The day passed quietly.

Teclos spent most of it inside the Frosted Ram, seated in his usual corner with a cup of tea in front of him, saying little and bothering no one. It was a rare pause, one he had allowed himself after the mercenaries’ failure. They had stirred the wyvern, and even if they had all frozen to death for their stupidity, the disturbance they caused meant that it would be alert for intruders for a few days.

So Teclos waited.

Fred didn’t ask any questions, and Selma moved around the tavern with her usual energy, though she kept glancing at him every now and then, wondering how she could crack that unreadable face. Bruno had hovered nearby more than once, probably wanting to speak to Teclos, but one look from Fred always sent him back to work.

The day passed without much happening.

The next day, though...

The tavern door slammed open so hard it rattled the hinges, and a hunter stumbled inside, half-covered in snow. One of his sleeves was torn open and stained with blood. Every conversation in the tavern died at once.

Fred straightened behind the bar. "What happened?"

The hunter braced himself on a table and dragged in a deep breath.

"Bad news," he said. "I found them. Also, can I get a mug of ale?"

He sat down, and Selma brought him a mug of ale and some bandages.

"The mercenaries," he continued. "Five frozen figures near the lower slopes of the mountain. One of them was the captain we saw the day before."

The tavern erupted in noise.

Selma covered her mouth. Bruno swore under his breath. Several villagers started speaking over each other at once, asking questions, cursing, denying it, hoping it was some mistake.

But the hunter wasn’t done.

"There’s more," he said, forcing the room quiet again. "Beast activity’s rising. And I mean by a lot. I barely made it back. Ran into two blizzard bears, then a frost lynx on the return. If I didn’t have wind mana, I’d be dead already. They were all heading toward our village. I already notified the chief."

His face tightened.

Teclos looked up for the first time. He had been leisurely sipping his tea, listening without much interest. But when the hunter mentioned the beasts, a faint frown touched his face.

The hunter kept going after gulping the ale down in one go.

"Faahh. The chief said to brace for an attack from the beast stampede, so all able-bodied men should go up the ramps and defend."

A hush fell over the tavern.

Outside, the village was already starting to stir with alarm.

Teclos sat in silence for a moment. It seemed like the wyvern was planning on wiping out the humans that had disturbed its peace.

Still, Teclos found it strange that it was driving a horde toward the humans just because they had come close to it. Those humans had even died miserably without doing anything to it, so this kind of reaction was a bit much.

He figured that it was protecting something.

An egg, most likely. Or some other valuable thing.

Whatever the case, Teclos was grateful, as it had just made a huge mistake.

He drank all of his tea in one go and rose from his chair.

This movement alone drew every eye in the tavern, and their expressions turned hopeful. He simply put the cup down on the table and turned toward the stairs, yet the people misunderstood it and thought that he would defend them.

Fred could not help himself and asked.

"You’re going to fight?"

Teclos paused only for a moment.

"It seems," he said calmly, "the wyvern is sending food my way. It would be rude to refuse."

Then he walked upstairs.

The villagers’ fear had nothing to do with him. If the village burned, that was their fate. If the beasts tore through their defenses, that was not his concern. He owed them nothing.

The villagers still looked upon him favorably, misunderstanding his intent.

But like he said, he shouldn’t waste this golden opportunity to bring the wyvern down earlier than planned. A thin smile touched his lips.

He opened his dark dimension and armed himself quickly.

His dark grey armor was fastened piece by piece into place. After that came his tattered cloak, falling over his shoulders and settling against his back. His sword was secured on his belt at his side, along with the knives.

After that, he checked the contents of his dark dimension one last time. The blood orb waited there, heavy and dense with the power he had stored over the week for a day like this.

Teclos felt its presence, then nodded faintly. Everything was in order, and he was ready to head out.

Meanwhile, below in the village, panic was already spreading.

Men shouted in the street. Hunters and the few guards the village could muster rushed toward the outer defenses with bows, spears, and pale faces. Mothers called for their children, and doors slammed shut one after another.

Fred had somehow found himself a set of leather armor. More suspiciously, he also had two spare sets that fit Bruno and Selma far too well.

They both tried to question him.

Fred ignored them and shoved a spear and bow into each of their hands.

Upstairs, Teclos decided not to bother walking out this time. If teleporting raised suspicion, then so be it.

Darkness spread across the floor of his room, and his body sank into it without a sound. A moment later, he stepped out from a patch of shadow near the edge of the village, where the houses ended and the white forest began.

Cold wind ran through his hair as he looked ahead and smiled.

The beasts were coming.

An entire wave of them was crashing through the forest and ignoring each other, even though some of them had fought for territory just yesterday—dire wolves, blizzard bears, blue-horned lizards, kobolds, lynxes, trolls, and worse things that lived deeper in the mountains. Their snarls and roars mixed into one ugly chorus as branches snapped beneath their charge.

They were working together, and for ordinary people, it would have been terrifying.

But for Teclos, it was beautiful.

His smile widened, and for the first time in days, genuine delight flickered across his face.

He took one step forward and vanished, reappearing among the charging horde of monsters like death itself had descended upon them.

Without any warning or hesitation, darkness exploded across the ground.

It spread in all directions, swallowing the whole forest until every beast on the battlefield was inside the deadly dark mana. From that darkness, razor-sharp black blades emerged, slashing and carving everything in their path. They shredded through flesh and bone like spinning saws.

Multiple rows of beasts died instantly.

Bodies split apart mid-charge. Heads flew. Limbs were torn free. Blood sprayed through the air, only to be dragged toward Teclos by his new crimson mana and fed straight into his mouth.

A blizzard bear weathered the first wave and charged through the black field, roaring.

Dark hands shot up from below, seized its head, and slammed it face-first into the frozen ground. More hands followed, pinning it down while the darkness beneath it ground through its body piece by piece until its roar died down and transformed into a wet, gargling shriek of horror and fear before it died.

Teclos moved freely between the shadows.

He vanished from one spot and appeared from another, his sword flashing once, twice, three times in the blink of an eye. A frost lynx lost its head before it even realized he was beside it. The wolves were cut apart in a single sweeping arc of his blade.

An ice boar lunged at him next.

Teclos caught it mid-charge by the tusks, twisted hard, and ripped them straight from its mouth. Then he drove the broken tusks back into the beast’s skull and let it collapse at his feet.

Everywhere he appeared, death followed. Not a single drop of blood was wasted, and each one nourished him with even more power as he greedily drank everything.

Mana and blood mixed together in a violent storm around his body, crimson and black flowing into him so fast even he almost staggered from the sudden rush of power.

The last incomplete circle within him trembled as it was filled, nourished by the slaughter, by the feast, by the mountain of life he was consuming in mere moments.

His fifth Mind circle.

The last missing piece he needed to hunt that wyvern.

The power surging through him became almost too much to contain. Every circle inside of him spun faster and faster, and the three cores—Mind, Heart, and Core—began to resonate with each other.

A new, stronger force began blooming inside of him.

The beasts felt it too.

Those that had survived the opening slaughter so far hesitated. Terror was gnawing at them as they stared at a monster worse than even the icy king on top of the mountain.

Most of them realized that they had stumbled into the jaws of another tyrant.

Teclos laughed.

It was almost swallowed by the sounds of battle, but it was there—unhinged, delighted that the plan was working so far. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

He disappeared from his spot again.

A whole cluster of kobolds leaped at him, only to be intercepted by a wave of darkness that sliced them apart into small pieces. He stepped through the spray of blood and sucked it from the air before it even touched the ground. A blizzard bear tried to slam both of its paws down on him; he casually blocked it with one hand, split its chest open with his sword, and dark spikes burst through its back.

The black field under his control widened.

Shadow slashes screamed through it again and again. Dark hands pinned down the sturdier beasts, holding them in place while the ground beneath them consumed them slowly. Those too weak to resist were simply butchered. Those strong enough to survive a moment longer only died in more pain.

The entire battlefield became a slaughterhouse.

And through it all, Teclos fed.

High above, the wyvern finally noticed.

Its screech rolled down from the mountain, sharp and furious. It had sensed the beasts dying too quickly, their lives vanishing in waves, and now it took to the skies in a rush.

It was coming.

Teclos sensed it, but did not care.

By the time the wyvern descended through the clouds, most of the horde was already dead. The rest were in pieces or shriveled corpses, drained dry by blood magic and darkness alike.

Teclos stood in the middle of the blackened field, wrapped in a cocoon of darkness pulsing with power. The last of the mana he had gathered was surging through him, his newly completed fifteenth circle settling into place.

The wyvern screeched again and folded its wings, preparing to strike the cocoon before whatever stood inside of it could emerge.

But it was too late.

The cocoon pulsed for the final time.

And then it exploded.

A massive black blast tore outward, mixed with a curtain of darkness so dense it momentarily blinded even the wyvern. The shockwave slammed into it mid-descent and forced it back through the air, while the remaining beasts in the vicinity were ripped apart where they stood.

The darkness slowly dissipated and peeled away.

Showing off Teclos with his newfound power.

His whole presence had changed with all three cores aligned. The circles inside of his body resonated clearly and amplified his power severalfold.

Teclos looked at the wyvern and reached into his dark dimension, pulling out the blood orb.

It hovered above his palm for only a heartbeat before he absorbed it.

The effect was instant.

Pitch-black wings burst from his back, unfurling behind him in a spray of darkness and blood-tinted mana. They spread wide in the cold air, unnatural and majestic, making him look less like a man and more like some dark angel born from a battlefield.

Across from him, the wyvern hovered in the sky. It didn’t rush in like before, as it was wary now. That vampire was almost as strong as her.

Teclos looked up at it and smiled as an equal.

"Too late, wyvern... though it’s a shame your heart will go to that bastard."

The hunt could finally begin.