Lara had completely overwhelmed Gut, tearing through every spell he cast like a wild beast unleashed from its chains. Zack lay twitching weakly on the cold stone floor, barely alive.

Beside Shin, Lara remained crouched on all fours, her massive tits bare, as she looked at him, waiting for orders. Blood dripped slowly from her fangs while her glowing amber eyes stayed fixed on him expectantly.

"She is waiting for orders," Lilel explained calmly while floating nearby. "She wants to play with him first, but she understands killing Gut is the priority."

Shin looked at Lara strangely for a moment. It felt absurd. A few minutes ago, she looked like a normal woman. Now she acted more like a dog than a human.

"Go kill Gut," Shin finally said, judging that this was the priority.

The effect was immediate. Lara’s tailbone fur bristled violently, and her eyes widened with savage excitement. A deep growl escaped her throat before she exploded forward fast enough to crack the ground beneath her feet.

BOOOOM!

Several walls collapsed in the distance as she charged after the fleeing ice wolf. Shin could already hear Gut screaming somewhere deeper within the bunker.

He had no reason to worry about that guy, so he slowly approached Zack’s broken body instead.

The assassin tried to crawl away weakly, fingers trembling while blood pooled beneath him. Half his face had been destroyed by Lara’s bite, exposing shattered teeth and fragments of bone.

Still, somehow, he remained alive.

"You abandoned your friend pretty quickly," Shin commented coldly.

Zack glared at him with pure hatred but lacked the strength to respond properly. Then Lilel suddenly floated closer, her eyes shining with curiosity.

"Wait," she said excitedly. "Don’t kill him yet."

Shin frowned. "Why?"

"His system is extremely unique," the small fairy explained while observing Zack carefully. "It interacts with perception itself. I want to study it."

Even while dying, Zack’s remaining eye widened slightly.

"No..." he rasped weakly.

Lilel ignored him completely.

"For the experiment to work, he needs to activate the skill himself," she continued thoughtfully. "Preferably multiple times."

Shin stared at her for a moment before looking back down at Zack. The assassin immediately understood what was about to happen.

Fear flooded his expression.

"I can’t..." Zack muttered painfully. "I have no mana... I..."

Shin crouched beside him silently. Then he grabbed the broken remains of Zack’s arm and twisted the shattered limb further without hesitation, forcing another horrible cry from him.

"Activate it," Shin said calmly.

"I CAN’T!"

CRACK! Another finger bent backward unnaturally. Zack convulsed violently, blood spilling from his mouth.

"Activate it," he said again. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

Shin had no way of knowing if he had enough mana or not. In the worst case, Zack would die, which was not a bad thing. So he didn’t hesitate to torture him even more.

"AAGHHHH!"

Shin grabbed the wound on the side of his destroyed skull and pressed directly into it. The pain was so intense that Zack nearly blacked out instantly.

"Stop, please... stop!"

"Then do it."

Tears mixed with the blood running down the assassin’s ruined face. For years, Zack had walked above others like a shadow no one could touch. He controlled every situation, toyed with weaker people, and decided the outcome of everyone around him.

But now he was the one lying helpless on the floor. He was broken, crying, and completely unable to fight back.

The pride he once carried had shattered alongside his body. His confidence, his arrogance, even the belief that he was someone special had been crushed beneath overwhelming fear.

At that moment, Zack no longer cared about dignity, loyalty, or survival. He only wanted the pain to stop.

Desperately, Zack forced the last fragments of mana inside his body to move. His invisibility skill activated weakly.

The outline of his body blurred unnaturally before slowly fading from sight. Even the blood on the ground became harder to perceive.

Lilel’s eyes sparkled immediately.

"Ohhhh..." she whispered excitedly. "Interesting."

She then glowed and was ready to enter Zack’s body when all of them heard a loud explosion. And Shin felt a terrible premonition.

"Don’t tell me that this crazy bastard broke the seal..." he murmured worriedly.

Any of the instructors responsible for maintaining the seals could break them. After all, they were the ones who had placed the seals there in the first place.

Still, actually doing something like this was completely insane. And worse... Arlo was probably outside alone right now. Letting him die like that would be a complete waste of a potentially powerful ally in the future.

"Lilel, you can experiment with him later, but I need to go," Shin said while tightening his grip on the obsidian sword. "If Lara shows up around here, tell her to come after me."

"Okay!" the little fairy replied with a military salute. "But don’t worry, I think she’ll come straight to you anyway."

Her body glowed brightly before disappearing from the physical world, diving directly into Zack’s system.

Shin immediately rushed outside. And the moment he stepped out of the bunker, he realized the situation was even worse than he had imagined. Monsters rampaged everywhere, tearing through the exam grounds.

A colossal pillar of ice towered above the battlefield like a frozen mountain. Inside it, barely visible beneath the layers of crystal-clear frost, was the chimera Arlo had defeated.

"So he actually managed to stop that thing..." Shin muttered.

But there was no time to admire it. A violent explosion suddenly echoed nearby. Shin turned instantly and saw Arlo desperately fighting for his life against a swarm of monsters, trying to stop them from entering the testing grounds.

The wolf boy was covered in blood and breathing heavily. His ice magic continued freezing creatures apart, but there were simply too many enemies surrounding him.

One massive beast lunged toward his blind spot—

Shin moved immediately, cutting the enemy in half. Next, his obsidian sword cut cleanly through another monster’s neck.

The creature’s head spun through the air before crashing onto the ground. His blade flashed repeatedly through the chaos, cutting apart monster after monster.

And slowly... the weaker creatures began backing away from him. Monsters weren’t stupid, and understanding they wouldn’t be able to kill him, they began stepping away.

"Shin?!" Arlo gasped in disbelief.

"No time to explain," Shin answered immediately. "Can you still move?"

"Barely..."

Without hesitation, Shin grabbed Arlo by the arm and pulled him onto his shoulder.

"Tch... this is humiliating," Arlo muttered weakly. "I never imagined I would be saved by a newcomer, but you are really strong, aren’t you?"

"We can talk later," Shin commented simply, and immediately sprinted south. "I told the girl I rescued to run to a castle in this direction. We need to go save them."