Riven sank to his knees, legs folding beneath him as his head drooped forward. He glanced around at the once-pristine brown tiles—now smeared with streaks of bright red."That… was… risky," he whispered between heaving breaths.
The sun blazed overhead, its rays cutting through the sky like molten spears. He shut his eyes—partly from exhaustion, partly to shield them from the glare. The clash of steel still echoed around him, sharp and chaotic, carried by the wind like a symphony of violence. Nothing about the battle had quieted. Not yet.
With effort, Riven forced his eyes open again, blinking rapidly as the light sharpened into focus. He lifted his gaze, finally taking in the full view below.
To the left, a thick forest stretched outward, dense and dark, the canopy rolling on for miles until it eventually rose into distant hills and jagged mountain shapes. To the far right, another forest spread out—sparser, with thinner trees and shorter growth—its uneven treeline giving way to what he realized was the beginning of the city wall, barely visible through the drifting haze of dust and smoke.
A quiet, startled thought crossed his mind.
We're actually outside the city…?
He assumed it was a possibility, but he hadn't truly believed it. The realization sent a cold twist through his stomach. If Roman and Sylvia hadn't come all this way to find him… if he had been left out here alone…
There would have been almost no chance of making it back home alive.
For a brief moment—just a breath amidst the chaos—Riven felt a surge of fierce, wordless gratitude toward the two of them.
He braced to rise, but then—pressure. A sudden weight in his soul space. Foreign, insistent.
Alarmed, Riven closed his eyes and dove inward, into his soul space.
His awareness slipped into the realm of his soul. As his astral form drifted closer to the core of his being, unease twisted in his chest. He'd been pushing his mana to the edge for a week straight—there were plenty of things that could've gone wrong.
A soft pink and amber light pulsed around him as his two cores came into view. They glowed brighter than he remembered—fuller, denser—despite him only having broken into Rank 1 the day before.
His expression darkened as realization struck. His face twisted, lips curling in revulsion.
That's the essence from the archers… from killing them.
The understanding hit like a hammer. Hands stained red. Lives severed. The brief screams—and the awful, final quiet that followed.
His astral body trembled, a cold ripple passing through it. He hadn't meant to return to his body yet, but his mind recoiled—and the next blink brought him back to the sun-baked tiles beneath him. His left hand was shaking uncontrollably, as if it had been thrust into a blizzard and left bare to the cold. He tried to steady it, but the tremor only worsened.
A memory surfaced—one of his father's warnings.That killing humans who had awakened—those above Rank 0—also produced essence. Not the raw, unprocessed kind found in beasts, but something disturbingly compatible with a human body… because it had already been refined and held by people just like him. A terrible, natural by-product of taking their lives.
His instructors had lectured about it. His father had cautioned him even more sternly.The only "mercy" in it all was that awakened humans were rare—far rarer than beasts. Encounters like this weren't supposed to happen often.
But today, it had.By his hand.
He drew in a slow, uneven breath. His thoughts drifted again—this time to the stories his father used to tell. Tales of adventure, of desperate battles, of the choices hunters were forced to make. They'd always sounded thrilling to a younger Riven.
Now… he finally understood the weight behind them.The exhaustion. The grief. The unspoken cost of surviving.
His trembling hand curled into a fist—not from theatrics or overwhelming sobs, but from a small, sharp ache building in his chest. A sting behind his eyes, subtle but real—just enough to betray the truth he was trying so hard to process.
Not monsters.Not beasts.Humans.
And he had been the one to end them.
Riven remained still, silent and immobile for several long minutes. The only thing that tore him from his stupor was a sharp yell from below.
"Riven!"
Blinking away the newly formed tears, he jerked his head left and tilted it down. Sylvia stood beneath him, staring up with her rapier in hand, its blade slick with dark red, frostbitten blood. Dozens of corpses lay at her feet, each covered in varying amounts of frost, their flesh pale and cracked like shattered porcelain. The blood pooling around them had thickened into a gruesome slurry—ice, bone, and viscera blending together into a twisted frozen mosaic.
Behind her loomed the elemental beast. It stood motionless, hands gripping its massive sword like a ceremonial knight. The blade was still plunged into the ground, a totem of violence. Frost steamed gently from the frozen blade, but what seized Riven's gaze was the color—the sword, once bluish-white, now gleamed a vivid, glassy red, as though it had absorbed the blood it spilled and frozen it into a flawless crimson sculpture.
His face tightened. The sight should have brought him comfort—proof that Sylvia was holding her ground—but instead, a dull throb of nausea crawled through his gut. The mounting weight of death, the stink of blood and iron, the sound of distant screams and shattering magic… it all churned inside his skull until the world tilted slightly.
Sylvia didn't speak, didn't move. Just stood there, silently expecting a response. Whether she had noticed his shaken expression or not, she didn't show it. Her mask gave nothing away, and her posture was carved from stone.
Mustering his breath, Riven forced out a reply. "I took care of them!"
Sylvia gave a curt nod and turned, her cloak fluttering behind her as she moved. Riven followed her gaze.
Roman.
The man was locked in a chaotic melee—fighting the beast, the noble, and now at least a dozen hooded figures closing in from every angle. Riven's brows shot up, and his hand curled into a tight fist.
Roman's robe had been torn to shreds. Giant sections were missing, revealing bandage-wrapped flesh beneath. Nearly every strip was stained deep red, wounds reopening, blood soaking through in fresh blooms. He looked like he'd clawed his way out of a battlefield grave.
Riven's expression darkened, and he slammed his fist down, cracking the tile beneath.
Damn it. He came here without even being fully healed.
He inhaled deeply, tasting the dry, iron-tinged air. No time to hesitate.
His thoughts snapped to his right arm-still as immobile as ever. With a sigh, he turned his focus to his mana. A quick check confirmed it was resting around fifty percent—regenerated partially by the essence he'd absorbed earlier. He hadn't thought it possible to recover mana from killing humans.
He shoved the thought away.
No time.
He gritted his teeth and retightened the ragged sling over his right shoulder. He activated Blink, targeting a patch of unfrozen grass. His body shimmered—then reappeared six feet above the intended spot. He dropped like a stone, tucking into a roll the instant he hit the ground. The grass was damp and icy, cold slapping against his skin as he tumbled.
Gotta save as much mana as possible, he thought, gritting his teeth.
Then he was up and running—each step bringing him closer to Roman.
Getting closer, Riven watched as Sylvia carved through two of the assailants flanking Roman. But something was off. Unlike the others they'd fought before, these two didn't stay down. They staggered back to their feet, retreating just out of range while two more hooded figures took their place, keeping up the relentless, suffocating pressure.
His eyes scanned the battlefield, searching for Sylvia's elemental beast.Nothing. His chest tightened.
Where was it? The hulking ice knight was impossible to miss—ten feet tall, plated in frost, loud with every move. It should've stood out even from this distance.
Riven frowned and swept his gaze across the chaos again.Then—just at the edge of his vision—he caught it.
Not the knight… but a five-foot-tall elongated hexagonal structure of solid ice, faintly tinted red. Inside, buried behind those frosted layers, he could just make out a fist-sized dark blue orb.
"Oh no…" he murmured.
It wasn't gone.It had run out of mana.
That hexagonal pillar was its resting form—the last-ditch defensive state elementals entered when their energy reserves hit zero. It must have burned the final bits of mana reinforcing itself, using everything left to shield its core.
Which meant only one thing:One of their trump cards was now out of the fight.
"Not good," he breathed.
Riven clenched his jaw, letting his amber mana surge through his veins. It pulsed beneath his skin like fire in his bloodstream, leaving a faint tingling heat as it circulated. He reserved the pink mana, treating it like loaded ammunition—critical for his Blinks.
Three more assailants broke from the group hounding Roman and veered toward Sylvia—flanking her from the sides while she remained locked in combat at the front. They moved with disturbing coordination, like shadows slipping through fog.
Before they could close in, Riven blinked.
He appeared directly in front of the leftmost figure, already mid-motion. His arm, tense and coiled with mana, snapped forward. His fist slammed into the back of the figure's hooded head with a sickening crack. Bone crumpled beneath the impact, and the attacker's body went limp, cratering into the ground with a dull, wet thud.
No time to think.
He blinked again.
This time he reappeared beside the second attacker—fist already arcing. His blow connected with a harsh smack, knuckles crashing into the man's face in a horizontal sweep. The figure spun from the impact, blood trailing from his mouth as he twisted through the air and collapsed in a heap.
Even as the second attacker crumpled, the third was already moving—clever, fast, and too close. Riven didn't blink this time.
He pivoted on his heel, amber mana coiling through his legs, launching himself forward with explosive speed. The third figure raised a blade, a short, jagged thing that shimmered with a sickly green sheen. Poisoned, maybe. Didn't matter.
Riven ducked low under the swipe, feeling the blade slice through the air inches from his scalp, cool and sharp like the breath of a winter wind.
He twisted into the attack, shoulder slamming into the man's gut with enough force to lift him off his feet. The figure let out a choked grunt, air punched from his lungs as they crashed into the ground.
Riven didn't let up.
He straddled the downed attacker, one knee pinning his chest as he drove a mana-fueled punch into the figure's face. Once. Twice. The third cracked bone, and a sharp spray of blood arced across his knuckles. The hood slipped, revealing wide, dazed eyes just before they rolled back.
Still breathing. For now.
Riven grabbed the man's blade without pause, wiping its edge clean against the dark fabric of his cloak. The liquid smeared, streaking green over the worn cloth.
He rose to his feet, breath ragged, heat pouring off his skin in steady waves. His heart pounded like war drums, each beat syncing with the mana thrumming through his veins—adrenaline and energy twisting together until the world sharpened into jagged clarity.
Instinctively, he checked his mana reserves again—and despair flickered through him. The amber core had sunk all the way down to five percent, a dull glow barely clinging to life. The pink core wasn't much better, hovering at roughly twenty percent. Not enough for prolonged combat. Not enough for mistakes.
He turned toward Sylvia. The fight hadn't stopped. Blood still spilled. Steel still clashed.
No time to rest.