The dust of battle finally settled, and the thick black smoke that had choked the breath cleared, leaving behind a surreal tableau of death and destruction in the heart of the Falus Forest. Only two people remained standing in that ominous spot: Dex, who was breathing slowly and rhythmically as if what he had just done was merely a light warm-up exercise, and Lumia, who stood a few paces away, brushing imaginary dust from the edges of her cloak with delicate, calm movements, completely ignoring the pools of blood and shredded flesh surrounding her.
In contrast, there was a lone survivor breaking this silent scene. Garrick... the hulking leader who, just minutes ago, had filled the forest with his booming laughter and arrogance, claiming to be an elite hunter. Now, Garrick was nothing but human wreckage. He sat on the damp, muddy ground, his broad back leaning against a charred tree trunk, trembling violently as if an invisible electric current was tearing through his limbs. His leather and steel armor was scorched and blackened, and his skin bore hideous burns from the splattered molten metal.
But the physical pain was nothing compared to the absolute terror crushing his mind. He was breathing heavily, his chest heaving frantically, while a dark patch spread across his leather trousers, betraying his loss of bladder control from sheer fear. His bulging eyes darted in panic among the corpses of his men; elite mercenaries who had accompanied him for years, now reduced to either roasted lumps of meat or mangled bodies with crushed bones and torn throats.
"You... you're not human..." Garrick muttered, his voice raspy, disjointed, like a rusty musical instrument. He swallowed his dry saliva with difficulty and tried to push himself backward, but the solid trunk stopped him. "You are not Rank E... that's impossible... not even Rank D... you... you are a demon! A demon incarnate, crawled out of the deepest layers of hell to punish us!"
Dex showed no expression of euphoria or arrogance. He advanced toward him with calm, slow, and heavy steps, crushing the remnants of a mercenary's sword under his boot with a dry snap. As he walked, the residual fire mana, unconsumed by the battle, still leaked from his body and ignited in the air behind his back, forming thermal phantoms that resembled the giant, broken wings of a phoenix made of fire and ash. His face was smeared with the ash of battle and spots of black blood, but what terrified Garrick the most were Dex's eyes; they were no longer blue, but radiated a glowing golden and orange brilliance, like two drops of molten gold piercing his soul.
"You came to the wrong address, Garrick," Dex said in a quiet, even voice, the calm before a devastating storm, looking down at him. "You came to this forest full of confidence, thinking you were on a hunting trip for a gentle rabbit, but in your ignorance and arrogance, you awakened a sleeping dragon who would have preferred to be left undisturbed. You came looking for an easy bounty, looking for 'Okonnor', but you found nothing but your inevitable end."
Upon hearing the name "Okonnor," Garrick's last psychological defenses crumbled. He collapsed from his leaning position against the tree and threw himself onto the ground, crawling on his burned knees toward Dex. He tossed away the remaining handle of his melted axe as a sign of absolute surrender.
"Please! I swear by all the gods, please!" Garrick cried out, tears of fear mixing with the ash on his ugly face. "I'll give you everything! Money... the gold hidden in our guild's vault... information! I'll tell you everything! I'll tell you who hired us to track Okonnor, and how we knew his path... I'll be your slave, your guard dog! Just... just let me go! Please, I have a family, I have..."
Dex stopped right in front of him, so that the shadow of his phantom fiery wings completely enveloped the trembling mercenary's body. Dex looked at this once-mighty man collapsed at his feet, and for a very brief moment, he went silent.
In that moment of silence, Dex didn't see the Falus Forest. His mind swiftly pulled backward, across the barrier of time and lives. He remembered his cramped, damp cell, no more than two meters wide. The image of his past life flashed through his memory, suffering and being crushed beneath the wheels of an oppressive system with no one to show him mercy. He remembered the faces of the cruel prison guards and the gang lords who reveled in torturing the weak, who would cry and beg for mercy exactly like children only when the tables were turned and a sharp blade was placed at their throats. He remembered the most important lesson, one that cost him blood and broken teeth to learn: those who beg for mercy in a moment of weakness are the first to plunge a rusty dagger into your back the moment you turn around and give them a chance to recover.
"Mercy..." Dex uttered the word as if tasting something bitter in his mouth. "Mercy is an expensive luxury, a luxury the likes of us do not possess in this filthy world, Garrick," he said with a coldness that froze the blood in one's veins. "If the roles were reversed, if I were just a weak noble boy as you thought, you would have cut off my head while laughing, you would have relished my agony, and you would have raped my companion before my dead eyes before selling her in the slave markets. This is the law of your world that you chose to live by. You are not a victim here, Garrick... I am merely applying the rules you set."
Dex didn't wait for a reply. He reached out his right hand with inescapable speed and grabbed Garrick's massive head, digging his fingers forcefully into his coarse scalp.
The leader tried to scream, opening his mouth to unleash a final howl, but the sound never came out. Dex didn't use explosive fire this time, so as not to leave a massive magical trace, nor did he burn his body from the outside. Instead, through the point of contact in his palm, Dex pumped a highly concentrated heatwave, precise as a surgical laser, directly through the skull and into the cerebral cortex.
There was no external combustion, no visible fire, not even smoke. There was only "extinguishment." The supreme, instantaneous heat raised the temperature of Garrick's cerebrospinal fluid to the boiling point in a millisecond, completely destroying the neurons and brain synapses. The central brain functions stopped sending signals to the heart and lungs. Garrick's massive body instantly went limp like an empty potato sack, the gleam of terror in his eyes extinguished, and he dropped as a motionless, lifeless corpse, without shedding a single drop of blood. A clean, perfect, and terrifying kill.
Dex withdrew his hand and wiped it on the mercenary's clothes. He took a deep breath, trying to calm the phoenix's heartbeats that were still raging in his chest.
"Dex..."
The voice came quietly, innocently, and musically from behind him. Dex turned to see Lumia. She had finished wiping her soft white hand with a piece of cloth torn from the clothes of one of the dead. She approached him with light, silent steps, stepping over the mutilated corpses of the mercenaries she had killed herself, and those he had burned, without batting an eye, without any expression of disgust, fear, or even normal human remorse.
She stood beside him, looked down at Garrick's sprawled corpse, then raised her clear silver eyes to meet Dex's. "Dex... did I do it correctly?" she asked in an innocent, inquiring tone, tilting her head slightly like a bright student awaiting her teacher's evaluation. "Was the angle of the throat strike precise enough? And was plunging the dagger into the lumbar vertebra the optimal tactical choice to paralyze him before he could scream?"
She asked him as if inquiring about the ingredients for cooking a vegetable soup, or the proper way to embroider a flower on a silk handkerchief.
Dex looked at her, then turned his gaze toward the beautiful forest that, thanks to their combined power, had transformed into a miniature bloody graveyard. He swallowed hard as he realized the magnitude of the transformation. He felt a complex and conflicting mix in his chest: deep pride that she wouldn't be a burden and wouldn't die easily in this world, and a cold terror, a suffocation at the thought that he might have awakened a monster far worse than the phoenix he carried.
"You... you did more than correctly, Lumia," Dex answered in a voice he tried to make sound natural, cautiously patting her shoulder. "You have become a survivor. And in this cruel world, that is the only title that matters."
Wasting no more time on philosophical contemplation, Dex bent down and began searching Garrick's pockets with the skill of a master thief. He ignored the copper and silver coins, searching for information. In a hidden pocket inside his leather tunic, he found a small pouch sealed with wax to protect it from moisture. He broke it open quickly to find a highly detailed leather map of the Falus Forest and the surrounding areas inside, with paths drawn and cross marks in red.
Alongside the map, he found a small paper letter, encrypted with interlocking letters, and sealed with black wax bearing the same emblem of the "Black Claw" guild. Dex looked at the symbols. To anyone else, they were just random scribbles, but thanks to his comprehensive prior knowledge of this world's structure (as a reader of the original novel he had fallen into), these ciphers were as familiar to him as the letters of his mother tongue.
He moved his lips as he translated the cipher in seconds: "Primary target: Okonnor's head. Confirmed location: Northern Camp, Valley of Shadows, below the Blood Waterfalls."
Dex stood up, clenching his fist around the paper letter until its edges caught fire from his latent hand's heat, turning it into ash that scattered in the air.
"They saved us days of blind searching," Dex said, his eyes gleaming with renewed determination. "They know exactly where he is... and we are very close to the Valley of Shadows. Let's go, Lumia, there's no time left to rest or mourn the dead. We must reach him before the guild sends another squad."
The duo set off in silence, leaving behind ashes, blood, and questions no one answered.