Richard's question silenced everyone. The air grew cold, the forest itself waiting for the answer. Rush looked at him.
"We share the credit. All of us."
"No." Richard's answer arrived before the sentence finished. "I'm not ready for that."
Jennifer stepped forward.
"We form an assault team—one member from each squad. Whoever lands the killing blow gets the credit for their squad."
Richard considered it, his amber eyes flicking to the ridge.
"Fine. Let's do it."
Squads separated to discuss who would be part of the assault team.
Richard and Patricia were the obvious choices for their squads. When Jennifer suggested herself, Rush shook his head.
"We need someone to lead the distraction team. Your magic capacity is higher than anyone here. You handle the outside; I'll go with the assault squad."
"But your left arm—"
"It's fine. Just a scratch."
The plan was a machine of moving parts. Jennifer, Slavic, and Nia would lead the chaos at the eastern ridge, using explosions and terrain-shifting to bottle the Orcs. Ethan and the others would provide the steel.
Alexis stepped forward, his gaze lingering on the first-years.
"Are you sure you want to do this?"
"Yes," they replied in a unified breath.
Alexis looked at Jennifer.
"We interfere only as a last resort."
The forest erupted.
The squads separated.
Ten minutes later a loud BOOM echoed from the east, the signal that Jennifer and Slavic had initiated the bait. The sound tore through the silence of Hunter's Willow, followed quickly by the rhythmic, guttural roars of the Orc sentries being drawn away.
The temple guards and a General abandoned their posts to follow the noise.
Rush, Richard, and Patricia slipped through the west — a collapsed archway, the lintel stone fallen inward, leaving a gap wide enough for one at a time.
Rush first.
Patricia second.
Richard third.
The interior was dim, still, a cavern of stale air and ancient dust. The mana density pressing against Rush's awareness. Every footstep felt like a heartbeat against the cold stone.
They moved through the outer halls until they reached the center—a large chamber dominated by a broken throne.
A figure sat there — the Red King.
Twelve feet of red muscle and yellow-eyed malice. Its weapon stood beside its leg like a second body — crude, massive, built from compacted bone and dense metal.
One General standing beside the giant, the other drawn out by the chaos.
The mana pressure is stronger than anticipated, Beelzebub said. Use your daggers, boy.
I thought so. That's the only reason I came instead of Jennifer.
"So you are the reason for the chaos outside." the Red King rumbled in broken, guttural human tongue.
Its presence hit the room like a physical weight—not as suffocating as the Snow Lycan in the cave, but enough to make Richard and Patricia's mana flicker in a sudden, instinctive tremor.
The giant glanced at the Orc General.
It obeyed. Launched toward them.
Richard moved.
Mana surged into his palm — a compressed fireball forming as his sword came up in the other hand.
Rush and Patricia held position.
The clash lasted seconds.
The Orc General fell — burnt, headless.
The Red King stood.
"You are good. And I like the prey that puts up a fight."
It was sure they didn't stand a chance.
Rush looked at Richard, at Patricia and it in the completely yellow eyes of the C-Rank monster.
The Giant moved, the weapon coming up from the floor in one hand with the ease of something that weighed nothing to it. Its full height changed the chamber. The ceiling felt lower. The space between the throne and the doorway felt smaller
It was a blur of red muscle and mana. Rush moved with a speed that Richard and Patricia couldn't match, yet he was still a step behind the King's long reach. He became the pivot of the fight, parrying a strike meant for Richard, the vibration rattling his teeth.
Patricia came in from the left — her sword affinity responding without direction, the blade enhanced and precise. The Red King redirected toward her without breaking its momentum. She absorbed the shift and adjusted.
Richard from the right — his Flames stronger, sword bathed in mana.
They couldn't land a hit. The Red King moving with the accumulated instinct of decades — adjusting faster than they could fully commit, reading their patterns before they completed them.
The Red King almost got Richard — a backswing too fast, coming from an angle Richard hadn't tracked.
Rush stepped between them.
He redirected the weapon's arc by the minimum necessary margin — not stopping it, just altering its path enough. The impact caught him across the shoulder. He absorbed it and kept moving.
Richard looked at him.
Rush was already looking at the Red King.
Richard looked away.
Final resort, Rush thought.
"Nebelwand." he said. Low. For Patricia and Richard only.
Richard's flames came first.
Concentrated. Spiraling. Forcing the Red King to redirect its awareness toward the heat.
Patricia's water spell followed immediately — meeting the fire in the space between them and the Red King.
A thick, blinding veil of steam filled the chamber.
Rush moved.
He had tracked the Red King's position through Hellsehen — a Ryanheart shadow art that reads sound and movement in place of sight.
The Hartsteel dagger came out.
He crossed the distance in the smoke — silent, the absolute economy of movement his father had spent five years building into him — and drove the blade into the Red King's ankle.
Deep.
The giant roared, swinging blindly. The impact caught Rush and Richard, sending them across the floor. Richard slammed into the stone wall; Rush hit near the foot of the throne, his left side white-hot with pain.
The Red King moved toward him.
Slower now.
The ankle wound bleeding steadily. Its movement still powerful, still dangerous but with the scream of anguish.
Just slower.
The Red King loomed over Rush, weapon raised.
Rush didn't move. He looked up, his right hand gripping his left arm, his eyes glowing a sudden, predatory violet.
"It's over."
Patricia appeared from the smoke like a ghost. She had been moving since the smoke screen formed. She was mid-air, her sword glowing with every drop of mana she possessed.
The Red King began to turn.
Too slow, its vision blurry.
Her sword pierced through its back — through the heart — and appeared from its chest.
Blood — dark, mana-saturated, carrying the particular density of a pure core creature — covered Rush where he sat.
The weapon dropped.
The body followed. It hit the floor like stagnant water.
Silence reclaimed the temple.
Rush closed his eyes.
Exhaled once — slow, controlled, the release of everything he had been holding since the moment they entered the temple.
Then opened them.
Patricia landed beside the fallen body. Withdrew her blade, her breathing ragged. Looked at Rush.
Rush looked at the Red King.
Then at his own hands — the blood dark against his skin, the Hartsteel dagger still in his grip.
He set the dagger down carefully and got to his feet.
Alexis moved to Richard. A broken arm at minimum — visible in the angle of it.
"Are you alright?" He asked Richard, supporting him to get up.
"I think my arm's broken." He answered, his eyes were on the giant laying lifeless. Frustration crossed his face — and then cleared. He hadn't been the one to kill it.
"Let's move over there." Alexis said pointing where Rush was.
Patricia began the messy work of extracting the core. Minutes later, the distraction squad arrived, the room quickly filled.
The Red King's corpse lay at the foot of the throne, but its skin was turning a strange, unnatural blue.
Alexis noticed first. Then Rosetta.
She moved around the body carefully.
"Who made the final blow?"
"Patricia," Rush said.
"Did you use poison, Patricia?" Rosetta asked her.
Patricia looked up from the body.
"No. Just my sword. Why would you think that?"
Rosetta knelt beside the body, her fingers tracing the blue veins spreading from the ankle.Her gaze shifted to the cut. Then looked up.
"Who made this?"
Darius stood slightly apart from the group. He had not moved since entering the chamber. His eyes were on Rush.
"I did," Rush said, standing slowly. "And yes, it's poison. It was on my dagger."
He met Rosetta's eyes, his expression flat.
"The poison didn't kill the King. Patricia did. The hole in its chest proves it."
Something moved behind Rosetta's eyes. She looked at him the way she had looked at him in the corridor outside Elyse's office. Warm. Filing.
Darius said nothing.
But the quality of his attention shifted — intensified.
Rush didn't look at him.
Rosetta noted something in her record.
"Patricia Aetos – squad four. Red King of Hunter's Willow."
Richard, sitting against the wall with Amber beside him, looked at the ceiling and said nothing at all.
Few minutes later, Alexis moved.
"Ok everyone. Let's finish searching the other parts of the temple and move."
His eyes moved to Richard.
"We're getting you out of the forest."
He then turned toward Rosetta.
"I'll take him and his squad back. You take over mine."
"Ok." She replied, her eyes turned at Patricia, Ethan and Nia.
Alexis left with Richard and his squad.
Evening arrived as others left the temple.
The squads separated. Rush's squad followed a stream along a ridge — level ground, clear of undergrowth, cold water running beside them in the growing dark.
"We set up camp here."
Darius didn't wait for a response.
Slavic began taking things out of his pouch. Rush moved away.
Rush washed the blood from his face and hands at the stream's edge. His left side ached. He confirmed the grip was functional and stood.
Jennifer appeared beside him with a vial.
"Take it."
He took it without argument.
The potion's warmth spread outward from his core. The ache in his left side reduced. He handed the empty vial back.
Jennifer looked at the stream.
"Your eyes look different."
Rush looked at her.
"What? How so?"
Her eyes met his.
"They're changing. A shade of violet."
"It must be the light."
She looked at the stream for a moment.
"Of course."
She walked back toward the campsite.
She's not convinced, boy, Beelzebub's voice surfaced in his head. She reads you better than you think.
I know. I know.
He thought for a second and then —
Are my eyes truly changing?
Yes, but it's for better. Our synchronization —
It's getting better.
Yes.
Using poison was a good idea.
It was the only plan where you would've survived.
I think I knew the moment I saw that monster.
"Rush, get over here if you're done." Slavic called.
Rush looked at him and nodded.
Night came. The camp was set up.
The fire caught. They ate. Slavic narrated the distraction team's engagement with enthusiasm and creative license. Jennifer corrected him. Darius contributed once — dry, warm, entirely convincing.
Laughter filled the camp for a while.
Rush watched the fire and let the warmth settle.
The night grew colder.
Guard shifts were agreed. Darius insisted on first — "You all need the rest more than I do" — and his voice was easy and warm.
Rush lay down.
Closed his eyes.
Didn't sleep.
He listened to Slavic's breathing deepen. Tracked Jennifer's until it smoothed. Lay still and thought about the day — the battle, the time he was having with his friends and the cold that had been building since the fire went down
Time passed.
"Wake up."
Beelzebub's voice — sharp, immediate, carrying none of its usual measured quality.
"Now, child."
Rush opened his eyes.
The campfire — reduced to coals, dim amber light barely reaching the tent edges.
The cold of the night, now frost — thick, covering the ground in a pale creeping sheet that hadn't been there when he lay down.
And Darius.
Lying on the white forest floor three feet from the dead coals. Face down. Still.
His chest wasn't moving.