Darkness.

It was a familiar comfort to him.

The plush, suffocating darkness of his childhood bedchambers, so large they echoed his breathing.

The darkness of closed eyelids when his tutors droned on about political alliances and the "honor of the house." When he had no choice but to do everything by their rules, follow everything they forced onto him, kill everything they wanted gone...

Darkness, was a blanket he could pull over his head to hide from those gleaming, expectant eyes.

'...!'

What followed the darkness was pain.

A sharp, insistent drill in his temple. A deep, throbbing ache in his ribs that yanked him back from the peaceful void.

"Ugh!"

Back to the grinding hum of a monster and the cold, hard stone against his cheek.

"!"

Cassiel's eyes fluttered open.

The world swam into focus, a dark canvas of nightmare woven in red light and shadow, present beyond a new blanket of green.

The first thing he saw when his mind stabilised was the Warden— the reaper of souls, the deliverer of death, taking a final, ground-shaking step.

Their death was approaching...

"Where's!"

The second was Aria, crumpled and still beside him, her breathing a shallow, ragged thing. The green barrier must be her doing... another one of her hidden secrets.

'Warm...'

He felt a warmth now distant to him.

"It's hesitant..."

The guardian didn't approach them readily; instead, it was analysing. The green barrier was losing its light as the single red eye of the guardian intensified.

Cass guessed, 'It's interpreting the barrier to undo it.'

But even a colossal being like that found it challenging.

"Qwy..."

The third to meet his eyes was the strange feathered eyeball, the tiny, defiant spark of light, her brave chirps fading into pathetic little peeps as she fell to the ground.

Failure.

The word suddenly echoed, not as a new thought, but as an old, bitter companion. It was the same taste he'd had in his mouth his entire life.

Utter failure.

He had been treasured all his life.

Not loved, not cherished—treasured, like a legendary artifact locked in a vault, its value measured only by the power it could wield.

From the moment his status window had manifested, the House of Khalasi had seen not a son, but a weapon. A prodigy.

His innate mana affinity was exceptional, a solid foundation for a powerful mage. But it was the other skill, the one that had no business appearing for a scion of a lineage of hunters and political spiders, that made their eyes gleam with naked, hungry fire.

It was a skill that broke the natural rules.

===Status===

ID: Cassiel vi Khalasi

Job: Apprentice Mage (Beginner)

Mana: 50/500

Strength: 42

Agility: 43

Vitality: 18

Intellect: 20

Stamina: 21

Mage EXP: 20 (Next level: 4500)

Level: 10

Possessed coins: 234

~*~*~*~*~*~*

Innate Skills: Mana Affinity (A), {Cut} (S)

Job skills: Magic utilisation (Beginner), Magic inference (Novice), Spell weave (Beginner), Spellcasting (Novice).

============

{Cut} (S).

Fewer than fifty people on the whole damned continent possessed an S-rank skill. It was a mark of a sovereign, a demigod in the making, a being who could elevate a noble house to a royal dynasty with a flick of their wrist.

His family hadn't wanted a mage; they had wanted a Monarch. A blademaster whose will could sever fate itself.

They tried to tame him, to break him to the saddle of the sword, to forge him into the living weapon of their ambition.

'Monsters.'

So he ran. He'd chosen the staff over the sword, the robe over the armor.

He'd buried his true nature under a mountain of fumbled spells and manufactured terror, playing the part of a weakling so perfectly he almost believed it himself.

He chose magic not out of love, but as the ultimate act of rebellion against the destiny they'd carved out for him.

Cut.

Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut.

Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut.

Cut. Cut. Cut.

'Ugh... not again.'

But the truth was a serpent coiled deep in his gut.

When it came to cutting, he was, simply and unfairly, a natural.

It wasn't a skill; it was an understanding that lived in his bones, a harmony between intent and action that felt more right than breathing.

'I don't want to...'

His gaze, still blurred with pain, drifted past Aria's pale, still face and landed on the mithril blade.

It lay there, glowing with a soft, serene light that seemed to call his name.

Not to his intellect, not to his pitiful mage's mana pool, but to the caged beast he'd locked in the deepest dungeon of his soul.

Cut.

Cut.

Cut.

He fought his inner demons, but the moment he felt her breathing slow down, something inside him snapped.

'For her...'

The dull, fearful gray of his eyes evaporated, burned away in an instant by a stark, burning crimson.

A bloodlust that felt both alien and terrifyingly familiar— a scent he'd spent his life trying to wash off— seeped from his pores, so potent it made the advancing Warden hesitate for a single, crucial heartbeat.

-Step.

His body screamed in protest. His mana was a dried-up well, his stamina gone.

But the stats he'd hidden, the Strength and Agility of a level 10 hunter who'd secretly carved his way through the family'sprivate beast-forests, they were still there. Unfairly so.

-Step.

He moved.

-Swish!

It wasn't the clumsy scramble of Cassiel the Mage. It was a predator's fluid, uncoiling glide.

-Swiiiiish!

His hand closed around the hilt of the mithril short sword.

And...

-Ooooooooooooooong!

The moment his skin touched the metal, it screamed.

-Zaaaaaaaaaaa...!

It wasn't a sound of pain, but of recognition. A joyous, deafening shriek of power.

A blank slate had finally found its master.

-Swish!

Cassiel didn't cast a spell; he commanded the mystical blade, channeling his raw fire affinity directly into the mithril'sperfect, mana-thirsty core.

-Zuuuuu!

The blade didn't just glow; it erupted.

-Ooooooooooooong!

The soft moonlight transformed into a miniature sun.

Flames, red-hot and vicious, wreathed the steel without consuming it, the very edge of the blade humming with a frequency that promised to unmake anything it touched.

"Grrrrrr...!"

The Warden's single red eye pulsed, its programming finally registering a threat that defied its parameters.

It stopped declaring the green barrier and focused on the scrawny boy; however, Cass didn't give it time to calculate.

-Step.

His mind went quiet.

There was no fear in those crimson eyes, no thought of home or family, no pathetic self-pity or doubt.

There was only the target and...

Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut.

The familiar voices.

-Thump!

He kicked the air and jumped.

-Swish...

The world didn't slow down; it simplified itself in his mind.

He saw the lines— the flaws in the stone, the fragile stitchings in the mana-weave holding the golem together.

They glowed to his sight like neon signs in a fog, asking to be severed.

-Swish.

First cut.

A horizontal slash was made. A crescent of blazing red flame that didn't so much strike the Warden as it passed throughits torso.

The stone didn't crack; it shifted. The magic within it severed with a clean, silent, final hiss.

The mage landed, his momentum now a relentless dance.

His body became an artist's brush, painting destruction with impossible grace.

Cut. Cut. Cut.

Cut. Cut.

Cut!

Two. Three. Four.

Vertical, diagonal, sweeping arcs. Each movement was a haiku of violence, each cut a master's strike that ignored the concept of defense and went straight to the truth of the thing's existence.

-Swiiiiiiiiiiiiiish!!

The air filled with the whisper of parting stone and the sizzle of dying enchantments.

Cut! Cut! Cut! Cut! Cut! Cut!

Five. Six. Seven.

Eight...

Nine.

He landed softly, his back facing the Warden.

-Tuck.

The inferno on the mithril blade winked out as he fluidly sheathed the now-satisfied sword at his hip.

-Oooooooong...

As if by some deep, pre-ordained magic, the blade itself dissolved into motes of brilliant light and flowed directly into his body, a symbiotic weapon finally finding its one true host.

A blade tattoo appeared on the back of his hand the next moment, before it, too, vanished under the pale skin.

"..."

For a moment, there was a silence more deafening than any that had come before.

-Thud!

-Thud! Thud! Thud!

-Thud! Thud!

Then, with a series of heavy, crushing sighs, the Warden's body slid apart into nine perfectly segmented pieces, smashing to the floor in a pile of dead rock.

Its core, the blazing red eye, was cleft into three dark, motionless shards.

At the same time, the oppressive, aggressive hum of the dungeon died.

The strobing red alarms faded, replaced only by the steady, calming green of Aria's emergency Safe Zone.

The dungeon core, witnessing the impossible and the stabilization of the zone, had stood down.

"...?"

Cass stood there, his small frame trembling not with fear, but with the cataclysmic strain.

"...!"

He coughed, a spray of crimson decorating the stone before him.

"Cough!!"

The backlash of pushing himself was brutal; wielding such a powerful weapon and unleashing his true self had momentarily shattered something fundamental inside him.

The power had been too much, a tidal wave in a vessel not yet built to hold it.

"Ughhh."

He swallowed the blood and the pain, turning his gaze to Aria.

He looked at her, this chaotic, brilliant woman who had stumbled into his life and seen a person, not a specimen, or a tool, or a ruler.

A wave of dizzying curiosity and awe washed over him, and a faint, completely inappropriate blush heated his cheeks despite the agony.

'I don't bite...'

Some not-so-old words surfaced in his mind, intensifying the heat on his cheeks.

"Haaa..."

He took a single, wobbling step towards her, needing to see the rise and fall of her chest, to know if those clever, green eyes would ever open again.

But...

His body had given all it had.

-Thud.

His vision tunneled to a pinprick of light, his legs turned fluid, and he collapsed to the ground, the world fading to black once more, the secret of the mithril now a dormant, sleeping power within his body.

The entire stupidly one-sided battle, only having been witnessed by one, tiny, weak, green eye...

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