Aaron stepped out of the base and reached the main entrance. At Level 299, he moved with the casual indifference of a god walking among insects. His mana was so thick that everyone could feel it.

Still hidden, Jake saw him. <That should be him.>

Aaron Abstuln. The man who betrayed Lena. This was the moment he had been waiting for. The boy didn't hesitate.

He activated Augmentation. Mana surged through his small body, dumping raw power into his attributes.

He pushed F.L.A.I.R. to high limits; the world slowed around him as his reflexes spiked, and he poured some more into S.H.I.E.L.D. to turn his body into a weapon of mass destruction.

He wasn't able to increase his attributes that much, because he also had to modify the summoning skill he used, so his mana dwindled, and quite a lot at that.

He launched himself.

To the soldiers below, Jake was a blur, a streak that tore through the air. He closed the distance in a second, aiming his dagger at Aaron's throat.

The man turned. He raised a hand, manifesting a dense barrier of mana. That appeared just in time.

BOOM.

The impact cracked the stone beneath Aaron's boots. Jake rebounded off the shield, landing in a crouch.

Aaron stared at the boy. "Really?" he asked in disdain. "The Spriggans are sending children to fight their wars now?"

But beneath the arrogance, Aaron's mind shook. His barrier was severely cracked, to the point that even blowing on it would make it crumble.

That blow had carried the weight of a siege engine.

<That's impossible,> he thought, staring at the small boy radiating mana like a furnace. <No eleven-year-old hits that hard.>

Jake would have hit even harder if it wasn't for all the mana he had to use on other things.

Aaron narrowed his eyes. The tag hovered above the boy's head. It was pure absurdity.

—[Jake Roberts—Level 289]—

The air left his lungs. This wasn't just high-level; it was wrong. It dwarfed the last reading he'd seen on Reidar. A kid stood before him, wielding power that belonged to nightmares. <What did they feed him — steroids?>

Jake erased the space between them. His dagger flashed toward Aaron's ribs.

The collision traveled up his arm like an electric shock, vibrating through his marrow until his teeth clicked together. Then came the high-pitched screech of steel grinding against a construct of pure magic. The force was too heavy to anchor against; his boots skidded backward, carving furrows in the dirt as the momentum physically shoved him away.

The air hissed, sliced apart by a blur of steel that flashed high near the eyes before sweeping low. Then came the sound of breaking glass. With every deflection, the space in front of Aaron fractured; shards of translucent light exploded outward and dissolved into dust as his micro-barriers shattered the instant they met the cold iron.

"Enough!" Aaron pushed a wave of mana outward, sending Jake flipping backward to land in a crouch, unbothered.

Aaron's arm burned; numbness crept into his fingers as he stared at the cratered stone where his last barrier had failed. The boy radiated lethal intent, his mana reserves vast and violent.

<I can't tank this.>

It seemed like it was a losing game. If one of those strikes connected, armor wouldn't matter, shields wouldn't matter; he would simply be killed.

<Who the fuck is this kid?>

Jake became a storm. The more his mana returned, the more he increased his S.H.I.E.L.D.

The wind of the stroke bit his neck, a hair's breadth from contact, as the steel hissed through empty air. Aaron retaliated, flooding the space with a blinding eruption of mana that scorched the ground, but the heat washed over nothing. The target was gone. Then the light dimmed. A shadow fell over him from above, bringing the promise of a downward strike.

A blinding shower of white-hot sparks exploded inches from Aaron's face as the dagger hammered into his mana blade.

The impact got enough force that drove him down until his knee smashed into the ground, cracking the stone below him.

Aaron gritted his teeth and shoved upward to break the lock, but the release was too sudden. There was no heavy thud of a landing—just the terrifying silence of a feather touching the earth before the whirlwind spun up again.

Then came the mistake. A blur of motion pulled his eyes to the left, a visual lie that his body believed. He shifted his weight, and the air suddenly felt cold against his exposed flank.

The world slowed down to a crawl. The only thing that existed was the glint of steel rushing toward the gap in his armor, a bright, inevitable line of death that he watched with the sickening realization that his own blade was too far away to stop it.

Another Barrier.

He poured mana into the space between them, snapping a wall of shimmering violet energy into existence just as the dagger struck.

CRACK.

The barrier shattered like glass, but it absorbed the strength behind the blow, stopping the blade inches from his ribs.

<Shit!>

The man blasted Jake backward with a pulse of mana, sending the boy skidding to a halt hundreds of meters away.

Aaron stood with his chest heaving, sweat slicking his palms, knowing that if the barrier had been a fraction of a second late forming, he would be bleeding out on the cobblestones. <He's faster than me,> Aaron realized. <Stronger. And he's not slowing down.>

Jake spun his dagger, looking neither tired nor scared, but as if he were merely getting started. Aaron tightened his grip on his sword because he knew he couldn't win a contest of speed, realizing he needed to change the game from reaction to dictation, or else he would die here, cut down by a child who shouldn't exist.

Screams tore through the air behind him, but Aaron didn't turn, as he lacked the luxury of distraction.

A shadow fell over the ramparts as shapes materialized from the stone, jagged, humanoid nightmares woven from void that moved with the same impossible speed as the boy.

A War Hound soldier collapsed as armor sheared open from shoulder to hip, while next to him, a summoned stone golem crumbled into gravel, pulverized by a single strike. Aaron risked a glance, catching the tag that floated above the nearest horror.

—[Shadow Stalker—Level 289]—

His blood ran cold because there weren't just a few; hundreds of them swarmed the wall, a tide of black death dismantling his troops like children tearing wings off flies.

He looked back at Jake, seeing that the boy hadn't moved to strike again but stood watching with daggers loose in his grip, a terrifying calm settling over his face.

<He did this.>

It felt like facing Reidar, bringing the same overwhelming pressure and the same drowning sensation of fighting a tide that never ended, yet this kid was physically three or four times stronger than Reidar.

<He's not just a copy of Reidar,> Aaron thought as he watched a Shadow Stalker decapitate a lieutenant. <He's a better version.>

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