Lein landed in a deserted corner of the street, far from the settlement's main road, then walked out from it as though he had been traveling on foot all along.Ryn and Sael followed at his left and right.Morning in the settlement felt different from the previous afternoon. Not all the merchants had opened for business yet, but enough of them were setting up their stalls. Smoke was already rising from several cooking fires scattered throughout the area, and the sound of conversation filled the main street even though the sun had not yet climbed high into the sky.The first scent that caught Lein's attention did not come from a meat stall or a spice vendor.On the right side of the street, beneath a modest wooden roof, an elderly woman with white hair loosely pinned behind her head was stirring something inside a massive pot that seemed disproportionately large for the old woman standing behind it.Thin wisps of steam rose from the pot, and the smell was not something that required muc

Lein landed on the branch beside their treehouse and let Ryn and Sael climb down.“Go inside.” His voice was not loud, but it left no room for negotiation. “Don’t come out until I return. Understood?”The two nodded at the same time.But before Lein could step toward the edge of the branch to jump away, someone tugged at the hem of his shirt.Sael.The girl looked up at him with the expression of a child who wanted to say something but was not entirely sure she was allowed to.“Be careful, Uncle.” Her voice did not tremble, but there was something behind it that felt heavier than her years. “Come back safely. To me... you’re already like a second big brother.”Lein looked at her for a moment, and then one corner of his lips curved upward.“Don’t worry.” He glanced at Sael, then at Ryn. “I’ve never lost before. And the Demon Fang won’t be the ones to change that.”The worry on Sael’s face did not disappear completely, but it lessened enough for her to release the edge of his shirt.Sta

Vera did not come at him with a single attack.She came with everything she had.Her axe swept from left to right in a horizontal arc powerful enough to split two ordinary trees in half if they had stood in its path. Lein took a single step backward, and the blade passed across his chest close enough for him to feel the pressure of it, yet it never touched the fabric of his shirt.Vera spun, using the momentum of the previous swing to transition immediately into a diagonal strike from above.Lein tilted his head to the right.The blade sliced past his left ear and crashed into a tree root behind him, cutting through a third of its thickness in a single blow.Vera did not stop.The axe rose again, this time from below, carrying soil and fragments of the shattered root upward in a motion that left no time to breathe between attacks.Lein jumped.He passed over the axe, landed on a higher root beside him, and steadied himself.Vera followed.One strike after another.And another.And ano

The knock on Krul Ashgor's door did not sound like a normal knock.It was rapid and uneven—the kind of knocking from someone who had forgotten how to be polite because their mind was entirely occupied elsewhere.Krul, who was still seated on his sofa, rose to his feet with an expression already prepared for anger before the door had even opened.He opened it himself.The man standing outside, one of the fifty he had dispatched the previous night, was pale, his breathing unsteady."Boss." His words came out in a rush, too hurried to be properly organized. "Everyone... everyone lost. That explorer is here now, at the headquarters!"Krul stood still for a second."Everyone... lost?"The fifty men he had sent out the previous night—he could have accepted it if they had returned empty-handed. They were not the core strength of the Demon Fang.But Dren Skarr. Vera Khal. Dovan Reck.The Three Elites who had spent years building the reputation that made the name Demon Fang feared throughout t

“From this moment on, the Demon Fangs are finished.”Krul lifted his head from the wreckage of shattered stone and timber beneath him. His eyes fixed on Lein, but there was nothing left of the feared leader who had terrorized the entire region. His lips moved, trying to form words that might have become a final plea.He never got the chance to finish.Lein’s foot came down on his face with full force.KRAK.Krul Ashgor’s body went completely still. His head no longer resembled what it should have been.Lein pulled his foot back, straightened his shirt with one hand, and walked out of the ruins of the headquarters with the same calm stride he had entered with that morning. Nothing about him suggested that he had just destroyed the most feared criminal organization in the region. He looked more like a man who had simply finished a brief stroll.A single thought formed clearly in his mind.This was only one.Out there, during the two years he still had before the tournament began, there