The purple canopy finally broke apart entirely, giving way to a massive gap in the forest. The ground dropped away into a wide, sunken bowl that looked out of place among the twisted trees.

Its edges were perfectly circular, surrounded by a sheer wall of pale roots that boxed the area in. It didn’t look like a natural clearing at all, but rather something deliberately carved out to be a fighting pit.

Hajin stopped a few steps past the treeline, his eyes scanning the empty bowl. The sickly purple veins of corruption were woven much thicker here, pulsing steadily through the roots that made up the walls.

Behind him, Cassie and the other two rookies finally caught up, completely exhausted from their hike. They barely had time to take in the strange sight before Hajin held one hand out to stop them.

He didn’t bother turning around to look at them, his gaze already locked on the far edge of the pit.

"Step back toward the trees, all three of you," he ordered, keeping his focus strictly forward.

Two distinct signatures had just flared to life at the absolute edge of his perception, and they were moving fast. They were different from the mindless beasts they had been using as target practice all day.

These two signatures felt focused, and completely locked onto his group’s location. They were moving in perfect tandem, sweeping around the edges of the pit to cut off any chance of escape.

Loccy stepped up beside him, her hammer resting easily across her shoulder. She bounced lightly on her heels, her ears swiveling to track the faint rustling coming from the trees.

Hajin glanced at her, then back at the trees where the two signatures were closing in.

"Sit this one out, Loccy," he said. "You’ve been swinging that hammer all day, and these two are a step above anything you’ve hit yet."

He expected at least a little pushback, since she lived for a good fight. Instead she just dropped the hammer head to the ground and gave him an easy nod.

"Okay!" she said, bright and unbothered, plopping down onto a root with the hammer across her lap.

He looked back over his shoulder at Vella, who had drifted up near the rookies with her arms crossed.

"Stay on standby," he told her. "If one of them slips past us, patch it before it turns into a real problem."

Vella tipped her head in a lazy nod and let a thin thread of healing mana gather at her fingertips. "Try not to make too much work for me," she said.

That left Juna, who had gone quiet and still at his side, her eyes fixed on the far rim of the pit. He turned to her with the first real smile he had worn all day.

"Looks like it’s our turn to put on a show," he said.

Juna’s ears pricked straight up, and the tip of her tail gave a single sharp flick.

"Yes, Master," she said.

He let his smile widen a fraction as he looked his oldest summon over.

"Then quit hiding it," he said. "Time to show them what your evolution actually gave you."

Her eyes lit at that, and she stepped forward to the lip of the pit. Three wings of pale silver light unfolded behind her, one more than Loccy carried, spread wide and steady against the dark trees.

Light gathered in her open hand, drawing itself out long and thin until it took a solid shape. A glaive settled into her grip, taller than she was, its single curved blade gleaming a clean silver from heel to point.

The same silver that burned in her wings ran in fine threads down the length of the shaft. Her insignia sat glowing just below the blade, the mark of something her evolution had forged rather than anything a smith ever touched.

Where Loccy’s hammer was all blunt mass and raw weight, Juna’s weapon was the opposite in every way. It was long and light, honed to a thin edge, the weapon of someone who killed with speed rather than weight.

She gave the glaive a single lazy spin, the blade humming as it cut the air. Then she dropped into a loose stance, the point settled and aimed at the trees.

Behind them, the rookies had gone dead silent, watching a second one of his summons unfold her wings and draw a weapon out of nothing.

Hajin laughed under his breath and called up the rest of his own gear.

Two golden rings materialized around his right wrist one after another, rotating around his arm as the raw power they held poured straight into him. The chain came last, snapping into his palm in a flash of gold light that lit the whole treeline.

"Alright," he said, rolling his neck until it cracked. "This is going to be fun."

A second later the trees burst apart on the far rim, and a feathered shape came screaming across the pit. It folded into a dive aimed straight at Juna’s face, beak first, the exact same move the last bird had pulled on the scout.

The one difference was that Hajin now stood there with every ring on his hand. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

He stepped across Juna’s front in a single motion, faster than the dive, and caught the beak square in his bare hand. The whole creature jerked to a dead stop against his grip, talons raking empty air, every feather standing on end in shock.

It had clearly expected to punch its beak straight through to something soft and warm. Instead it hung there, beak crushed in a fist that hadn’t so much as shifted under the impact.

"Yeah," he said, looking it dead in one wide, panicking eye. "Guess I’ll take this one."

He swung it off to his left like a sack of grain and flung it back across the pit toward the trees it had come from. Then he kicked off the ground and went after it, the chain trailing gold behind him.

Cassie stood completely frozen near the edge of the trees, watching him tear across the pit. She had always known he was incredibly strong, since nobody secured the King’s personal sponsorship without real power.

Hearing the other adventurers talk about a Ranker’s strength was one thing. Actually watching a man casually crush a charging monster’s beak with his bare hands was something else entirely.

The sheer scale of the golden mana radiating off him was completely overwhelming to look at. Yet at the exact same time, knowing that terrifying power was standing directly between her and the gate’s monsters felt undeniably reassuring.

She watched the light flash through the trees, her grip slowly tightening around her staff.

’If I can just stay close to him and learn how to really fight,’ she thought, staring at the raw power on display, ’maybe I can actually help my...’

She shoved the old memory back down before it could distract her, focusing her attention entirely on the battle unfolding in the pit.