Rush stood up hurriedly.
His eyes moved past Darius's body. His heart was racing.
Several meters ahead — at the edge of the camp, where the treeline began — something stood with its back to him.
It was not human.
Grey and white — neither fully present nor entirely absent. Its proportions were wrong in ways his eyes kept trying to correct and couldn't — limbs slightly too long, joints bending at angles but deliberate.
It was bent over something on the ground.
Its hands — if they were hands — moved in slow, deliberate patterns above the frost.
Beneath them, lines of pale light spread outward.
Geometric. Precise. Alive.
A magic circle.
Rush's gaze sharpened.
Rush reached for the Hartsteel dagger.
Child, Beelzebub said. His voice serious like never before. That's Phantom Sleeper. A Greater Demon. I can't assess it's evolution level. But a Greater Demon is at least as strong as a B-Rank monster.
Rush knew what that meant.
So what power does it hold?, Rush thought.
"Innate Ability: Dead possession."
"Magic affinity: Frost Control."
Rush looked at Darius's body.
Then at the geometric lines of cold light.
What is it doing?
A Higher Grade spell, Beelzebub said. Very few beings in Etherion can use one without a magic circle of this kind. It takes time to complete and It's almost done.
What spell?, Rush thought.
Information inaccessible at current archive level.
****. It's bad.
Yes, it is.
Rush looked at Jennifer's tent. At Slavic's.
He opened his mouth.
"Jennifer."
Nothing.
"Slavic."
No response.
The camp was silent except for the soft creak of frost-covered branches and the slow pulse of the cold light on the ground.
The Phantom Sleeper straightened, magic circle complete — now pulsing like something was breathing.
Turned — unhurried, as if it sensed Rush the moment he opened his eyes and had simply chosen not to react yet because reaction wasn't necessary.
It looked at him.
Its face — if it was a face — was wrong. Present but not right. Something that had worn many faces before.
"You're awake."
Voice cold, clinical and beneath both of those — a fractional quality of surprise that it didn't fully conceal.
Rush kept his eyes on it.
"Jennifer. Slavic. What did you do to them?"
"Hibernation," the Phantom Sleeper said. "They will wake when we're gone."
It took a step towards Rush.
"I came for you. Not them."
"To finish me."
It didn't answer immediately. Its wrong eyes moved to Rush's chest — to the silver markings of the Khaos Blocker just visible at his wrist.
"Give me the Weltgehirn and you won't have to come with me. And nobody dies today. "
Rush said nothing. The word meant nothing to him.
Beelzebub, he thought.
Weltgehirn, Beelzebub said. The artifact I was sealed in. Before our synchronization. It's after me, child. Not you specifically.
But it doesn't know about our synchronization or it would have never asked me for the artifact.
You're right it doesn't know about me. It just know of the artifact.
But whoever it works for may know about you.
Rush looked at the Phantom Sleeper.
At Darius's body on the ground.
At Jennifer's tent and Slavic's tent and the retreating possibility of any of this going well without someone getting killed.
So there's no way out of it, Rush thought. I have to finish it.
You cannot, Beelzebub said flatly. Not alone, not at your current level and It's faster than you, stronger than you, and its physical form is not something you can damage.
Tension raised in Rush's grip.
Then—
I can.
How?
The Gluttony Protocol, Beelzebub said. If you touch it and allow me partial control — I could harvest it. The Khaos Blocker will absorb most of the cost. Your core will sustain damage but you will survive.
Rush looked at the circle. At the pulsing cold light.
Last time you moved without warning.
Last time you were dying, Beelzebub said. This time you are not, we do it together.
Rush exhaled slowly through his nose.
"I don't have what you're asking me," he said to the Phantom Sleeper. "I don't even know what it is?"
The demon's expression changed from calm to impatient, frustrated.
"Don't take me for a fool, Rush."
Frost on the ground thickened, temperature dropped.
"Lie again and one of them dies."
It looked at Slavic.
"I'm not lying. I don't have the artifact."
The demon's studied his face.
"Then you're coming with me."
Rush knew there was no other way.
"Ok. I'll come with you."
He moved toward the circle. Toward the demon.
The Phantom Sleeper watched him approach — calm, clinical, entirely unsuspicious of a fourteen year old boy walking toward it.
Rush got close.
Reached out to get his palm to touch the demon.
The Phantom Sleeper moved.
Faster than Rush had anticipated — a single fluid step back, its wrong face tilting fractionally, its expression shifting from clinical to alert.
"Interesting," it said. "What were you even trying?"
Rush's hand closed on empty air.
I can't stop now, Rush thought.
The fight began.
The Phantom Sleeper's cold came first.
Not a strike — the environment itself. The frost that had been retreating under the coals' residual warmth surged back, thicker and more directed, the ambient temperature dropping several degrees in the space of a breath. The ground under Rush's boots became unreliable — the moisture in the packed earth freezing and expanding, the surface shifting beneath each step.
Rush moved anyway.
His cold resistance — the Snow Lycan's inheritance — kept him functional where another student would have slowed to a stop. He closed the distance, driving the Hartsteel dagger toward the junction between the Phantom Sleeper's neck and shoulder.
The blade couldn't even scratch it.
The counter arrived before Rush finished processing the failed strike.
A concentrated burst of cold — directed, precise — hit him across the chest and sent him back three steps. His breath left him. He pulled it back in and kept moving.
It's faster, Beelzebub said. Stronger. And in its true form physical combat won't work. Enhance your body with mana.
Rush already knew that.
He tried twice more — using Flash Step, reinforcing his body with mana to close the distance faster than before, the dagger angled for disruption rather than damage. Both times the Demon moved — without panic. Without effort.
The third counter hit Rush across his left side.
He went down to one knee.
Stayed there for a moment, breathing.
His core was straining — the physical demand accelerating, the Khaos Blocker tightening against each spike of effort.
Core stability, Rush thought.
"Khaos Blocker will handle it," Beelzebub said."But be careful."
The Phantom Sleeper didn't press. It simply waited — the cold building steadily around the camp's perimeter, the teleportation circle continuing its slow pulse behind it. It wasn't in a hurry. It knew where it stood in the current situation.
Rush got up.
Child, Beelzebub said quietly. Something is coming.