The air pressure shifted against my face.
The Stalker's claws were three feet from my jugular, its yellow eyes burning with predatory hunger.
I didn't flinch. I didn't duck. I just tilted my head toward the chaos and let the words rip from my half-frozen vocal cords.
"Raiden. Flank left. There's a moss-covered stone formation three meters behind the Stalker on the eastern edge. The stone is saturated with ambient Ink runoff. It will absorb and ground out their nerve-ink discharge. Use it as cover for your initiation, then drop them on your terms."
The Stalker pounced.
A silver blur intercepted it mid-air. Raiden materialized like a ghost, her katana flashing in a precise, horizontal arc. The Stalker split cleanly in two, its halves tumbling into the mud on either side of me.
Raiden landed softly, her winter-sky eyes flicking toward the stone formation. Toward the remaining Greyveil Stalkers. Back to me. Her katana adjusted by a fraction of an inch.
She nodded once, sharply.
She didn't question it. She just did it. Why didn't she question it? I just told her to hide behind a rock because of "ambient Ink runoff." That's a loading screen tooltip, not a tactical directive! And I almost got my throat ripped out waiting for her to execute!
I turned my head toward Instructor Freya, ignoring the splashing nerve-ink pooling near my boots.
"Instructor Freya. The Barkhollow's respiratory valves are exposed under the jawline right now. It just flushed its toxin reserve in that concentrated stream. The valves stay open for approximately four seconds while the gland recharges. That amber fog clinging to its throat is wet and highly conductive. Push high-voltage static through the fog to fry its central nervous system."
Instructor Freya's single eye snapped toward the Barkhollow's throat. Toward the glistening, amber-soaked tissue visible beneath the jaw. I couldn't hear her voice, but I saw her lips move, shaping a rough, grated response.
"How long on the recharge window?"
"Four seconds starting now. You have two left."
Instructor Freya didn't waste them. Her buster sword swung in a brutal horizontal arc, the Governor Valve shrieking—silently to me—as she redirected her charge. The Barkhollow tracked her movement, but it was still recovering from the concentrated blast, its respiratory system cycling through the recharge phase.
"Raiden. Strike the throat. Lightning element. Now."
The words left my mouth before I could stop them.
I just ordered the Number Two of the first-year cohort to execute a specific elemental attack on a specific hitbox like I'm calling mechanics on a Discord channel. I am committed. There is no going back.
Raiden materialized from the fog like a silver blizzard. A pristine, sapphire-cut Shard tore into existence over her right shoulder, blazing with an intensity that turned the grey mist into a localized thunderstorm.
Crackling silver-gold Vein-light—Lightning element—flooded down her arm. The air around her distorted with static electricity, lifting the ends of her hair and making the hairs on my arms stand on end even from this distance.
My heart stuttered.
She has a Shard. A real, manifested Shard.
If she had used this in the arena—if she had called upon this power during our spar—I wouldn't have lasted a fraction of a second. I wouldn't have been able to parry or dodge or even breathe. I would have been a scorch mark on the sand before the starting bell finished echoing. Thank god she was handicapped or holding back or just plain arrogant back then.
I need to go to a temple and light a candle for every single second of that 14-second survival record.
Senkōkyaku. Flash Step.
The twelve-meter gap between her and the Barkhollow collapsed in less than a single movement frame. Her silhouette dissolved into a blinding corona of static, completely breaking the monster's visual tracking.
A split second later, she was airborne, directly under the Barkhollow's jaw. All the static charge from her movement concentrated onto the spine of her katana.
Rakurai Ittō. Single Blade of Falling Lightning.
One straight thrust pierced the toxic amber fog still clinging to the Barkhollow's throat. The wet fog acted as the perfect conductor. The lightning didn't just strike—it detonated, riding the amber vapor straight into the respiratory valves and frying the Barkhollow's central nervous system from the inside out.
The giant beast convulsed violently. Its massive muscles locked up from the high-frequency resonance, every limb seizing in paralyzed rigidity. Six eyes went wide—wide with something I had never seen in a T3 Alpha.
Shock.
She actually did it. The mechanic callout worked. I just called a raid mechanic and the DPS executed it perfectly.
What the hell am I doing? I am an E-Rank provincial with frostbitten eardrums, standing behind a rotting log, calling boss mechanics to a prodigy and a veteran instructor. This is insane. This is objectively insane.
But it was working.
Instructor Freya didn't waste the opening.
Her steel-tipped boots slammed into the mud. Both leather-clad hands gripped the massive hilt of her buster sword in a lethal dual-stance. A sharp twist of her wrist cracked the Governor Valve open. Searing steam shrieked from the brass exhaust plates.
Two conflicting colors of Vein-light erupted simultaneously through her skin. Blood-red Fire and jagged, yellow-white Lightning.
Multi-attunement.
She launched herself into the air, fighting gravity with the steam thrust, and brought the massive slab of iron straight down onto the paralyzed Barkhollow's left knee.
"Shatter the left knee," I said, my voice carrying across the silent clearing. "The joint capsule is the structural weak point. It can't regenerate the connective tissue while its nervous system is locked."
Fire and lightning merged at the impact point, triggering a kinetic plasma explosion.
Bark shattered. Black sap and bone shrapnel exploded outward in a silent, strobing detonation that I felt in my chest more than saw with my eyes. The kinetic force severed the leg joint in one brutal arc.
The Barkhollow collapsed.
Its massive center of gravity shifted violently, the monstrosity tipping sideways. The ground shook as it hit the mud—a deep, rolling tremor that traveled up my shins and rattled my teeth.
Boss HP: 1%. Desperation Phase.
The Barkhollow didn't fall backward. Driven by the hard-coded logic of a dying predator, it threw its remaining weight forward. One final, desperate lunge—not at Instructor Freya, not at Raiden—directly at the target holding the highest aggro marker.
Me.
The ground split under its remaining good leg. The monster launched itself across the clearing, a runaway freight train of bark and bone, closing the ten-meter gap in a single, terrifying bound.
My stamina bar blinked red. My arms hung like lead. My legs were rooted to the mud.
No dodge. No block. No stamina.
I'm dead.