The orc's roar shattered into something else entirely.
Pain.
Shock.
Disbelief.
Its massive body lurched sideways, balance collapsing in an instant. One knee slammed into the ground, shattering stone beneath its weight.
Lucien stood frozen, eyes wide and uncomprehending.
"…No way…"
Tharic's face drained completely of color.
Even the last recruit slid down the wall, legs no longer able to hold him.
Because this wasn't combat.
It was reduction.
The orc swung again—wild now, desperate. Its remaining cleaver carved a sweeping arc meant to erase everything in its path.
Draven shifted once.
Only once.
A minimal step. A perfect angle.
The blade passed inches from his face, wind tearing through his hair.
He didn't blink.
Didn't flinch.
Didn't react like someone escaping death.
He reacted like someone confirming it had already missed.
His chain snapped outward.
**CLANG.**
It wrapped around the orc's wrist.
The monster roared and pulled—muscles swelling with brute force.
The chain tightened.
Draven's arm barely moved.
Then—
He yanked.
The orc's upper body lurched forward, balance fully compromised now, blood still pouring from the severed limb.
Draven stepped in.
Close.
Unbroken eye contact.
Crimson meeting crimson-red fury.
Cold. Empty. Certain.
Then—
His fist rose.
And drove upward.
No flourish.
No wasted motion.
Just impact.
**BOOM.**
The sound cracked through the chamber like thunder splitting stone.
The orc's head snapped back violently. Tusks shattered. Teeth exploded. Blood sprayed in a wide arc.
Its body lifted off the ground—
A mass of muscle and steel briefly denied gravity—
Then crashed backward.
The impact shook the entire chamber.
Cracks raced across the floor. Dust surged upward in a choking wave.
Silence followed.
Heavy. Absolute.
The orc twitched once.
Twice.
Then stopped.
Draven stood where he was.
Still holding the oversized cleaver.
Still wrapped in chains.
Still unchanged.
Blood dripped from the blade, from the corpse, from the unseen fractures above.
But not from him.
Lucien slowly rose to his feet, staring as if his mind hadn't caught up with reality.
Tharic looked less afraid now—
And more lost.
The last recruit whispered, voice hollow:
"…What… are you…"
Draven didn't answer.
He let the cleaver fall.
It hit the stone with a heavy, final crash.
Then he looked ahead.
Toward the next gate.
Toward whatever came next.
As though what he had just done—
Was only an interruption.
Elsewhere—
Steel had never truly touched flesh.
Not in any meaningful way.
Because from the very beginning—
the black hobgoblin had been playing them.
The shallow cuts across its forearms.
The gouge along its side.
The heavier breathing.
The slight favoring of one leg.
All of it.
A performance.
A lie.
And the moment they committed—
it stopped pretending.
Kaelira struck first.
A blur of sharpened instinct and condensed mana, claws cutting through the air with enough force to tear stone apart.
Straight for its throat.
Fast. Clean. Lethal.
The hobgoblin smiled.
Then vanished.
Not erased.
Not gone.
Just movement—too fast, too precise for the eye to properly follow.
Its body twisted sideways with impossible economy, slipping past Kaelira's strike as though it had never been aimed at anything real.
Her claws passed through empty air.
The hobgoblin's hand snapped out.
A backhand.
Brutal.
**BOOM.**
Kaelira's eyes widened—not in fear, but in recognition.
She raised her arm just in time to block.
It didn't matter.
The impact still launched her across the chamber.
Stone shattered under her path as she carved through debris, boots grinding violent grooves into the floor before she finally stopped.
Mana flickered erratically around her.
"Kaelira—!" the mage shouted.
Too late.
The hobgoblin was already moving.
Straight for him.
It had seen it instantly.
The support.
The anchor.
The weakest structural point.
Seryna moved.
Lightning detonated beneath her feet.
She intercepted mid-line.
Blue-white arcs screaming around her fist as she drove a strike into its ribs.
The hobgoblin rotated mid-step.
Its claw met her fist.
**CRACK.**
The sound wasn't just impact—it was pressure meeting pressure, force refusing to yield.
Lightning exploded outward.
Stone fractured in a ring beneath them.
But the hobgoblin didn't move back.
Not even a millimeter.
Its grin widened instead.
Interested now.
Amused.
Seryna's eyes narrowed.
Because now she understood.
This wasn't B-rank.
It was something else entirely.
The hobgoblin's free hand dropped low.
Too fast.
A knifehand aimed directly at her throat.
She bent backward just in time.
Claws skimmed past her skin, close enough to leave a thin red line across her neck.
Lucien's sister stepped in instantly.
"Aelion."
The wind responded.
Invisible pressure condensed into blades of air, slamming into the hobgoblin's flank from its blind side.
For the first time—
it reacted.
Its body shifted sharply, forced off balance by the unseen strike.
Seryna exploited it immediately.
Lightning speared down.
**BOOM.**
The floor erupted beneath the hobgoblin, stone exploding upward as cracks raced through the ground like veins of light.
Dust swallowed it whole.
The mage raised both hands, trembling violently.
"…Bind!"
Light shot outward.
Chains of force formed from the shattered floor, wrapping into the smoke, locking around something unseen.
The chamber went still.
Half a breath of silence.
Kaelira wiped blood from the corner of her mouth and pushed herself upright.
Mana flared again—hotter now. Less controlled. More honest.
"…Tch."
She spat blood aside.
"…Knew it."
No panic. No surprise.
Only confirmation.
"…Never trust something that smiles while dying."
Seryna didn't take her eyes off the dust.
"…Status."
Her voice was steady.
Sharper now.
The mage's hands shook.
"…I can hold it for maybe five seconds."
Lucien's sister exhaled slowly, feeling Aelion coil tighter around her.
"…It's enraged," she said quietly.
Certain.
The dust shifted.
Then—
A laugh came from within.
Low. Deep. Wrong.
The chains snapped.
Not strained.
Not resisted.
Simply broken.
Like thread under no pressure at all.
Silence.
Then the hobgoblin stepped out.
Unharmed.
No burn.
No cut.
No sign of damage at all.
Its yellow eyes gleamed brighter than before.
Its grin wider.
Almost delighted.
It rolled its shoulder slowly, like a warrior stretching before real combat.
The mage went pale.
"…No…"
Seryna's lightning surged harder, but even she felt it now.
The pressure in the room had changed.
This wasn't a creature reacting anymore.
This was a creature deciding.
Kaelira stepped forward again.
Loose stance. Low center. Tail perfectly still.
Mana surging—dense, violent, unrestrained.
And unlike the others—
she wasn't shaken.
Because she had never believed the illusion.
Never believed it was injured.
Never believed it was anything less than lethal.
Even now—
even after everything—
her eyes were sharp.
Alive.
Predatory.
Her lips curled.
Not fear.
Not panic.
Hunger.
"…Good."
The hobgoblin's grin sharpened in return.
Predator recognizing predator.
Kaelira's eyes narrowed.
Deadly focused.
"…Now it's honest."
And then—
she moved.
No probing.
No testing.
No hesitation.
Only kill intent.
The second clash began.