Lin sighed and gently patted her head. "I just thought of some very bad things." Freya froze but did not back off. "Red eyes, stop treating me like this."
Dorothy who was now sitting on a staircase looked at them with curiosity and wonder."You two really seem close, how long have you two been together?."
Lin smiled ar her direction. "An entire year, well two years ago that is, then I couldn't contact her anymore."
Freya pushed his hand off her head. "Yeah he was annoying but i hate to admit it, we had a very strange synergy with one another and were compatible at hunting together I guess."
Lin grinned, his crimson eyes gleaming with a sharp, mischievous glint. "Strange synergy, huh? I'd call it perfected chaos."
Freya rolled her eyes with a huff, but her golden aura softened, the sharp edges of her stance dulling slightly.
Dorothy leaned forward on the step, her golden crow perching on her knee like a curious spectator. "That's kinda sweet though. You two seem like the type who bicker all day but would tear through monsters like a storm when fighting together."
Lin glanced at Freya, smirking, his scythe resting lazily against his shoulder. "She's not wrong. Also, i see your Morphtech isn'twith you, did you lose that too?"
Freya groaned in annoyance. "It's roaming about, you know how the attitude of Beast Morphtechs are. Especially cats"
"Did you upgrade it, the new functions this year is weird." Diron asked not bothering on addressing Freya's remarks about cats..
She nodded. "Yeah it cost me a lot of Imperia and I had to optimize the gun mode and gauntlet mode, it still pisses me off that I need to use Six Taimat crystals to charge it every day."
Diron chuckled, soon the group of four continued talking about each other's interest and quickly became friends.
Professor Argus who was watching the future students from the control room of Babylon looked at Lin's group.
He clicked his tongue as he realized something, Lin was the child of one of his most favoured students...it seems he inherited her feral nature, though he was pretty damn sure his mother threw him out in te world when he was ten?!!. It was if course the normal age for one to start hunting on their own, but you see, you don't just leave them unsupervised for five years and expect them to survive.
Professor Argus shaked his head and then clicked on a particular picture in his interface. It was that of a woman with long and wild hair, a grin that contained sharp teeth and slitted red eyes that felt like the woman could tear out of the screen and challenge him to a fight.
"Minerva, I wonder what you are up to these days." He sighed and then removed the image from the interface. After some hours it was finally time.
He pressed a button and all 128 Hunters and Huntress disappeared in a burst of light.
Now the true test began.
----
Lin was disoriented by the warping that just happened, he could have atleast been given a warning.
Either way he new it was time for the test and his scythe was ready to taste monster blood.
Currently he was In a large empty field where the skies were dark and endless, there was no stars nor a moon and all around him was darkness, if he didn't have Tai giving him sight in the dark he would have been blind.
He took in a deep breath and exhaled it as he began getting a ready. A slight pressure was generated around him and the ground had small cracks on it. It was as if gravity increased around his body.
Soon, the silence was broken as he heard the cacophony of Monsters hissing and roaring, trying to probe him before they attacked him. Their purple eyes glowing in the dark. "In a atmosphere where only darkness prevails, the flesh of Taimat has met the conditions that spawn Stalkers, 'Monsters who prey in the dark'.".
Lin smirked and then made the attack first, he lunged towards the group of Stalkers, swinging his scythe in a circular motion cutting down four of them within seconds.
The purple blood stained his Morphtech and his face, he grinned this time his teeth seem to be a bit sharper than before and his eyes glowed menacingly in the dark.
Suddenly the Stalkers felt like they were floating but before they could figure out why that was, they were suddenly slammed back down aggressively as if gravity itself was mocking them.
Lin danced around the horde of Stalkers seemingly being unending. His Tai reached the entirety of his Morphtech enhancing its sharpness and durability.
Lin's mother thought him one thing when he was with her. It was to always embrace the inherent wildness within ones own soul.
His mother had the ability to cut through space and travel vast distances or destroy countless enemies, though he doesn't know who he is father was, he was sure he inherited a bit if his mother's lower, he could not cut space but gravity was not something that wasn't within his arms.
This wad Lin's special trait that was almost on the level of a [Beast of Taimat].
Lin's breath came in sharp bursts as he moved, a blur of dark hair and glinting metal under the starless sky. His body seemed to flow with the storm of violence—graceful, brutal, unstoppable. The ground cracked under each step, each swing of his scythe pulling the air itself into a vortex of deadly force.
The Stalkers shrieked and lunged, their razor-sharp claws glinting like fractured obsidian in the dark. Lin welcomed them.
As one leapt toward him, jaws wide, he twisted—a sudden shift in the gravitational field. The monster's body snapped mid-air, slamming sideways into another of its kin with a wet crunch.
Lin grinned wider, his crimson eyes alight with a primal, untamed fury. His scythe spun in a deadly arc, cleaving another Stalker clean in half.
A whisper of wind—a faint, familiar scent in the chaos.
Freya's boots hit the ground with a thunderous crack, the shockwave rippling outward, throwing several Stalkers back in a spray of shattered limbs and purple ichor.
"Lin!" she shouted, her golden Tai flaring like wildfire across her body, fists clenched tight. "Leave some for me, will you?"
Overhead, a faint mechanical hum cut through the chaos—a whisper of gears shifting, metal sliding into place. From the shadows above, her Morphtech—a golden, feline-like construct with sleek metal plating and two segmented tails—descended in a spiraling dive. Its eyes glowed bright, a piercing gold that matched Freya's own aura.
As it landed, the cat's form unfolded with a series of sharp clicks and shifting plates. The two tails split apart, segments sliding and locking into new configurations. They retracted inward, forming a complex system of mechanical rails and pulse chambers that snapped together with a satisfying metallic clunk.
The Morphtech's feline body compressed, limbs folding into the main chassis as the golden lines pulsed across its form like flowing energy circuits. The glowing Tai crystals embedded in its core pulsed once—twice—before the entire construct shifted, elongating and reconfiguring itself into dual high-caliber guns, sleek and deadly, brimming with a dangerous golden glow. The twin barrels crackled with residual Tai energy, arcs of golden light surging across their frames.
Freya grabbed the transformed weapons mid-air, her fingers snapping into the grooves with practiced precision. The Morphtech's core shifted seamlessly, integrating with her Tai and feeding off her energy—like a hungry predator waiting to pounce.
Her grin was razor-sharp."Let's dance."
As she surged forward, the twin guns fired in unison—a burst of golden plasma rounds that tore through the darkness, illuminating the battlefield in flashes of destruction.
Seeing her using such attacks, Lin's scythe blade propped up and transformed into a spear head, on thay spear head was a small hole and he pointed it at the horde of Stalkers like a gun.
The earlier Taimat crystal he placed inside his Morphtech began to be drained as a purple energy started gathering at the tip of the spear.
The tip of Lin's spear pulsed and hissed, a swirling storm of violet energy coalescing into a blinding sphere of destructive force. His grin sharpened into something feral, teeth bared in a snarl.
"Let's see if you can handle this."
The moment the sphere reached critical mass, Lin twisted his grip, slamming the butt of the spear into the cracked earth. The energy discharged with a deafening boom, a shockwave tearing through the air.
A jagged, spiraling beam of condensed Tai burst from the spearhead, tearing through the darkness like a wrathful comet. The Stalkers shrieked, their forms caught in the blast, disintegrating into splashes of purple ichor and mangled chunks of flesh. The beam didn't just pierce them; it ripped the very fabric of the battlefield, distorting the air in its path.
Freya, still firing in rhythmic bursts, laughed breathlessly as the shockwave rushed past her. Her Tai synced instinctively with the pulse of Lin's attack, golden streaks weaving through the air like wildfire.
"Showoff!" she shouted, voice raw and wild.