The Undying Warrior's Rewind

5

I needed to move fast. My Tier 1 mana core had finally blasted wide open, filling my veins with a glorious, surging warmth, but it also meant I had the processing power to realize exactly how bad a dozen messy sword wounds would look to the authorities.

If the Royal Mage Police found Geraldine looking like a human pincushion, they wouldn't blame the giant monster. They’d look for a murderer.

"Can't have that," I muttered, snapping my fingers.

Using my newly unlocked Tier 1 core, I gathered the residual, unrefined fire mana from the air and channeled it into a precise, high-temperature spark. 

I dropped it right onto Geraldine's torso. The magical flame caught instantly, aggressively consuming her body to ash within seconds, erasing every single trace of my sword work.

I didn't burn everything, though. I purposefully left her scorched, silver-trimmed academy gown and her pristine, untouched head intact. 

To any investigator, it would look exactly like the classic calling card of a high-tier abyssal vanguard beast, disintegration by raw, localized cosmic corruption.

Once the evidence was properly cooked, I shoved the blood-red scroll deep inside my tunic, right against my chest.

Now came the fun part: showtime.

I dropped the guard's sword into the ash, messed up my hair, tore my shirt, and fell to my knees. I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing out authentic, panicked tears, and began to wail like an absolute child.

"Help! Someone help! The monster, it ate her! Fire, so, powerful! Geraldine is dead!" I screamed like a spineless, terrified idiot.

Right on cue, the heavy, synchronized clack-clack-clack of boots echoed down the cobblestones. 

Dozens of Mage Police officers turned the corner, shields raised and staves glowing, their faces pale as they took in the dead colossal beast and the smoking remains of the academy's prize prodigy.

As the lead commander rushed toward me, I decided to give them a grand finale. I rolled my eyes into the back of my head, let my muscles go completely limp, and fainted right into the dirt. 

Because why the hell not? I was just a pathetic, magic-less dropout who had witnessed a tragedy. Playing the victim was a free pass out of an interrogation.

When my eyes finally fluttered open, the harsh stench of burnt copper and disinfectant filled my nose.

I was lying on a plush, white-sheeted bed inside the high-ceilinged infirmary of the Mage Tower’s healer clinic. 

My left foot was tightly bandaged, a neat white wrap was tied around my forehead, and a gentle recovery spell was humming softly on my chest. 

Mechanically speaking, I was entirely fine, my new Tier 1 core was already working overtime, quietly absorbing the healing ambient mana to make me even stronger.

I stretched my arms, letting out a weak, pathetic groan for any onlookers.

"Ah, you're awake."

The voice came from the dark shadows behind my bed. It was deep, resonant, and carried a heavy, crushing gravity that made the atmospheric pressure in the room drop instantly.

I turned my head slowly, keeping my expression perfectly dazed. Standing there was an elderly man draped in ornate, midnight-blue robes embroidered with silver constellations. 

He held a staff carved from a single piece of world-tree timber, and his glowing white eyes looked like they could pierce straight through a man's soul.

It was the Mage Tower Master, one of the top five strongest individuals in the entire kingdom.

I immediately shrunk back into my pillows, trembling like a frightened puppy. "M-Master? What... what happened? Where is Geraldine? Is the monster gone?"

The Tower Master didn't answer right away. He walked over to the side of my bed, his white eyes staring down at me with an unreadable, suffocating intensity. 

He leaned in close, the ambient mana crackling around his robes.

"The beast is dead, Ethan," the Tower Master said, his voice dropping to a sharp, dangerous whisper.

"But our investigators found something fascinating. The monster was killed by a precise, military-grade puncture through its core, a strike that requires the exact tactical geometry of a veteran vanguard commander. And the only other person in that alley was a magic-less dropout."

He leaned even closer, his gaze locked onto mine.

"Did you kill the beast, Hoke?"

My heart did a violent flip inside my chest. 

Wait. Why the hell would he think that?

I had played the part perfectly! There was no way a Tier 1 kid could have theoretically pierced that hide. 

Unless... he wasn't looking at my magical output. He was looking at something else.

"Did you kill the beast, Hoke?"

The Mage Tower Master’s voice vibrated with a terrifying, crushing gravity that would have forced a regular seventeen-year-old to wet the bed. His white, glowing eyes bored into mine, trying to dissect my soul.

I shrunk back into the fluffy pillows of the clinic bed, shivering like a wet Chihuahua, but inside? Inside, my mind was running a tactical simulation at Mach 5. 

How did this old fossil deduce that? Did a guard see me? Did I leave a footprint?

"M-Me?!" I gasped, letting my voice crack like a puberty-stricken peasant. "Master, I couldn't even kill a regular chicken, let alone a mountain of teeth and tentacles! I was just rolling in the dirt screaming for my life!"

The Tower Master didn't blink. Slowly, a small, knowing smile crept onto his ancient, wrinkled face. 

He stood up straight, releasing the suffocating pressure in the room, and tapped his world-tree staff against the marble floor.

"You do not need to hide it from me, boy," he said, his tone shifting from an interrogation to a creepy, conspiratorial whisper. 

"The Mage Tower has kept records of the kingdom's founding lineages for over five centuries. The public thinks the Hoke family is just a disgraced, fading noble house of magic-less dropouts. But I know the truth of your bloodline."

I blinked. Wait. What?

"The Hoke lineage," the old man continued, pacing around my bed with his hands behind his back, looking like a history professor who had drunk way too much wine. 

"You are the direct descendants of the Berserker King, Logan Hoke. Five hundred years ago, during the First Unification War, your ancestor fought without a drop of traditional mana. 

Instead, when pushed to the brink of death, the Hoke bloodline unlocks a primal, chaotic awakening, a burst of physical godhood that allows a mortal to tear through magical beasts with their bare hands."

I stared at him, completely dumbfounded. Are you serious right now?

I didn't know who this Logan Hoke guy was, but his convenient family history was currently throwing me a massive, golden lifeline. 

The original Ethan Hoke wasn't just a dropout; his ancestors were literally martial-arts meatheads who didn't use magic. 

To the Tower Master, my hyper-efficient, military-grade slaughter of an abyssal vanguard beast wasn't the work of a transmigrated sci-fi fantasy god, it was just me having a genetic temper tantrum.

“What? I’m the direct descendant of the Berserker King?”