Why had Lord Gregore chosen this place? The Mirewretches were, in one sense, well-suited for the boy. Their lumbering bulk and slow swings matched neatly against the child’s speed, giving him room to dodge and weave.
Yet in another sense, they were the worst opponent for him. Their bodies were made of grimstone, too hard for piercing or slashing to break through. Every thrust and Wind Blade chipped, but never broke.
That sort of defense… for a Tier 1 to shatter it would be… impossible, right?
Fiedore kept watching. The boy’s endurance was no surprise to him—he had seen it already in their spars. But still, it was way beyond the norms. Any other Tier 1 standing in those boots would have collapsed several times by now, drained either by the mental strain or the stamina consumption after the usage of so many Skills. But the kid pressed on, using them one after another without pause or care.
While he would never voice it aloud… a thought stirred quietly inside him. Was this child truly a Barion?
His features bore little resemblance to his father, and beyond that… could their bloodline alone truly birth such a monstrous talent?
***
Hope stopped throwing Wind Blades and cut back on Dash, circling the Mirewretch in tighter arcs to ease the drain.
Shame he couldn’t touch Spacetime. Point Implosion—or even a clean Vector Fold—would’ve torn the thing apart. Warp was leagues ahead of Dash too.
Alas… he could not.
The battle dragged on.
Fatigue clawed through his limbs, searing through the gaps of his armour. Every breath came sharp and ragged. His skull pounded with a deep, rhythmic hammering—each pulse matching the beat of his heart. His thoughts were getting slower, fuzzier.
Sweat streamed down his face and soaked into his collar, dripping onto the black soil. He could taste the iron of blood where he’d bitten his cheek.
His vision shook, doubled for a second—then snapped back into focus as the Mirewretch swung again. He dodged, barely. Dirt exploded beside him, shards of stone and moss pelting his legs.
Too damn strong… and too damn tough.
He skidded back, breath coming fast, eyes narrowing. The creature’s rocky skin was almost mocking him. His Wind Blades only scratched it, leaving faint grooves that healed over moments later as vines pulsed through the cracks.
He clenched his teeth.
The Wind Blades weren’t sharp enough. They scattered too fast, broke apart before hitting deep. It was like throwing gusts at a boulder.
Then—something flickered in his mind.
He remembered Rask’s kitchen. The old bastard always yelled when he ruined a cut. “You don’t hack at it, boy! You feel where it wants to split. The knife’s got a line—follow it, and it’ll glide. Miss it, and you’re just bruisin’ meat.”
Find the line.
He blinked, heart thudding harder now—not from fear, but from a spark of realisation.
He steadied his breathing, eyes locked on the Mirewretch. The air wasn’t something to shove—it was something to shape. A cut didn’t happen from power, it happened from precision.
He focused, pulling the wind tighter and tighter until he could almost feel the tension humming between his fingers—thin, sharp, invisible.
It wasn’t about making a storm. It was about finding the line.
He pictured the edge not as a wave, but a stretched string ready to snap. One perfect line of pressure.
The next Wind Blade came out silent.
It hit the Mirewretch’s side and cut deep. Not all the way, but deeper than anything before. A line of stone split open, and black-green ooze trickled out like rot.
Hope’s lips curled in a grin despite the sweat stinging his eyes.
That’s it.
He drew another breath, shaping the air again, tightening it further—testing, feeling, adjusting. The sound changed: not a whoosh, but a faint hiss. Like a drawn knife.
He could feel his headache worsen, the mental strain gnawing at him, but he ignored it.
For the first time since the fight started—he’d done real damage.
His grin barely lasted a second before pain crashed back in—his head splitting, lungs burning, legs trembling with every shift of weight.
He staggered sideways, narrowly avoiding another massive swing that sent mud and moss exploding into the air. His chest heaved, heart thrashing like a caged beast.
He was close to collapsing. His knees buckled for a moment, and the thought came—retreat.
He could come back later. Recover. Try again when he wasn’t half-dead.
But the moment that thought took shape, something inside him snapped.
Why?
Why run?
What then—when running became easy? When every fight felt like an excuse to quit?
One retreat would turn into two. Two into habit. Habit into ruin.
No. Not this time.
Before him was victory, bleeding and trembling, waiting to be claimed.
And so he roared.
A raw, primal sound tore through his throat as he forced Air Gear to ignite beneath his boots. The burst of wind threw up a spray of dirt and mist, his body surging forward faster than it should’ve. Every nerve screamed in protest.
He moved. Faster. Closer.
The Mirewretch swung its arm—a slab of rock the size of a tree trunk—but Hope twisted through the gap, the Air Gear’s thrusts snapping his body into impossible angles. The pressure shredded his muscles, but he didn’t stop.
His breath came in gasps. Blood trickled from his nose. His vision was nothing but light and blur.
One more.
He raised his hand. The wind trembled.
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He forced it thinner, sharper—his headache spiking until it felt like his skull would split.
The blade hissed through the air, carving another deep line across the creature’s chest. Black ooze burst out, spraying across Hope’s cloth. The Mirewretch howled, the ground shaking under its weight.
His legs wobbled. His lungs burned. He could barely see.
But he wasn’t done.
He pushed again. Wind flared, wild and unstable. His control slipped for a heartbeat, then steadied as he screamed through clenched teeth.
He’d already gone too far. He knew it. His body was breaking. His mind was flickering in and out.
But the blades—his blades—were getting sharper.
Each strike cut deeper. Each whisper of wind left another scar.
The creature staggered, vines whipping around to mend the wounds, but too slow this time.
He circled, leaving streaks of air in his wake—a storm born of desperation and fury—as he dodged the stone spikes jutting from the ground.
He felt his heartbeat slowing. Everything hurt. The world was spinning.
Just one more.
He gathered the last of his strength. The last of his breath.
He shaped the wind so thin it stopped being air—it was edge.
It left his hand in silence.
A line flashed across the Mirewretch’s neck.
The creature froze.
A second later, it collapsed—its body crumbling into shards of stone and ash, the vines inside snapping and curling inwards.
Hope stood there, swaying.
Then the ground tilted, and his knees hit the dirt. His eyes fluttered, the world dimming around him.
A grin still lingered on his face as darkness swallowed him whole.
***
Fiedore stood still. For a moment, he almost stepped forward—every instinct screamed that the boy was going to kill himself—and yet… for some reason he couldn’t explain, he didn’t move.
It was as if some unseen force kept him rooted. He could only watch.
He watched as a child, younger than his own son, bled and drove his body and mind past the limits any human should reach. And yet, he did.
He watched as the boy’s Wind Blades refined before his very own eyes—something that took weeks of training, perfected in mere moments—until they reached an edge no Tier 1 should ever touch. And yet, they did.
And now, as the Mirewretch collapsed into dust, Fiedore stood frozen, mind blank, realising he had just witnessed something he would never forget. A Tier 1 boy had defeated a Tier 2 creature—alone, unprepared, and against all logic. A battle doomed to failure. A victory that should never have been possible. And yet, it was.
He stepped slowly toward the child’s fallen body.
Blood trickled from the boy’s nose, ears, and mouth—a telltale sign of mental strain so severe that even Fiedore shuddered at the thought of enduring it. To withstand such agony, to keep fighting through it...
What could drive someone so young to go that far?
He crouched down, uncorked a potion from his Inventory, and tilted it carefully to the boy’s lips.
Hope’s face was pale, drained of colour. Yet faintly—impossibly—there lingered a grin that had no right being there.
Who are you… Hope?
Hope blinked slowly, his eyes catching the faint light of one of the moons above, stars flickering softly in the dark sky around it.
He touched his scalp and groaned, forcing himself upright.
The smell of damp earth and heavy moisture filled his nose as awareness crept back—where he was, what had happened.
“So, you’re awake, young sir,” came the familiar voice of the old knight beside him.
Hope nodded weakly and pushed himself to his feet, still unsteady.
“I’m fine,” he said, though his gaze was fixed on the System prompts before him.
Level 96?99
Feats Achieved:
- Tier Defier
?? Tier Defier (G)
You brought down a Tier 2 threat without assistance.
? +500 Physis permanently.
? +100 Magia permanently.
So he’d won.
A faint smile tugged at his lips as relief sank into his bones—warm, dizzying, almost unreal. His chest rose and fell in steady, shallow breaths, pride glowing faintly beneath the fatigue.
He’d done it.
He’d brought down a creature a whole Tier above him. He’d crossed the wall everyone said was impossible.
For a moment, he just stared at the prompt, catching his breath, unsure whether to laugh or just drop back down.
Level 99, huh? Just one more… maybe—
Well, what maybe? He was the young sir, after all.
“Fiedore, let’s go for the next,” he said with a crooked grin. “The night’s still young.”
The old knight’s eyes widened, disbelief flickering across his face. Then, after a long exhale, his shoulders dropped and he gave the smallest, most defeated sigh imaginable.
This kid… is not normal.
As they walked, Hope tried to shake the last fight out of his head, running through every move, every screw-up. How the Wind Blades sliced—too loose, too wide. How the Mirewretch swung—slow but heavy, with that tiny pause before each strike. He replayed it all, rearranging patterns, fixing angles, trimming the waste.
Time to turn that messy blur of instinct and burn-out into something slicker.
Something that could win again—without chewing him up in the process.
“Alright, young sir,” Fiedore said, pointing ahead as another Mirewretch dragged itself out of the ground, its twisted body catching the moonlight. “This one’s level 104. Just… let me know if you need me.”
Though the last words sounded more like a whisper meant for himself.
Hope grinned, waved a hand, and almost blurted out one of his “absolutely-not-noble” lines before catching himself mid-sentence with a sheepish laugh.
“Eh… yes,” he said, clearing his throat.
Then he rolled his shoulders, the grin creeping back as he tightened his grip around the spear.
Air Gear flared to life with a deep hum, wrapping him in a faint silver blur. Dust stirred around his boots. The Mirewretch ahead screeched—a wet, grinding sound like boulders rubbing together—as the ground rippled and spikes burst up from the soil.
Hope moved.
Dash snapped like a gunshot, launching him forward just as stone tore through where he’d stood. His spear traced an arc of light through the dark as he skimmed along the ground, the air whistling past his ears.
He could feel the rhythm now. The hum, the pulse. Each breath syncing with the spin of the air around him.
Wind Blades formed at his sides—thin, silent, sharp. Not the messy ones from before, but clean lines of compressed air so tight they shimmered faintly in the dark.
The Mirewretch swung its arm—a slab of rock wrapped in moss and bone.
Hope slid under it, knees scraping dirt, then flung the blades in a wide sweep.
They hit like whispers—soft, almost delicate—until they cut.
Cracks split the creature’s arm, running from shoulder to wrist in glowing lines before the limb crumbled apart, collapsing into shards.
Hope didn’t stop. He spun once, letting the momentum feed another volley. Each Wind Blade struck with surgical precision, slicing through joints, vines, and the jagged mask of stone that passed for a head.
The creature staggered, letting out a strangled groan. Its chest split open under one final arc of air.
Less than a second—and the Mirewretch was dust.
Hope stood still, panting softly, sweat dripping from his chin as the wind around him faded.
He gave the spear a lazy twirl, then rested it against his shoulder with a crooked smile.
“That was better,” he muttered.
Behind him, Fiedore stood frozen—jaw half-dropped, one hand still clutching his sword like he’d forgotten what it was for. His eyes were wide, almost comically so, like someone who’d just watched the laws of nature politely pack their bags and leave.
The old knight blinked once. Then again.
“…By the stars…” he whispered, rubbing his temple.
Hope turned slightly, amusement flickering at the edge of his grin.
“Don’t look so shocked, old man. It’s just good form,” he said, tapping his spear against his shoulder.
Fiedore exhaled sharply, muttering under his breath.
“Good form, he says. Bloody hell, I trained for forty years for good form—didn’t look like that.”
Hope chuckled, feeling rather pleased with himself.
Only then did he focus on the prompt—
What the hell!?
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