Fang Yuqing stood behind Yuan Wu, her breath hitching in her chest. She could see the strain on his back. Even though he was a UR-rank, a gap of 55 levels was an astronomical canyon in the world of Spirit-Mastery. His spiritual energy was still depleted from the fight with the Deep-Sea Revenant. He was fighting on fumes and sheer, stubborn willpower.
"Master," Yuan Wu said, not turning his head. "Stay behind me. If you move, the shockwave of her next strike will liquefy your internal organs."
"But Yuan Wu—you're at your limit!" Yuqing cried, reaching into her pocket for her last high-grade Mana Potion.
"I am a Ghoul," he replied, a chilling smile spreading behind his mask. "Our limit is whenever we decide we've had enough of being hungry."
The Leopard-Warrior let out a guttural roar and leaped backward, spinning her axe in a blur of gold and steel.
[Skill Activated: Predator's Leap]
She vanished. In the eyes of the surrounding students, she had simply ceased to exist. But to Yuan Wu, whose senses were heightened by the lingering RC cells of his Kakuja state, she was a streak of thermal energy moving through the air.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Three strikes rained down from three different directions in less than a second. Yuan Wu's Kagune moved like whip-cracking serpents, parrying every blow. Each impact sent a shockwave through the plaza, cracking the stone tiles and shattering the windows of the nearby recruitment hall.
"Too slow! Too slow!" the assassin taunted, her voice echoing from the shadows.
She reappeared directly above them, her axe trailing a massive phantom image of a hunting cat. This was her finishing move—a strike designed to split a Spirit and its Master in a single blow.
[B-Rank Ultimate: Sundering Fang]
"Die, little girl!"
The axe descended. The air itself seemed to scream as it was torn asunder.
Yuan Wu didn't dodge. He didn't even raise all four of his Kagune to block. Instead, he planted his feet, and the blood-red eye in his mask dilated until the pupil was almost gone.
"Master, watch closely," he murmured. "This is how you deal with a beast."
BOOM!
The axe hit. A massive cloud of dust and debris obscured the center of the plaza. The students watched in horror, many covering their eyes. No Level 15 Spirit could survive a direct hit from a Level 70 B-rank's ultimate move.
"Heh... too easy," the Leopard-Warrior laughed as she landed, her chest heaving. "That kid was all talk."
"Is that so?"
The smoke cleared. Yuan Wu was still standing.
His suit was torn, and blood was dripping from his forehead, but he hadn't moved an inch. One of his Kagune had been sacrificed; it lay on the ground, severed and twitching, slowly turning into ash. But his other three were wrapped tightly around the Leopard-Warrior's axe, holding it motionless.
"You... you sacrificed an appendage to catch my blade?" The woman's eyes widened in realization.
"A small price to pay to get you within reach," Yuan Wu hissed.
Before she could pull back, his two remaining Kagune struck. They didn't aim for her axe; they aimed for her legs.
CRUNCH.
The sound of shattering bone echoed through the silent plaza. The Leopard-Warrior screamed, her knees buckling as the red tentacles crushed her shins into powder.
"You're a Level 70," Yuan Wu said, stepping forward until his mask was inches from her face. "But you're a B-rank. You rely on your system-granted stats. I? I rely on the hunger that has defined my existence since the moment I was born."
Yuan Wu grabbed the woman's throat with a hand that felt like cold marble. He lifted her off the ground, her massive axe clattering uselessly to the stones.
"Wait! Stop!" A voice cried out from the crowd.
A middle-aged man in expensive silk robes stepped forward, his face pale and sweating. He was the Leopard-Warrior's Spirit-Master, a wealthy merchant-class Master who had been hiding among the students. "If you kill her, the Spirit-Master Association will have you executed! She's a registered B-rank! Put her down and we can negotiate!"
Yuan Wu turned his red eye toward the man. The merchant felt his heart stop for a beat. It wasn't the look of a student's Spirit; it was the look of a demon staring at a piece of meat.
"Negotiate?" Yuan Wu asked. "You tried to behead my Master. You sent an assassin into a school. And now you want to talk about rules?"
"Yuan Wu," Fang Yuqing called out. Her voice was steady now, filled with a cold, righteous fury. "She said it herself. Let big sister chop this little girl into pieces. If I were dead, you'd be his slave right now."
She looked the merchant in the eye. "My family name is Fang. If you think the Association will protect you for trying to kill a Fang heir, you're as stupid as your Spirit."
The merchant's face went from white to a sickly grey. The Fang family was one of the pillars of the region's Spirit-Master nobility. He hadn't realized who he was targeting; he had only seen the UR-rank.
"Yuan Wu," Yuqing said, turning her back to the scene. "Finish it."
"As you wish, Master," Yuan Wu replied.
He didn't use his Kagune. He didn't use a flashy skill. He simply tightened his grip. The Leopard-Warrior struggled, her claws scratching at his armored arm, but she was like a child fighting a mountain.
SNAP.
The light faded from the assassin's eyes. Her body began to dissolve into shimmering particles of spiritual essence—the fate of any Spirit whose physical form is destroyed beyond repair.
The merchant let out a strangled cry as his contract link shattered, the mental backlash forcing him to cough up blood. He collapsed to his knees, his career and his soul-bond destroyed in a single moment.
Yuan Wu stood in the center of the cratered plaza, his white hair swaying as the last of his Kagune retracted into his back. He looked around at the stunned crowd. No one dared to speak. No one dared to breathe.
He walked over to Yuqing and stopped. His mask retracted slightly, revealing a face that was terrifyingly handsome but utterly devoid of warmth.
"The materials we gathered in the dungeon," he said, his voice returning to its usual calm, dry tone. "We should go home and process them. You need to reach Level 20 before the Academy trials begin."
Yuqing looked at him, then at the destruction he had wrought at only Level 15. She reached out and gently wiped the blood from his cheek.
"I think," she whispered, "that I'm the one who needs to keep up with you."
Yuan Wu chuckled, a soft, jagged sound. "Then don't stop running, Master. Because the world is full of people who want what you have. And I have a very long list of things I still want to eat."
As they walked away from the plaza, leaving the broken merchant and the whispering crowd behind, the legend of the "White-Haired Demon" and the "Ice Goddess" truly began.
The students and Spirits watching from the sidelines felt their heads spinning. That final exchange hadn't just ended a fight; it had shattered their fundamental understanding of power hierarchies.
"Level 15 taking down a Level 70 and walking away like it was a light workout... UR-ranks aren't just 'stronger,' they're a different dimension entirely," one student whispered, eyes wide.
"Yuan-God is too much! And that skill—did you see that? If I had a UR like him, I'd wake up laughing every single morning!"
"No wonder he could solo a Two-Star rift. He's clearly an all-rounder—tanky enough to eat a B-rank ultimate and deadly enough to end the fight in one move."
"Did you guys catch it? He showed his face for a second. Those heterochromatic eyes... they're terrifyingly handsome. It's like looking at a god of death who stepped off a runway."
"I spend every day envying Class-Rep Fang's luck. How did she pick up such a massive 'glitch' in the system?"
Yuan Wu, however, merely frowned, adjusting his mask and pulling his blindfold back into place. "The output was too low," he muttered to himself. "Without my peak combat capacity, it's still not quite right. I need to grind more levels immediately."
If he were Level 100, a Hollow Purple of that scale wouldn't have been so "weak" in his eyes.
Fang Yuqing's lip twitched. Weak? He calls that weak? Yuan Wu turned around, looking down at the girl currently collapsed on the cracked pavement. "Can you stand?"
Yuqing tried to push herself up, her arms shaking before she slumped back down. She looked up at him, her eyes brimming with a mix of exhaustion and grievance. "No... I've got nothing left."
Her spiritual reservoir had been sucked dry. Every drop of Mana had been sacrificed to fuel his devastating counter-attack.
Yuan Wu sighed, reaching down and picking her up in a firm, effortless carry. "Master... we really need to work on your stamina. This 'one-shot and faint' routine is going to get old."
Being told she "wasn't good enough" by her own Spirit—especially after almost being assassinated—was the ultimate blow to her pride. Fang Yuqing puffed out her cheeks in annoyance, but she couldn't find a single word to argue back.
He was right. Her spiritual capacity was a joke compared to his output. She remembered bragging earlier about how he could "fight however he wanted," only to realize she was essentially a battery that ran out after thirty seconds.
The Aftermath and the Faculty
By the time the Academy instructors and their high-level Spirits rushed onto the scene, they were met with a landscape that looked like a war zone. Deep craters, shattered glass, and the smell of ozone hung heavy in the air.
"Student Fang! Are you alright?"
"Where is the assassin? We heard reports of a Level 70 Spirit!"
The teachers fanned out, their Spirits on high alert. Fang Yuqing was the jewel of the Fang family and the Academy's only UR-Master; if she died on campus, heads would roll.
Yuqing poked her head up from Yuan Wu's arms. "It's over. Yuan Wu... he handled it."
The instructors looked at each other, then at the Level 15 Spirit holding her. They looked at the destroyed terrain. The silence was deafening.
A Level 15 Spirit had altered the geography of the campus while killing a Level 70 B-rank? The math didn't add up, yet the evidence was written in the rubble. It was becoming clear that Yuan Wu wasn't just a "High-Tier" card—he was a "Nuke-Tier" DPS character.
"Student Fang, the school takes full responsibility for this security breach," one senior instructor said, bowing slightly. "The Principal has already been notified. We will investigate the merchant and find whoever pulled the strings. The Fang family will have justice."
The investigation began immediately, but as expected, the "Merchant" was just a pawn. Whoever had orchestrated the hit was professional; they had already wiped their tracks, leaving no digital or spiritual trail. In the world of high-society Spirit-Masters, the truth was often buried under layers of politics.
The Master's Insecurity
Back at the villa, the atmosphere was quiet. Yuqing was physically spent, but her mind was racing. The news had arrived: the Fang Family had summoned her back to the main estate tomorrow.
She knew why. A UR-rank was too big a prize to stay hidden. The family would want to "optimize" her situation—which usually meant "re-evaluating" if she was the right person to hold the contract.
As the sun began to set, Yuqing watched Yuan Wu standing by the window, his white hair catching the dying light. She reached out and grabbed his sleeve, her voice small and laced with a deep-seated anxiety.
"Yuan Wu... if a Master with a much larger spiritual pool than mine... someone like a High Elder or a General... wanted to contract with you... would you go with them?"
Yuan Wu felt her hand trembling. He didn't answer immediately. Instead, he reached down and gave her waist a sharp, sudden pinch.
"Ow! Hey!" Yuqing yelped, jumping back and rubbing her side, glaring at him with watery eyes. "What was that for!?"
Yuan Wu dropped his cold, detached persona for a moment. He looked at her with a level of sincerity that made her breath catch.
"When I was on the verge of fading into nothingness in that trash-tier card, it was your hand that pulled me out," he said, his voice dropping into a low, resonant baritone. "No matter how much energy someone else has, my Master can only be you."
He leaned in closer, the air around them stilling.
"Others? They don't have the qualification."
Yuqing felt a lump form in her throat. "Yuan Wu..."
"It's not that they can't steal me," he continued, his tone carrying an absolute, terrifying certainty. "It's that—they aren't worthy."
Before she could process the weight of his words, he let go and turned toward the kitchen.
"The contract is a two-way street," his voice drifted back to her. "As long as you're breathing, no one can take me away."
He paused at the doorway, his tone regaining that sharp, biting edge she was growing used to.
"Of course, that assumes you don't stay so weak that someone can step on you like a bug. And for heaven's sake... get more Mana. I'm tired of carrying you like a sack of rice."
Fang Yuqing stood frozen in the living room. The heavy, suffocating fear that had been crushing her chest since the assassination attempt... it was gone. Just like that.
"You jerk..." she whispered, a small, genuine smile finally tugging at the corners of her mouth. "Do you have to be so mean when you're being nice?"
But she didn't care. For the first time since she had drawn that card, she felt like she truly understood the Spirit she had summoned. He wasn't just a weapon. He was hers.