Day five.
Jayden's eyes opened.
White ceiling. Cave walls. His team staring.
"Finally," Marcus breathed.
Jayden sat up. Felt different. Lighter. Stronger.
"How long?"
"Five days." Elena's voice was tight. "Your hair "
He touched it. White. All of it.
"What happened?"
"Trauma." Cinna's hands glowed, checking him. "Your regeneration healed the physical damage. But not the mental. The stress turned your hair white."
Jayden looked at his reflection in a water basin. White freeforms. Brown skin. Red black eye when it pulsed.
Different. Striking. Older somehow.
"I feel fine."
"That's the problem," Zain said. "Your body's perfect. Your mind..." He trailed off.
"I said I'm fine." Jayden stood. Everything responded instantly. "What happened after the monkey?"
Marcus exchanged glances with Elena.
"That's the weird part. We searched everywhere. No essence. No staff. No drops. Nothing."
"An S rank boss dropped nothing?"
"Zero."
Jayden frowned. His eye pulsed.
"Omni. Where's the essence?"
**[QUERY RECEIVED]**
**[ACCESSING STORAGE PROTOCOLS...]**
**[ESSENCE ABSORPTION: COMPLETE DURING UNCONSCIOUS STATE]**
**[ALL RESOURCES: STORED INTERNALLY]**
"What?"
**[AUTOMATIC INTEGRATION INITIATED TO PRESERVE HOST LIFE]**
**[NO CONFIRMATION REQUIRED DURING CRITICAL CONDITION]**
"Omni stored everything. And integrated it while I was out."
The team froze.
"All of it?" Elena asked.
"Show me the stats."
**[INTEGRATION RESULTS:]**
**[SPEED: 31.2 → 63.4 UNITS (BASE)]**
**[ATTACK POWER: 40.3 → 54.8 UNITS (BASE)]**
**[BLACK LIGHTNING AURA ENHANCEMENT: 35% → 50% SPEED, 15% → 25% ATTACK]**
**[REGENERATION: IMPROVED HEALING FACTOR x3]**
**[STAFF ESSENCE: CONVERTED TO 47 ESSENCE STONES]**
**[ADDITIONAL DROPS: 200KG FOOD, 150L WATER, STORED]**
Jayden's heart hammered. "I doubled everything."
"What?" Marcus stepped closer.
"My base speed is 63. Attack is 54. Black Lightning aura gives me 50% more speed now. That's..." He calculated. "95 effective speed."
Silence.
"That's Sage level," Vance said from the entrance. "High Sage."
"The staff turned into essence stones. Forty seven of them." Jayden's eye tracked them in his internal storage. "They upgrade manifestations."
"And you have food and water," Cinna added. "For weeks."
"Can you transfer essence?" Elena asked.
Jayden focused on Cinna. His eye pulsed.
**[ESSENCE TRANSFER: AVAILABLE]**
**[TARGET: CINNA VAEL]**
**[AMOUNT: SPECIFY]**
"How much do you want?"
Cinna's eyes widened. "I what?"
"Omni can transfer some. Not all. But enough to boost you."
"Ten percent," she said quickly. "If you can spare it."
He focused. Green essence flowed from him to her.
**[TRANSFER COMPLETE]**
**[CINNA VAEL STATS UPDATED:]**
**[SPEED: 14.2 → 18.7 UNITS]**
**[ATTACK POWER: 4.0 → 6.8 UNITS]**
**[HEALING RANGE: 50M → 70M]**
Cinna gasped. Power flooding her.
"I'm almost Expert rank."
"Good." Jayden turned to Vance. "What's the plan now?"
She pulled out a map. Marked in red.
"The kingdom mobilized. Three armies. Nexus capital, border towns, and Ashenfell entrance." She pointed. "They're boxing us in."
"Then we go through Ashenfell."
"It's a wasteland. Corrupted beasts. Essence storms. And somewhere in there Lucian."
"We need to reach him anyway." Jayden traced the route. "We go through, find him, get answers."
"And if he tries to kill us?" Zain asked.
"We're strong enough to run." Jayden met their eyes. "Barely."
Marcus cracked his knuckles. "What about our ranks? We cleared a fifteen floor dungeon. Killed an S rank. We should check."
Jayden's eye pulsed. Scanned each of them.
**[TEAM RANKINGS POST DUNGEON:]**
**[JAYDEN: GRANDMASTER (HIGH) APPROACHING SAGE]**
**[MARCUS: MASTER (PEAK) GRANDMASTER DURABILITY]**
**[ELENA: MASTER (HIGH)]**
**[ZAIN: MASTER (MID)]**
**[CINNA: EXPERT (HIGH)]**
"We're all Master rank minimum," he said. "Except Cinna, who's Expert."
"That's..." Elena's voice was awed. "We're a Master rank team. At sixteen."
"Youngest in recorded history," Vance confirmed. "Which makes you even bigger targets."
"So we hide." Jayden looked at the map. "Ashenfell Kingdom. Where?"
"There's ruins. Old cities. Plenty of places to disappear." Vance marked three locations. "But first, we need to get out of Nexus without being caught."
"How?"
"I have contacts. Smugglers. They'll move you through the border for a price."
"We have essence stones," Jayden said. "That's currency."
"Good. Because it's expensive." Vance folded the map. "I leave tomorrow. Scout the route. You rest one more day. Then we move."
"What about after?" Cinna asked. "After we reach Ashenfell?"
"We find Lucian," Jayden said. "See if he's ally or enemy."
"And then?"
"We make a plan. With Omni's help." His eye blazed. "Calculate everything. Every move. Every probability. We beat Theron. Clear our names. End this."
Marcus grinned. "Sounds easy."
"It won't be." Jayden's expression was steel. "But we don't have a choice."
That night, they rested.
Jayden sat at the cave entrance. White hair catching moonlight. Black lightning sparking faintly around him.
Elena joined him.
"You're different."
"I know."
"Not just the hair. Your energy. It's..." She searched for words. "Colder."
"Enrage mode changed something." Jayden looked at his hands. "I felt myself breaking. Becoming what they fear."
"But you came back."
"This time."
Silence stretched.
"Your plan," Elena said. "Find Lucian. Face Theron. It's insane."
"It's all we've got."
"What if Lucian kills us? What if Theron's too strong?"
Jayden's eye pulsed. Showed probabilities.
**[LUCIAN ENCOUNTER: 34% HOSTILE, 23% ALLY, 43% NEUTRAL]**
**[THERON CONFRONTATION: 67% VICTORY WITH CURRENT STRENGTH]**
**[SURVIVAL RATE NEXT 30 DAYS: 71%]**
"Seventy one percent we make it through the month."
"Those aren't good odds."
"They're better than zero." He stood. "Get some sleep. Tomorrow we plan. Day after, we move."
She didn't argue. Left him alone with the darkness.
Jayden's eye glowed crimson. Black lightning danced.
95 effective speed. 68 effective attack with aura active.
Almost Sage level. At sixteen.
He thought about the monkey. The enrage. The white hair.
About Lucian, waiting in Ashenfell.
About Theron, who tried to cage him.
*I'm not the victim anymore.*
His black lightning flared.
*I'm the threat.*