Sofia's words were a command born of desperation. A pragmatic field-commission from a commander whose strategy had failed. She didn't care what his power was. Where it came from. What it cost.
She just knew it was the only variable left that could change the outcome.
Edward looked at her. His expression was just cold calm. This was the moment he wanted. The moment his performance would pay off. He had allowed them to see him as a passive, useless burden. And now, they were turning to him.
He was no longer just baggage. He was the emergency brake. The final, desperate gambit.
He couldn't reveal his true power. Not with the Inquisition's Gaze watching. But Sofia was right. He had to do something. He had to give them a piece of the truth. A carefully calculated, edited version.
He decided to show them the predator. Not the monster.
"Stay here," he said. His voice was a low, quiet command. It cut through the noise of exploding spells.
He did not wait for a reply. He moved.
He exploded from behind the cracking golden barrier. A blur of motion so sudden, so swift, it defied the eyes of his teammates.
One moment he was the silent figure at the rear guard. The next, he was a phantom. A whisper of death streaking across the vast, open floor.
The skeletal mages were focused on breaking Sofia's shield. They were completely unprepared. They were magical artillery. Powerful at a distance. But they had no way to stop a threat that could reach them in a blink.
He reached the first mage before its bony jaw could drop. The Shadowfang Dagger was in his hand. A sliver of perfect, light-devouring black.
He needed efficiency.
His strike was a single, precise, upward thrust under the creature's ribcage. The blade slid through brittle ribs, piercing the creature's purple core of dark energy.
He activated Soul Rend at once.
The key to his performance.
To an outside observer, Soul Rend was invisible. No flash of light. No crackle of energy. No sound. A silent, undetectable attack. From their perspective, all they would see was Edward stabbing a skeleton with a strange, black dagger.
But the effect was catastrophic. The invisible bolt of soul-draining energy caused its internal magic to rot and decay in an instant. The purple light in its eye sockets flickered and died. Its bony form lost all cohesion. It clattered to the floor in a heap of inert, lifeless bones.
No flash of light. No grand explosion. The mage just… switched off.
Edward didn't pause. He was already moving. A fluid, relentless engine of destruction. He flowed to the next mage. And the next. His movements were a symphony of calculated carnage. A wraith. A phantom dancer in a ballroom of death.
Thrust. Rend. Collapse.
Dodge. Thrust. Rend. Collapse.
He weaved through the barrage of necrotic bolts now frantically redirected towards him. The mages panicked. Their teamwork broke down into a frantic struggle to survive, like trying to hit a ghost with a cannon.
From behind their failing barrier, the rest of the raid party watched in stunned, disbelieving silence.
The scene was surreal.
The Rankless boy, the one they had dismissed and scorned, was single-handedly dismantling an entire congregation of elite, B-Rank monsters. He wasn't fighting them like a knight. Or a mage.
He was hunting them.
He moved with a terrifying, predatory grace they had never witnessed. A fighting style that defied every principle of academy combat. Brutal. Efficient. Utterly devoid of any wasted motion. He was an assassin. A ridiculously, impossibly skilled assassin.
Sofia stared. Her mind, usually a whirlwind of tactical calculations, was completely blank with awe. This was a display of pure, unadulterated skill.
Every step was perfect. Every dodge was precise. Every single strike was a killing blow. His "technique," the way the mages just fell apart, was like nothing she had ever read about.
Gareth, the tank, stood with his shield lowered. His mouth was hanging open. "By the seven gods…" he whispered. "He's not a rear guard. He's a one-man vanguard."
The twin mages peeked over the top of the now-unnecessary shield. Their eyes were wide. The monster that had been overwhelming them was being systematically exterminated by a boy they had considered worthless.
In less than a minute, it was over.
Edward stood on the dais. Surrounded by more than twenty piles of lifeless bones. He was breathing a little heavily. Otherwise, he was unharmed. He calmly wiped his black dagger on a tattered robe and sheathed it.
The chamber fell into a profound, echoing silence. Broken only by Sofia's golden barrier dissolving with a soft, chiming sound.
The raid party slowly lowered their weapons. They looked from the piles of bones to the silent, solitary figure of Edward. The contempt was gone. The scorn was gone. Even the fear had changed. It was now a deep, profound awe.
He had just saved all of their lives. And he had done it with a chilling, detached efficiency.
Sofia was the first to find her voice. She walked forward. Her expression was a complex mixture of gratitude, suspicion, and a deep, burning curiosity. She stopped a few feet from him.
"That…" she began, her voice carefully measured, "…was an impressive display of swordsmanship. Your technique is… unusual."
"It's effective," Edward replied. His voice was flat. He offered no explanation.
He had done it. He had walked the razor's edge. He had revealed a fraction of his power. Enough to be seen as a prodigy. A martial genius. Not enough to be seen as a monster. He had given them a new puzzle to solve.
He had earned a sliver of their grudging respect. But he had also deepened the mystery surrounding him. He was playing a dangerous, high-stakes game. And he had just won another round.
As the team began to move forward, a low, grating sound echoed from the far end of the chamber. A massive, stone Coffin began to shudder. The heavy lid slowly, began to slide open.
A wave of palpable, soul-chilling cold washed over the room. From within the Coffin, two points of malevolent, intelligent blue light ignited in the darkness.
A dry, rasping voice, a sound like autumn leaves skittering across a tombstone, echoed through the vast chamber. It spoke not to the party. But directly to him.
"A soul-eater," it hissed. The voice was filled with a horrifying, ancient amusement. "How long has it been since I've tasted one of my own kind?"