The carriage halted before the quiet, sprawling estate. Dust settled around the heavy wooden wheels.
Kian stared at the huge building.
"Lexi," Kian ordered lazily without even bothering to stand up from his wooden seat. "Go in there. Check the adoption process."
He meant it literally, being entirely too lazy to walk inside the facility himself.
Lexi dropped silently from the carriage roof. Her face was completely bored. She stood on the ground and stared at the large wooden doors of the facility.
As a high-level Thief, her senses were naturally tuned to the biological leak of Life Force. She did not sense a handful of crying children and kind charity workers.
Instead, she sensed over sixty heavily localized spikes of aggressive biological energy.
The men inside were sweating and their hearts were racing. They were holding drawn weapons, waiting in a coordinated ambush formation right behind the walls.
Check the adoption process, Lexi analyzed. A coded command. Kian recognizes this facility is a heavily armed syndicate stronghold. He is ordering me to adopt their lives into the void.
"Understood," Lexi said softly.
She climbed the stone steps and sent her boot slamming into the heavy doors without bothering to knock.
Inside the main hall, Silas did not wait to see what stepped through the splintered wood.
"Defend the hall! Hold the line!" the Regional Boss screamed at the top of his lungs.
He did not reach for a weapon, instead snatching the heavy leather ledger off the desk as he shoved two of his men forward and seized the chains binding the three heavily drugged children.
Silas sprinted toward the secret tunnel at the back of the facility, completely abandoning his entire army.
I am not dying today! Silas panicked while sweating through his expensive coat. Let the lackeys handle that monster!
A deafening crash shook the earth. The entire stone facade of the orphanage violently blew outward.
A thick cloud of dust and splintered wood rained down on the road. Mirelle screamed, throwing her arms over her head.
A heavy chunk of masonry slammed into the ground just inches from the carriage wheels and the wooden frame rattled from the impact.
Mirelle whipped her head to the right, her eyes wide with absolute panic.
Kian sat perfectly still. He did not draw a weapon or cast a protective barrier. He just pulled a clean white handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it over his nose to block the incoming dust. He looked entirely bored.
What is she doing? Kian thought. His brow furrowed in deep confusion. Did she insult the receptionist? I just sent her in to ask about dropping the kid off. Now she is destroying the architecture. They are definitely going to send me the bill for these damages.
Mirelle saw his calm eyes above the white cloth. Her frantic heartbeat instantly slowed down.
He expected this, Mirelle concluded, her twelve-year-old mind confidently putting the pieces together. He is completely unbothered by falling boulders. I am safe here. This driver's seat is an absolute fortress.
She dropped her arms and pulled the collar of her brown peasant dress up over her nose to block the dust. She mimicked Kian's posture as she watched the chaos unfold.
The battle spilled rapidly into the front courtyard. Dozens of syndicate thugs ran out through the collapsing walls, coughing wildly, swinging swords and firing heavy crossbows into the dust cloud.
Lexi moved through them like a scythe through dry wheat. She used no wide, flashy magic. Instead, she relied on brutal, physical strikes and dropped men to the ground before they could even blink.
Beneath the crumbling building, the violent shockwaves of the battle shattered the rusted iron locks on the basement holding cells. The heavy doors swung open.
Dozens of thin, abused children crept out of the dark. They scrambled up the collapsing stone stairs and shivered in their rags.
They did not know what was happening. They huddled near the distant tree line and stared at the explosions, entirely convinced the earth itself had finally decided to swallow their nightmare.
In the courtyard, the remaining syndicate thugs took one look at the pink-haired slaughter and lost their nerve. They dropped their weapons and ran screaming for the woods, desperate to avoid the crossfire.
Only one man remained standing in the rubble.
Gareth rolled his big shoulders and cracked his neck. He dragged a heavy steel greatsword out of the dust. He was a former Level 7 Swordsman. He looked at the tiny pink-haired girl standing ten feet away.
"A little chick?" Gareth laughed, a deep, arrogant sound rumbling in his chest. "They sent a Thief to fight me head-on?"
He planted his boots and forced his Mana outward. It took two full seconds for his Aura to come out, but when it did, a thick, blindingly bright layer of dense Aura coated his entire body and his big sword.
"You rely solely on speed," Gareth mocked, highly confident in the absolute rules of combat. "In a 1v1 clash, a Swordsman always beats a Thief. My Aura will snap your little bones in half."
Then, he charged. The ground physically shook under his boots. He swung the big greatsword in a devastating, horizontal arc, aiming to cut Lexi completely in two.
Lexi refused to dodge or step back. Instead, she raised her plain, dull steel dagger to block.
Is she suicidal? Gareth thought, his arrogant grin widening into a sneer. She didn't activate her Aura! Raw steel against Level 7 heavy Aura? Her arms will shatter!
The blades collided.
Point 0.
Lexi did not need three seconds to pull her Mana outward. Her Mana was already active, rushing violently through her hardened Etheric Veins at all times. She had simply held it back and sealed it tightly beneath her skin. The exact millisecond her dagger touched his greatsword, she let go.
BOOM.
The raw physical force of the instantaneous release created a shockwave that flattened the grass in a fifty-foot radius.
Gareth's eyes bulged out of his skull. His heavy greatsword bounced violently backward.
The sheer, crushing recoil traveled straight down the steel, completely numbing his wrists and dislocating his right shoulder with a sickening pop.
He stumbled backward and gasped for air as his heavy boots dug deep trenches into the ground.
What was that?! Gareth screamed in his mind, his arrogant grin completely wiped away. Where did that Aura come from? There was no delay! She blocked a heavy strike of a sword with a dagger? Impossible!
His large frame swayed. He tried to force his dislocated shoulder back into place.
A hot, tearing pain shot down his spine and his fingers went numb. The heavy greatsword slipped from his grip and hit the earth with a dull thud.
He coughed and spat dirt from his mouth. He stared at the tiny pink-haired girl.
She had not moved a single inch. Her leather boots were perfectly planted.
The heavy shock of that clash should have thrown her small body across the courtyard.
But the force did not push her backward. The sudden, violent burst of light from her dagger acted like a solid stone wall, bouncing all that crushing weight straight back into his own bones.
Lexi did not wait for him to recover. Her face changed. The bored, sleepy expression vanished entirely. Her eyes narrowed into a sharp, terrifying glare.
Mirelle watched from the carriage, her jaw dropping. To her normal eyes, the actual battle was just a chaotic blur of kicking dirt and shaking air. She simply could not track their superhuman movements.
But in the split second before the pink-haired maid dashed forward, Mirelle saw her face clearly. She had seen Lexi slaughter a hundred wyverns, but the maid had looked entirely relaxed then.
Now, her bored expression was completely gone, replaced by a cold, terrifying glare. This was the first time Mirelle had ever seen the Silent Shadow fight a human seriously. It was a terrifying spectacle.
The Thief class was never meant for a frontal assault. Because they lacked the thick bones and heavy muscle mass of a vanguard, their anatomy and the nature of their Mana Core forced them to rely entirely on explosive, unpredictable speed.
To fight on equal footing against a Swordsman, a standard Thief fights by darting into blind spots, utilizing their blinding momentum to create a pseudo-stealth, and delivering fatal strikes from behind before the enemy could even turn around.
In a direct physical brawl of clashing steel, a Thief was considered the weakest of the melee classes.
To challenge a Level 7 heavy Swordsman face-to-face was universally recognized as instant suicide for a Thief.
But Lexi dashed forward. She did not circle to his blind spot or plan a sneak attack.
Instead, she fought him head-on, completely humiliating his pride as a heavy Swordsman.
Gareth swung wildly, panicking. He could not sense her Aura nor predict her movements. His Swordsman instincts were entirely useless against a biological void.
Every time his big sword got close to her, she simply parried him blow for blow with that impossible, zero-delay explosion of force, pushing his big frame further and further off balance.
Gareth grunted, his vision blurring as he wrenched his greatsword back for a vertical cleave.
The steel whistled through the air, but Lexi did not retreat. She stepped into the strike, her dull dagger meeting the mid-section of his huge blade.
Crack.
A flare of white light erupted at the point of contact. Gareth felt the vibration rattle his teeth as the force of his own momentum was reflected back into his grip.
Before he could recover, Lexi spun. Her heel caught him in the solar plexus, her foot releasing a focused burst of pressure.
"Hkkh!"
Gareth gasped, his lungs seizing, but he swung again—a desperate, wide horizontal sweep meant to force her back.
Lexi dropped into a low crouch. As the huge blade passed inches above her pink hair, she drove the heavy iron pommel of her dagger against the flat of the moving steel.
Boom.
The secondary explosion sent the greatsword vibrating so violently it nearly tore the skin from Gareth's palms.
"Argh!"
He stared at the pink-haired girl in absolute disbelief, his seasoned instincts entirely failing to comprehend the brutal reality of their clash.
He had fought monsters that leveled forests before, but this was worse. He tried to track her Aura to predict her next move, but there was no "ignition" to read.
She swung with raw steel, only flaring her Aura at the millisecond of impact. Without that predictive light, he was fighting a ghost.
He swung a low, heavy arc aimed at her shins but Lexi did not jump. Instead, she hammered the tip of her dagger into the center of the moving blade as it swept past, her weight and a localized Aura burst momentarily anchoring the weapon.
In that split second, she drove a knee into his jaw. Gareth felt his head snap back, the copper tang of blood filling his mouth.
"Ghk!"
She isn't a human! Gareth thought, spitting blood as another rapid kick cracked his ribs.
He did not even notice the black carriage parked twenty meters away or the elusive Level 8 seated on its bench.
His subordinates had completely abandoned him. His entire world shrank down to the pink-haired monster systematically dismantling his defenses.
Lexi ducked under a desperate, wide swing. She stepped effortlessly inside his guard. She planted her brown boot directly onto the flat of his heavy greatsword, slamming it into the ground and pinning it there with terrifying physical strength.
Gareth froze, his arms wide open, completely defenseless.
Lexi raised her dagger, the dull steel reflecting the early afternoon sun, aiming directly for his throat.