In the Academy's heavily fortified monitoring room, banks of glowing screens displayed live feeds from the stealth drones patrolling the Savage Wilds.
Instructor Graves paced back and forth, holding a steaming cup of coffee. He paused in front of Monitor 4, frowning deeply.
The screen showed Leo Valerius and his team scattered on the forest floor, beaten to a pulp. The drone hadn't captured the fight; it had arrived just seconds too late, recording only the aftermath.
"What happened to the Valerius kid?" another instructor asked, leaning over the console. "Did a boss-tier monster ambush them?"
"No monster leaves its prey alive without taking a bite," Graves muttered, his eyes narrowing. "Those are blunt-force trauma wounds. Someone took them out. And they did it fast enough to evade the drone's patrol cycle."
Before Graves could investigate further, the entire control room flashed crimson.
A deafening siren blared, and the main holographic map of the Savage Wilds turned bright red in Sector 4.
"Instructor!" a technician yelled, his fingers flying across the keyboard. "We have a massive spatial rupture inside the testing zone! A rogue Gate fragment just tore through the D-Rank barrier!"
"What's the threat level?!" Graves barked, spilling his coffee.
"The mana wavelength is... Sir, it's a B-Rank anomaly! It's a Bloodfiend!"
Graves turned pale. A Bloodfiend was a demonic entity attracted to the scent of fresh blood. It possessed terrifying speed, regenerative abilities, and a sadistic intelligence. Dropping a B-Rank demon into a forest full of unarmored, low-level cadets wasn't a test; it was a slaughter.
"And it spawned right next to the injured Valerius team!" the technician shouted in panic.
"Deploy the emergency rescue teams immediately!" Graves roared, drawing his weapon and sprinting toward the door. "Lock down the perimeter! We have less than three minutes before it massacres those kids!"
Back in the Savage Wilds, the smell of sulfur grew so thick it burned the lungs.
Elias stood motionless in the shadow of a massive oak tree. He watched the space in the clearing warp and tear like wet tissue paper. Out of the jagged, bleeding spatial rift stepped a nightmare.
The Bloodfiend stood three meters tall, its skin the color of flayed muscle. It had no eyes, only a gaping maw filled with circular rows of razor-sharp teeth. Its long, lanky arms ended in scythe-like claws dripping with corrosive black venom.
It tilted its head, sniffing the air. It immediately picked up the scent of Leo Valerius and his bleeding, unconscious team lying just fifty meters away. The demon let out a horrific, screeching laugh and dropped to all fours, preparing to sprint toward its helpless prey.
Elias stepped out from behind the tree, directly into the creature's path.
"You're tracking mud in my farming zone," Elias said, his voice cutting through the thick, sulfurous air.
The Bloodfiend stopped. It turned its eyeless face toward Elias. It couldn't smell any blood on him, but it sensed something deeply wrong. The human standing in front of it didn't radiate fear. He radiated the abyss.
The demon screeched and lunged, crossing the distance in a fraction of a second. Its venomous claws slashed in a lethal cross-pattern aimed at Elias's throat.
Elias didn't even draw his crowbar. He didn't use Spatial Step. He just stood there.
Clang!
The Bloodfiend's claws struck an invisible barrier of pure, condensed dark mana. The impact sent a shockwave through the dirt, but Elias didn't flinch.
From the shadow extending from Elias's feet, a massive, shadowy hand reached up and grabbed the Bloodfiend by its throat, lifting the three-meter demon off the ground as if it were a toy.
Iron, the Elite Hobgoblin, fully materialized. His electric-blue eyes flared with anger at the creature that dared to attack his monarch.
The Bloodfiend thrashed wildly, its claws digging into Iron's shadowy arm, but the physical attacks did absolutely nothing to the mana-based construct.
"Let's test the new aerial support," Elias murmured. "Eclipse."
The sky above the clearing suddenly grew pitch black, as if a cloud had blocked out the sun.
The Void Chimera dropped from the canopy without a sound. Its massive wingspan cast a terrifying shadow over the entire clearing. The B-Rank demon in Iron's grip suddenly stopped thrashing. Even with its primitive, blood-crazed intelligence, it realized it had just picked a fight with the apex predators of the underworld.
"Tear it apart," Elias ordered.
Eclipse didn't hesitate. The Chimera swung its massive scythe-legs, cleanly severing the Bloodfiend's arms from its body. The demon shrieked in agony, black blood spraying across the grass.
Before it could even attempt to regenerate, Blood, the Commander-Grade Death Knight, emerged from Elias's shadow. He moved with a terrifying elegance, his crimson claymore leaving a trail of red light in the air.
With a single, horizontal slash, Blood decapitated the B-Rank demon.
The fight was over in less than five seconds.
[You have slain a B-Rank Bloodfiend.] [You have leveled up!] [You have reached Level 23.]
Elias looked down at the demon's corpse. B-Rank souls were incredibly useful. They were fast, highly aggressive, and perfect for frontline shock troops.
"Arise."
The black smoke violently pulled itself from the corpse, taking the form of the lanky, terrifying demon.
[Extraction Successful!] [Elite Grade Shadow: Bloodfiend (Lv. 20) has joined your legion.]
Elias smirked. His army was becoming more diverse and infinitely more dangerous.
Suddenly, the whirring sound of helicopter blades echoed from above. The military rescue choppers were arriving, accompanied by Instructor Graves and his elite strike team.
"Return," Elias commanded.
The shadow legion melted back into the ground just as the heavy floodlights from the helicopters pierced through the canopy, illuminating the clearing.
Graves and his team dropped from the choppers, weapons drawn, expecting a bloodbath. Instead, they found Leo Valerius and his team bruised but alive, and the decapitated corpse of a B-Rank demon lying in the dirt.
Standing over the demon's corpse, wiping a bit of black blood off his hoodie, was Elias.
Graves stared at the scene in absolute shock. The rescue team lowered their weapons, dumbfounded.
"Instructor," Elias said, looking up with a perfectly calm, slightly exhausted expression. "I think someone left the Gate open."