CRUNCH... CRUNCH...
The sound of heavy leather boots pressing into dried leaves and brittle twigs echoed softly in the damp morning air.
Alden walked away from Oakhaven without looking back. He knew that if he turned his head, even for a second, the image of Lily's tear-stained face and Silas's conflicted, terrified eyes would burn a hole straight through his resolve. He had to keep moving. Lingering meant death—not just for him, but for the only people in this godforsaken world who had shown him genuine, uncalculated kindness.
The Oakhaven forest road wasn't much of a road at all. It was an ancient, overgrown merchant trail that had long been reclaimed by nature. Thick, twisted roots burst through the cracked cobblestones like the fingers of a buried giant trying to claw its way out of the earth. The tree canopy above was a dense weave of emerald and dark brown, filtering the morning sunlight into pale, dusty columns that barely touched the forest floor.
Swoosh...
Alden pulled the heavy, dark green cloak tighter around his shoulders. Silas had given it to him before he left—a sturdy ranger's cloak meant to ward off the mountain chill. He reached up, pulling the deep hood over his head, casting his face into shadow.
His fingers lingered on the black cloth tied securely around his head. He adjusted the knot at the back, making sure the dark strip sat perfectly flat over the hollow cavern of his left eye. The fabric felt rough against the smooth, unblemished skin of his newly healed face.
'I look like a wandering vagabond,' he thought, a dry, humorless smirk touching his lips.
'A blind beggar with a hundred billion gold coins on his head. If Edwin could see me now, he'd probably write a tragic poem about it.'
Snap.
A branch broke somewhere in the thick underbrush to his right.
Alden froze instantly. His body reacted before his conscious mind even registered the sound. His knees bent slightly, his center of gravity dropping, and his right hand hovered instinctively near the empty space at his waist where a sword should have been.
Rustle... rustle...
He waited. His single eye tracked the dense bushes, his breathing slowing to an absolute, silent crawl. He listened past the wind, past the creaking branches, searching for the rhythm of a heartbeat or the heavy, unnatural displacement of a magical beast.
A large, grey-furred squirrel darted out from the ferns, scrambled up the trunk of a massive oak, and vanished into the high branches.
Alden exhaled a long, steady breath, forcing his coiled muscles to relax.
'Calm down,' he chided himself, though the tension in his jaw refused to entirely fade.
'It's just a squirrel. Not an Inquisition hound.'
He resumed his trek, forcing his steps to remain light and calculated. He couldn't afford to be careless here. The Elderia mountains were notorious for harboring wandering magical beasts, and his current condition was… complicated, to say the least.
Physically, he was a monster. The miraculous, overnight healing brought on by the crystal sphere had done more than just knit his skin back together; it had restored his muscle density, his bone hardiness, and his reflex speed. He was, for all intents and purposes, walking around with the physical vessel of an A-Rank awakener. If a low-tier goblin jumped out of the bushes right now, Alden could probably punch a hole straight through its chest without breaking a sweat.
But magic?
That was an entirely different, incredibly depressing story.
Alden closed his eye for a moment, looking inward. Where there used to be a roaring, expanding star of mana, there was now only a sluggish, pathetic puddle. The Arcane Leech hadn't just stolen his Authorities; Liam had violently strip-mined his core.
'D-Rank,' Alden thought, the bitterness tasting like ash on his tongue. 'I'm a goddamn D-Rank awakener.'
It was a humiliating demotion. Having the body of an A-Ranker but the mana core of a D-Ranker was like putting the engine of a rusted lawnmower into a heavy, armored siege tank. Sure, the armor was impenetrable, but if he tried to use any actual magical skills—a spatial step, a void slash, or even a heavy reinforcement—the massive discrepancy would cause his pathetic mana circuit to violently short-circuit.
He was physically lethal, but magically crippled. If he ran into a monster that utilized long-range mana attacks or mental suppression, he wouldn't be able to defend his core. He would be shredded from the inside out.
So, he walked in the shadows. He stepped carefully over dry leaves. He played the part of the hunted.
After another hour of grueling, silent hiking, the forest grew slightly less oppressive. The trail widened, opening up into a small, natural clearing surrounded by towering pines.
Alden stopped near the edge of the clearing, leaning his shoulder against a rough tree trunk to catch his breath.
He reached into the deep inner pocket of his cloak and pulled out the crystal sphere.
Hummm...
The moment the glass touched his palm, a faint, almost imperceptible vibration travelled up his arm. Alden stared at it, a profound sense of amazement washing over his hardened features.
Inside the flawless, transparent glass, the two wisps of light were dancing. The original blue wisp, calm and steady, was intertwined with the brilliant, erratic golden wisp. They revolved around each other in a mesmerizing, miniature solar system, casting a soft, ethereal glow that pushed the forest shadows away from Alden's face.
'You saved my life,' Alden thought, his thumb gently stroking the smooth curve of the sphere.
'You fixed my broken body. But what exactly are you? A leftover relic from the dragon? A fragment of my shattered Star?'
The sphere offered no answers. It just pulsed, warm and reassuring, a silent companion in a world that had suddenly decided he needed to be exterminated.
A bounty of one hundred billion gold coins.
Alden let out a quiet, raspy chuckle that held absolutely no joy. The sound died quickly in the empty woods.
"One hundred billion," he muttered aloud, his voice dropping into a dangerous, icy register. "I didn't know my head was worth more than the entire gross domestic product of a small kingdom."
He slipped the crystal sphere safely back into his pocket, his hand lingering over his chest for a moment.
The initial shock of seeing that newspaper had faded, leaving behind something much colder, much heavier. It was a dark, seething fury that rooted itself deep in his bones.
Liam von Ravel. The SS-Rank Pillar of the Empire. The man who had chained him to a wall, flayed his skin, shattered his bones, and tried to rip his soul apart just to steal a power he had no right to claim.
When the Heaven had dropped a literal pillar of divine wrath onto Liam's head, Alden had thought the universe had finally doled out some karmic justice. But he had severely underestimated the political machinery of the human domain.
Liam hadn't died. But an SS-Ranker couldn't exactly tell the High Council that he got struck by heaven's lightning because he was caught trying to rob an A-Rank student in a black site torture chamber. It would shatter his reputation. It would expose his greed.
So, Liam lied.
He pinned the blame on the anomaly. He painted Alden as a demonic parasite, a traitor who had launched an unprovoked terrorist attack on one of humanity's greatest protectors. And the Empire, blinded by their reverence for their SS-Rank 'gods', had swallowed the lie whole.
'S-Rank Existential Threat. Bring him in dead or alive.'
Alden tilted his head back, looking up at the slivers of blue sky visible through the thick pine branches.
He thought about his past life. He had been a nobody. A guy who kept his head down, watched the world happen from the sidelines, and ultimately died quietly in a sterile hospital bed.
When he had woken up in Elderia, in the body of Alden von Astra, he had planned to do the exact same thing. He wanted to be a background character. He wanted to avoid the tropes, avoid the heroes, avoid the demons, and just live a comfortable, unremarkable life.
But the world wouldn't let him.
The demons had hunted him. The trials had tested him. Alisia had drawn him out of the shadows. And Liam... Liam had tried to erase him.
"I never wanted any of this," Alden whispered, his single eye narrowing, the Crimson iris darkening until it looked almost black in the forest shade. "I never did a single damn thing to harm this world. I stood on the front lines. I bled on the Academy floors so those arrogant nobles wouldn't get slaughtered."
CRACK!
Alden hadn't realized he had balled his hand into a fist until the thick bark of the tree he was leaning against suddenly splintered and caved in under his grip.
He pulled his hand back, looking at the crushed wood. His A-Rank physical strength was reacting to his rising temper.
'They see me as a threat,' Alden thought, stepping away from the tree. 'They see an anomaly that doesn't fit into their neat little power structures. An obstacle to be removed. A monster to be hunted.'
He stood in the center of the path, the wind suddenly picking up, whipping the edges of his dark cloak around his legs.
He wasn't going to run away forever. He wasn't going to hide in some remote mountain cave and spend the rest of his second life jumping at shadows, terrified of every bounty hunter with a tracking compass.
That was what the old him would have done. The observer. The coward.
But the boy who had survived the Black Cell? The boy who had claimed the Void-Walker's authority and forced the System itself to bend?
He was done playing the victim.
"You want an S-Rank threat, Liam?" Alden said aloud, his voice echoing through the silent trees, dripping with a venomous, heavy anticipation. "You want to declare war on a parasite?"
A wild, thrilling sensation sparked in Alden's chest. It wasn't mana. It was pure, unadulterated willpower.
"You'll regret framing me. Not just you, Liam. Everyone who sat back and let this happen. Every High Council member who stamped their seal on that bounty."
He adjusted the strap of his travel bag, his posture straightening. The slight hunch of the broken boy vanished entirely, replaced by the imposing, predatory stillness of a hunter.
If they were so desperate to brand him a monster, then he would stop trying to prove them wrong. He would show them exactly why the heavens had protected him. He would drag himself back up from the D-Rank mud, claw his way past their precious power rankings, and tear their entire corrupt hierarchy down to the foundations.
'I will show you what I can do because you crossed the line.'
SWISH~
Alden spun on his heel and strode forward, his boots hitting the dirt with a new, rhythmic certainty. He didn't know exactly where this overgrown path led. He had no money, no allies, and a fractured system that was still counting down the days until it rebooted.
But he had time.
And for the first time since he had arrived in this world, Alden von Astra felt genuinely, terrifyingly excited for the future.
He was walking into the unknown, a blind vagabond with a shattered core. But the shadows of the forest no longer felt like a place to hide.
They felt like a place to hunt.