"Lune, I don't give a damn what kind of personality you are! Stealing Shumanton's body is an unforgivable sin!"

  Chris grabbed Lune by the collar in a death grip, hoisting him halfway off the ground. "Lune! I'll... I'll kill you! Just die, you bastard!"

  Tears streamed uncontrollably from Chris's eyes. His hands, still clutching Lune, trembled violently. He didn't even care to wipe away the snot running pathetically down his face. Looking at him now, he wasn't just angry—he was a man pushed to the absolute brink of a breakdown.

  In the distance, a fluttering butterfly drifted across the meadow, silently gliding into the hunter's cabin until it finally came to rest upon Silvan's mask.

  Awakened by the commotion outside, Silvan slowly sat up and skillfully readjusted his mask.

  (Chris and Lune... what are they arguing about now? Honestly, just a bunch of overgrown brats.)

  He let out an exasperated sigh, grabbed a woven bamboo basket filled with their laundry, and stepped out of the cabin. However, the moment his gaze landed on the source of the noise, he inhaled sharply.

  Smack. The basket slipped from his grasp and hit the dirt.

  Vrrrrr—!

  The beam sword in Chris's hand, humming with high-density energy, let out a piercing shriek as it pressed relentlessly against a thick defensive barrier made of countless glowing triangles. On either side of the barrier, two entirely different extremes of emotion clashed.

  Veins bulged along Chris's arm, snaking all the way up to his temples. His falcon-like eyes swirled with a tempest of rage, looking as if he wanted nothing more than to tear Lune limb from limb.

  On the other side, poor Lune could only cross his arms defensively over his chest. His timid face hid behind the glowing shield as he desperately cried out:

  "Uncle Chris! What did I even do wrong?! Good lord, did water leak into your brain or something?!"

  Chris's eyes instantly darkened. The golden beam of his blade ground against the barrier, sparking with a crackling burst of static electricity.

  Amber.

  That was the color of Lune's pupils. Whenever this guy stared at him with those innocent amber eyes, Chris felt an indescribable, blinding fury. Because that body... it belonged to Shumanton! Yet now, the real Shumanton was left with nothing but dull, hazy gray eyes, completely blind.

  It was never supposed to be like this!

  (Why...? What right do you have to steal Shumanton's eyes?! Lune...!)

  "Uraaaagh—!"

  Chris let out a beastly roar and lunged forward again. The golden beam carved a deadly, dazzling arc through the air. Accompanied by the sharp sound of shattering glass, Lune's proudly constructed, multi-layered geometric barrier was smashed to pieces. Stumbling backward with messy footwork, Lune frantically channeled his mana, desperately trying to reconstruct his defenses.

  "Uncle Chris! Are you insane?! What the hell happened?! Weren't we just fine yesterday?!"

  Just in the nick of time, a dark shadow darted between the two of them.

  Clang-bzzt—!

  Silvan's short sword flawlessly parried Chris's beam sword. A blinding shower of sparks erupted where the two blades clashed. Behind Silvan, Lune finally found a moment to breathe, dropping to his knees and gasping for air.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  In truth, Lune's body was already nearing its absolute limit. Sustaining such a high-intensity barrier for so long had caused lactic acid to explode in his muscles. A severe, burning ache spread from his arms through his entire body. If Silvan had been even a second slower, his life would have truly ended right there.

  "Silvan—!"

  This sudden interference completely enraged Chris. He was already a steel cable stretched to its breaking point, and Silvan's intervention was undoubtedly the final blow that severed his rationality.

  "Silvan! Silvan! SILVAN—! You meddling fool!" Chris roared, overflowing with killing intent. His sword strikes rained down on Silvan like a torrential storm. It was an overwhelming shadow of heavy blows, each slash carrying the force of a hurricane that tore through the very air.

  "That guy, Lune, is nothing! He's a piece of trash! A leftover scrap! A parasite leeching off Shumanton!" Chris bellowed hoarsely. With a vicious twist of his wrist, his merciless thrusts transformed into a sky-covering shower of arrows.

  Despite the ferocious assault, Silvan's footwork remained as light as a phantom's.

  He slipped gracefully through the flashes of sword light like a loach. Alongside his calm, unfathomable movements, a hidden mechanism in Silvan's heel quietly activated, drawing the magical particles from the grass to rapidly converge.

  In the blink of an eye, a massive transmutation circle erupted outwards, using the two of them as its epicenter like a battle arena! Accompanied by a violent tremor of the earth, a massive slab of bedrock shot up from the ground, propelling them straight into the clear sky above the forest.

  As the Empire's premier alchemist, the very moment Silvan spread his arms, a slender silver staff was transmuted out of thin air.

  He slammed the silver staff down in front of him. A high-frequency magical oscillation instantly detonated, and silver flashes bloomed around them like fireworks. From between Silvan's leather gloves, a silver chain attached to a nickel-alloy pocket watch lunged forward like a striking snake under the sunlight. The blooming flashes of light acted as nuclei, rapidly linked and stabilized by the infinitely elongating, synapse-like silver chain. Ultimately, they took shape as deadly, spiked spheres covered in jagged fangs, resembling menacing viruses.

  Silver.

  The color Chris hated most of all.

  Unlike the absolute, sacred golden power in his hands, silver represented the hue of cold, calculated slaughter. It inevitably forced him to recall the unforgiving battlefields, to remember those cruel years when he and Shumanton fought side-by-side, bathed in blood.

  "Aaaaarrrgh—!"

  He roared in a mix of grief and fury, swinging his golden beam to viciously smash into those impossibly hard, spiked spheres.

  Crack! Smash!

  The spiked spheres were cleaved in half under the sunlight, the shattered debris cascading down like a landslide. Seeing this from the ground below, a terrified Lune scrambled on his hands and knees to take cover beneath the roots of a large tree. After all, Chris had completely lost control. With every swing of his sword, the violently compressed magical particles in the air triggered deafening claps of thunder. For Lune on the ground, this downpour of falling rubble was nothing short of a lethal disaster.

  Staring at the rocks crashing to the earth, their surfaces still crackling and sparking with static electricity, Lune was left entirely speechless.

  "Good lord... how does Mr. Silvan usually deal with Uncle Chris? These two are absolute monsters!"

  Just as Lune was locked in an internal struggle over whether he should grease his soles and slip away, the battle in mid-air underwent a dramatic shift.

  Silvan flicked his wrist holding the silver staff, and the bedrock arena beneath their feet instantly tilted at a drastic angle! Chris stumbled, his body sliding uncontrollably toward Silvan.

  In the very split second they brushed past each other—

  With an undeniably forceful stance, Silvan precisely locked onto Chris's right prosthetic arm. He viciously jammed the silver staff directly into the seam connecting Chris's shoulder blade to the mechanical iron limb.

  That spot was the most vulnerable weak point on the iron-willed man's entire body.

  "Gwah!"

  Chris let out an agonizing wail. That very iron arm was the one Silvan had personally attached for him years ago.

  The densely packed pain receptors, resembling bundles of electrical wire, were instantly triggered by the sudden, violent tear. The pain surged like a bursting dam, rushing at insane speeds across countless neurons straight into Chris's brain.

  Immediately after, Silvan's other hand performed a deft, magic-like flip, already pinching a sharp metal awl between his fingertips. Seizing the opening created by Chris's excruciating pain, he mercilessly plunged the awl deep into the mechanical seam where the neurons were most densely concentrated.

  "...!"

  Chris's vision abruptly went black. He was like a stick of high-explosive dynamite that had its power source forcefully severed. The red countdown light on the panel flickered for a brief second before fading into total silence.

  The massive body crashed heavily to the ground.

  Silvan stood perfectly still, drenched in sweat. His chest heaved violently as his heart continued to pound against his ribs. Looking down at his fallen comrade, he felt an overwhelming sense of relief in his heart for having successfully defused this "bomb crisis."