"Fragile, indeed," I said, the words cutting through the stunned silence of the Impact Sector like a cold blade.
The veterans stared. Some with raw shock, others with a burgeoning curiosity that bordered on respect. I didn't wait for their applause or their apologies. I simply smiled, a small, mocking curve of the lips, and shoved my hands into my pockets. I walked past their motionless bodies, the rhythmic click of my boots the only sound in the hall.
Behind me, the vacuum of silence broke into a roar of hushed, frantic whispers.
"No way… this… this is impossible," a Vanguard random elite whispered, kneeling to run his fingers through the metallic sand. "This alloy is rated to withstand a direct hit from a Tier-8 skilled elite master. To turn it into dust without even a shockwave... that's not strength. That's Captain-level molecular precision."
"Wait, isn't that the Tier-1 newbie from the entrance?" a woman asked, her voice trembling with a mix of fear and sudden respect.
"Impossible! Did he falsify his rank? Is he some kind of Tier-8 hidden elite sent to test us?"
"We can only confirm his strength after the first mission," another replied, eyes narrowing as they watched me disappear down the hall. "We'll wait until then."
-----
The briefing room was a sanctuary of cold, clinical death. Carved from the heart of the Spire out of mana-dampening obsidian, the air here was heavy, filtered to a purity that made every breath feel like a sharp intake of ozone. There were no chairs, this was a room for those who lived on their feet, for warriors who knew that sitting down was the first step toward dying.
Monitors lined the walls, a flickering gallery of war. They displayed the real-time status of various Vanguard squads currently deployed in the uncharted zones. Many were blinking a rhythmic, haunting red signalling squads who were currently being systematically wiped out by things that shouldn't exist.
Kageno leaned against a massive obsidian pillar, his shadow bleeding into the dark stone like an ink stain. He was brooding, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes fixed on the empty space in the center of the room where Sherach would inevitably appear. Kael stood like a statue of focus, his fingers twitching as he mentally categorized the data streams. Beside him, Ria and Sinata stood close together. Their playful academy personas were gone, replaced by a grim, wide-eyed realization of the scale of the world they had just entered.
Suddenly, the air rippled. There was no sound of a door opening, no flash of light, and no fluctuation in mana. One moment the central table was empty, and the next, Sherach Leon was sitting cross-legged on the edge of the holographic map, casually tossing a small green apple into the air.
"You're late," Kageno rumbled, his shadow flickering with irritation.
"Actually, I've been here for three minutes," Sherach chirped, catching the apple and taking a loud, crisp bite. He stared at us, his fluffy yellow earrings swaying with his movements. "I was just admiring how serious you all look. Relax! You'll get wrinkles before the mission even starts."
He tapped a finger on the obsidian table, and the holographic map zoomed in on a jagged, lightning-scarred valley surrounded by a forest that looked like a tangled mass of veins.
"Alright, kids. Playtime is over," his voice dropped an octave, the carefree vibe replaced by something sharp, cold, and authoritative. "Welcome to your first real nightmare: The Enchanted Wilderness."
"Umm… what do you mean by enchanted?" Ria asked, her voice wavering. "Is it a haunted forest?" Sinata added, her hand gripping the hilt of her blade.
Sherach sighed and gave a small, sad smile. He pointed to a cluster of red flickers on the map which portrayed the graveyard of the Vanguardians sent before us. "It's enchanted because the mana there is sentient. It mutates almost everything it touches. The trees don't just grow, they hunt. The animals don't just eat, they evolve into demons. It's a place where the laws of biology have been rewritten by high-density mana radiation."
He looked at us, his eyes crinkling. "Don't worry. Do not be afraid. If you face threats that are above your power, I will be there for you."
"I don't need help from an arrogant old geezer," Kageno replied coldly.
"Well… that was harsh," Sherach laughed, springing to his feet. "But seriously, be careful. I've received the final reports from the previous elites. They were killed before their SOS messages could even fully register. Just let me know when you're in a difficult situation."
I simply gave a smile and stepped forward. "I never knew you were the worried type, Sherach. Your free-care attitude is slipping."
"That's the duty of a good captain, Oliver," he said, turning to leave. This time, he didn't vanish. He walked away with a slow, deliberate stride, his retreating back looking surprisingly heavy.
I looked at the group. Kael was already calculating routes.while.Ria and Sinata were pale but determined. "Alright guys, let's prepare to leave. Kageno? We're going to be needing your spatial artifact storage."
"Oliver Veyron, stop playing bossy," he snapped. "I don't take orders over my own dimensional pocket."
"I know," I replied calmly. "But one can never determine how many days a mission in the wilderness will take. We need to be efficient."
"Tsk. Use it if you want to," he muttered, yielding the artifact with a grumble about cluttering his space.
-----
We stood before the Vanguard Mission Portal, a swirling vortex of cerulean energy that hummed with a low-frequency vibration. We stepped in, and for a heartbeat, the world became a blur of white noise and gravity-defying pressure.
Then, the portal spat us out.
The transition was violent. We hit the ground hard, the air suddenly thick with the cloying scent of rotting vegetation and metallic ozone. As the portal mist cleared, the enchanted wilderness revealed itself.
It was a place of twisted beauty and absolute horror. Huge, gnarled trees with bark like weeping human skin loomed over us, their branches tangled like the fingers of a drowning man. The sky above was a bruised purple, blocked out by a canopy of leaves that pulsed with a faint, sickly green light.
But it was what lay on the forest floor that stopped our breath.
Scattered across the damp, black soil were the remains of the previous Vanguard squad. It was a butchery. We found one man pinned to a tree by a jagged wooden spike that had grown through his chest. His face was frozen in a mask of eternal agony. Another lay nearby, his eyes wide and leaking red tears. His internal organs had likely liquefied before he could even scream.
Further off, a woman's body was charred to a blackened husk. The ground around her had been fused into jagged glass, as if she had been the epicenter of a localized nuclear explosion.
Ria and Sinata immediately turned away, the sound of their retching echoing through the silent, oppressive forest. Even Kael's face went a ghostly shade of white, his analytical mind struggling to process the sheer brutality of the scene. Kageno and I remained still, though I felt my heart thumping against my ribs.
A faint, wet rasping sound came from my left. I rushed over to a fallen elite whose lower body was buried under a pile of mutated vines. He was barely clinging to life, his breath coming in ragged, bloody stutters.
"You… you made a mistake coming here," he wheezed, his eyes glazed with the coming dark. He gripped my sleeve with a strength born of pure terror. "You're all going to die… turn back… protect your souls… you're in trouble if you stay here… an… y… lon… longer…"
His hand went limp. His last breath was a rattling sigh of despair as his head lolled to the side.
Ria looked at me, her eyes brimming with tears. "Oliver… he's right. Look at them. If Tier-7 and Tier-8 veterans died like this, what chance do we have?"
I stood up, my gaze hardening as I looked at the dark canopy above. I couldn't let them break. Not now.
"Listen to me!" I commanded, my voice projecting a calm, resonant frequency that seemed to cut through the oppressive atmosphere. "Fear is a natural reaction. It tells you that you are alive. But for a Vanguard, fear is a tool, not a cage. These people didn't die because they were weak but because they were first. They've given us the greatest gift a warrior can receive which is the knowledge of what we are facing."
I stepped toward Ria and Sinata, placing a steadying hand on their shoulders. "A warrior doesn't feel fear because they are brave, they feel it and they move anyway. If we turn back, we aren't just failing a mission, we are letting the monsters win without a fight. Steel your hearts. We honor the fallen by finishing what they started. We are Vanguardian elites and warriors who strive to move forward."
The girls took a shaky breath, the terror in their eyes replaced by a fragile, flickering determination.
Kageno walked up beside me, his gaze scanning the shadows between the weeping trees. "Nice speech, Veyron. But words won't kill whatever did this." He looked at the path where the charred ground led deeper into the valley. "We should split up into pairs. We need to cover more ground and investigate the source of that blast. If you find anything disturbing, control us through telepathy and report back immediately. Don't try to be a hero." He said and sprinted up a tree in a blurry motions. I stared back at the others who gave me a simple nod and also departed in separate directions while I prepared to take the straight part setting into the unknown.