Path to Power: Rise of Leo Vance

Chapter 7

The silence in the hallway was so absolute that a dropping pin would have sounded like a gunshot. 

Dozens of elite students stood frozen like statues. They stared down at the concrete landing where Trent, the untouchable king of Oakbridge Academy, lay sobbing. He clutched his unnaturally bent leg, crying loudly like a frightened child. 

Without breaking his stride, Leo Vance simply stepped right over Trent’s crying body. He did not look down. He did not smile. He didn't even turn his head. He continued walking down the bright, polished hallway, heading toward his first class, looking as calm as if he were taking a quiet morning stroll through a park. 

From the dark corner near the tall lockers, a pair of sharp eyes watched him leave. 

It was a girl. She leaned against the cold metal lockers, entirely hidden in the shadows. Her hair was a striking, unnatural pale silver that caught the light, and her eyes were a piercing ice blue. This was Elara Frost. 

Most students thought Elara was just a quiet, mysterious rich girl who liked to read. But that was a lie. Elara was the sole heir to the Frost Corporate Dynasty—a massive, multi-billion dollar company that secretly controlled half the legal and illegal magical trade in the city. 

Elara narrowed her eyes, watching Leo’s back disappear around the corner. 

“What just happened?” she thought, her mind racing. “Trent’s Misfortune Charm is a low-level kinetic item. It should have pushed Vance down the stairs. But the force reversed perfectly. It rebounded.” 

Elara’s family had taught her to sense magic since she was a baby. She closed her eyes and reached out with her mind. In the air right where Leo had snapped his fingers, she could still feel the lingering traces of something terrifying. 

It wasn’t just kinetic energy. It was a perfectly structured, impossibly dense pocket of pure arcane force. And it had tasted like... absolute freezing cold fire. 

“Leo Vance is supposed to be a mundane,” Elara thought, a frown appearing on her beautiful face. “A poor charity case from the slums. But no mundane could casually deflect a magical attack like that without breaking a sweat.”

She opened her eyes and pushed herself away from the lockers. 

"Interesting," she whispered to herself. She pulled out her expensive smartphone and sent a quick text message to her family's private intelligence team. “Look into a boy named Leo Vance. I want to know everything about him by the time the final bell rings.”

The rest of the school day passed in a blur of terrified whispers. Nobody dared to speak to Leo. If a teacher called on him, he answered the question perfectly, his voice smooth and cold. If a student accidentally walked too close to him in the cafeteria, they would apologize frantically and run away. 

For Zayin, the ancient soul inside the teenager, high school was a complete waste of time. He spent the hours sitting in the back of the classroom, secretly circulating mana through his newly refined bones. 

When the final bell finally rang, Leo packed his bag and walked out the front gates alone. 

He did not walk toward his apartment. He knew the Obsidian Cartel would return tonight. The two Collectors had fled like cowards, but they would tell their master what happened. The Cartel would send stronger fighters. They would bring guns, and they would bring better magic. 

Leo's newly refined bones were stronger than normal human bones, but his mortal flesh was still weak. A bullet to the brain would still kill him. 

He needed to cast a High-Tier Arcane Shield. But if he tried to pull that much raw mana through his mortal veins right now, his heart would explode. He needed a magical item—a catalyst—to hold the energy for him. 

Leo caught a dirty city bus and rode it deep into the city's old industrial district. He stepped off the bus and walked down a narrow, dirty street filled with broken streetlights and abandoned warehouses. 

This was the Under-Market. 

To a normal person, this street just looked like a row of sad, cheap pawnshops and dusty antique stores. But to anyone with a little bit of magical sense, this was the supernatural bazaar of the city. 

Leo pushed open the heavy wooden door of a shop called "Curiosities & Coins." A small brass bell jingled loudly above his head. 

The shop was dark and smelled like old dust and burning incense. Every shelf was packed with strange items: strange animal skulls, old silver rings, dried plants in glass jars, and heavy, leather-bound books. 

Behind the glass counter sat a fat, greasy man with a gold tooth. He was reading a dirty magazine. When he saw Leo, a teenager wearing a cheap, faded school uniform, his face twisted into an annoyed frown. 

"We don't buy stolen video games, kid," the shopkeeper grunted, not looking up from his magazine. "Get out."

Leo ignored the man. He walked slowly around the small shop, his dark eyes scanning the shelves. He was looking for any object that contained a stable core of mana. 

Most of the items in the shop were completely useless. They were just old junk meant to trick stupid tourists. But then, inside a locked glass display case, Leo spotted something interesting. 

It was a dagger. The blade was made of shiny black obsidian stone, and the handle was carved from dark wood. Along the side of the blade, strange silver runes were painted in a complex pattern. 

Leo stopped and pointed at the dagger. "How much for that?"

The fat shopkeeper finally looked up. He saw where Leo was pointing, and a greedy, nasty smile spread across his face. He recognized that this kid didn't look like he belonged in the Under-Market, but maybe he was some rich politician's son playing dress-up. 

The shopkeeper unlocked the case and pulled the dagger out carefully.