The sterile, rhythmic hum of the Translocation Chamber at ARIES Headquarters was a stark contrast to the thick, suffocating tension hanging between the three recruits.
Aamon Maverick, Draco Riven, and Seraphine Blackwood stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the massive Star-Silver platform. They were fully geared, their newly acquired artifacts secured and thrumming with latent arcane energy. Agent Myra Elswright stood a few paces away, her face an unreadable mask as she inputted the destination coordinates into a heavily encrypted terminal.
"Destination locked. Sanctioned Fixed Rift: Iron-Tooth," Elswright announced, her voice echoing in the cavernous room. "Brace yourselves."
Having experienced it once before, Aamon thought he was prepared for the sensation. He was wrong. The sapphire vortex descended, swallowing them in a blinding flash of distorted light and violent spatial compression.
It was like being shoved through the eye of a needle at the speed of sound. Aamon clenched his jaw, his F-Rank core burning as it fought to stabilize against the tearing currents of the dimensional void. Beside him, Draco stood like a statue, completely unfazed, while Seraphine simply closed her eyes and let her emerald aura gently pulse to ward off the nausea.
A fraction of a second later, the blinding blue light vanished, replaced by the harsh, glaring floodlights of reality.
Aamon stumbled slightly as his boots hit solid plascrete, the abrupt return of gravity hitting his stomach like a lead weight. He took a deep breath, fighting down the bile, and opened his eyes to take in their surroundings.
They hadn't just arrived in the wilderness. They had materialized on an elevated, reinforced translocation pad in the center of a sprawling, heavily fortified military encampment.
The air here was completely different from the sterile atmosphere of the capital. It smelled of exhaust fumes, burnt ozone, and the faint, coppery tang of old blood. Massive, temporary walls constructed from overlapping slabs of hex-plated steel surrounded the camp. Towering scanning pylons pulsed with a rhythmic, sweeping red light, constantly monitoring the ambient mana density of the surrounding area.
Everywhere Aamon looked, uniformed operatives were moving with urgent, mechanical precision. But these weren't the sleek, tailored agents of the ARIES Bureau.
"AEGIS," Draco murmured, his golden eyes sweeping over the heavily armed soldiers patrolling the perimeter.
Aamon nodded silently. The Arcanist Emergency Garrison for Incursion Suppression. While ARIES was the scalpel used for surgical strikes and anomaly investigations, AEGIS was the sledgehammer. They were the paramilitary wing of SCALE, tasked with holding the lines around known Fixed Rifts, maintaining containment barriers, and preventing monsters from breaking out into civilian territory.
This was a forward operating base. And the reality that this was no longer a training ground settled heavily over Aamon's shoulders.
"Move," Elswright commanded, stepping off the pad.
The trio followed her down a metal grated staircase, walking through the bustling camp. AEGIS soldiers, clad in thick, bulky Equipment-grade armor and carrying massive mag-rifles, paused to throw curious, assessing glances at the three teenagers walking behind the pristine ARIES agent.
They approached the northern end of the encampment. The massive steel walls here funneled inward, leading to a heavily guarded checkpoint. Beyond the checkpoint, the world simply... stopped.
Floating in the center of a massive, containment-warded archway was a tear in the fabric of reality. It didn't look like a swirling vortex or a black hole. It looked like a vertical lake of fractured, shimmering light. The surface of the Rift rippled and distorted, occasionally offering terrifying, fleeting glimpses of a dark, twisted forest on the other side.
The sheer density of the mana leaking from the tear was palpable. It felt like standing too close to an open furnace, the air heavy, humid, and practically vibrating with chaotic energy.
Agent Elswright stopped ten feet from the shimmering threshold. She turned to face them, her expression deadly serious.
"Listen closely, because I will only say this once," Elswright began, her voice cutting through the ambient noise of the AEGIS camp. "Beyond this threshold lies the Iron-Tooth biome. It is classified as an F-Rank difficulty zone, but a Rift's classification is merely an average. Anomalies occur. Mutations happen."
She locked eyes with each of them in turn.
"I will step through first to ensure the immediate landing zone is clear. Once you cross over, the training wheels are entirely off. You are an operational squad. I am a shadow. I will not offer tactical advice. I will not point out ambushes. I will not assist in killing your targets. I am here solely to retrieve your bodies if you fail, or to intervene if an out-of-bounds entity threatens your immediate extermination."
Elswright's gaze lingered on Aamon for a fraction of a second longer than the others. "Your objective is simple. Locate a nesting ground, clear the hostiles, harvest three intact monster cores, and return to this extraction point. Do not separate. Do not panic. Survive."
Without another word, Elswright turned on her heel and walked directly into the vertical lake of fractured light. The shimmering surface rippled outward as she passed through, swallowing her completely.
Draco drew a slow, measured breath, his hands resting on the hilts of his twin swords. "Stay in formation," he ordered, his voice slipping effortlessly into a commanding tone. "Sera in the center. Maverick, watch the flanks. Let's go."
Aamon didn't argue. He unclipped his Shifting-Phase Daggers from his thighs, the cool metal grounding his racing thoughts. He followed Draco and Seraphine as they stepped into the Rift.
The sensation of crossing the threshold was fundamentally different from Translocation. It didn't feel like moving through space; it felt like pushing through a thick, gelatinous membrane. A profound, bone-deep chill washed over Aamon, followed immediately by a wave of suffocating, oppressive heat.
He blinked, his eyes adjusting to the sudden shift in lighting.
They were standing in a clearing, but it looked nothing like the forests of Earth. The Iron-Tooth biome was aptly named. The trees towering over them didn't have bark; their trunks were composed of a twisted, dark-grey substance that looked and smelled exactly like rusted iron. The leaves above them were a sickly, luminescent silver, casting a pale, unnatural twilight over the forest floor.
The ground was covered in a thick layer of sharp, metallic underbrush and dark, damp moss. The mana density here was absurdly high. For a self-awakened like Aamon, it felt as though he were breathing in a thick syrup. His F-Rank core thrummed erratically in his chest, reacting to the ambient radiation of the dungeon.
Agent Elswright was nowhere to be seen. True to her word, she had completely vanished, leaving them entirely alone in the hostile environment.
Aamon can't help but feel the anticipation welling up in his chest. This particular part of clearing some monsters were actually the tutorial phase in Arcane Frontier in order to guide the players how to navigate their characters. Even though it was a short time, Aamon still remembered it.
After that tutorial phase with his character as the Warrior, the timeline will shift into the original storyline where it will start which is in the Polaris Academy. Only right now, it's not considered tutorial phase anymore. But rather his new reality where a single mistake can cost him his life and his teammates lives.
"Visibility is poor," Draco noted, his golden eyes scanning the dense, metallic treeline. The shadows here were unnaturally deep, seemingly drinking in the pale silver light of the canopy. "The magnetic interference from these trees is going to disrupt standard compasses. We need to pick a direction and systematically clear the grid until we find a nest."
"Actually," Aamon spoke up, his voice steady despite the hammering of his heart. "I think I can find it faster."
Draco turned to look at him, an eyebrow raised in skepticism. "Are you a tracker now, Maverick?"
"No. I just have a really good sense of direction," Aamon replied. He closed his eyes and deliberately activated one of his passive traits. System Interface hovering over his vision.
[Trait Activated: Map Sensitivity]
In the game, Map Sensitivity was a quality-of-life feature that allowed the player to see the minimap on their HUD, revealing the topography, identifying pathing routes, and marking the general direction of hostile spawns with faint red pings.
But here, in reality, there was no HUD. The trait manifested entirely differently.
Aamon felt a sudden, profound expansion of his spatial awareness. It wasn't a visual map in his mind; it was a sensory feeling. He could feel the flow of the terrain beneath his boots. He could sense where the metallic trees clustered thickest, creating impassable walls, and where the underbrush thinned out to form natural, meandering game trails.
More importantly, he could feel the ambient mana currents of the Rift. And like a rock in a stream, living entities disrupted those currents.
He opened his eyes, pointing toward the northwest. "The terrain slopes downward about half a mile in that direction. There's a natural basin. The mana flow is pooling there, and it's heavily disturbed. A large concentration of moving entities. That's our nest."
Sera looked at him, her amethyst eyes wide with genuine surprise. "You can sense mana disturbances from half a mile away? Aamon, that's... that's a high-tier tracking trait. Guardian classes usually don't develop that kind of radar. Are you sure you're an assassin?"
Draco's expression remained stoic, but the slight tightening of his jaw indicated his own surprise. "Are you certain?"
"Absolutely," Aamon said, stepping past Draco to take the point position. "The trails here are heavily trafficked. If we follow the path of least resistance through the ironwood, we'll hit the basin in ten minutes. Keep your eyes peeled. The distortion in the mana flow suggests they aren't all stationary."
Draco hesitated for a fraction of a second before nodding. "Lead the way. Sera, keep your aura suppressed. We don't want your healing signature acting as a beacon."
Aamon took a deep breath, slipping into the mindset he had cultivated over years of testing. He wasn't a terrified teenager anymore. He was the beta-tester navigating his own code.
He led them through the dense, metallic forest with an uncanny, fluid confidence. He didn't hack through the brush; he glided through the natural openings that Map Sensitivity highlighted for him. He pointed out trip-roots hidden beneath the moss and directed them around patches of unstable, sinking terrain that would have bogged them down.
For the first five minutes, the forest was eerily silent, save for the crunch of their boots on the metallic foliage.
Then, Aamon stopped dead in his tracks.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. Map Sensitivity didn't give him a visual warning, but the sensory input in his mind suddenly spiked, as if a heavy drum had been struck right next to his ear. The mana currents directly to their west were violently tearing apart.
"Contact," Aamon hissed, dropping into a low crouch, his daggers drawn. "West. Moving fast. Multiple heavy targets."
Draco instantly drew his twin swords, the dark alloy sliding silently from their scabbards. He stepped in front of Sera, his golden eyes locking onto the western treeline. "Distance?"
"Two hundred yards and closing. Fast," Aamon warned, his grip tightening on his daggers. "They're charging us."
A low, rumbling vibration began to shake the ground beneath their feet. It started as a faint tremor but rapidly escalated into a thunderous, rhythmic pounding that rattled Aamon's teeth. The metallic trees ahead of them began to shake violently, the silver leaves raining down in a shimmering cascade.
"Here they come!" Sera yelled, uncoiling her Thorn-Weave Whip. The barbs instantly flared with a sickly purple light as her toxins primed.
Bursting through the thick ironwood underbrush like living battering rams came a pack of five Iron-Hide Boars.
They were monstrous. Easily the size of small rhinos, their bodies were covered in thick, interlocking plates of dark grey, metallic armor that looked exactly like the bark of the trees around them. Their eyes burned with a chaotic, bloodshot red light, and massive, curved tusks jutted from their lower jaws, practically scraping the ground as they ran.
In the game, they were the quintessential low-level tank enemies. Slow to turn, but devastating in a straight line.
"I'll take the vanguard! Break their charge!" Draco roared, his voice cutting through the thundering hooves.
The warrior didn't wait for them to reach the team. He exploded forward, a terrifying display of E-Rank physical enhancement. He moved so fast he left a faint afterimage. As he closed the distance with the lead boar, Draco's swords ignited with a brilliant, blinding silver light.
Void Spikes.
Draco didn't swing his swords. He violently thrust them forward. Three massive, condensed spikes of spatial mana materialized in the air around him and shot forward like artillery shells.
The spatial spikes slammed into the lead boar with a deafening CRACK. The sheer kinetic and spatial distortion shattered the monster's iron-hide plating upon impact. The boar let out a squeal that sounded like grinding metal as it was thrown backward, its massive body flipping end-over-end before crashing into the dirt, dead before it even stopped rolling.
"One down!" Draco shouted, seamlessly transitioning the momentum of his attack into a fluid, spinning slash that deflected the tusks of the second charging boar.
The remaining three boars didn't even flinch at the death of their pack leader. They altered their trajectories slightly, two of them flanking Draco to charge directly at Sera and Aamon.
"I've got the right!" Aamon yelled, funneling mana into his hands. Kinetic Edge roared to life, coating his Phase-Steel daggers in a violently buzzing neon-blue aura.
He didn't meet the charging boar head-on—that would be suicide. Relying on his agility, Aamon sidestepped at the absolute last possible millisecond. The massive beast barreled past him, the wind of its charge whipping his blonde hair across his face.
As it passed, Aamon spun, driving his right dagger deep into the vulnerable, unarmored joint just behind the boar's front shoulder. The high-frequency vibration of Kinetic Edge sheared through the thick muscle and bone like butter.
The boar let out an agonizing shriek, its front leg collapsing under its massive weight. It tumbled forward, its momentum sending it crashing through a thicket of metallic ferns in a tangle of limbs and dirt.
Before Aamon could finish it off, the sharp, whistling crack of Sera's whip echoed through the clearing.
The third boar had nearly reached her, its tusks lowered to gore her through the chest. Sera didn't flinch. With the cool, calculating precision of a veteran, she lashed out. The Thorn-Weave Whip wrapped securely around the boar's thick front legs.
"Down you go, piggy," Sera muttered, channeling a burst of mana and viciously yanking the whip backward.
The boar's legs were ripped out from under it. It slammed face-first into the dirt, carving a deep trench in the moss. Immediately, the purple, sickly light of the whip's barbs flared as the paralytic toxin was injected directly into the creature's bloodstream. The massive beast seized, its muscles locking up rigidly as the poison paralyzed its nervous system in seconds.
Draco, meanwhile, had effortlessly decapitated his second target, his twin swords moving in a blur of silver light that left trails of spatial distortion in the air.
He turned toward the paralyzed boar at Sera's feet, raising his blade to deliver the killing blow.
"Hold!" Aamon suddenly screamed, his voice cracking with sheer, unadulterated panic.
His Map Sensitivity hadn't just spiked; it was practically screaming. The ambient mana currents around them weren't just disturbed anymore. They were being actively, maliciously shredded from the shadows.
It was a classic game mechanic. The loud, brute-force enemies draw the aggro, while the assassins flank from the stealth zones.
"Above you! Drop!" Aamon roared, pointing directly at the canopy above Draco.
Draco didn't question the order. His own Battlefield Precognition flared a fraction of a second later, confirming the threat. He violently threw himself backward, diving into the dirt.
Dropping from the silver canopy of the ironwood trees in absolute, terrifying silence were three massive, lupine shapes.
Lesser Shadow-Wolves.
Aamon was filled with dread as he eyed them. In the game, every type of wolf beasts has a trait called Pack Hunting. As long as a group of wolves hunt their preys together, their physical stats will be elevated to a certain degree. This was prevalent especially among lower rank beasts like Shadow Wolves. Not to mention, these beasts has a strange skill.
That's why Aamon already knew this would be a tough fight. Despite being Sera and Draco both being E-Rank, higher than these wolves, the combination of the Shadow Wolves' trait of Pack Hunting and their shadow-like skillset, it will be gruesome fight. Not to mention, they were half-drained from their previous encounters of Iron-Hide Boars.
If only they encountered the Shadow Wolves first, then it would be no problem. Aamon thinks as he gazed at the creatures in front of them.
They were the size of large lions, their bodies composed of a strange, shifting mass of solid matter and dark, inky smoke. Their eyes were glowing pinpricks of violet light, and their claws were elongated, razor-sharp scythes designed to bleed out heavily armored prey.
Where the boars were loud and clumsy, the wolves were fast, silent, and incredibly lethal.
One of the wolves landed exactly where Draco had been standing, its jaws snapping shut on empty air with a sound like a steel trap. The second wolf landed near the paralyzed boar, immediately turning its violet eyes toward Seraphine.
The third wolf didn't land. It used the trunk of a metallic tree as a springboard, launching itself directly at Aamon.
Aamon's Gaming Sense went into overdrive, processing the incoming threat. The wolf was moving too fast. It was entirely composed of fast-twitch muscle and shadow magic.
Aamon channeled his mana, instinctively triggering Frame Lag.
The world stuttered. The wolf, frozen mid-lunge in the air, slowed to a crawl. Aamon could see the individual drops of saliva flying from its open maw. He stepped to the side, raising his buzzing blue daggers to slice open the beast's exposed underbelly as it flew past.
But as he moved, a terrifying realization washed over him.
The wolf wasn't fully corporeal. In the game, Shadow-Wolves had an innate passive ability called Shadow-Step. Right before an attack connected, or when they were about to be hit, they could momentarily dissolve their physical bodies into intangible smoke, shifting their hitboxes forward by a few feet.
Aamon, relying on the visual trajectory of the Frame Lag, had positioned himself perfectly to counter a physical body. But the body was a lie.
The wolf's form suddenly dissolved into a cloud of black smoke, instantly reforming three feet closer than its trajectory dictated. The Frame Lag broke as the beast materialized directly inside Aamon's guard.
Aamon's eyes widened in horror. He couldn't dodge. He couldn't block.
The wolf's massive paw swiped down, its razor-sharp claws tearing through the air.
Aamon twisted his torso violently, sacrificing his left side to protect his vital organs. The claws struck his Aegis-Weave vest. The runes flared brightly, absorbing the blunt force of the impact, but the claws were too sharp, too deeply infused with shadow mana. The material held for a fraction of a second before giving way.
Three deep, jagged lacerations were torn across Aamon's left shoulder and bicep.
The pain was explosive. It wasn't the dull ache of Draco's training punches. It was a searing, white-hot agony that ripped a raw, guttural scream from Aamon's throat. Blood, hot and incredibly red, instantly soaked his sleeve.
The impact threw Aamon to the ground, his dagger skittering away into the moss.
The wolf landed gracefully, immediately pivoting to finish him off. Its maw opened wide, aiming directly for his throat.
I'm going to die, Aamon thought, staring into the violet eyes of the beast. I survived the training just to die in the tutorial.
Panic threatened to overwhelm his mind, but his Gaming Sense trait acted as a cold, emotionless anchor, forcefully suppressing the terror and forcing his brain to calculate.
He didn't have the physical speed to stop the bite. But he had the ultimate defensive cheat code.
As the wolf's jaws closed around his neck, Aamon violently expelled half of his remaining mana.
Spectator Mode.
The world instantly washed into grayscale. His physical density dropped to zero.
The wolf's jaws snapped shut, passing entirely through Aamon's ethereal neck. The beast's teeth clacked together with enough force to shatter bone, but it bit nothing but empty air. The wolf stumbled, confused by the absolute lack of resistance and the sudden disappearance of its prey's aura.
Aamon didn't wait. He immediately dropped Spectator Mode, color rushing back into the world, along with the blinding agony of his torn shoulder. He scrambled backward, kicking the confused wolf in the snout to gain distance, and grabbed his fallen dagger with his right hand.
He was bleeding heavily, his left arm hanging uselessly by his side, his F-Rank core practically screaming from the rapid, successive use of Frame Lag and Spectator Mode. He had maybe enough mana for a few seconds of Kinetic Edge, and then he was completely empty.
Across the clearing, absolute chaos had erupted.
Draco was locked in a deadly dance with the first wolf. The warrior was incredibly skilled, but the wolf's Shadow-Step was wreaking havoc on his timing. Every time Draco swung, the wolf dissolved into smoke, reappearing to swipe at his blind spots.
Sera was frantically backpedaling, her whip lashing out at the second wolf to keep it at bay. But the Shadow-Wolves were highly resistant to toxins. Her paralytic poison was barely slowing the beast down.
"They're too fast!" Sera screamed, barely dodging a swipe that clipped the edge of her jacket. "I can't lock it down!"
Aamon leaned against an ironwood tree, his breath coming in ragged, painful gasps. His vision was blurring slightly from blood loss, but the beta -tester side of his brain was working at lightspeed.
He knew these monsters. He had reviewed their interface. He knew their attack algorithms. He knew their exact hitboxes and cooldowns.
Physical superiority was failing. It was time to use the one weapon in his arsenal that was truly Mythic-grade.His absolute, encyclopedic knowledge of the game's underlying mechanics.
"Draco! Stop chasing the smoke!" Aamon roared, his voice cutting through the snarling of the wolves.
Draco parried a heavy blow, glancing over his shoulder. "What?!"
"It's a fixed animation loop!" Aamon yelled, gripping his dagger tightly and pushing himself off the tree, his eyes locked onto the wolf pacing in front of him. "The Shadow-Step has a two-second cooldown! When it dissolves, it will always materialize exactly three feet in the direction of its momentum! Don't strike where it is! Strike where the smoke is going to be!"
Draco's golden eyes widened in sudden comprehension. The warrior didn't argue. He trusted the call.
The wolf facing Draco lunged. Draco swung his left sword. Exactly as Aamon predicted, the wolf dissolved into black smoke to avoid the blade.
But Draco didn't follow through with the left. He spun on his heel, calculating the three-foot trajectory of the momentum, and drove his right sword blindly into the empty air directly ahead of the smoke cloud.
A split second later, the wolf materialized. It materialized exactly onto the tip of Draco's blade.
The dark alloy sword pierced cleanly through the wolf's chest, right where its heart should be. The beast let out a gurgling yelp, its violet eyes fading to black as its body rapidly dissolved into a puddle of foul-smelling, inky sludge.
"One down!" Draco gritted, his confidence surging. He immediately pivoted to assist Sera.
Aamon, meanwhile, had his own problem. The wolf he had kicked was recovering, its violet eyes locking onto the bleeding, injured boy. It recognized weakness. It bared its fangs and charged.
Aamon couldn't dodge. He couldn't block with his injured arm. He had to kill it now.
"Sera!" Aamon shouted, his voice hoarse. "The wolf tracking you! It blinks its eyes right before it lunges! When it blinks, whip its back legs! It breaks the casting animation!"
Sera, desperate and out of options, focused entirely on the wolf pacing in front of her. The beast snarled, its muscles tensing. It blinked.
Sera lashed out, pouring all her strength into the whip. The thorny vine wrapped around the wolf's hind legs just as it prepared to launch.
The interruption was catastrophic for the monster. The Shadow-Step magic misfired, violently pulling the wolf's front half into the shadow realm while its back half remained anchored by the whip. The resulting spatial distortion tore the beast completely in half, ending its life instantly.
Aamon didn't have the luxury of watching her success. His own wolf was mid-air, hurtling toward his face.
Aamon didn't cast FrameLag. He didn't cast Spectator Mode. He channeled every last drop of mana in his F-Rank core into his right hand.
Kinetic Edgeroared to life, the blade glowing with an intense, blinding blue light.
Aamon remembered the coding of the Shadow-Step hitbox. When the wolf was in its smoke form, it was immune to physical damage. But Kinetic Edge wasn't just physical damage. It was a vibrating, localized mana that allows it to cause high damage friction and penetration.
Aamon didn't aim for the physical body. He aimed the buzzing blue blade directly into the thickest part of the incoming shadow-smoke.
He thrust his arm forward, throwing his entire body weight behind the strike.
The dagger plunged into the smoke. The high-frequency vibration of the Kinetic Edge clashed violently with the unstable shadow magic. It acted like a blender inside a smoke machine.
The wolf's spell violently destabilized. It materialized abruptly, its body horribly mangled and twisted by the arcane friction. Aamon's dagger was buried to the hilt directly beneath its jaw, piercing up into its brain cavity.
The massive beast crashed into Aamon, the dead weight driving him to the ground. Aamon let out a cry of pain as the impact jarred his torn shoulder.
He lay there, pinned beneath the dissolving, sludgy corpse of the Shadow-Wolf, his chest heaving, his vision spotting with dark colors.
The clearing fell deathly silent.
The thunderous pounding of the boars and the snarling of the wolves had been replaced by the quiet, metallic rustling of the ironwood leaves. The stench of blood, ozone, and demonic sludge hung heavily in the oppressive, mana-dense air.
"Maverick!"
Draco's voice cut through the haze. Strong hands gripped the decomposing wolf carcass, effortlessly tossing the massive beast aside.
Draco knelt beside him, his golden eyes scanning the gruesome lacerations on Aamon's shoulder. The warrior was breathing heavily, his swords slick with black sludge, but he was entirely unharmed.
"I'm fine," Aamon lied, his teeth gritted in agony as he tried to push himself up with his good arm. "Just... give me a second."
"Don't move, you idiot," Sera's voice commanded, tight with stress.
The healer dropped to her knees beside him, her hands already glowing with a brilliant, intense emerald light. She placed her hands directly over the torn flesh of his shoulder.
The pain was excruciating for a brief second as the healing magic forcefully knit the muscle fibers and flesh back together, pushing out the residual shadow-mana. Aamon gasped, arching his back, before the soothing numbness finally took hold.
Sera sat back on her heels, wiping a smear of blood from her cheek. She was panting, her own E-Rank core significantly drained from the intense, chaotic skirmish.
"Three deep lacerations, major blood loss, and localized shadow-rot," Sera listed off clinically, though her voice shook slightly. "That's going to be a six thousand credit bill, Maverick. Minimum."
Aamon let out a weak, breathless laugh, his head falling back against the damp moss. "Add it to the tab, Sera."
Draco didn't say anything. The warrior stood up, walking over to the fallen monsters. He systematically drove his sword into the chests of the dead boars and wolves, extracting the glowing, crystallized cores from their hearts—the primary objective of their mission.
He returned, dropping three dull grey cores and three deep violet cores onto the moss beside Aamon.
"You called out their mechanics," Draco said, his voice low, his golden eyes fixed on Aamon. "You didn't just sense them. You knew exactly how their innate magic functioned. You knew their cooldowns. You knew their visual tells."
Aamon looked up at the protagonist. He couldn't lie about it. Draco wasn't stupid.
"I told you," Aamon said softly, his voice tired. "I like to read. I know what makes these things tick."
Draco stared at him for a long time. The suspicion was gone. The condescension was gone. In their place was a profound, undeniable realization of value.
"Physical strength failed us," Draco admitted, the words clearly tasting bitter on his tongue. "My speed couldn't match their spatial shifting. Without your tactical calls, Seraphine would have been overwhelmed, and I would have been bled out. You stabilized the field, Maverick."
Draco reached out his hand, offering it to Aamon.
It wasn't a test this time. It was genuine.
Aamon took the hand, letting Draco haul him to his feet. His newly healed shoulder throbbed with a dull ache, and his core was entirely empty, leaving him feeling weak and nauseous.
He looked around the blood-soaked clearing, taking in the twisted metal trees and the dissolving corpses of the monsters.
The adrenaline was finally fading, leaving behind a cold, stark reality.
I almost died, Aamon thought, the gravity of the situation settling deep into his bones. I knew their stats. I knew their patterns. And I still almost died because my physical reaction time couldn't keep up with the real-world speed of a monster.
There were no respawns here. There were no checkpoints to reload. Every single mistake was paid for in blood. Every tactical error carried the irreversible consequence of death.
Aamon felt a spark of profound resolve ignite within him.
He wasn't strong enough yet. But he had the knowledge. He had the beta-tester's guide to this apocalyptic nightmare. And he had the absolute, unwavering determination to exploit every single line of code in this reality to survive.
"Grab the cores," Aamon said, his voice steadying, picking up his fallen daggers and sliding them into their sheaths. "Let's find the nest, clear the rest of this trash, and go back. I'm tired of the woods."
Draco offered a faint, fleeting smirk, scooping up the glowing crystals. "Agreed."
They fell back into formation. Battered, exhausted, but united by the baptism of real battle and bloodshed, the trio pressed deeper into the metallic shadows of the Iron-Tooth Rift.
Among the shadows above the trees far from them, Agent Elswright was watching. Her eyes filled with a sense of appreciation for these trios that one day will grow up to be like her, navigating the dangerous territory of rifts, rescuing people and solving rift anomalies, all the while remaining unnamed heroes to the masses as they continue their duty.