagger bit deep into the lead soldier's throat while his right hand drove a blade straight into the second man's temple. Before the remaining two could react to their comrades dropping, Kei blinked behind them, cross-slashing their spines with terrifying precision. Both soldiers crumpled silently into the moss before they could even draw a breath to scream.
While Yejin engaged in a high-stakes, evasive dance against Cogar's earth-shattering axe strikes, Kei stood as an impenetrable wall in the shadows behind her—clearing the perimeter of every soldier that dared step foot into the clearing. Each movement was a whisper of death, each strike a masterpiece of lethal efficiency. The forest floor grew littered with fallen enemies, and yet Kei remained untouched.
The battle raged on, but the tide was shifting—and Cogar had yet to realize that his soldiers were being systematically erased from the field.
Sparks showered into the dim undercanopy as Yejin executed three rapid, fluid sword techniques in a heartbeat—a deceptive low sweep, a rising petal thrust, and a lightning-fast diagonal slash. Yet each strike proved utterly futile. Her blade glanced harmlessly off Cogar's colossal iron gauntlets, the wide flat of his executioner's axe, or the dense, Prana-reinforced plates of his armor. With every attempt, she probed for an opening, quickly realizing that his helmetless head was his only exposed target. But bridging that distance was a nightmare; Cogar's massive frame and sweeping guard made reaching his face an almost impossible gamble.
Driven by desperate resolve, Yejin pushed her footwork to its limit. Surging forward into a blinding sprint, she ducked beneath a low axe check, shortening the gap in a flash to drive a lethal point-blank thrust straight for his jaw.
Cogar did not even bother to swing his weapon.
With a guttural growl, he compressed his internal Anima matrix and detonated a violent, omnidirectional kinetic shockwave directly from his body. The sudden burst of raw, concussive pressure hit Yejin like a battering ram. The force shattered her balance, blasting her backward through the air before she tumbled violently across the forest floor, her armor scuffed and her body bruised from the punishing impact.
Cogar threw back his head and laughed, a booming sound of pure arrogance that echoed through the trees. He rested the heavy spine of his executioner's axe onto his shoulder, looking down at her as she struggled to catch her breath on the dirt.
"You are so dead, Princess Yejin!" Cogar sneered, his smoldering eyes flashing with cruel triumph. Turning toward the forest perimeter, he bellowed at the top of his lungs, "Kill the Princess now!"
He waited for the thunderous battle cry of his vanguard. He waited for the stomping of heavy boots and the surge of iron spears.
Nothing came.
A suffocating, eerie silence settled over the clearing, broken only by the gentle rustle of wind through the leaves and the faint, rhythmic dripping of blood onto the moss. Cogar's grin faltered, his brow furrowing in confusion as the stillness stretched on.
Slowly, the commander turned around—and his breath hitched in his throat.
Scattered across the forest floor in a wide, macabre circle lay every single soldier of his unit. The elite vanguard of the Fifth Great Battalion, hardened killers trained for scorched-earth warfare, had been utterly wiped out. Some slumped against tree trunks, others lay face-down in the brush, each bearing precise, lethal punctures to their throats, temples, or Prana pathways. In the center of the silent graveyard stood Kei, calmly flicking a thick ribbon of dark blood from his twin daggers before sheathing them.
"What the hell happened?!" Cogar roared, his voice cracking with sheer, furious disbelief as his eyes bulged at the corpse-strewn clearing. "You all got killed by that nobody?!"
Propping herself up on one elbow, Yejin stared at the silent phantom standing amid the fallen soldiers, her mind reeling in absolute shock. The Fifth Great Battalion were not mere conscripts; they were elite, heavily armored killers. To dismantle an entire squad in a matter of seconds, without a single soldier even managing to sound an alarm, was a level of martial dominance she had only ever witnessed once before in her life—from her older brother, the Dae-Ryeong Choi Eunjoo, the supreme commander of all Hwa-Samurais.
Kei crossed the clearing in a single fluid motion, clearing the fallen vanguard's body in a leap and landing softly at Yejin's side. He dropped to a knee in the dirt and hovered a palm above her injuries. Her fair, delicate skin left every bruise standing out sharply against it. A faint, pale glow of Prana kindled at his fingertips, spreading over her battered ribs and broken skin like a gentle wave. Under that soft light, the ruptured capillaries knit themselves shut, the swelling faded away, and the bleeding beneath her skin was halted before it could spread further.
Yejin winced as the initial sting faded into a cool numbness, a faint, surprised smile touching her lips. "You are capable of healing as well?"
"Only basic injuries," Kei replied quietly. "Another member of my order, Kiara, taught me enough to mend broken vessels and stop blood loss. Beyond that, I cannot do anything any more."
A few paces away, Cogar stood frozen in absolute disbelief, his wide eyes sweeping over the macabre circle of his slaughtered vanguard. Hardened killers, trained for scorched-earth operations, had been cut down like wheat in a harvest. A thick, dark vein throbbed violently along Cogar's temple as the shock curdled into unbridled fury. "Hey, you brat..." he growled, his voice cracking with a terrifying, guttural resonance that shook the dry leaves on the branches above. "How did you do it? Massacring all my men?!"
Kei stood up smoothly, stepping directly between the injured Princess and the looming commander. His expression remained an unreadable mask of ice. "They were too weak," Kei said, his tone entirely void of fear. "I had hoped their commander, who seems so fond of dark practition, would offer a proper challenge."
Cogar's face darkened to a deep, bruised purple. His smoldering crimson eyes flared with a sickening, blood-red light as his internal Anima matrix surged, his massive, corded fists shaking so violently that the leather wrappings around his knuckles creaked under the tension.
"So, what kind of demon have you struck a deal with?" Kei asked coldly, casually flicking his wrists so his twin daggers spun in two seamless, blinding silver circles before settling into a reverse grip. "You boast of your strength, but you merely borrow it from something far more sinister. And you don't even realize the cost it takes from your body and soul."
Unable to contain his rage any longer, Cogar threw his massive body into the air with a roar, leaping high above the canopy. He brought his colossal executioner's axe down with both hands, hurling his entire multi-ton mass into an earth-shattering downward strike aimed directly at Kei's skull.
Kei did not dodge. Crossing his twin daggers above his head, he channeled a dense layer of blue Mana across the metal blades to intercept the falling mountain of iron. The impact exploded like a thunderclap. Though the Mana reinforcement held and kept his daggers from shattering into splinters, the sheer, crushing kinetic weight of Cogar's Anima-fueled blow drove Kei's boots inches deep into the soil, sending a bone-rattling shockwave straight through his shoulders and down his spine.
Before Cogar could press his weight down to crush him, Kei pivoted inside the giant's guard. Pivoting on his heel, he delivered a lightning-fast spinning kick straight into Cogar's lower abdomen, using the commander's own momentum against him. Before the giant could recover his breath, Kei executed a second, high-velocity spinning heel kick directly to Cogar's exposed jaw. The double kinetic strike snapped the massive man's head back, sending his giant frame airborne and tumbling backward through the thick treeline.
Without missing a beat, Kei blurred into motion, using a rapid burst of speed to chase the flying body through the air. Materializing above the mid-flight commander, Kei locked both hands around Cogar's head, spun his own body in mid-air to generate rotational force, and brutally slammed the giant down, hurling him headfirst into a massive, moss-covered granite boulder.
The stone shattered into a shower of debris as Cogar crashed through it. But the sheer humiliation of the attack only fed the monster's madness. Roaring from the center of the dust cloud, Cogar's body flared with a violent, dark aura. As Kei charged back in to deliver a finishing blow, Cogar violently detonated an omnidirectional kinetic Anima burst from his core. The sudden, explosive shockwave slammed into Kei like an invisible battering ram, blasting him backward across the clearing before he skidded violently across the dirt.
Kei had barely touched the dirt before Cogar moved to finish him. The Fifth Commander gave no pause for breath, no quarter for recovery. With a guttural, earth-shaking roar, the juggernaut launched his massive frame into the air once more, his shadow eclipsing the sunlight as he raised his executioner's axe overhead like a falling guillotine.
Kei's instincts screamed at him—attempting to parry a second downward strike from that multi-ton mass would shatter his weapons and crush his ribs. Pushing off the ground with every ounce of his remaining agility, Kei threw himself sideways, rolling violently across the exposed roots and grass just as the axe descended.
The heavy iron blade buried itself three feet into the solid earth. The impact did not merely strike the ground; it detonated it. The compressed Anima within Cogar's core exploded outward in a violent, concussive wave of kinetic force. Even though Kei had avoided the direct edge of the blade, the erupting shockwave slammed into his flank like a battering ram, hurling him sideways through the air. His body slammed hard against the trunk of an ancient oak, shattering the thick bark before he slid down into the dirt, the breath knocked completely from his lungs.
Wiping a smudge of dirt and sweat from his temple, Kei forced himself upright in a single, fluid motion. His eyes flared as he activated Deathsight. The world stripped away its colors, morphing into a stark matrix of flowing life energy and structural stress points. Through the ocular vision, Kei observed his own internal Prana pathways—the glowing blue threads of his lifeforce were flickering and dimming. He was burning through his reserves far too quickly. Prolonging this battle of attrition against a monster with reinforced cellular durability was suicide.
His gaze snapped to Cogar, mapping the commander's exposed vulnerabilities. Through Deathsight, two key paths to victory revealed themselves: he could strike the dense Prana nodes behind Cogar's knees to sever his hamstrings and permanently destroy his mobility, or he could go straight for the kill. Realizing Cogar's unnatural pain tolerance and juggernaut resilience would allow him to fight even on shattered legs, Kei made his choice instantly.
He had to take the head.
Before the giant could tear his heavy weapon free from the shattered earth, Kei raised his left hand and channeled a surge of cryogenic Mana—weaving the exact same chilling frost technique he had previously deployed to lock down Yul. A wave of sub-zero energy erupted around Cogar's boots, climbing up his heavy greaves and flash-freezing the joints of his armor. The sudden, biting frost doused the commander's thermal aura, instantly sluggish-ifying his reflexes and delaying his reaction speed by crucial fractions of a second.
While Cogar strained against the creeping ice, Kei blinked.
Space folded around him, and in a flicker of displaced air, Kei materialized out of thin air directly behind Cogar's exposed neck. Holding his Mana-reinforced dagger in a reverse grip, Kei drove the steel blade straight into the base of the commander's skull.
A horrifying, blood-curdling scream tore from Cogar's throat, shaking the leaves from the surrounding trees as blood spurted from the deep wound. Yet, driven by the sheer, unnatural vitality of his experimental reinforcement protocols, the monster refused to fall.
In a frantic surge of violent agony, Cogar reached up backhandedly with a vise-like grip, clamping his massive, iron-hard palm around Kei's wrist. With a brutal heave, he hurled Kei over his shoulder and slammed him face-first into the unforgiving ground.
The earth cracked beneath the impact. The crushing blow drove the air from Kei's chest, forcing a spray of crimson blood from his lips as internal trauma flared through his body. But where an ordinary warrior would have been paralyzed by shock, Kei's conditioning took over. The moment Cogar released his grip to turn, Kei pushed off the dirt and sprang back onto his feet with terrifying velocity.
Channeling every remaining drop of his compressed Prana into his right fist, Kei stepped inside the giant's turn and drove a devastating, full-body punch straight up into the point of Cogar's exposed jaw. The impact sounded like a cracking whip. The raw, concentrated kinetic force bypassed Cogar's heavy armor, tearing through his internal matrix and driving his jaw upward with catastrophic pressure. A sickening, reverberating crunch echoed through the clearing as Cogar's neck snapped instantly, severing his spinal column.
The smoldering crimson light in Cogar's eyes vanished in a heartbeat, replaced by a hollow, vacant stare. The multi-ton juggernaut of the Fifth Great Battalion went completely limp, crashing onto the forest floor like a felled mountain. Silence returned to the forest, broken only by the sound of Kei's heavy breathing as he wiped the blood from his chin, standing triumphant over the fallen commander.
Yejin, who witnessed all that, could only watch in awe.