The Blackhorn Guild's festival had begun.
Laughter echoed through the night as members filled the area, carrying barrels of ale and roasted meat.
Lanterns hung from the cliffs, their red light making the entire valley look like a pit of fire.
At the highest seat, the Owner of the Blackhorn Guild sat on his throne.
Beside him were ten Executives, each with a cold and sharp presence.
Below them, low-rank members enjoyed food, drink, and wild music unaware of the silent tension above.
---
The Owner looked down at them and muttered,
"I find this… boring. Even those low ranks kill so many people, yet act like fools."
One Executive frowned.
"What do you mean?"
The Owner shook his head.
"Nothing. Forget it."
---
Another Executive leaned forward, curious.
"What do you think, Owner? How many S-rank, SS-rank, and SSS-rank members are here tonight?"
The Owner replied calmly,
"I'm the Owner. Obviously, around 100 S-rank, 25 SS-rank, and 5 SSS-rank members."
The third Executive laughed mockingly.
"You're wrong. It's 150 S-rank, 40 SS-rank, and 2 SSS-rank.
You sit in the office all day maybe count properly next time."
---
The first Executive snorted.
"And what do you even do in that office?"
The second Executive crossed his arms.
"You don't need to go hunting to understand leadership."
The seventh Executive grinned.
"You're weak, Owner.
We made you the leader because you had brains, not strength."
The tenth Executive nodded.
"You did rebuild the falling Blackhorn Guild, I'll admit that."
The sixth Executive's tone darkened.
"But if you keep acting like this…"
The ninth finished his sentence coldly.
"We might have to kill you."
The eighth Executive smirked.
"Just like we killed your family."
---
The table fell silent.
The words hung heavy in the air.
Even the firelight seemed to flicker weaker.
The Owner froze.
Memories stabbed into his mind flashes of his past life, when he was the Strategist of the Northern World Alliance.
He once had a loving family… power… respect.
Then came the monster attack.
The chaos.
The screams.
He didn't even know how he survived.
But the Blackhorn Guild found him tortured him forced him to work for them.
He refused.
And they made him watch as his family died before his eyes.
---
The pain that had once broken him now turned to silence.
He looked at the Executives, his voice low and cold.
"Enough. Tonight, we celebrate."
He leaned forward slightly, eyes sharp as blades.
"But remember… I've already buried those I loved. If any of you betray me… I won't hesitate to bury you next."
---
The Executives didn't respond.
Their earlier arrogance had turned into quiet fear.
Down below, the feast continued.
Laughter returned, songs echoed again, and flames danced across the valley
But no one at the party heard what was spoken on that throne.
Only the ten Executives and the Owner knew what truly happened that night.
The Owner climbed onto the raised dais. Lantern light painted his face in crimson,
making his expression look like a mask carved from night.
He paused, letting the murmurs below settle into silence.
The ten Executives formed a dark circle behind him shadows with weapons and smiles.
The First Executive spat, loud enough for the Owner to hear.
"Don't put on that pathetic face, old man. Save the drama."
A low chuckle from the sixth Executive.
"Come on give us your speech.
Entertain us."
The Owner's eyes were empty for a moment, then hollow steel slid into his voice.
He stepped forward, voice ringing through the basin like a bell of war.
"We are Blackhorn," he declared. "We do not yield. We do not feel weakness.
We fuel our rage and grind it into power. Our goal is simple to become the world's number one assassin guild.
To reach the top, we do not care how many lives we burn along the way. Do you swear to me that we will take it all?"
A roar rose from the crowd a thousand voices promising blood.
Everything froze like a camera held on the scene.
From the dark ridge above, a shadow moved
a single white-haired silhouette perched on the mountain's lip. Dong.
He watched them below, his figure a pale sliver against the moonlight.
His lips curved in that small, cold smile he never used.
Foolish goal, he thought.
You're promising a mountain of corpses to men who will never see the scale of their foolishness.
Dong raised his hand toward the sky.
The air answered.
From above, the heavens cracked like glass.
A dozen frozen meteors each the size of a cart shattered through cloud and starlight, plunging down like jagged spears of midnight ice.
KRASH—BOOM!
They slammed into the festival.
Ice screamed as it met flesh and bone. Tables exploded.
Lanterns were snuffed under white fury. The cavern became a field of blue-white carnage.
The Owner blinked. His mouth opened
then he collapsed, black eyes rolling as he fell unconscious beneath the ash and frost.
When he stirred again, the sight stole the breath from him.
Half the low ranks were smashed into frozen statues.
S-ranks lay broken beneath the ice. Even many SS officers were impaled, their armor caked in frost.
Blood steamed into the moonlit air where the meteors had struck.
Dong landed in the middle of the devastation, snow dusting his shoulders.
He walked through the frozen bodies as if through a garden of thorns.
I swore not to kill low-rank scum, he thought, his voice a whisper only he heard.
Yet they scorned and humiliated the innocent.
They tasted power and spat on it. My hand has been forced.
He remembered the man at the desk bragging, overplaying his rank, mocking people he called beneath him.
The memory flared like a match.
Far below, the surviving SS and SSS ranks surged blades and spears like a tide.
They aimed to cut him down where he stood.
Dong moved like a ghost. Sword strikes sang past him; he slipped between arcs of steel as if time itself lent him room to breathe.
Every dodge was a panel in motion footwork precise, eyes unreadable.
Then the Executives looked up and saw him.
The eighth Executive leaned forward, squinting. "Do you know who that is?"
The first Executive shook his head, unsure.
Dong's white hair and icy eyes shimmered and then rolled back hair and gaze snapping to their true color.
The room felt like someone had dropped a shutter.
The tenth Executive's face went pale. "That's Dong.
The one we were supposed to assassinate in two years' time. Why is he here today?"
The second Executive barked a laugh that had no humor.
"You fools he found a way in. Of course he did."
The fifth Executive's lips curled. "Perfect. We were waiting two years; now we'll take him on. Let's show him what we planned."
The eighth Executive agreed, but the ninth shook his head.
"No. Look at the ruins. He's already shattered half our ranks.
You want to test him now? You'd be dead."
Voices rose, fractured and clashing like their blades.
"How many have we lost?" the second demanded angrily. "Why are we even discussing his power level when our numbers lie buried under ice?"
A cold wind threaded through the basin, carrying the scent of melted iron and shattered pride.
Dong stood where the meteor storm had ended, a calm island amid chaos.
Around him, the Blackhorn's pride had been broken like glass.
The Executives hesitated a council that had once called the shots now looked onto a battlefield they hadn't chosen.
Above them all, the moon watched, impartial and silver. Below it, men argued whether to fight now, calculate Dong's might, or run.
Dong's lips curled into a single sentence that might have been a smile.
Tomorrow, Blackhorn ends.
The frozen canyon tasted of iron and smoke. Light from shattered lanterns danced across splintered wood and jagged ice.
Dong moved like a storm. The SS-rank officers attacked in disciplined waves blades singing, formations tight, every move practiced to kill.
He didn't hesitate.
A sword flashed toward his throat. Dong slipped under the arc as if time slowed; the steel shaved air where his skin had been a heartbeat before.
He countered with a single, precise motion a quick palm that struck a pressure point. The SS staggered, collapsed, and never rose.
One by one, they fell.
Dong's voice cut through the chaos, calm and almost bored.
"They're skilled… SS is truly formidable. But skill means nothing when you stand against me."
A new group surged upward three SSS-ranked elites, radiant with power.
Their auras coalesced like storm clouds; they rose together, swords drawn, eyes like knives.
Dong watched them for a heartbeat. A smile ghosted across his face.
"Apologies, brothers. I don't have much time."
The battle lifted into the sky steel and power clashing above the frozen ground. Each strike painted the air with arcs of light.
The three SSS moved like kings of the battlefield, each blow meant to end a life.
Dong's expression never changed.
He raised a hand and let out the low, resonant call of Lion Fear a mental roar that tore through the minds of those who heard it.
The world warped for the SSS warriors. Their confident stances crumpled as invisible claws ripped at their sanity.
They fell from the sky like puppets with severed strings tumbling, hitting the ground hard, then curling on the frozen stone,
trembling and crying as if their childhood nightmares had been replayed before their eyes.
Dong walked down to them, footsteps soft on ice. He crouched so his face was level with theirs.
"If you had masters at your rank, you would resist more,"
he said, voice cold and measured. "But even masters can break.
You were arrogant, and arrogance is a blade that turns inward."
He didn't waste words or mercy.
One by one, with efficiency like a thresher, Dong ended them swift, clinical, leaving no room for pity. Their auras snuffed like candles in a gust.
As the last SSS slid to silence in the snow, Dong straightened and began walking again.
The Executives watched him from above faces pale, hands inching toward weapons that suddenly felt too small.
He moved toward them like a hunter approaching the den.
The night was quiet for a breath, the sort that meant thunder was coming.
Silence swallowed the basin.
The ten Executives stood above the carnage like kings on a ruined stage faces drained of color, hands trembling over hilts that suddenly felt too small.
They had been bold moments ago. Now their boldness had turned brittle.
Dong walked toward them, each step measured, the snow crunching under his boots like a heartbeat.
His white hair flashed silver in the torchlight; his eyes burned with a color no one wanted to meet.
"I prepared one last gift for you," he said, voice calm as a blade.
He raised his hand.
Reality folded.
A black-crimson flame unfurled not heat, but a horror that gnawed at the mind.
The Hellfire Illusion Technique spilled into the air like smoke, slipping under armor and into thoughts.
Screams erupted inside ten chests as if invisible hands had struck their souls.
One by one, seven Executives crumpled to their knees, eyes wide, bodies shaking victims of nightmare made flesh.
The Owner's face went ashen. For the first time since he'd taken the throne, true fear showed.
Dong's expression didn't change. He lowered his voice and cast a single low-level binding.
"Be proud," he said, almost kindly. "You will die by a small thing today."
The seven Executives' heads lolled forward at once.
Not a scream only the wet sound of life ending on frozen stone.
Dong stopped the Hellfire. Silence slammed back in like a door.
He didn't wait.
He closed his fist and whispered the words of Domain of Fire.
The world shattered into heat and light around them.
A second plane tore open a realm of molten skies and rivers of flame.
Dong and three remaining Executives were sucked through the rip like paper into fire.
Inside that inferno, an ancient fire dragon uncoiled from the lava.
It moved with the slow certainty of a god.
The Executives' screams filled the infernal sky as the dragon's jaws closed.
Ancient fire devoured armor, bone, pride the sound was a single long howl that echoed into the dimension's molten hills.
Dong listened to those screams and a thin smile curved his lips.
When the dimension collapsed and the air stuttered back into the basin, ash drifted where the Executives had stood.
Only the Owner remained trembling, kneeling, eyes empty like used candles.
Dong stopped a few paces away, sword in hand, gaze steady.
"Do you want to live?" he asked.
The Owner's voice was a broken thing. "I… have nothing left. My family… my power… my goal is gone. I have nothing."
Dong's eyes softened for a breath not pity, but clarity.
"A person's goal is given at birth," he said. "You had yours. You gave it away."
The Owner's words died on his lips. He bowed his head like a man who had finally surrendered.
Dong didn't hesitate.
With a single, clean slash, the blade finished the sentence the Owner had begun.
Blood darkened the snow. The Owner's body slumped and lay still.
Dong stepped back and looked at the fallen
executives burned, crushed, or ripped apart by their own hubris.
He remembered whispers, betrayal, how those men had turned on their leader and slaughtered his family to bind him.
A bitter thought touched him: they had once betrayed their own and in the end, that treachery fed the pit they'd been swallowed by.
The basin was quiet now, save for the drip of melting ice and distant, stunned voices.
Night watched in neutral light as Dong turned away, the golden SA card heavy in his pocket, the world a little less corrupt than it had been an hour before.
Dong looked up at the crimson-tinted sky.
> "I don't know why…" he whispered, voice calm, almost tired.
"But I'm feeling lighter than before."