“Poser much?” Lisa transmitted, her voice laced with dry amusement.

  In response, Jenny flashed a sweet, dazzling smile that all but screamed, “Bet your cute ass I am.”

  Unfortunately for her, the Ironsworn Ravager didn’t share that sentiment.

  Its tail whipped around like a battering ram, smashing toward her with brutal force.

  Jenny reacted instantly—shifting her stance, she pulled kinetic energy from the incoming strike, dampening its impact just enough to prevent a full-on crash. The momentum slowed—

  But not completely.

  The blow still launched her several meters through the air, her body spinning as she fought to regain control. Pulses of sound erupted beneath her feet—Lisa’s doing—softening her descent before she tumbled into a skid across the cracked earth.

  The moment Jenny’s motion stopped, a streak of aether surged her way.

  Seth, once a member of the Black Talon, now running support under his own name, arrived at her side without hesitation. Sheets of healing aether spread over her injuries, stabilizing her core and soothing the internal backlash from absorbing such a violent hit.

  “Try not to take a direct tail swipe next time,” he laughed dryly, kneeling beside her.

  Jenny exhaled slowly, pushing herself up with one hand as the scythe blinked back into reach through a short recall.

  She adjusted her glasses with a crooked smile. “You try smiling that good under pressure.”

  And in that moment, it felt like the moon was falling.

  A violent crescendo of sword slashes rippled across the Ravager’s body—one after another, each strike sharper than the last. Kaito’s blades danced like moonlight through broken clouds, carving glowing lines along the beast’s reinforced armor.

  The Ravager staggered but didn’t fall, shaking off the barrage with a bellow.

  Flipping away, Kaito vanished from sight—only to reappear high above, silhouetted against the darkened sky.

  Then—he dropped.

  Both swords drawn, descending like judgment itself, he crashed down in a twin-bladed arc. The strike landed with perfect timing, each blade tracing a mirrored curve down the Ravager’s back.

  A glowing crescent-shaped scar was left behind—seared into the stone plating like a mark of the moon.

  The Ravager roared, this time in pain.

  Once again, the Ironsworn Ravager's monstrous vitality surged. Cracks sealed. Gashes closed. The brutal wound Kaito had carved into its back knitted itself shut as if it had never happened.

  “Dammit,” Reinhardt growled, slamming his shield into another tusk strike to protect the others. “At this rate, we’ll never deal lasting damage. Its Constitution’s too high—it’s recovering faster than we can wear it down!”

  Draggbane spun his greatsword in a wide arc, slashing streaks of crimson fire across the beast’s rocky hide. Each breath was labored now, the flames flickering as his reserves began to dip dangerously low.

  “I’m almost out,” he grunted, barely managing to keep the weight of the blade steady. “Can’t keep this up much longer.”

  At the center of it all, Jin Saito stood calm—unmoving.

  His breathing slowed.

  Then… something shifted.

  The silver rings in his eyes gleamed, spinning faster—each rotation accelerating with precise rhythm.

  And for the first time since stepping into the Expanse, he activated a skill.

  Aether surged.

  Twin spirals of silver light bloomed from his wrists, traveling up his forearms like bands of radiant circuitry. Dozens of luminous rings hovered just above his skin—thin and sharp, arranged like orbiting halos. The smallest rings clustered near his wrists, while the largest floated around his upper arms. Each one shimmered with a faint ripple, fragile and beautiful like glass—yet etched with raw calculation.

  Every ring represented a future.

  A path.

  A choice.

  The smallest rings glowed brightest—they held the greatest chance of success. Near impossible paths, fine as thread. The larger rings shimmered with uncertainty—wider possibilities, broader outcomes, but less stability.

  Jin exhaled slowly, arms lowering as the rings spun tighter.

  And then, he moved.

  Starting with the largest rings orbiting his arms, Jin willed them to detonate.

  The wide, silver bands unraveled in an instant, collapsing inward like ripples in a disturbed reflection. They vanished without sound, and with them, entire futures were erased.

  He gave them up willingly.

  The broadest paths—the most uncertain, most flexible—were always the least rewarding. Their sacrifice yielded only a faint reinforcement: a mild boost to his physical state. A little more strength in his step. A bit more sharpness in his stance.

  But it was enough.

  The smaller the ring, the more refined the path. And the greater the reward for letting it go.

  That was the law of his ability: each choice narrowed the scope of his destiny. Every ring detonated stripped him of foresight—but in return, the present became stronger, faster, more absolute.

  It was clarity through sacrifice.

  And Jin was far from done.

  The next ring spun faster.

  Smaller.

  Tighter.

  He willed it away.

  And the battle shifted again.

  With a sudden dash, Jin launched forward—his form blurring as momentum coiled behind every step. He slammed into the Ravager’s leg with a devastating kick, the impact echoing across the battlefield like a cannon blast. Before the creature could react, Jin unleashed a flurry of punches, rapid and brutal, each one hammering the same point with surgical precision.

  Then—another shift.

  Without so much as a gesture, another set of larger silver rings hovering around his arms detonated, collapsing in on themselves and vanishing into radiant bursts of light. Jin’s strength surged, proportional to the breadth of the path he’d sacrificed. His body didn’t just move faster—it moved heavier, denser, like every strike now carried the weight of inevitability.

  He twisted, flipped, and drove both heels upward in a rising kick toward the Ravager’s head.

  CRACK.

  Stone and earth shattered like brittle armor, fragments of jagged rock exploding outward from the impact. Jin didn’t stop. He pressed the assault, blow after blow, forcing the Apex Beast’s head to twist violently under the pressure. By the time he backed off, a portion of its head armor had been completely obliterated—flesh exposed beneath.

  And then Jin saw it.

  The perfect opening.

  His silver-ringed eyes narrowed. He didn’t hesitate.

  Three smaller rings, glowing closer to his wrists, began to spin—tight, razor-thin halos of potential.

  He willed them to detonate.

  In that moment, his dexterity spiked. The flow of his movement became something else entirely—fluid, ghostlike, refined down to the subtlest twitch. His breathing synchronized with his footwork, his punches becoming harder to see than even the light reflecting off his skin.

  With a single pivot, he drove his fist forward in a fierce, sudden jab.

  FWOOM.

  A sharp, spiralingl burst of silver aether condensed around his fist—taking shape mid-strike. It formed into a long, spear-like arrow of pure force, honed and sharpened by his Clairvoyance-aligned stat control.

  The arrow didn’t fire.

  It punched through.

  BOOM.

  The silver arrow ripped through the Ravager’s exposed temple like a lightning bolt forged from raw will. Its trajectory was perfect—no deviation, no hesitation, just piercing force channeled through a path Jin had long seen coming.

  The Ravager reeled, its body staggering sideways, balance lost. The wound smoked, silver aether threading violently through the hole now carved into its skull.

  And Jin stood at the epicenter—breathing calm, eyes glowing, the silver rings on his arms still spinning.

  Watching the silver arrow pierce clean through the other side of the Ravager’s skull, Kei blinked in mild surprise from his perch.

  “…Damn,” he muttered, lips curling into a grin. “He really throws them hard bitches.”

  The shot had been clean. Devastating. It carved a wound too deep, too sudden, for even the Ravager’s monstrous constitution to recover from instantly. And Jin wasn’t done.

  As the boar staggered, Jin flowed back into motion—silver rings continuing to detonate with purpose, each sacrifice granting him the right balance of strength, speed, or endurance. He opened weak point after weak point across the Ravager’s frame, like carving fault lines into a crumbling mountain.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  And everyone took full advantage.

  Spells, blades, and projectiles surged toward the ruptured gaps in its armor, each attack landing with increasingly brutal synergy.

  Then came something unexpected.

  A flash of sickly green aether surged across the battlefield—a long, grasping hand extending from the shadows and slamming into one of the opened wounds. It latched onto the Ravager’s vitality like a parasite, draining life and energy at a rapid pace. The boar’s regeneration slowed immediately, its movements becoming sluggish, unbalanced.

  A tall figure followed behind the energy—wielding a heavy greatsword laced with the same greenish hue.

  Orin Graves stepped forward, calmly dragging the blade along the ground. With a sharp upward slash, he anchored the Ravager’s vitality to himself. The siphoning effect deepened, tethering the creature’s recovery and burdening it with a mirrored weight.

  He didn’t say a word—but his contribution was undeniable.

  Reese, Owen, Talia, and Kai all noticed.

  Their attacks never stopped, but each of them shot a glance toward a tree on the edge of the battlefield—where Kei still sat.

  Their collective expressions said one thing:

  “Aren’t you glad we didn’t let you kill him?”

  Each look, playful or otherwise, was met with a sharp glare—one so icy, so pointed, that it silenced every trace of smugness.

  Reese clicked his tongue. “I’d rather fight the Ravager alone than deal with him.” He loosed three more arrows in rapid succession, all veering unnaturally mid-air to stab through the gaps in the Ravager’s chest plating.

  Talia, nearby, laughed softly. “I like my jaw intact and attached to my face, thanks.” Her figure flickered into mist as she manipulated the Ravager’s field of vision with layered mirages, pulling its attention in three different directions.

  Kai didn’t look away from his target. He simply muttered, “I’d rather he not put needles in my eye,” as his spear surged forward, encased in a dense spiral of aether. It drilled into one of the newly exposed weak points, forcing the Ravager to rear back in frustration.

  And Kei, from the tree, sighed long and low.

  “Bunch of ungrateful bastards,” he murmured

  As more and more paths were sacrificed, Jin’s world narrowed. With each ring detonated, the futures he could once see were stripped away—shattered fragments of possibility vanishing into nothing.

  He no longer saw who might need help. He couldn’t perceive when a perfect opening might emerge from the chaos. All of that foresight—gone.

  What remained was the now.

  It was the price he paid. Every sacrifice meant one less thread to guide his movements. One less option. One less path forward.

  But the Ironsworn Ravager’s monstrous vitality demanded that price. Jin needed the boost—needed to hit harder, strike deeper, and leave wounds that took time to close. Anything less, and the creature would recover before the damage could matter.

  The trade-off wasn’t just mental. The toll on his body was growing.

  Each detonation felt like tearing his vision from a part of himself. The more precise the path he sacrificed, the harsher the recoil. His muscles strained. His breathing grew heavier. His bones trembled under the stress of moving faster than he was meant to. It wasn’t just an aether cost—it was physical.

  But Jin endured.

  Because clarity came at a cost.

  And he was willing to pay it.

  As he crashed down from high above, the air howled around him—momentum compressed into a single devastating strike. A silver arrow of force, shaped mid-fall, pierced cleanly through the boar’s thick skull, trailing radiant streaks in its wake.

  The impact echoed across the battlefield.

  The Ravager lurched, its body twisting violently as it let out a strained, guttural bellow. For a moment, its limbs staggered. The constant, oppressive force of its Earth-aligned pressure receded just slightly.

  And with that step—shaky, but firm—Jin landed.

  The ground beneath his foot cracked but held, and for the first time since the battle began, the destructive force tearing through the terrain quieted. The jagged upheaval of earth paused. No tremors. No spikes.

  A breath of calm passed through the chaos.

  Just long enough for the others to regroup. Just long enough to breathe.

  Watching it all unfold, Lisa found herself quietly fascinated. She’d launched a few attacks of her own, cushioned a couple of hard landings with sound bursts, but it was the sheer scale of what everyone else was doing that held her attention now.

  They were fighting under relentless pressure—against a monster that didn’t know how to stay down—and still, they carved through it.

  She turned slightly, eyes drifting back toward the tree at the edge of the battlefield.

  Kei sat there, calm as ever.

  Flexing his hands back and forth in a slow, rhythmic motion, almost like he was playing with invisible strings. If someone looked close enough, they’d notice it—tiny pulses of wind bursting from his fingertips, barely audible, controlled to perfection.

  And the smile on his face wasn’t one of concern. It wasn’t even one of interest.

  It was satisfaction.

  “He’s not even bothered by what he’s witnessing,” Lisa muttered, half to herself. “It’s like this doesn’t pose any risk to him at all. He’s just… in his own world.”

  And somehow, that was more unnerving than anything the Ravager had done.

  “Whatcha looking at?”

  Jenny appeared beside her, following Lisa’s gaze toward what, to her, looked like just a regular tree with no notable presence.

  “I was just thinking…” Lisa said softly, her eyes wide, almost glowing. “I should’ve taken this more seriously when we first arrived here. This is amazing.”

  A frenzied, excited gleam sparked in her eyes.

  “The pulse of everything—the rhythmic sound—it’s just… exhilarating,” she confessed, voice low, like she didn’t want the moment to end.

  Jenny smiled. “Yeah… it really is an amazing place we’ve found ourselves in. How about we make up for lost progress and try some teamwork?”

  Lisa tilted her head with a grin just as Kaito landed beside them.

  “Hey—are you okay?” he asked, looking directly at Jenny, concern etched in his expression. “You took a pretty hard hit earlier. I was worried.”

  Jenny blinked once before smirking.

  “Yeah, we can tell, Romeo. You lost it and went full berserk on the poor boar. So mean.”

  Lisa snorted, clearly entertained. Kaito flushed red, scrambling for words.

  “No—I—I was just… worried about my friend, that’s all!” he said quickly, stumbling through his sentence.

  Lisa patted his arm with a teasing smile.

  “Aw, look at you. Hero mode and bashful. Dangerous combo.”

  Jenny just laughed, spinning her scythe once in her hand.

  “Then let’s put that heroic energy to use, shall we?”

  With a graceful swirl of her scythe, Jenny redirected the stored crimson fire from the weapon into her own body. Her eyes gleamed with anticipation as heat radiated off her skin in controlled pulses.

  “How about you charge me up?” she asked Lisa with a smirk.

  Lisa didn’t hesitate—streams of concentrated sound pulsed forward, syncing with Jenny’s rhythm. Jenny absorbed them, recording the kinetic signature into her scythe while letting the surging heat from earlier empower her core.

  “Follow me,” she said, spinning her scythe into a ready stance. “And match my pace.”

  Without waiting for a reply, Jenny took off. Wind curled around her as she surged forward.

  Lisa followed immediately, bursts of sound erupting beneath her feet, propelling her like stepping stones made of vibration. Together, the two moved in perfect sync—tempo and flow aligned like the pulse of a song building toward its peak.

  Jin landed beside Kaito, his breath heavy, muscles tense from the toll of his detonated paths. His limbs moved slower now, but his eyes remained sharp.

  “You’re okay?” he asked, glancing at Kaito with a strained voice.

  Kaito blinked, still flustered from earlier, then gave a small shake of his head. “Forget about me. You look like you’re ready to collapse.”

  Jin exhaled and offered a faint smile.

  “For what it’s worth… they’ll be fine. For now.”

  A few silver rings still floated faintly around his forearms—dim but present. He could still see a few paths ahead, though each one burned a little brighter with risk.

  Taking a deep breath, Jin released a soft exhale—only this time, it came out as a faint mist. His tunic glowed faintly with a cool, icy-blue shimmer as aether circulated through it, activating the garment’s passive effect. A wave of frost breath escaped his lips, cooling his overheated body and easing the strain burning through his muscles and bones.

  From the tree, Kei sat still, idly pulsing bursts of Wind Force between his fingers as he continued experimenting with the new minor force he'd picked up. But the moment that icy breath wafted through the air—he froze.

  His head snapped toward Jin.

  “You killed my Vipers…” Kei’s voice was quiet, but his expression twisted darkly as his eyes began to glow—deep, seething crimson-orange.

  “…and you’re wearing Frosty?”

  The pressure that followed was suffocating.

  Kei didn’t move. He didn’t need to. But if looks could kill, Jin wouldn’t just die—he’d be erased from existence without a trace left for reincarnation.

  Jin blinked and slowly turned toward the tree. His gaze met Kei’s glowing eyes—wide, unblinking, burning with something primal.

  Kaito, standing beside him, immediately took a half-step back. “Jin… what did you do?” His voice cracked slightly as he noticed Kei’s silent fury.

  “I… I don’t know?” Jin said, thoroughly confused. “What’s with the tree?”

  The tension was thick, but Jin shook it off and turned back to the battlefield, choosing to ignore the death glare for now.

  And behind the fractured Ravager—Jenny moved.

  She appeared like a shadow trailing flame, her presence masked beneath the thunder of battle. With a quick vault from the ground using her scythe as leverage, she flipped gracefully onto the beast’s back.

  Her form blurred—one flip, then another, and another.

  With each landing, her hand struck the Ravager’s exposed surface.

  Thump.

  A small pulse of crimson kinetic force rippled out beneath her palm.

  Thump.

  Another. Then another.

  Each touch wasn’t just for balance—it was a mark.

  A trap.

  Jenny was planting them.

  Kinetic bursts, some crimson in hue, some lilac in hue, imprinted on the boar’s rocky hide like invisible landmines. With every contact, her force moved like silent gunpowder, waiting to ignite.

  Using both hands, Jenny vaulted off the Ravager’s head, flipping midair with a gymnast's ease. As she hung upside down, still falling, she twisted her body to face the Apex Beast directly.

  The Ravager stared up at her—confused, angry, uncertain.

  She smiled sweetly.

  “Boom.”

  A beat later, the battlefield lit up.

  A symphony of pulsing detonations erupted across the Ravager’s body—crimson-red shockwaves flaring outward, overlaid with a ghostly lilac hue. Each one detonated in perfect sequence, like percussion in a violent orchestra.

  The Ravager howled. A visceral, guttural roar tore through the air as its body convulsed under the precise impact of dozens of stored kinetic bursts detonating at once.

  Chunks of armor cracked and flew in every direction.

  Jenny landed without fanfare—soft, clean, unbothered.

  Turning to Draggbane, she casually held out her hand like a kid expecting sweets. “Hey, lizard man. Recharge me.”

  Draggbane blinked, mildly taken aback.

  Lisa, meanwhile, was absolutely floored.

  “If you’re capable of that, then why the hell are you always so lazy, you blonde-headed freak?!” she shouted.

  Jenny winced. “Oi! Don’t scream in my ear, dammit.”

  “It’s called reserves, ever heard of it?” she added, smirking as she reached out and pinched Lisa’s cheek like she was a toddler. “Good to rest when you can.”

  Lisa puffed her cheeks in protest, arms flailing as Jenny held her at bay.

  Meanwhile, the Ravager continued its rampage—but something new joined the chaos.

  Hop.

  Hop.

  Hop.

  A rhythmic sound echoed over the field, soft at first, but gaining presence with each step.

  A figure adjusted the loose scarf tied over her head, stepping through the fading smoke as vines slithered up from the broken earth, wrapping loosely around her arms.

  The grass beneath her feet danced—literally, swaying toward her like it recognized her as one of its own.

  “You guys’ve been fighting this thing for how long,” she said, voice dripping with dry amusement, “and this is all you’ve managed?”

  The vines pulsed, the greenery around her blooming unnaturally in her wake.

  Jin’s eyes narrowed the moment her voice rang out.

  Something about the air shifted—like a note added to an already complex song. His instincts screamed at him that something was about to happen—he just didn’t know what. Good or bad, ally or chaos—it was unclear.

  He could sacrifice the smallest silver rings on his wrist, but he didn’t.

  He needed those paths—for later.

  Just in case.

  High up in the tree, Kei’s eyes flicked toward the new presence. His eyebrows arched slightly, the wind around him curling with interest.

  “…The aether,” he murmured, “it’s… really excited to be around her.”

  His voice wasn’t worried. Just curious.

  Like something interesting had finally shown up.

  Silvie also noticed it.

  Even amidst the chaos of battle, even as the Ironsworn Ravager’s roar echoed across the cracked plains and pulses of elemental energy rippled through the earth—something else tugged at her attention.

  Aether.

  It was... excited.

  Not just around her—that she was used to. It always danced for her, curled toward her, sang in subtle vibrations under her skin. But now, in the far distance, a different melody called out. A pulse of joyful resonance like a second heartbeat, echoing from a tree that had no business drawing her eye.

  Her expression shifted, curiosity replacing amusement.

  The grass at her feet leaned in that direction. The wind nudged her shoulders. Even the vines trailing from her arms pulsed faintly.

  She turned her head slowly and squinted toward the source.

  There, just barely visible through the flickering haze of heat and battle-light, was a single tree. Unremarkable. Untouched.

  But the aether around it told a different story.

  It gathered there—like excited children crowding a storyteller, drawn to something that shouldn’t be ignored.

  Her eyes narrowed in amused, confused surprise. “I never thought I’d run into someone like me.”

  And from the branches above, Kei stared back.

  Eyes half-lidded, fingers still flicking currents of Wind Force between them like a composer teasing the strings of an invisible harp. But now, those crimson-orange eyes locked onto hers, unblinking and still.

  A silent understanding passed between them.

  For just that moment, everything else faded—the collapsing terrain, the roars of the Ravager, the frantic clamor of blades and spells.

  Because aether itself was watching. Not the monster. Not the battle.

  Them.

  And sparks began to gather across the battlefield.

  Not fire. Not lightning.

  But potential.

  Raw, volatile, curious.

  They ignored the towering Apex Beast. Ignored the destruction. Ignored everything.

  As if the world had decided: This meeting was more important.