๐ฅ[๐๐ผ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ผ๐๐! ๐ฎ๐ฌ ๐พ๐๐๐ฅ๐ฉ๐๐ง๐จ ๐ฉ๐ค๐๐๐ฎ!]๐ฅ
๐๐ ๐๐ง๐ #๐ญ ๐๐ฃ๐ ๐ฌ๐ ๐๐ง๐ ๐ฃ๐ค๐ฉ ๐จ๐ฉ๐ค๐ฅ๐ฅ๐๐ฃ๐! ๐๐ ๐ฎ๐ค๐ช ๐ฌ๐๐ฃ๐ฉ ๐ข๐ค๐ง๐, ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ฃ๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐! ๐๐๐ฉ'๐จ ๐จ๐๐ค๐ฌ ๐๐๐๐ฃ๐ค๐ซ๐๐ก ๐ฌ๐๐ค ๐๐จ ๐ฉ๐๐ ๐ง๐๐๐ก ๐๐ค๐ซ๐๐ง๐๐๐๐ฃ! โ๏ธ
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Leonardo had only been walking for twenty minutes, but the Elinor Woods had already begun to play tricks on his senses. Every snapping twig sounded like a bone breaking; every rustle of the wind felt like a cold hand brushing against his neck. He kept his hand on the hilt of the Sting, his eyes darting between the massive, moss-covered trunks.
He was so focused on the darkness ahead that he didn't notice the silence behind him.
The air didn't shift. There was no sound of a footstep on the dry leaves. But suddenly, a heavy hand dropped onto Leonardo's shoulder.
The boy let out a sharp gasp, spinning around and half-drawing the gray dagger in a single, panicked motion. He stumbled back, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
Standing there, leaning casually against a gnarled oak as if he had been part of the bark all along, was his grandfather. Arthur didn't look like the weary old man from the study. In the dappled green light of the forest, he looked like a predator that had forgotten how to age.
"You're dead, Leo," Arthur said calmly, his eyes unreadable. "If I were a Lesser Stalker, your throat would be open before you even realized the wind had stopped blowing."
Leonardo exhaled, a cloud of white vapor escaping his lips in the cooling air. He sheathed the dagger, his hands still trembling slightly. "Grandpa! You nearly gave me a heart attack. I thought you were staying at the manor."
"The manor is for old men who have given up," Arthur replied, stepping into the small clearing. "The woods are for those who still want to breathe. You walked through the gate like a soldier, but you're moving like a tourist. Your mind is still back in the city, thinking about the festivals and the noise."
Leonardo looked down at his boots, feeling the sting of the critique. "It's different out here. It's... too much. Everything feels like a threat."
"Good," Arthur said, though his voice remained stern. "Fear is the only thing that keeps a Level 1 alive. But fear without focus is just a loud way to die."
Leonardo sighed, his shoulders slumping. "Grandpa, please! I've been practicing my forms for weeks. I want to see people, visit the cities... see Albion beyond the walls! Why do we have to come to these boring, suffocating places over and over?"
"The world out there is for those who are ready, Leonardo," the Old Man replied, his voice firm as he surveyed the dense thicket. "Polishing your skills is the only guarantee that you will return alive. A city is just a collection of walls; the wild is where you learn what those walls are actually keeping out."
"But Aunt Ecatrice said I'm already strong!" Leonardo argued, kicking a loose stone into the ferns.
"That witch calls anyone strong if they survive the curses she uses as tests," the Old Man smiled faintly, though his eyes remained sharp. "She wants lab rats in the real world, not warriors. She values results; I value survival."
"Being her lab rat seems less repetitive than this training..." the boy grumbled, crossing his arms.
The Old Man stopped walking and turned to face his grandson. The playful air between them vanished, replaced by a sudden, heavy authority. "Want a deal? If we camp up there, on the ridge, and you do well with tonight's lesson, you'll get two days in Albion. But it will be your annual vacation in advance. No books, no pranks, just the city."
"Yay!" Leonardo's fatigue seemed to evaporate for a second, his eyes lighting up at the prospect of freedom.
"Don't get excited yet. If you fail, the punishment will be doubled. Sit down."
With a casual flick of his wrist, the Old Man didn't just light a fire. He reached into the spatial fabric of the world. Two luxury armchairs, upholstered in deep crimson velvet, materialized in the middle of the packed earth, looking utterly absurd against the backdrop of rotting logs and thorns. Between them, white and frigid flames sprouted from the bare ground, illuminating the twilight with a ghostly glow that provided light but no warmth.
"Now, the theory," said the grandfather. His voice shifted, losing its familial warmth and turning into a cold, analytical drone that echoed off the trees. "Forget that I am your grandfather. For the next hour, I am a Hunter. Imagine that something is approaching us right now. Something that is not human."
Leonardo grew alert, his hand instinctively hovering near the Sting. He looked into the deepening dark of the Elinor Woods, his pulse quickening.
Leonardo shifted in the velvet chair, the contrast between the plush fabric and the jagged roots beneath him making the situation feel like a fever dream. The white, cold fire cast long, flickering shadows that danced against the ancient bark of the trees.
"Can you hear it? Can you see it?" The Hunter questioned, his eyes fixed on Leonardo with a piercing intensity that seemed to peel back the boy's skin.
Leonardo strained his ears. He heard the distant groan of a shifting branch and the dry skitter of an insect, but nothing that sounded like a predator. "No..."
"Then how do you defend yourself against what you do not perceive?"
Leonardo gripped the armrests of the chair, his knuckles turning white. "I... I can't."
"Exactly. Therefore, never define something before you know it. The unknown is a potential enemy. Anything that can hurt you is a threat. Do you understand?"
Leonardo thought for a moment, the ghostly light of the white flames reflecting in his gray eyes. He thought about the "Inept" label the Academy had given him and the "Supreme" label his grandfather whispered. He thought about how the world saw him versus what he actually was.
"I understand the logic of safety, Grandpa," Leonardo said, his voice gaining a bit of weight. "But in these woods, even a cub is stronger than I am. If I treat everything as a threat, I'll be devoured simply because I can't fight everyone. Survival here requires more than fear; it requires camouflage..."
Arthur's eyebrows shot up. A genuine smile, rare and unfiltered, broke across his weathered face. He looked at Leonardo as if seeing him clearly for the first time in years.
"That is why the academy is useless," the Old Man said, his voice filled with a grim satisfaction. "There, logic is absolute. They teach you to measure Tiers and calculate mana ratios. But here, a gust of wind topples your knowledge if you are not adaptable. You understand that power isn't just about the strength of your strike; it's about the space you occupy in the world."
He stood up, the luxury chairs and the white fire vanishing as abruptly as they had appeared, plunging the clearing back into the oppressive, natural gloom of the Elinor.
"The lesson is over, Leo. Now, the test begins."
Arthur stood in the center of the darkening clearing, the last of the white fire's light reflecting in his eyes before it blinked out of existence. The transition back to the natural gloom of the Elinor was jarring; the sounds of the forestโthe clicking of unseen carapaces and the heavy rustle of branchesโseemed to amplify in the sudden dark.
"You've understood the first truth, Leo," Arthur said, his voice now a mere whisper that blended with the wind. "The Academy teaches you to be a hammer. I am teaching you to be the air. A hammer can be broken by a harder stone, but the air... you cannot break what you cannot find."
He reached out and adjusted the strap of Leonardo's tunic one last time. It was a small, grounding gesture of a grandfather, but his eyes were already distant, scanning the canopy for threats that Leonardo couldn't even imagine.
"Remember the deal," Arthur reminded him. "Survive the night, find your rhythm, and the city is yours for two days. Fail, and you'll be scrubbing Ecatrice's cauldrons until your fingernails fall off."
"I won't fail," Leonardo said, his hand tightening around the hilt of the Sting. The cold metal felt like a part of his own skeleton now.
"Don't hunt the beast, Leo. Survive, that's winning," Arthur said.
Then, without a flash of light or a gust of wind, the Old Man simply wasn't there anymore. He didn't walk away; he didn't leap into the trees. He vanished as if he had never been standing there at all, leaving only a slight indentation in the damp moss where his boots had been.
Leonardo stood alone in the center of the Elinor. The temperature had dropped significantly, and a low, gray mist was beginning to crawl along the forest floor, swirling around his ankles like ghostly fingers. For the first time in his life, there was no wall between him and the unknown. No guards, no grandfather, no Ecatrice.
He closed his eyes and took a breath, feeling the raw, jagged mana of the woods scratching at his throat. He didn't reach for the Void State immediately; he waited, listening, letting the "fear" his grandfather spoke of sharpen his senses into a fine, needle-like point.
"Camouflage," Leonardo whispered to himself.
He stepped off the small patch of packed earth and into the thick, thorny undergrowth, moving toward the Western Ridge. He wasn't walking anymore; he was drifting, searching for the first scent of the rot that marked his first real prey.
The ascent to the Western Ridge was a grueling climb through a vertical graveyard of ancient, fallen timber. Leonardo's lungs burned with the thin, mana-heavy air of the higher elevation. Every time he grabbed a handhold, the bark felt like cold, wet skin, and the silence of the forest seemed to thicken, pressing against his eardrums until he could hear the frantic rhythm of his own pulse.
He reached the crest of the ridge just as the last sliver of the sun vanished behind the jagged peaks of the horizon. Below him, the Elinor Woods stretched out like a sea of shifting obsidian. But it was the smell that stopped him mid-breath.
It wasn't the clean, sharp scent of pine or the damp musk of earth. It was a sweet, cloying aromaโlike overripe fruit left to rot in a cellar.
The scent of the rot, Leonardo realized, his stomach doing a slow, cold flip.
He sank into a crouch, pressing his back against a lichen-covered boulder. He didn't just activate the Void State; he surrendered to it. He let the boundaries of his body blur into the stone and the mist. His gray eyes scanned the narrow plateau of the ridge, and there, near a cluster of shattered white rocks, he saw it.
A trail of dark, viscous fluid was smeared across the stones. It wasn't bloodโit was too thick, almost like tar, and it seemed to shimmer with a faint, sickly violet light in the twilight. Beside the smear was a single footprint. It wasn't a paw or a hoof; it looked like a hand with too many joints, the claws having dug deep enough into the rock to leave jagged white scars.
Leonardo's left eye throbbed with a sudden, sharp heat. The "Monster Soul" fragment within him was reacting, not with fear, but with a predatory recognition.
He looked further down the trail, where the mist was densest. A low, guttural clicking sound echoed through the treesโthe sound of a thousand dry needles snapping at once. Something was moving down there, something that didn't belong to the natural Tiers of the forest.
The deal was simple: survive the night. But as Leonardo looked at the black smear on the rocks, he knew the Elinor wasn't going to let him just sit and wait for morning. The unknown was no longer a theory; it was a shadow with claws, and it was already hunting him.
He drew the Sting. The matte-gray blade felt impossibly cold in the night air, its silver etchings pulsing with a dull, expectant light.
"Camouflage isn't enough," Leonardo whispered, his breath hitching as a second, louder click sounded from right behind his boulder. "I need to erase my existence."