The morning sun over Nairn did not ask for permission; it simply demanded attention. It poured through the gaps in the curtains of the Scarlet household, hitting Lencar squarely in the face.
He groaned, rolling over and burying his face in the pillow. For a fleeting second, he was just Kenji Tanaka wanting five more minutes before the morning commute. Then, the smell of yeast and woodsmoke hit his nose, and reality reasserted itself. He was Lencar Abarame. He was a dishwasher. And he was a warlord in the making.
"Lencar! Get up! The flour delivery is here!" Rebecca's voice floated up from the kitchen, sounding both stressed and cheerful.
"Coming," Lencar mumbled, his voice raspy with sleep.
He sat up, rubbing his face. His hands felt normal. They were warm. They didn't feel like the hands of a man who had stolen twelve souls the night before. That was the scary part—how easily the mask slipped back on.
The day at "The Rusty Spoon" was a blur of controlled chaos. Lencar moved through the kitchen with the efficiency of a machine but the warmth of a human. He joked with Gorn about the questionable freshness of the carrots. He helped Marco fix a broken toy soldier using a dab of sticky dough. He listened to Luca complain about a boy in the village who pulled her hair.
"He likes you," Lencar said, chopping onions with rhythmic precision. "That's how boys show affection when their brains haven't fully formed yet."
"It's stupid," Luca huffed.
"It is," Lencar agreed, sliding the onions into the pot. "But people do stupid things when they don't know how to express what they want."
He paused, the knife hovering for a fraction of a second. Like burning down a house to prove you're pure, he thought, thinking of Pyre and the Red Hoods.
By the time evening rolled around, Lencar was exhausted. Not magically—his core was buzzing with the Breath of Yggdrasil—but he was somewhat tired mentally.
He sat through dinner, told the kids a story about a dragon who lost his teeth because he ate too many sweets (a subtle propaganda campaign by Rebecca to get them to brush their teeth), and waited.
One by one, the lights went out. The breathing in the house slowed to the deep, rhythmic cadence of sleep.
Lencar stood in his dark room. The smile dropped from his face. The "Big Brother" was gone. The Auditor remained.
He pulled the dossier from his desk.
Target: The Mud-Dogs.
Leader: Grog.
Crimes: Kidnapping, extortion, highway robbery.
Location: The Whispering Marshes, near the Forsaken Realm border.
"Let's see if you're worth the paper you're printed on," Lencar whispered.
He donned his gear. The black cloak. The wooden mask. The Switch-Gear Aspis hidden on his arm.
[Spatial Magic]: [Long-Range Coordinate Shift]
The world folded in on itself.
Lencar reappeared miles away, stumbling slightly as his boots hit soft, yielding ground. The smell hit him instantly—a pungent mix of rotting vegetation, stagnant water, and sulfur. The Whispering Marshes lived up to their name; the wind hissed through the reeds like a thousand dying snakes.
He activated [Sensory Domain: The Whispering Roots].
He didn't need to see; he could feel. He felt the vibrations of the swamp. He felt the heartbeats of frogs, the slither of eels.
And then, he felt them.
About two miles east, on a patch of semi-dry land. Fifteen distinct, heavy mana signatures. They felt greasy. Aggressive.
But underneath that, Lencar felt something else. Three faint, frantic heartbeats. Weak. Terrified. And stationary.
"Hostages," Lencar realized, his jaw tightening.
He moved. He didn't use [Gale Step] to fly; he used [Mist Magic] to dissolve his silhouette, becoming part of the fog that rolled off the water. He drifted through the reeds, silent as a ghost.
He reached the perimeter of their camp twenty minutes later.
It was a wretched sight. Tents made of stolen canvas were sinking into the mud. A fire sputtered in a pit, fighting against the damp air.
In the center, Grog sat on a crate. He was a massive man, his skin pale and bloated like a corpse left in the water too long. He was laughing, a wet, gurgling sound.
"Look at him shiver," Grog jeered, poking a bound figure with a muddy stick. "Hey! Wake up! Your family hasn't paid yet, so you don't get to sleep!"
The figure—a merchant with a bloody nose—sobbed. Next to him, two young women were tied back-to-back. Their clothes were torn. Their eyes were vacant, staring at nothing, broken by trauma.
Lencar stood in the shadows of a cypress tree.
With the Red Hoods, he had felt annoyance. They were misguided fanatics.
But this? Watching Grog laugh as he terrorized helpless people? watching the other bandits leer and pass a bottle of rum around?
Lencar felt a cold, hard stone form in his stomach. This wasn't misguided. This was predation. These men were cancers.
"I should just kill them," Lencar thought. The urge was strong. It would be easy. A [Wind Blade] to the throat. Clean. Fast.
But he stopped himself. No. Dead men don't patrol the borders. Dead men don't save the next village. I need tools, not corpses.
He stepped out of the fog.
"You're loud," Lencar said. His voice was calm, conversational, which made it jarring in the tense atmosphere of the camp.
The bandits jumped. Grog spun around on his crate, nearly tipping over.
"Who the hell are you?!" Grog roared, squinting into the dark. "A hero? You want to be a hero?!"
"I'm just a guy who hates noise," Lencar said, walking forward.
"Get him!" Grog screamed. "Kill him and strip him!"
The Mud-Dogs scrambled for their grimoires. They were uncoordinated, sloppy, fueled by alcohol and cruelty.
"Water Magic: Acid Spit!"
"Mud Magic: Sinking Grave!"
Spells flew at Lencar. Globs of acidic slime. Spears of hardened mud.
Lencar didn't draw his sword. He didn't even raise a shield. He walked through the barrage. He side-stepped a mud spear with a minimal tilt of his head. He deflected an acid glob with a pulse of [Wind Magic] from his palm.
He reached the first bandit.
"Chain Magic: Binding Serpent."
Steel chains exploded from the swamp water. They weren't just metal; they were imbued with Lencar's suppression mana. They wrapped around the bandit's legs, dragging him down.
Lencar punched the man in the jaw. CRACK. The bandit went limp.
It was a dismantling. Lencar moved through the camp like a storm front. He broke wrists. He shattered knees. He choked them out with [Mist Magic].
"You freak!" Grog roared, trying to summon a mud golem.
Lencar appeared in front of him. He didn't use magic. He grabbed Grog by his greasy tunic and headbutted him.
THUD.
Grog's eyes rolled back. The massive man collapsed into the mud he loved so much.
The camp was silent, save for the whimpering of the hostages.
Lencar looked at the captives. They were staring at him with terror. To them, he was just another monster, stronger than the last one.
"Close your eyes," Lencar told them softly.
He didn't wait for them to obey. He turned to the unconscious bandits.
"You don't deserve to be here," Lencar muttered.
He used the chains to drag the fifteen bodies away from the camp, hauling them a mile deep into the dense forest where the hostages couldn't see or hear what came next.
He dumped them in a pile.
"Time for harvest"
He opened his grimoire.
[Replica Magic]: [Absolute Replication]
He went down the line. He placed his hand on their grimoires.
Harvest.
He ripped out the Swamp Magic Soul Gem from Grog. It felt heavy, slimy, and suffused with greed.
He harvested Poison Magic, Mud Magic, and Water Magic from the others.
Fifteen grimoires turned to dust. Fifteen men became Husks.
Lencar stood back, wiping his hands on his cloak. He felt dirty. Not physically, but spiritually. He was eating their souls. These people were disgusting and he wanted to just kill them directly.
"It's necessary," he told himself.
He tore out fifteen pages.
[Replica Magic]: [Reverse Replication]
"Mass Production."
The golden light flared in the dark forest. Fifteen new grimoires formed in the air—perfect copies, tethered to Lencar's heart by invisible golden threads.
He placed them on the bandits' chests. The mana flowed back in. The connection snapped into place.
He looked at them. They looked peaceful now, sleeping.
"Wake up," Lencar whispered, blowing the [Pollen of Awakening] over them.
Phase One was complete. Now came the hard part. The breaking.