Dawn in Oakhaven did not arrive with a gentle cascade of light; it bled through the toxic, gray smog of the Abyssal Mountain Range like a fresh bruise.
For the first time in his life, Kaelen did not wake up with the excruciating, deep-bone ache of a malnourished body pushed beyond its limits. He opened his eyes, staring at the rotting wooden ceiling of his shack. He lay perfectly still, listening.
The world was... loud. But not with sound.
With his newly awakened Void Perception, a passive ability of his Mid-Phase Rank 0 evolution, Kaelen could "hear" the flow of energy. He closed his eyes and focused. The ambient mana in the air, usually invisible to the unawakened, registered in his mind as a chaotic, shimmering web of faint blue threads. He could sense the miserable, flickering yellow auras of the slum-dwellers waking up around him, their life-force dim and sluggish.
But more importantly, he could sense himself. Or rather, the terrifying absence of himself.
Where other people had a glowing sun in their chests, Kaelen had an abyss. The 'Null Singularity' rested silently where his heart should have been, a microscopic black hole held in check by the rusted iron Ring of the Mundane that Vance had given him. The ring was doing its job—it cloaked the suffocating void of his core, projecting a fake, broken mana signature. But beneath the ring's suppression, Kaelen's physical body had changed completely overnight.
He sat up and threw off the threadbare blanket. His bruised, calloused hands were completely healed. He swung his legs out of bed, feeling a profound, terrifying lightness. The density of his bones, the tensile strength of his muscles, the elasticity of his ligaments—everything had been reforged by the energy of the corrupted Shadow-Stalker Wolf he had devoured.
Mid-Phase Rank 0: The Void Vessel. Kaelen understood it now. He was a cup meant to hold the abyss. The more he ate, the thicker the cup became.
Kaelen walked to the corner of his shack where his rusted iron training sword lay. Usually, it took a focused grunt and a bracing of his core to lift the fifty-pound slab of metal one-handed. This morning, he reached down and picked it up.
It felt like holding a dried twig.
"Flesh has limits," Kaelen whispered to himself, remembering Vance's words. "But the void has none."
He spent the next two hours in the freezing mist outside his shack, swinging the sword. He didn't just swing it; he swung it with boulders tied to the hilt using thick ropes of hemp. Ten thousand swings. The familiar routine, but instead of finishing with torn, bleeding hands and micro-fractures in his forearms, Kaelen barely broke a sweat. Every time his muscles threatened to tear, a microscopic sliver of the dark energy from the Singularity pulsed, instantly weaving the fibers back together, stronger than before.
It was an endless cycle of self-destruction and instantaneous rebirth.
By the time the smog lifted, Kaelen set the sword down. His body was a tightly coiled spring of lethal, kinetic potential. But he knew better than to be arrogant. A true Rank 2 warrior could still crush a mountain boulder with pure mana projection. Kaelen's strength was purely physical, and his ultimate weapon—devouring energy—could not be used publicly without bringing the wrath of the Empire down upon him. The Azure Sky Sect was still in Oakhaven, hunting the prophecy of the "Cursed Omen." He had to remain the ghost.
He put on his tattered coat, hid his bone shiv in his sleeve, and walked down the muddy, winding path toward the town center to fetch water from the communal well.
The slums were unusually quiet. The deaths of the three guards and the abrupt "disappearance" of the Corrupted Beast the night before had left the locals terrified. There were rumors of a demon, an imperial executioner, or an ancient ghost haunting the Narrows.
Kaelen ignored the whispers. He joined the long line of haggard women and crippled men waiting at the stone well in the central plaza. As he waited, his Void Perception picked up an anomaly.
Thirty feet away, near a stall selling bruised apples, stood a figure wrapped tightly in a thick, dirt-smeared brown cloak. To a normal person, it was just another desperate slum rat hiding from the cold. But to Kaelen's new eyes, the figure was a blinding lighthouse in a sea of candles.
A dense, suppressed sphere of emerald-green mana radiated from the cloaked figure. Rank 2: Aura Core. Peak stage. Kaelen's eyes narrowed slightly. A Peak Rank 2 did not belong in the slums buying rotten fruit. But more intriguingly, the mana signature felt familiar. It was the same chaotic, terrified energy he had sensed under the collapsed stall the night before.
It was the girl. Elara.
She turned her head, the heavy hood slipping back just a fraction of an inch to reveal a lock of auburn hair and bright amber eyes. Those eyes scanned the crowd frantically before locking onto Kaelen.
She froze. She recognized his face—the chillingly calm, gray-eyed boy who had erased a Rank 2 monster from existence.
Elara hesitated, glancing around the plaza. The silver-armored knights of the Azure Sky Sect were patrolling the opposite side of the square on their Dire-Wolves. She quickly pulled her hood back down and began to walk toward the narrow alleyway behind the apple stall, subtly gesturing for Kaelen to follow.
Kaelen didn't move. He had no intention of getting involved with whatever trouble a runaway Peak Rank 2 cultivator was hiding from. He picked up his wooden bucket, intending to draw his water and leave.
But a second anomaly pinged in his Void Perception.
Three muddy yellow auras—Rank 1 initiates—were converging on the alleyway from the opposite direction, moving with synchronized, predatory intent. They weren't looking for Kaelen; they were tracking the girl.
Kaelen sighed internally. The world of Eldoria was determined to drag him into its mess. He set his bucket down, adjusted his tattered coat, and slipped silently into the shadows between the buildings, mirroring their path.
In the damp, garbage-strewn alleyway, Elara pressed her back against the brick wall, her breath misting in the cold air. She cursed her own foolishness. She was the youngest daughter of the Vaelen Merchant House, a genius who had reached Peak Rank 2 at fourteen. But out here, separated from her bodyguards and trying to hide her mana signature to evade her family's trackers, she was just a target.
"Well, well, well," a sneering voice echoed from the mouth of the alley.
Three men stepped into the shadows. They wore dark leather armor adorned with the crimson emblem of a stylized, bleeding falcon—the Blood Hawks. The biggest one, a bald man with crude tribal tattoos over his skull, drew a heavy, serrated saber.
"The boys at the gate said a pretty little stray wandered into the slums last night," the bald man chuckled, his Rank 1 muddy yellow aura flaring, granting his muscles a visible bulge. "A runaway noble, maybe? A disgraced cultivator? Don't matter. The slave masters down in the Undercity pay double for unbroken toys like you."
Elara's amber eyes hardened. She dropped her act. The dirt-smeared cloak fluttered as an emerald-green aura exploded from her body, illuminating the dark alley. The air around her cracked with condensed wind mana.
"I suggest," Elara said, her voice dropping the fearful tone and taking on the refined, icy edge of high nobility, "that you vermin turn around before I sever your limbs."
The three Blood Hawks faltered for a second, intimidated by the sheer density of a Peak Rank 2 aura. But the bald leader grinned, showing rotted teeth.
"Normally, we would run," he spat. "But you're suppressing your core. Your aura is unstable. You're hiding from someone bigger than us, aren't you? If you use a high-tier wind technique here, those silver-knight bastards in the plaza will feel the shockwave. They'll be here in ten seconds."
He took a step forward, raising his saber. "You can't use your magic, princess. And without it, you're just meat."
Elara's emerald aura flickered, confirming his theory. She was trapped. If she fought with her full power, the Azure Sky Sect would sense the high-level wind magic and capture her. If she didn't, these thugs would drag her to a fate worse than death. She reached into her cloak, pulling out a beautifully crafted, rune-etched dagger.
But before anyone could move, a soft, sickening crunch echoed from the opposite end of the alley.
The bald leader spun around, his saber raised.
Out of the shadows stepped Kaelen. His posture was completely relaxed, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his ragged coat. His face was an emotionless mask, his dark gray eyes—muted by the iron ring—staring blankly ahead. He hadn't drawn a weapon. He simply walked forward, crunching a discarded chicken bone beneath his boot.
"Who the hell are you?" the bald man demanded, swinging his saber menacingly. "Get lost, Null-trash, before I peel your skin off."
Kaelen didn't stop walking. His Void Perception analyzed the three men in a fraction of a second. Two Early Rank 1s. One Peak Rank 1. Blood flow elevated. Heart rates 120 beats per minute. Muscle tension focused entirely on their dominant arms.
"Kaelen!" Elara gasped, recognizing him. "Run! They're Blood Hawks! They'll kill you for fun!"
Kaelen finally stopped, exactly five feet away from the bald leader. He didn't look at Elara. He kept his gaze fixed on the chest of the Peak Rank 1 thug.
"Three of your men died in the Narrows yesterday," Kaelen said, his voice flat, devoid of any inflection. It was merely a statement of fact.
The bald man's eyes widened, the sneer dropping from his face. "You... you know about that? The Narrows are our territory. Those were our scouts." The man's aura flared violently, his saber humming with crude, violent energy. "You saw who did it?"
"I am who did it," Kaelen replied simply.
Silence descended on the alley, broken only by the dripping of water from a broken pipe. Then, the two younger thugs burst into laughter.
"This defect?" one of them howled. "A Rank 0 starved rat killed three of our guys? Boss, he's out of his mind on Dream-Dust!"
The bald leader didn't laugh. He looked at Kaelen's eyes. He saw the same chilling abyss that Gorm the merchant had seen. There was no fear, no bravado. Just the cold, mechanical certainty of an executioner.
"Kill him," the leader roared, lunging forward, his heavy saber arcing down toward Kaelen's collarbone with enough mana-infused force to split an anvil in half.
Elara screamed, squeezing her eyes shut, expecting the boy to be cleaved in two.
Kaelen didn't use the Null Singularity. He didn't devour the mana. He relied purely on the biomechanics of his newly forged Rank 0 Mid-Phase body and the absolute clarity of his Void Perception.
Time seemed to slow down. Kaelen saw the muddy yellow mana wrapping around the descending blade. He saw the microscopic flaw in the thug's stance—his left foot was planted half an inch too wide in the mud, causing a 0.2-second delay in his kinetic transfer.
In that 0.2-second window, Kaelen moved.
He didn't dodge backward; he stepped inside the guard. The heavy saber whistled past Kaelen's ear, slicing a few strands of his raven hair, and buried itself deep into the muddy ground.
Before the thug could pull the blade free, Kaelen pivoted. His right fist, moving with the explosive, refined power of ten thousand daily swings multiplied by his newly enhanced muscle fibers, slammed directly into the side of the man's knee.
CRACK.
It wasn't a bone snapping. It was the sound of a joint entirely exploding. The Peak Rank 1 thug let out an unearthly shriek as his leg inverted, his massive body collapsing into the mud.
The two laughing thugs froze mid-cackle. Horror painted their faces. A Rank 0 had just crippled a Peak Rank 1 in a single, unblockable strike.
Kaelen didn't pause to gloat. Combat was a mathematical equation, and two variables remained.
As the first thug fell, Kaelen used the man's armored shoulder as a springboard. He launched himself into the air, flipping over the sweeping strike of the second thug's mace. While inverted in mid-air, Kaelen's hand shot out of his pocket, holding the bone shiv.
He didn't aim for armor. He aimed for the gaps.
With surgical precision, he drove the bone shiv downward, piercing the gap between the second thug's leather collar and helmet, directly into the carotid artery.
Kaelen landed softly in a crouch as the second man dropped his mace, clutching his spurting neck, drowning in his own blood within seconds.
Two down. Four seconds elapsed.
The final Blood Hawk thug dropped his weapon entirely. His muddy yellow aura vanished as pure, animalistic terror overtook him. He turned and sprinted toward the end of the alley, screaming for help.
Kaelen's eyes tracked him. Distance: twenty feet. Target speed: low. Intercept path calculated.
Kaelen bent his knees. The mud beneath his boots exploded as he launched himself forward. His raw physical speed, unburdened by the weight of the iron training sword, was a blur even to Elara's Peak Rank 2 eyes.
He caught up to the running man in three massive strides. Kaelen reached out, grabbing the back of the thug's head, and violently slammed his face straight into the unforgiving brick wall of the alley.
A sickening thud echoed. The man's body went limp instantly, crumbling to the ground like a broken puppet.
The alley fell silent again, save for the pathetic groans of the first man clutching his shattered knee in the mud.
Elara stood pinned against the wall, her rune-etched dagger shaking in her hand. Her breath caught in her throat. She stared at Kaelen. He stood over the bodies, his chest barely heaving. There was no glow of mana, no flashy technique, no roaring battle cries. Just brutal, hyper-efficient, silent butchery.
He was a ghost. A monster wearing the skin of a starved peasant boy.
Kaelen slowly turned around, pulling a ragged cloth from his pocket to wipe the blood off his bone shiv. His dark gray eyes finally met Elara's amber ones.
"You shouldn't release your aura in the slums," Kaelen said, his voice entirely calm, as if he hadn't just slaughtered three men. "It draws flies."
"You... you're not a Null," Elara stammered, stepping away from the wall, her aristocratic composure entirely shattered. "No human body can move like that without a core. Who are you?"
Kaelen slid the clean shiv back into his pocket. He looked at the girl—the future Ultimate Goddess's complete opposite. Where the silver-haired maiden was a terrifying, untouchable star, Elara was a brilliant, grounded flame. But to Kaelen, they were both just variables in a world trying to kill him.
"My name is Kaelen," he replied, walking past her toward the exit of the alley. "And I am exactly what you see. Nothing."
He didn't ask for a reward. He didn't ask why she was hiding. He stepped back out into the bustling, noisy market street, melting into the crowd as if he had never been there.
Behind him, Elara watched the spot where he had vanished. The fear in her chest was slowly being replaced by an overwhelming, burning curiosity. She was the heiress to the greatest merchant house in the continent; she knew the value of everything. But for the first time in her life, she had found something completely priceless, utterly lethal, and entirely off the records.
She looked down at the bleeding, groaning Blood Hawk leader.
"Who," Elara whispered to herself, a fierce, calculating spark igniting in her amber eyes, "is that boy?"
But the Blood Hawks wouldn't be the only ones asking that question soon. In the shadows of Vance's forge, the old, crippled blacksmith had watched the entire fight from afar, a grim, terrifying smile stretching across his scarred face. The 'Zero' had officially stepped onto the board.
And the game had begun.