Kael’s gravity sense suddenly prickled.

Something was wrong.

His hand was already moving toward his storage ring when the first laser beam hit.

ZAP!

Not one beam. Twelve. Simultaneously coming from different angles.

BOOM!

The vehicle exploded anyway—fire and metal screaming outward in a ball of destruction.

The smoke cleared.

And there they stood. Five figures in a perfect bubble of translucent energy, completely untouched by the explosion. The remains of the vehicle dripped around them like hot wax.

Grey lowered his hand.

"Well," he said mildly. "That was low. Even for villains like you."

Figures emerged from the fog. Twelve of them with black clothes and red masks with curved horns. But these weren’t the ragtag operatives from Jabia. These moved with precision, with purpose, with the coordinated confidence of trained soldiers.

Kael’s senses swept across them. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

Eight Peak Foundation Establishment. Two Mana Heart Rank 5. One Mana Heart Rank 9.

And one more.

The woman at the back didn’t wear a red mask. Her mask was white—bone white, featureless except for two eye slits that glowed faintly green. Her cultivation base pressed against Kael’s senses like a weight.

Mana Heart Rank 1.

The rank 9 male stepped forward. His mask’s eye slits flickered with residual laser light—the source of the attack, apparently. Laser manipulation or something similar.

"You can’t blame us," he said, voice muffled by the mask. "You just entered enemy territory."

He raised his hand.

"Take them down. Leave them alive if possible. They’ll be useful sacrifices."

Grey sighed.

"ENHANCE ALL PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES AND MANA OUTPUT."

The words weren’t shouted—they were spoken quietly.

But the effect was anything but quiet.

A halo of golden light erupted from Grey’s body and expanded outward, washing over Bruno, Kael, Yenna, and Cassian like a wave of pure energy. It sank into their muscles, their bones, their meridians—everything amplified, everything boosted, everything running at two hundred percent capacity.

Kael felt his body respond immediately. His already-enhanced physical stats from Void Body Refinement doubled. His mana output surged. Even his gravity sense sharpened, extending further, processing faster.

Bruno cracked his neck.

"I always seem to miss this."

Then he moved.

The ground cratered beneath his feet as he launched forward directly at the two Mana Heart Rank 5 cultivators. His fist cocked back, dense with compressed air and raw physical power.

WHOOSH.

Air punch.

The shockwave hit both Rank 5s simultaneously. The one with water manipulation tried to throw up a defensive barrier—too slow. The one with steel reinforcement tried to brace—useless. Both of them rocketed backward, crashing through two abandoned buildings in a spray of brick dust as Bruno was already chasing.

Grey moved.

Kael didn’t see him move. One moment Grey was standing beside him. The next moment he was across the battlefield, surrounded by the eight Peak Foundation Establishment operatives, his fist embedded in one man’s chest.

Then he was somewhere else. Another operative down.

Then another.

Eight Peak Foundation Establishment cultivators. Gone in less than three seconds. Each one dropped with a single strike—precise, clinical, utterly without wasted movement.

The rank 9 laser guy stared in anger as he raised both hands and fired multiple laser beams toward Grey at different angles, trying to catch him in a web of concentrated light.

Grey raised one hand.

A barrier materialized.

ZAP ZAP ZAP ZAP ZAP!

Every laser hit the barrier and stopped. Dead. The light dissipated like water on glass. The barrier didn’t even flicker.

"The Rank 1 Mana Heart female is all yours." Grey didn’t look back. "I’m sure the three of you can do that much."

He vanished.

Reappeared directly in front of the rank 9 with a kick that would have caved in a small building.

CRASH!

The rank 9 blocked—fists reinforced with laser energy meeting Grey’s foot in a shockwave that shattered every window within fifty meters. Then they were moving, trading blows at speeds that turned them into blurs, each impact sending shockwaves rippling through the abandoned city.

Buildings crumbled. Streets cracked. The fog itself seemed to flee from the violence.

Cassian watched for a moment.

"Come on," he complained. "He could have just taken her out too."

Kael snorted. "Come on, don’t be such a lazy ass. You barely did anything yesterday."

"I supervised."

"You were just enjoying the show and even had the balls to be eating."

"Supervision requires sustenance."

The woman in the white mask had been watching the chaos with what was probably irritation behind that featureless face angry at been ignored—being dismissed as a training exercise for children—clearly wasn’t in her plans.

Her hand moved.

A whip materialized in her grip, one made of compressed wind, visible only as faint distortion lines in the air. She cracked it once.

WHOOM.

The gust of wind that erupted from the whip.

Kael’s eyes narrowed. "Get ready."

The whip came down again.

WHOOOM!

This time it was an attack—a wall of compressed air screaming toward the trio at terrifying speed. Kael’s gravity sense screamed at him a split second before impact.

"Defensive!"

Three barriers snapped up simultaneously.

Cassian’s shield—a dome of distorted time that made the air around it shimmer and warp.

Yenna’s ice shield—a wall of crystallized frost three feet thick, gleaming blue-white in the foggy light.

Kael’s shadow wall—a plane of solid darkness that drank the light around it.

WHAM!

The wind hit all three barriers and kept going.

The trio slid backward—boots scraping against cracked asphalt as their barriers strained, the wind howling past them like a living thing. Kael’s shadow wall held longest, but even it cracked before the gust finally died.

The woman was already winding up for another strike.

Kael reached into his storage ring. His Tier 3 Shadow-Strike bow materialized in his hands—he’d been meaning to test it in real combat. Beside him, Yenna drew her Tier 2 transparent ice sword, frost spreading through the air around her. Cassian produced a weapon Kael hadn’t seen before—a three-section staff connected by chains, each segment inscribed with faintly glowing runes.

A Tier 2 weapon.

The woman’s eyes—glowing green through the mask—swept across them.

Kael nocked a dark arrow, coating it with lightning.

He really needed to get his own Tier 2 weapon.