The deep, dreamless sleep was a luxury Alden had almost forgotten how to experience.
For the first time in a month, his muscles weren't tightly coiled in anticipation of a midnight ambush. His core was stable, the erratic energies within him finally pacified.
Then, the heavy oak door of the bedroom violently slammed open.
BANG!
The noise was like a cannon shot in the quiet, simulated night of the luxurious spatial hut.
Before Alden could even fully open his crimson eye, a pair of pale, frantic hands grabbed him by the shoulders. He was violently shaken, the plush mattress bouncing under the sudden assault.
"Get up! Peasant, wake up right now!"
Nova's voice lacked its usual smooth, aristocratic drawl. It was sharp, laced with genuine, unadulterated urgency.
Alden's combat instincts flared instantly. He didn't groggily rub his eyes or ask for five more minutes. He was out of the bed in a fraction of a second, his right hand instinctively dropping to his waist, searching for the hilt of his weapon before he remembered he was wearing sleepwear.
"What happened?" Alden demanded, his voice dropping into a cold, completely awake register.
"Did the syndicate find us?"
"Worse," Nova hissed, her violet eyes wide with a frantic energy as she practically dragged him toward his discarded clothes.
"The guards are coming. We need to leave this place immediately."
Alden didn't ask questions. Not yet.
He closed his eye, extending his perception outward, pushing his senses past the boundaries of the spatially expanded mansion, past the mossy wooden exterior of the hut, and into the dense redwood grove.
The moment his senses brushed the open air of the outer valley, a suffocating, terrifying pressure slammed into his mind.
It was coming from the distant northern horizon. It wasn't just one aura. It was multiple. And they were monstrous. The sheer, overwhelming density of the approaching mana signatures made the air itself vibrate with a heavy, oppressive hum.
Peak S-Rank entities. And they were moving incredibly fast.
Alden's heart skipped a beat.
He didn't waste another millisecond. He snatched his dark clothes from the corner of the room, pulling on his trousers and the sleek black trench coat with terrifying efficiency. He grabbed his heavy travel pack, swinging it over his shoulders.
Finally, he turned to the bed. The crystal sphere rested innocently on the mattress, the blue, golden, and newly formed green wisps swirling calmly inside. He grabbed the artifact, shoving it deep into his inner pocket, safely securing it within his storage ring.
"Back door," Alden ordered.
They sprinted out of the bedroom, tearing down the grand marble staircase of the hidden mansion. The sheer luxury of the pocket dimension blurred past them as they reached the rear exit.
Alden shoved the wooden door open, and they spilled out into the damp, incredibly dense air of the redwood grove.
"They are fast," Nova breathed, her gaze darting toward the sky.
"Hide your aura," Alden snapped, already moving.
Nova didn't need to be told twice. Her violet eyes flashed. The innate Authority of Telekinesis flared around her, but she didn't use it to lift boulders or freeze enemies. She turned the conceptual power entirely inward. The telekinetic force wrapped around her own body like an airtight, invisible vault, violently clamping down on her mana pathways.
It was a flawless, instantaneous suppression. The telekinetic lock prevented a single drop of her Peak S-Rank aura from leaking into the surrounding atmosphere, effectively erasing her magical footprint from the world.
Alden was a step ahead.
He pulled the sleek, matte-black artifact mask from his storage ring and snapped it over his face. The cool metal instantly adhered to his jawline, the runic matrix flaring to life to scramble his baseline signature.
But against approaching Peak S-Rank dragons, an artifact alone wasn't enough.
Alden focused internally. He drew a sharp breath, pulling in a massive volume of the pure, incredibly dense ambient mana of the Dragon Valley. He channeled the pure energy directly into his chest.
Simultaneously, he released a perfectly measured, identical volume of his highly destructive Chaos element.
He forced the two opposing energies to collide violently just beneath the surface of his skin.
It was a basic, brutal mathematical law applied to spiritual combat. The pure mana and the Chaos element slammed into each other, actively and continuously erasing one another in a perfectly balanced zero-sum reaction. The friction generated absolutely no outward fluctuation. To the outside world, Alden von Astra simply ceased to exist.
"Run," Alden commanded.
They bolted deep into the towering, ancient redwood forest, their boots barely making a sound against the damp earth. They moved with terrifying speed, weaving through the massive trunks and dodging glowing, exotic flora.
After putting several miles between themselves and the hidden hut, Alden finally broke the tense silence.
"Who exactly is chasing us?" Alden asked, his breath perfectly even despite the grueling pace.
Nova ran beside him, her black hair whipping behind her. She reached up, wiping an invisible bead of sweat from her brow, a rare display of actual physical stress.
"They are the Guardians of the Dragon Valley," Nova replied, her voice clipped.
Alden narrowed his single crimson eye behind the slit of his mask.
"Guardians of the Valley?" Alden repeated, his tone lacing with heavy skepticism.
"If they are the Guardians of the Valley, what in the name of the abyss are they doing thousands of kilometers outside of it?"
Nova didn't look at him.
"Patrolling."
"Don't insult my intelligence," Alden countered sharply, dodging a massive, protruding root.
"The area outside the Dragon Valley is a vast, untamed wilderness. There are hundreds of thousands of monsters out here. There is absolutely nothing new or interesting for them to come see."
For Alden, the towering redwoods and the glowing, A-Rank wildlife were breathtakingly unique. But for dragons who had lived here for centuries? It was their backyard.
"Besides," Alden pressed, his analytical mind tearing her vague excuse to shreds, "it is fundamentally impossible for them to detect the spatial fluctuations of our teleportation gate from thousands of kilometers away. Even a sensory-specialized SS-Ranker would struggle to pinpoint a localized spatial jump from that distance."
Alden turned his head slightly, his glowing red eye boring into the side of her face.
"And even if they somehow did detect it," Alden continued, his voice dropping into a dangerous, interrogating register, "why did they fly in a perfectly straight line directly toward that specific, hidden spatial hut beside the vast forest? They knew exactly where we were."
He stared at her, his expression filled with profound, highly suspicious questions.
Nova's jaw tightened. She pointedly avoided his gaze, her violet eyes staring straight ahead into the dark woods.
"I will be coming with you," Nova suddenly announced, completely dodging his entire line of questioning and violently changing the subject.
"I am free for the time being. My schedule is clear."
Alden nearly tripped over his own boots.
He skidded to a halt, grabbing her by the arm and forcing her to stop.
"No," Alden said flatly, dropping her arm as if she were radioactive. "Absolutely not. I don't want to get more annoyed by staying with you. You are a walking disaster magnet. It will be infinitely better if I travel by myself."
Nova turned fully to face him, her aristocratic pride flaring up to mask her cornered panic.
She took a step closer, tilting her head, a wicked, entirely unapologetic smirk spreading across her flawless face.
"Is that so?" Nova purred, her voice dripping with venomous sweetness. "How unfortunate. Because if you abandon me in these woods, peasant, I will simply drop my telekinetic lock. I will scream at the top of my lungs, and I will personally inform the Guardians that a filthy, masked human has illegally breached our sovereign territories."
Alden froze.
His right eye twitched violently behind the metal mask.
She was blackmailing him. The absolute, unmitigated audacity of the girl. He had pulled her from the snow, burned a lethal curse from her soul, and dragged her to safety, and she was currently threatening to hand him over to a squad of highly lethal, xenophobic dragons if he didn't act as her personal escort.
Alden stared at her, an intense, raging battle occurring inside his mind. He weighed the pros and cons of simply knocking her unconscious and burying her in a snowbank.
But he couldn't. If the Guardians found her unconscious body, they would sweep the entire forest. He needed distance.
Alden let out a slow, deeply exhausted sigh that seemed to drain years off his life.
"Fine," Alden gritted his teeth, the word tasting like ash in his mouth. "But if you complain about my walking pace one more time, I am throwing you into a ravine."
Nova's smug smile widened triumphantly. She gave a curt, satisfied nod.
"Excellent," she said, turning back toward the dense foliage.
"Do try to keep up."
They resumed their sprint, plunging deeper and deeper into the uncharted, treacherous depths of the ancient forest, leaving the hidden hut far behind them.
***
The air above the towering redwood grove violently distorted.
The clouds parted as two massive, terrifying shadows descended from the overcast sky.
They were dragons. True, unadulterated apex predators. Their bodies were larger than galleon ships, covered in thick, impenetrable scales that glinted like polished obsidian and deep, bruised sapphire. Their massive wings beat against the air, creating localized hurricanes that flattened the surrounding ancient trees.
Both of them radiated the suffocating, world-bending aura of Peak S-Rank entities.
The hidden, moss-covered hut below them looked extremely small in comparison, like a singular, fragile ant sitting in a vast desert of sand.
As they neared the ground, the two massive beasts began to glow. Their colossal forms rapidly shrank, condensing and shifting until they landed gracefully on the damp forest floor.
They had transformed into their half-dragon states. They stood easily over seven feet tall, possessing the humanoid frames of impossibly muscular warriors, but retaining their lethal draconic features. Thick, jagged scales covered their forearms and jaws, and heavy, curved horns rose from their skulls.
Without exchanging a single word, the two heavily armored guards stepped forward and kicked the rotting wooden door of the hut completely off its hinges.
They stepped into the sprawling, luxurious pocket dimension.
Their slit, reptilian eyes swept the grand marble foyer. They moved with terrifying, synchronized military precision, sweeping the upper floors, the grand bedroom, and the washrooms.
A few minutes later, they reconvened in the center of the main hall.
"Empty," the first guard growled, his voice a deep, gravelly rumble.
"They noticed our approach."
"It does not matter," the second guard replied, his golden reptilian eyes narrowing.
"They cannot erase their tracks completely."
The second guard reached into his heavy, scale-mail armor and pulled out an object.
It was an artifact. It wasn't a mundane tracking compass. It was a Legendary-Grade, SS-Rank sensory artifact. Forged from a piece of petrified primordial wood and wrapped in glowing, hyper-sensitive runes, the device was capable of detecting even the most microscopic, heavily concealed fluctuation in the surrounding atmosphere.
The guard activated the artifact. The runes flared blindingly bright.
He swept the device across the room.
Instantly, the artifact hummed.
"I have it," the guard announced, his voice carrying a dark, absolute certainty.
"There is a fluctuation of presence in the air. The lingering scent of her aura."
The artifact pulsed, locking onto a familiar Soul Fluctuation that had briefly leaked when Nova was asleep, before she had initiated her telekinetic lock.
Suddenly, a sharp, piercing vibration echoed from the first guard's waist.
He reached down, unclipping a small, perfectly spherical crystal communicator from his belt. The crystal was glowing with a harsh, demanding crimson light.
The two heavily armored Dragons physically stiffened. They immediately dropped to one knee, bowing their horned heads in absolute, terrifying reverence.
The guard activated the crystal.
From the spherical communicator, a voice emerged.
It wasn't loud. It wasn't screaming. But the sheer, unimaginable depth and weight of the voice made the very fabric of the pocket dimension groan under the pressure. It was a voice that commanded the oceans to stop and the mountains to bow.
"Do you find the girl?"
The first guard swallowed hard, a drop of cold sweat sliding down his scaled jaw.
"No, Your Majesty," the guard spoke, his voice trembling slightly with profound respect and underlying terror.
"But we have sensed her presence with the Soul Fluctuation. We are sure it wasn't that much time since she was here..."
The guard paused, his golden eyes darting toward the SS-Rank tracking artifact in his partner's hand. The runes on the device were currently highlighting a second, entirely distinct trail.
"Wait! Your Majesty..." the guard hastily added, his confusion evident. "We also sense a soul fluctuation of another person. It is heavily masked, but the residue is present. But... why was a person with the girl?"
The silence from the crystal communicator was deafening. It felt like standing at the edge of a guillotine.
"We will quickly follow it and immediately find her," the guard rushed to assure, desperation bleeding into his tone.
"You don't have to worry, Your Majesty."
The air inside the luxurious mansion grew incredibly, suffocatingly cold.
The deep, world-ending voice from the crystal sphere rang out once more, dripping with a terrifying, absolute authority.
"I want her within a month," the Sovereign commanded, every syllable hitting the guards like a physical hammer strike.
"And I also want the person who was with that girl at any cost."
The guards bowed their heads lower, their foreheads practically touching the marble floor.
"If I don't see her in front of me until the next month..." the Sovereign's voice dropped into a deadly, quiet whisper.
"You will lose your heads."
CRACK!
The crystal communicator shattered immediately.
It wasn't dropped. It was crushed into fine, sparkling dust by an unseen, remote force of sheer pressure from thousands of kilometers away.
The two towering, Peak S-Rank dragons remained kneeling for a long moment in the silence of the empty mansion.
Slowly, they stood up. They didn't speak. They didn't need to. They wiped the cold sweat from their brows, their reptilian eyes burning with a desperate, lethal intensity.
They turned their backs on the shattered crystal, stepping out of the hut and locking onto the faint, masked fluctuations leading deep into the redwood forest.