A year had passed since the deaths of Caius Voltaris and Gideon Silversword—two titans felled by the last heir of a shattered dynasty. Their absence was more than symbolic; it cracked the world's façade of invincibility. Fear loosened its grip on the masses. Whispers of hope threaded through the streets. The Hunter Association, once unchallenged, felt its teeth dull as the age of National Hunters waned.
Only four remained.
Lucian Blackthorne, the last scion of a ruined dynasty, had become a myth in the making. But beneath the myth, his body was still that of a teen age . Strong, yes—but young. Human. And he knew it. Fighting all seven Hunters in succession would not only be suicidal—it would rouse the entire world against him that he not wanted.
He needed time, Patience and Precision. So he hunted in shadows, striking when least expected.
Among the remaining National Hunters, Leonidas Wildborne—the Beast Monarch—had supposedly gone into seclusion to train. That was the story fed to the world. In truth, it was a calculated retreat to hunt his prey.
Far in the frozen north, buried beneath endless snowfall, lay the Eternal Frostspire—a towering, ancient mountain sealed away from time. Somewhere deep inside its glacial heart, a hidden chamber pulsed with dormant power. The mouth of the cave was invisible to the eye, guarded by ethereal wards that shimmered faintly beneath the ice like dying auroras. Inside, the air was thick with raw mana. The walls were carved from dragonbone, etched with runes that pulsed red like veins beneath skin.
At the center of that chamber, Leonidas sat in stillness—cross-legged, unmoving. Eyes shut. Breath steady. His frame, hulking and beastlike, radiated a strange calm. It was the kind of silence before a storm. A predator waiting for the right moment.
Outside, the blizzard screamed across the cliffs… then paused.
For a single breath, the wind stilled.
Across the ravine, standing atop a jagged ridge, was a lone figure draped in black.
Lucian Blackthorne.
Cloaked in obsidian, his hair tousled by the cold wind, he stood motionless—eyes glowing faintly with demonic fire.
He during recovering get to know that his eyes were extreme sensitive to mana, with the help of that he figure out all sort of arrays and inscribe runes left on the mountains.
He whispered to the frost, voice low and cold:
"Clever. But not enough."
In a blink, he vanished.
A breath later, Lucian stood inside the sanctum, his arrival as silent as falling snow. The air warped around him, mana rippling outward like a stone cast into still water. The seals shattered without fanfare—just a low crack, like ice breaking beneath your feet.
Leonidas's eyes snapped open. Golden and red, Sharp. Beastlike. He didn't look surprised.
A low, guttural growl rumbled from his throat.
"I was waiting for you," he said, voice deep and unshaken. "Ember of Blackthorne."
Lucian stepped forward slowly, each footstep crunching faintly against the frost-bitten stone.
"Then you should've prayed instead," he murmured.
From the darkness behind Leonidas, three more figures emerged.
Alaric Spellbinder glided forward, robes traced with shifting constellations. He smiled, soft and sinister. "Lucian Blackthorne," he greeted, like an old friend greeting a fool. "So predictable. You walked straight into our trap."
Beside him, fire flared.
Ignatius Emberlord stepped from the shadows, his robes glowing with molten heat. "Your arrogance," he sneered, "almost impresses me."
And standing further back, just inside the gloom—silent and immovable—was Marcus Ironfist. He said nothing. Just watched, his fists pulsing with coiled mana like smoldering mountains.
Lucian already known it was an trap but still he come because he was ready to end this for all once but still it was unexpected that Marcus will also be present there.
He let his arms fall open, a slight smirk touching his lips. "A reunion?" he said. "How touching."
Marcus moved.
Lucian's unshelled his sword, he cover his sword with a dark crimson mana.
His pendant lit with black flame, The sword was all to take Marcus attention the real deal was this.
Without warning, the ground beneath Marcus cracked wide—an abyssal rift tearing the floor apart. Black Maw Ocean—an ancient and forbidden ocean in which several monster live .
Marcus did not expected this but he didn't scream. He simply dropped into the void.
Gone.
Silence hung heavy.
Then chaos exploded.
Alaric's expression twisted with fury. He unleashed a Sixth-Tier Mana Lance—raw power shaped into a spiraling spear. It screamed through the air, tearing stone from the floor and vaporizing part of the wall.
Lucian didn't dodge.
He just tilted his head.
The lance missed, slamming into the cavern's entrance and triggering a distant avalanche.
Lucian gave Alaric a sideways glance. "A lava spear in a sealed tomb?" he said, dryly. "You sure a brilliant magician."
The ground trembled.
Ignatius snarled and raised his arm. Hellfire Cataclysm erupted, flooding the room with flames so intense the walls began to melt, and the air itself seemed to burn.
Lucian didn't flinch.
He raised one hand.
A burst of freezing demonic mana shot forth—black and glimmering with specks of violet. It swept through the flames, swallowing them, turning fire to ice in an instant. Statues of ash and obsidian formed, then shattered into shards that sparkled like glass.
Alaric was surprise to see it " To think his mana manipulation has reach this much greater heights that he could exclude all the fire atoms from the surrounding"
Lucian could easily perform this level of manipulation thanks to hos body.
Ignatius choked back his scream. "You… you shouldn't even exist."
Leonidas charged.
His war axe howled through the air, each swing backed by monstrous force. Lucian moved with him—matching, deflecting, redirecting. Steel clashed with steel in brutal rhythm.
With a sharp twist, Leonidas overcommitted—and his axe embedded in a scorched pillar behind Lucian.
Alaric moved to cast again—a desperate sixth-tier array. Runes flared in the air.
Lucian's blade whispered forward.
One cut.
The array was at the blink of shattering.
Alaric cast more magic for the support of Array.
Lucian give out an aura slash in the mid fight with the beast.
The spell collapsed.
Alaric was flung back like a ragdoll, his body slamming into stone. Blood splattered across ancient glyphs.
"Impossible…" Alaric coughed. "You cut it mid-cast…"
Ignatius's voice slithered into the minds of Alaric and Leonidas through telepathy, low and seething like molten fire.
"He is suffocating us in this cursed cavern. His shadows thrive here. I'll incinerate this entire place—let it all collapse if I must."
Leonidas roared like a beast denied prey, fury clawing at his throat. He hurled himself at Lucian, his colossal axe blazing with destructive mana. Steel screamed against the Obsidian Oath as sparks ignited in a storm of crimson and black. The air shook. The ground fractured. Leonidas pressed forward with monstrous strength, veins bulging, teeth gnashing—yet Lucian's eyes never flickered, calm and merciless.
With a guttural howl, Leonidas shoved, managing to push Lucian back a single step before retreating, sweat dripping from his brow. His lungs burned. His pride shattered.
Then came Ignatius. His blade roared to life, swallowed whole by hellfire, flames spilling like rivers of wrath. Every step he took charred the ground into ash. The cavern walls blistered and cracked under the oppressive heat.
Lucian did not bend. Did not flinch. His figure stood unwavering—his sword, the Obsidian Oath, dripping with a crimson aura that pulsed like a beating heart.
They clashed.
The instant their blades met, reality itself seemed to split apart.
A detonation of mana burst outward, splitting the sky and shredding the mountain's peak. Rock vaporized. The dome of the cavern was obliterated, the battlefield exposed beneath a bleeding, storm-wracked sky.
Smoke cloaked the ruin. From it, Leonidas and Ignatius emerged again, battered but burning with hate. But Alaric was gone.
Lucian's eyes narrowed. A chill swept over the battlefield as the world itself seemed to grow dim. He lifted his gaze to the heavens—dark clouds devoured the stars, heavy and violent, their veins swollen with lightning.
Alaric hovered high above, his robes whipping in the storm. His incantation carved the sky with power.
"Eighth Class Magic—Lightning Roar."
The heavens convulsed. Dark clouds spiraled tighter and tighter, compressing into a singular, blinding core of radiance. A bolt was birthed—colossal, merciless, a spear of sun-bright annihilation that could erase a mountain in a single strike.
The world flashed white.
Lucian did not cower. He lowered into stance, his voice a whisper drowned by the storm.
"Eighth Form—Shadow's Wrath."
The Obsidian Oath screamed. From its edge erupted lightning not of nature, but of nightmare—dark crimson, jagged and alive, searing through the storm like a serpent of doom. It met Alaric's sun-spear mid-descent.
The collision was cataclysm.
Yellow and crimson clashed in a sphere of pure destruction, radiant waves tearing across the valley. Air was obliterated. Trees evaporated. The shockwaves blinded the eye, and even opening one's lids became agony.
A voice, colder than death, rose from below.
"How was that, fool?"
The words slithered into Alaric's bones, draining warmth from his veins. He looked down—Lucian was smiling, sharp and merciless, his aura swelling like the approach of judgment itself.
But instinct screamed. Something else was coming.
Lucian's gaze fell too late. Leonidas's colossal axe cleaved downward with the force of a collapsing world. Lucian tilted his blade at the last possible instant, diverting the path, yet the monstrous impact still hurled him back across the battlefield, tearing stone beneath his feet.
Heat washed over him. Too hot. Too close.
He turned—and Ignatius was already upon him. His body wreathed in inferno, his blade dripping fire that melted earth to rivers of magma. Everything his flames touched turned to ruin.
Two steps away—then nothing.
Lucian vanished.
The next heartbeat—he was in the sky, body coiling midair. His blade arced, violet-black energy spiraling in a death hymn.
"Sixth Form—Phantom's Requiem."
The strike fell like apocalypse. A mountain-spanning slash of darkness carved reality, aiming to devour Ignatius whole.
Ignatius roared and raised his flaming blade to meet it. But even as steel met shadow, his knees buckled. His feet sank deep into the snow, carving trenches. Blood seeped from his gums as the pressure crushed him. His blade split, his muscles tore, his clothes shredded—until at last, he collapsed to one knee, broken and gasping.
But the battle did not relent.
Alaric's incantations twisted the air again. Storms spiraled above, mana howling like banshees. His 7th-class spell, "Wind Breaker," bloomed into a storm vast enough to bury the battlefield.
At the same time, Leonidas's monstrous axe returned, covered in catastrophic mana, thrown with force enough to crack the sky itself.
Time fractured.
Lucian's eyes narrowed. Not every strike is meant to be dodged.
He spun, body whirling like a storm, catching the colossal axe midair. With a grunt, he redirected its monstrous momentum, hurling it back with tenfold force toward Alaric.
In the same motion, he flung the Obsidian Oath. His sword tore the sky, aura screaming so violently it felt as if space itself split before it. The blade flew straight for Leonidas.
The storm shrieked.
The axe split through Alaric's Wind Breaker, shredding the spell into tatters. Alaric barely had time to conjure a barrier before the axe tore through it, cleaving his left arm clean off in a spray of blood. His scream echoed across the valley.
Leonidas's head snapped upward, panic flaring. But there was no time. The Obsidian Oath was already upon him, shrieking death. He barely had the chance to cross his arms, mana flooding desperately to defend himself.
It wasn't enough.
Lucian was already on the ground, his figure a blur. He appeared before Leonidas like a phantom, snatched the Obsidian Oath midair, and with a single motion unleashed—
"Nocturne's Ascendancy."
The world silenced.
One second later, Leonidas's head was no longer attached to his body. Blood sprayed into the snow like a fountain, his corpse collapsing in a lifeless heap.
Ignatius stirred, broken and ruined, his vision fading. He tried to rise, but a chill colder than the grave pressed against his throat.
The Obsidian Oath. Lucian's blade.
Lucian's voice slipped into his ears, quiet and merciless.
"How does it feel… to brush against death itself?"
Ignatius coughed blood, lips curling into a grim smile.
"You will face the consequences soon… boy. We are nothing but pawns… beneath him."
The world shuddered.
A rift split the sky, blue and black swirling into a storm's eye. From its depths stepped Marcus Ironfist—steam rising from his skin, fury rolling from his shoulders like a tidal wave.
He froze at the sight. Ignatius kneeling. Lucian, standing behind him, blade on the throat to sever his head.
Marcus's voice thundered.
"Enough. You are spent, young one. Stop now, before you lose everything."
Lucian smirked, eyes burning with defiance.
"Took you long enough."
And with a single, casual stroke, he severed Ignatius's head. Blood sprayed, painting Marcus's face red.
Lucian sheathed his blade in one smooth motion, eyes never leaving Marcus's.
"But I'm not in the mood to stop. Not for you. Not for anyone."
Marcus's eyes glowed beneath the dripping blood, rage igniting like the birth of a star.