The march back to Aethelgard felt different. The air was heavier, charged with unseen static. Even the birds in the non-cursed part of the forest seemed quiet.
Ravi, despite his promises of caution, found himself looking over his shoulder constantly. The cultist's threat about 'The Hound' stuck in his mind.
By noon of the second day, they were traversing the Stone Gulch—a narrow pass cut through limestone cliffs that separated the forest lands from the golden plains of the capital. It was a natural choke point.
"I hate this place," Celeste muttered, her staff glowing as she scanned the ridges above. "Ideally designed for ambush. Limited maneuverability. Poor line of sight."
"Cheer up," Ravi said, casually kicking a boulder the size of a microwave off the path. "Maybe the bad guys are on a lunch break."
They weren't.
A howl split the air. Not a wolf howl. This sound was deeper, resonant, like metal grinding on bone. It didn't echo; it seemed to suck the sound out of the air.
Celeste stumbled, clutching her chest. "My mana... it's draining. Something is pulling at it."
"Formation!" Lyanna shouted, drawing her sword.
From the cliffs above, something leaped.
It was massive. The size of a bus. It looked like a cross between a wolf and a reptile, covered in scales the color of dried blood. Its eyes were swirling vortices of purple light. But the most terrifying part was its mouth—a lamprey-like maw filled with hundreds of spinning teeth that crackled with blue sparks.
It landed in front of them with an earth-shaking thud, blocking the path forward.
"The Void Hound," Celeste whispered, terror blanching her face. "It's an anti-mage biological weapon. Don't cast anything! It feeds on active spells!"
The beast sniffed the air, its vortex eyes locking onto Celeste instantly. It drooled lightning.
"Lyanna, keep Celeste back!" Ravi ordered, stepping forward with the Widowmaker. "I'll take aggro."
"You can't!" Celeste screamed. "It devours magical energy! Augmentation is magic! If you reinforce your body, it will strip the energy right out of your muscles and leave you paralyzed!"
"Good thing I don't use augmentation then," Ravi muttered.
The Hound roared and lunged—not at Ravi, but past him, aiming straight for the magical buffet that was Celeste.
Ravi sidestepped, bringing the Widowmaker around in a sweeping interception arc.
CLANG.
The glaive connected with the beast's scaly hide. It was hard as diamond. The impact stopped the creature's lunge dead in the air, dropping it to the ground.
It shook its head, snarling. It turned to Ravi, seemingly confused. It sniffed him.
To the Hound, Ravi must have smelled like... nothing. A rock. A piece of furniture. It sensed no mana, no life force it recognized as food. It turned away, dismissing him, and focused on Celeste again.
"Hey!" Ravi yelled, waving his arms. "Over here! Juicy mage!" He pointed at himself.
The beast ignored him. It opened its horrific maw. A ball of compressed void energy began to form—a breath weapon.
"It's charging a Void Howl!" Lyanna shouted, leaping in front of Celeste with her shield raised. But her shield was magical. The beast would eat through it in seconds.
Ravi realized standard tactics wouldn't work. The monster literally couldn't perceive him as a threat because he lacked the one thing every living creature in this world had: mana.
Okay. If I can't be bait, I'll have to be a headache.
Ravi dropped the Widowmaker. It clattered loudly on the stones.
He sprinted.
Just as the beast reared back to unleash its devastating breath, Ravi jumped. He landed squarely on the creature's back.
He grabbed two handfuls of the thick, leathery mane scales.
"Giddy up!"
The Hound bucked wildy, startled by the rock that had suddenly grown arms and grabbed it. It thrashed, slamming its body against the canyon walls, trying to dislodge the passenger.
Ravi held on. Not with mana adhesion. With grip strength that could crush diamonds. His fingers dug into the scales, piercing them.
The beast roared in genuine pain now. Black ichor oozed from where Ravi held on.
"It... it's hurting!" Celeste gasped, watching from behind Lyanna's shield. "He's piercing high-density anti-magic armor with his bare hands!"
The Hound, realizing it couldn't shake him, tried to roll. It threw its multi-ton bulk onto its back, intending to crush Ravi into paste against the stone floor.
Ravi saw it coming. He released his grip at the last second, hopped off, let the beast slam onto its back with a bone-jarring impact, and then—before it could recover—hopped right back onto its exposed chest.
He was staring directly into the lamprey mouth. The spinning teeth. The swirling void light deep in its throat.
"You have terrible breath," Ravi stated.
He pulled back his right fist.
He didn't aim for the scales this time. He aimed right down the gullet.
"Celeste said you eat magic," Ravi grunted, driving his fist downward. "Eat this."
His punch didn't carry mana. It carried the mass of a wrecking ball concentrated into the surface area of a fist.
His arm plunged into the creature's mouth, past the teeth, deep into its throat.
There was a wet squelch. Then a dull thump.
The shockwave of the punch traveled through the creature. Its back arched. The stone ground beneath it cracked in a spiderweb pattern from the force transferred through its body.
The spinning teeth stopped. The purple light in its eyes flickered and died. The beast let out one final, wheezing gurgle, twitched once, and went still.
Ravi pulled his arm out. It was covered in glowing blue goo—undigested mana bile.
"Gross," he said, shaking his hand. "So gross."
He climbed off the carcass of the A-Rank legendary monster slayer.
Lyanna and Celeste stood in stunned silence. Again.
"You..." Celeste started, then stopped. She closed her book. "I give up. Physics is broken. Thermodynamics is a lie. I'm going to become a baker."
Lyanna sheathed her sword. She walked over to the beast, prodding its scaly armor with her boot. It was hard enough to deflect siege bolts. And Ravi had ridden it like a pony and punched it to death from the inside.
"The throat is a weak point," she said, trying to rationalize it for her own sanity. "Internal soft tissue. Theoretically vulnerable."
"Exactly!" Ravi seized the lifeline. "Soft palate. Very sensitive. Gag reflex, you know?"
Celeste looked at the cracked stone beneath the corpse. "Gag reflex caused tectonic fractures. Understood. I will note that in the report under 'Advanced tickling techniques'."
Ravi wiped the goo on the dead beast's fur. "We should take a trophy. Grimshaw needs to know his pet failed."
Lyanna nodded grimly. She drew a dagger and sawed off one of the long, curved horns.
"The Hound is dead," she said. "But the Master... Malachai... he knows we're a threat now. This was a targeted assassination."
"Let him come," Ravi said, picking up the Widowmaker. "If his pets are this dumb, I'm not worried."
But internally, his heart was pounding. That fight was messy. The beast hadn't recognized him. What if the next one ignored him completely and just killed Lyanna? He needed to figure out how to generate 'threat' without mana. Maybe he just needed to yell louder?
Or maybe he needed to stop pretending to be F-Rank.
"Let's move," he said. "I really need to wash this hand."
They left the gulch, leaving the mountain of meat behind for the carrion birds. The road to Aethelgard lay open.
But as they crested the final hill, looking down at the white city, smoke was rising from the Royal Palace.
Black, unnatural smoke.
"The beacons aren't lit," Lyanna frowned. "That's not an invasion signal."
"No," Ravi said, his enhanced vision zooming in. "It's coming from the Chancellor's tower."
Celeste gasped. "An attack from within?"
"Or a cover-up," Ravi said darkly. "We have the Void staff. We have the horn. Grimshaw knows we're coming back. He's destroying the evidence."
They broke into a run.
The quiet mission was over. The race was on.