Sangno and Jorge kept their eyes on Liam. He looked wrong, shaken by the night's strange turns, yet the wound on his leg was only a shallow gash.

They muttered to each other, low and sharp. Liam read their mouths more than he heard their words.

He knew what would come next. They found him too healthy. Too untouched still despite them both missing a limb and a weapon.

Liam retreated toward the source of the light. For a heartbeat there was only glare and silence.

Then he saw them. His men. All dead.

The sight hit him like a fist to the throat. Rage swelled fast, hot with grief.

No enemy stood waiting. No figure stepped forward to claim the work.

Just bodies and the cold fact that nobody would ever answer for it.

Liam's anger needed a target. With none to strike, he chose to hide. He chose to live.

Sangno and Jorge arrived at the bloodied site moments later and froze as if the corpses had spoken.

Their own anger, already simmering, boiled over. It burst out of them in a roar, a demand shouted into the dark.

"Liam, you cursed rat!" Sangno bellowed. "Plotting behind our backs, were you?"

Liam's name sat on their tongues like poison. They decided it was all his plot because a plot was easier than admitting they were lost.

Jorge's hand went to the short sword at his waist. He flooded the air with qi, drowning the lingering flames and snuffing the huge plot at once.

The sudden hush made the world feel too wide, too empty. Then the ground answered.

A hand snapped up from the soil and clamped Sangno by the ankle. It dragged him down with brutal certainty.

Sangno screamed. Light flared and wrapped around him from neck to ankles, held him, and sank him into the earth.

A trapping array, laid in advance, patient as a grave.

Jorge lunged, sword up, but blows came at him from the angle where the fire had burned brightest.

The fast strikes that forced him to parry, to pivot, to keep his feet while his mind tried to understand the shape of the attack.

His breaths turned harsh. His qi rasped through his meridians. Jorge felt something behind him.

A presence. A whisper of movement. Too late.

A dagger of light slid in like judgment and took his head clean, the cut so perfect it looked gentle for an instant.

The body swayed, still trying to stand on old pride, then toppled.

Sangno saw it and tore his bindings with raw force. He poured everything into a decisive strike.

A bear's roar rolled across the clearing. Sound and qi pounced toward Liam with the weight of a landslide.

Liam threw a puppet substitute, a practiced escape, but he was a fraction too slow.

The strike still caught him. It twisted his left leg into mangled flesh before the spell yanked him out of the bear's range.

Pain whitewashed his vision. His teeth ground. He tasted blood.

Smoke and dirt hung in the air. Sangno peered through it and knew Liam had fled.

He blasted rock and soil apart and took to the sky, desperate and furious, certain the treasure was slipping away despite being in his grasp.

Liam had already prepared for that too. He was above.

He hid in the thin cold light of the moon, where the eye hesitated and the mind filled in the wrong shapes.

Qi gathered in his blade, dense and bright, and the dagger flashed down. It opened Sangno from shoulder to hip.

The man did not die at once. Even as he folded, he clutched the crystal hard, fingers locked by greed and habit.

He shriveled instead. The crystal drank him. It lit with an ominous crimson glow and pulled his essence in like breath through a straw.

Skin tightened. Color died. The last of him vanished into that red pulse.

Liam stared, and laughter crawled out of him, ragged and disbelieving. Power sat in his palm, heavy as fate.

His mind ran wild, chasing secrets, imagining myth, imagining a path that would make all this worth it.

Elation swelled until it drowned the ache for his dead men, until it even pushed back the pain in his ruined leg.

Victory did that to a man. It lied to him sweetly. Then he looked for a crutch.

He found a trunk nearby, the right size, the right shape, solid enough to bear a limp out of this damned forest.

He hauled it close and turned to leave. The moment his hand closed around it, the wood seemed to shift.

It felt smaller. Lighter. As if it were shrinking away from him. His footing slipped.

He pitched forward and fell head first onto Jorge's short sword, the blade still pointing at the sky where it had been dropped.

Steel drove through skull with a sickening give. It did not kill him outright.

It robbed him of an eye, and blood poured hot down his face in thick ropes.

Liam tried to circulate qi. He found only emptiness. The fight had bottomed him out.

He waved the trunk like a man batting at ghosts, snarling at nothing, refusing to understand.

His skin puckered. His hands spotted. His breath turned thin.

Years piled onto him in heartbeats, and the trunk in his grip was not shrinking at all. Liam became an old man mid curse, mid denial.

He collapsed to the ground, still clutching the wood with stubborn ignorance, never knowing what had truly killed him.

Something slipped free from his loosening fingers. Radeon.

He slithered out from Liam's hand like a secret finally released and began to rummage through the three bodies.

The bull came in after, snorting steam, and scooped him up once the spoils were gathered.

Radeon did not look back at Liam's ruined face. He did not waste pity on a corpse that had laughed too soon.

He held the crystal of misfortune out to Fay and let the crimson glow stain their hands.

Only Fay could wield a treasure like that without it turning its teeth inward.

"The three helpers will begin collecting spoils from the fallen. Leave nothing behind." Fay said, her voice booming.

The commanding voice hit them like a slap and a blessing all at once. Fear churned with elation. They had won. Clean as a cut.

The woman they followed was peerless. An invincible war maiden wearing a human shape, and that thought made their hands move faster.

They did not linger. They swept the ground for worth. Spirit stones clinked into a growing pile. Weapons. Split armor plates.

Cracked talismans still stinking of burnt ink. Everything a dead cultivator could no longer claim.

Radeon did not idle while they gathered. He tore a strip of cloth, white enough to take a mark, and bled his qi into his fingertips.

He wrote with pressure and intent, strokes that held and did not fade.

He could not hand them something too profound. Not here. Not to these men.

So he gave what a man needed. Fists that could break. Legs that could carry.

A plain path with a hard ceiling, one that could still drag a desperate fool as far as Nascent Embryo if he paid for every step.

'If fate goes right, they might claim the second part.'

Radeon brought the bison under his will and set it to work. The beast shifted the pile, hoof by hoof, knocking weapons aside, pushing broken armor into one heap, talismans into another.

Radeon only cared for the spirit stones. Metal could be traded. Charms could fail. Stones were clean. Stones were sure.

He also knew the truth no one liked to say. If it was only him and Fay sorting through all of this, it would take time.

Time was the one thing an apocalypse never forgave.

"I grant you this manual." Fay's voice did not soften. "Master it. If fate allows, we may meet again. Provided you remain worth the meeting." Fay said.

The men froze, mouths half open. They had not expected a reward, not like this.

They lurched toward the nearest tree and sat hard in the dirt, backs to bark, hands already finding the first posture.

Breath in. Qi down. Words taken into bone. The method was obscene compared to what they had been grinding at.

A dozen times cleaner. A dozen times faster. Their faces shone with it, hunger and disbelief turning into focus.

When they lifted their heads to find the one who gave it, Radeon and Fay were already gone.

Only the bison's footprints cut a line through the frozen ground.

The three men stared at that fading trail, then bowed to the earth until their foreheads touched soil.

Tears slipped down anyway, hot with gratitude and something close to shame.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.