Boris stood alone.

  Almost two dozen Black Scorpions closed in—massive creatures, chitin glistening under the sky with no sun. They moved slowly, deliberately, forming a wide arc around him, their barbed tails twitching, poised like drawn bows.

  I’m ready.

  He adjusted his grip on the spear, one foot sliding forward over the hot sand. Right hand held the shaft firm; left hand balanced its weight. His breathing slowed, posture steady. This wasn’t new. This was familiar.

  Just like practice.

  The first Scorpion struck.

  Its tail came fast—too fast for most—but Boris moved like he’d done it before. His spear flashed upward, a clean slash that met the venomous stinger midair.

  Clang!

  A burst of sparks. The tail didn’t sever—its shell was just as hard as his spearhead—but the impact bought him time.

  He took a mental note. Their tails are not a good target.

  Another scorpion lashed out from the left. Boris shifted, rolled his wrist, and redirected the tail with the haft of his weapon. Parry, not block. Always conserve strength.

  His foot slid forward again. No wasted motion. He jabbed.

  The spear found its mark, slipping past the creature’s armored mandibles and into the soft chitin beneath its eye.

  Crunch!

  The scorpion twitched, spasmed, and dropped.

  One.

  The others surged.

  Dozens of legs clattered across the stone. Tails lashed the air like a forest of whips. Boris moved through them—not with grace, but with relentless, precise efficiency.

  Parry. Shift. Jab.

  No skills.

  He had them, of course. Powerful skills he could unleash in a heartbeat. But that would defeat the purpose.

  This wasn’t about winning.

  This was about refining.

  Sharpening.

  Becoming better.

  Another tail. He pivoted, letting it scrape his armor instead of his skin, then struck the joint where it curved. A dent, not a kill. Still, it hesitated.

  He pressed forward.

  Another jab—quick, efficient. No wide sweeps. No wasted energy.

  Jab.

  Reset.

  Jab again.

  The scorpions hissed, their formations unraveling as confusion spread. They weren’t used to prey that fought back, let alone prey that watched—that studied.

  Another one fell.

  Then another.

  The ring around him broke.

  He was breathing harder now, sweat running down his back, but his hands didn’t shake. His footwork stayed the same. His stance was firm.

  He could keep going. All day, if needed.

  ….

  From the edge of the battlefield, they watched.

  Kana had lowered her bow minutes ago. She stood beside Suri, her lips parted slightly, eyes fixed on the lone figure weaving between monsters.

  He was... dancing.

  No, not quite.

  There was no elegance in it—only brutal rhythm. Motion without pause. Calculation in every step. A spear in constant movement, striking with the same effective jab, deflecting, redirecting.

  Suri broke the silence first. “He hasn’t used a single skill.”

  Opel narrowed his eyes. “That’s...madness. I guess?”

  The hooded lady, Maya, didn’t speak. But she wasn’t blinking either.

  Even the [Swordsman]—the one who’d been skeptical earlier—watched with a kind of quiet dread. “That’s not how spear combat is supposed to look,” he muttered. Probably used to seeing spear skills, “That’s something else.”

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  Boris pivoted, letting a tail whistle past his face, then jabbed again, puncturing the base of another scorpion’s neck. It fell, legs twitching.

  Suri stepped forward without realizing. “He’s... faster.”

  “No,” Kana said, voice low. “He’s just... cleaner. Every movement is exactly what it needs to be. No more.”

  Asha, who had joined them late, saw the scene and fell silent. She said,“He’s training, isn’t he?”

  Kana nodded slowly. “Yeah. In the middle of all this... he still thinks this is just training.”

  Another scorpion lunged. Boris turned his spear sideways, using the shaft to vault slightly and land behind it. Before the creature could adjust, he drove the spear through its back with terrifying speed.

  Three more remained. There was no sign of him slowing down.

  ….

  Boris didn’t count the dead.

  He counted the blinks between their attacks.

  Three left.

  The last one’s tail quivered—coated with dark green venom, glistening in the dungeon’s sunless sky. Its mandibles clicked, sensing death around it. Its posture screamed caution, but it still lunged.

  Boris stepped forward.

  His left foot slid into the sand. He rotated the spear—in instinct—striking not at the scorpion, but beside it. The ground trembled as the beast adjusted, exposing its undercarriage. A narrow gap. Vulnerable.

  His arm moved on its own.

  One precise quick jabbed.

  The creature collapsed.

  Boris exhaled. Not exhaustion. Just... breath.

  Nineteen scorpions.

  He twisted the spear in his hand and turned toward the others.

  They stared at him.

  Kana’s bow dangled loosely from her fingers. Opel was frozen mid-step. Even the hooded woman, Maya, looked as if she’d seen something she didn’t quite understand.

  Boris walked past the twitching corpses. He did not wipe the sweat from his brow. He didn’t even look back at them.

  Kana was the first to approach. “You... didn’t use a single skill.”

  “No need,” he replied simply.

  “That was almost two dozen,” Opel said. “Even veterans—”

  “I had a hard time,” Boris cut in.

  Silence. A faint crackling sound echoed from deeper within the dungeon—somewhere below.

  A part of the sand was cleared revealing a door that leads underground.

  “The boss room!” The lady in the hood exclaimed.

  ….

  Roa didn’t like secrets.

  Not because she was bad at keeping them. She was excellent at it. But secrets had a smell. Something bitter. Something that lingered on the skin long after the danger passed.

  The coded letter came wrapped in waxed linen and merchant grease. Delivered not by Pit himself, but through an intermediary. Smart. Pit had a habit of underestimating risk, but this time—even he noticed it.

  Someone was watching them.

  Not just listening. Watching.

  She’d warned him. Her evolved skill, [Omni Eyes], detected a skill.. A skill, likely. Surveillance-type. Cloaked in the shadows of the city’s magic web.

  So Pit had gone quiet. Wrote the letter by hand. No mana ink. No enchantment. Just a few words and a cipher. Old code. Burned after reading.

  Primary suspect: student at the academy. Mana user. Investigate.

  Simple.

  Now Roa stood near the gates of the Academy, under the heat of the noon sun, blending with the wall.

  Her [Camouflage] skill wasn’t true invisibility. Anyone brushing past would feel her, might flinch at the contact. But for most people, she didn’t exist. Their minds slid off her like oil on glass.

  More importantly, the feeling—the thing that had been watching her—was gone the moment she activated it.

  So she watched.

  The Academy was a churning machine of magic and privilege, where noble brats studied skills they barely respected. Somewhere in there was someone smart enough to track them. Brave enough to peek at the investigation into the vaults or maybe the proprietor itself.

  She was going to get her lead: a list of students who were categorized as a mana class type. A professor—hooded and jittery—had slipped a parchment between the bricks near the outer courtyard.

  Bribes made quick work of confidentiality.

  Roa retrieved the parchment an hour later. Her eyes skimmed it.

  Two hundred fifty-three names of mana user students.

  Out of over five hundred students, that was the trimmed list.

  She exhaled slowly through her nose. Only if Pit’s skills worked, she never had to do any extra work. She’d accepted the job so she wouldn’t complain. Pit trusted her because she finished jobs.

  One name at a time. Even if it took her a year.

  Her eyes scanned the academy gate again as she faded into the background.

  …

  The night pressed in quietly around the rented house near the Academy, its silence broken only by the occasional creak of old wood or the faint rustle of parchment.

  Roa sat at her desk, back straight, candlelight flickering against the contours of her face. Shadows clung to the corners of the room, but her focus didn’t waver. Not tonight.

  The list lay before her—a roll of parchment, edges smudged with ink and her own fingerprints. Two hundred fifty-three names had become a battlefield, and she’d spent the last three hours culling the ranks.

  Known [Mages] with elemental affinities—cut. Too loud, too destructive. Not suited for reconnaissance.

  The obvious ones were easy. It was the strange ones—the unpopular classes, the strange hybrid paths, the ones people barely spoke about—that demanded attention.

  Classes like [Inquisitor], [Illusionist], [Esper], [Necromancer], [Warlock], [Pyromancer] or even the rare [Priest]. She didn’t know what most of them could do, but she knew one thing: the suspect had a strange class.. Skilled and Luck.

  By the end, her quill hovered above a much smaller list.

  Fifty-two names.

  She leaned back, rolled the stiffness from her shoulders. This was her initial list. Not final. Her instincts told her the real one was in there somewhere. If not? She’d backtrack. Dig through the rejects. No shame in retracing steps when truth was buried in layers.

  She closed her eyes for a moment.

  Tomorrow, she would begin observing them—quietly, methodically. One by one.

  Let them think they were safe.