A notification caught my attention somewhere between one stride and the next.
[Exploration reached Level 50. Enhance now?]
Yes.
[Dash skill upgraded to Dash II]
I stopped mid-step to check the details. A cooldown of a second and a half — nearly half of what it used to be. With mana that never runs out, I could practically live inside this skill. I planted my feet, ready to test it properly. Alright. Let's run.
The word alone was enough to drag something else up with it — something I hadn't asked for and couldn't push back down once it surfaced.
My father's voice, breaking apart mid-scream. "Run, son!" The wet sound that followed it. My mother reaching for me with both hands, already too late. "Save yourself, my child…"
I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. The memory held me exactly where I stood, as vivid as the day it happened, as if no time at all had passed since.
Then a different voice cut through it — closer, real, gentle in a way the memory wasn't. "Kazu? You're just standing here in front of the house. Come inside."
The blood and the screaming dissolved back into the ordinary shape of the orphanage, Rosalia's face in front of me instead of my mother's. I hadn't noticed the tears until they were already running down my face. "Mom Rosalia," I choked out, wrapping my arms around her waist before I'd decided to. "Don't leave me. Please."
She knelt without a word and pulled me into her, one hand smoothing over my hair. "Of course not, my child. I'll always be right here. I'm not going anywhere."
The next day.
"Kazu!" Kazike's voice carried clean across the Guild hall before I'd even reached the counter. "You taking a Job Quest today too?"
"I need to earn my keep somehow," I said. "Missy said to stick with F-rank for now, so—"
He was already shaking his head before I finished. "An S-rank adventurer taking F-rank work? Absolutely not." He lowered his voice, glancing at a couple of nearby rookies. "Think about it from their side, Kazu. If someone at your level starts scooping up the easy jobs, what's left for the ones who actually need them?"
"…You're right," I admitted, a little sheepish. "I hadn't thought of it that way. Would you take me along on one of yours, then? I'd like to see what real difficulty looks like."
He stroked his chin, and I caught the edge of a mutter under his breath — something that sounded suspiciously like finally, my moment — before his grin widened into something a little too eager. "An A-rank job's probably too easy for you at this point. Let's aim higher."
I felt something in my stomach drop slightly. "How much higher?"
"S-rank." He was already marching toward the board before I could object, tapping a heavily stamped parchment with obvious relish. "Here — five dragons, loose in Leafa Forest. Perfect test."
"Dragons?" My voice cracked on the word. "Kazike, I've fought slimes and goblins. That's it."
"Killing dragons is nothing," he said, throwing an arm around my shoulders and steering me toward the counter before I could argue further. "I've taken down two myself. It's practically routine." Under his breath, so quiet I almost missed it: "…even though I nearly died both times."
I decided not to mention that I'd heard that part.
Missy's face went through several stages of alarm when Kazike announced the quest at the counter. "Dragons? Kazike, are you seriously taking him out there?"
"It's alright, Missy," I said, before Kazike could dig himself in deeper. "I want to test what I can actually do. He thinks I can handle it."
She rubbed her temples, clearly unconvinced but out of arguments that would land. "Just — be careful. Both of you. That quest earns its rank."
"We'll come back in one piece," I promised. "I swear it."
Kazike was already halfway to the door, waving broadly. "We're off! Back before dinner!"
"Take care," Missy called after us, her eyes fixed on me rather more than on him. "Especially you, Kazu."
The forest swallowed the road behind us within the first mile, the light going thin and green overhead, the only sounds the distant rumble of something that wasn't quite thunder and the occasional crackle of static threading between the trees.
The ground shuddered under my boots. "Kazike — that wasn't me."
He drew his greatsword without a word, expression sliding into something grim I hadn't seen on him before. "They're close."
The roar that followed shook leaves loose from branches thirty feet up. "Behind you!" I shouted, and he spun and blinked aside just ahead of a gout of fire that would have taken his head off, reappearing at the dragon's flank in the same motion. "Stay back, Kazu — watch how this is done. BLADE STRIKE!"
His blade went through the creature's neck like it was parting water. The head hit the ground first; the rest of the beast followed a half-second later with a crash that scattered birds for what sounded like a mile in every direction.
Then Kazike dropped to his knees, and kept dropping, until he was flat on his back in the churned-up dirt. "Huff… see? Nothing to it." He managed a weak thumbs-up from the ground.
"Kazike!" I dropped beside him, panic climbing fast. "Are you hurt?"
"Just… overdid it a little," he wheezed. "You've got this from here, yeah?"
"There are four more of them coming," I said, watching trees snap and topple further back in the treeline. "I've never fought anything like this before."
His eyes were already sliding shut. "You're S-rank, kid. You'll figure it out." He let out a snore that seemed almost impressively timed, given the circumstances.
I stared at him a moment in disbelief, then hauled his considerable weight behind the nearest boulder before squaring back around toward the sound of approaching thunder. Four dragons. Fine. I need to be stronger than I've ever been, starting right now.
They broke the treeline together — scales crackling with stray lightning, jaws already glowing with banked fire.
"Dash II!" I blinked clear of the first blast, angling in mid-air. "Fire Pierce!"
They answered with everything at once, flame and lightning converging faster than I could track, and a bolt caught me across the shoulder hard enough to drop me to one knee, pain lancing white down my arm. This isn't working. They're too fast, and I'm too slow.
Something in me reached for an answer before I consciously asked for one.
"Bloodthirst," I whispered.
[BLOODTHIRST STATE ACTIVATED]
The change hit all at once — strength flooding into muscles that hadn't asked for it, the whole forest bleeding down into a single furious shade of red. Whatever fear I'd been carrying a moment before simply wasn't there anymore, burned away by something louder and hungrier.
"Where are you," I heard myself say, in a voice that didn't sound entirely like mine. "WHERE ARE YOU?"
I found the nearest dragon before I'd finished asking. Magic didn't even occur to me — I closed the distance on my own legs, seized it by the neck, and tore its head from its body in one motion that should have taken far more strength than I had any right to carry.
One down. Something in me that should have recoiled from what I'd just done instead wanted more.
The second dragon caught me across the chest with a lance of lightning that would have ended the fight against anyone else. I barely felt it. I walked through the crackling aftermath and tore into its side with my bare hands, moving faster than thought.
From somewhere behind me, muffled through the roar in my own ears, I caught Kazike's voice — awake now, and not bothering to hide the fear in it. "Kazu — he's fighting four dragons alone. That speed isn't — what is he?"
I turned toward the third. "You're next."
One driven fist collapsed its chest inward. Two dragons left, and they'd taken to the air rather than face whatever I'd become — which only made the ending easier. I caught the nearer one by its horns mid-flight and used its own momentum to hurl it into its partner, the two of them crashing together into the forest floor hard enough to daze them both.
They came at me together anyway, fire and lightning woven into one final, desperate assault. I walked through it. Whatever the Bloodthirst state was doing to my body, it had apparently decided pain was someone else's problem now.
"FIRE PIERCE!" The spell went off at point-blank range, catching both of them across their scales, and I finished what the fire started with my own hands until neither one was moving anymore.
The red drained out of the world as the last dragon fell.
[BLOODTHIRST EFFECT LOST]
My legs went out from under me the moment the haze cleared, my whole body suddenly weighing more than I could account for. "What just—" The words came out ragged, more breath than sound.
[Assassin skill reached Level 58] [Skill Upgraded: Bloodthirst has evolved into Bloodlust]
I stared at the notifications without really absorbing them, too exhausted to do more than blink.
"Kazu. Hey. Wake up." Kazike's hand was on my shoulder, his face swimming into focus above me — somewhere between relief and something that looked uncomfortably close to fear.
"K-Kazike… what happened…"
He helped me sit up, careful in a way that didn't match his usual bluster. "Rest. Just rest a minute. We'll take the trophies once you've got your breath back, then head home and collect the reward. You did good out there, kid." He laughed, but it came out thinner than usual, sweat still standing out on his brow as he glanced past me at the fallen dragons. Quiet enough that I almost missed it: "Whatever that was… I'm keeping it to myself. Rest now, Kazu."
"I'm alright," I said, though my body disagreed with me on every point. "Let's get back."
He tapped my head, some of his usual grin returning. "You were incredible out there. So — how do we split this? Sixty-forty, my favor?"
I managed a tired laugh. "Take whatever you want. I don't care, as long as we're both walking home."
"I'm joking, Kazu." His voice softened. "It's all yours. I got exactly what I came for today — watching you fight. You were something else out there."
"You're sure?"
He gave me a real thumbs-up this time. "Positive. Come on — let's harvest the horns and get out of this forest."
Kazike kicked the Guild doors open hard enough to bang against the wall. "We're back! S-rank quest, complete!"
I felt my face heat under the sudden weight of every eye in the hall. "Kazike, you don't have to announce it quite that loudly…"
Murmurs rippled through the crowd. Did they actually — where's the proof?
Kazike dropped a heavy sack on the counter with a flourish, dragon horns spilling out — ten of them, two to a beast. "Proof enough for you, Missy?"
Her eyes went round as she counted them. "Dragons. With — that's five confirmed kills." She pulled a heavy bag from beneath the counter. "Four hundred gold, as posted."
Kazike took the bag and handed it straight to me without a second thought. "This one's yours."
"That's too much," I said, staring at the weight of it in my hands.
"It's exactly right," he said, waving off my protest. "You saved my hide out there. Besides — I got to watch you fight. That was worth more to me than the gold."
I accepted it, still a little stunned. "If you're sure. I could live a year on this without taking another quest. Though I don't think I'm ready to stop yet."
"Take care getting home," Kazike said, already turning back toward the bar.
"You too, Kazu," Missy added, softer.
"Thank you both," I said, and meant every word of it, before heading out into the evening toward home.
I burst through the front door with more energy than I had any right to after the day I'd had. "I'm back — Mom! I have so much to tell you!"
Rosalia turned from the stove and caught me in a tight hug the moment I reached the kitchen. "Well, aren't you affectionate today. Sit, eat — you must be starving after all that adventuring."
"I missed your cooking," I said, and it was entirely true.
Six months later, the person I'd been the day I stumbled into this world barely resembled who I'd become. Stronger, steadier, more sure of my own footing in a place that had once felt built entirely out of things that could kill me.
Whatever came next, I was starting to believe I might actually be ready for it.