The camp wasn't burning. It was being erased.
Valen hit the ground at the edge of the clearing, his boots skidding on gravel that was already covered with ash. Marcus landed beside him a second later, a heavy thud of solid mass.
The scene before them was a nightmare painted in orange and yellow.
Tents were flattened. The supply wagons were splinters. In the center of the carnage, the Yellow Earth Mage stood atop a floating dais of churned earth. He was laughing, waving his hands like a conductor. At his command, boulders the size of horses ripped themselves from the ground and smashed into the few remaining pockets of bandit resistance.
"He's tearing it apart," Marcus growled, his knuckles white on his hilt.
"Ignore him," Valen barked.
Marcus turned, shocked. "What?"
Valen pointed to the south, past the burning tents, toward the dense forest line.
"Do you feel that?"
Marcus focused. He wasn't a mage, but his Steel Viscera made him sensitive to pressure. He felt it.
A vibration in the air. A deep, thrumming bass note that rattled his teeth. It felt like the ocean was trying to drown the forest. And clashing against it, a sharp, parasitic stinging sensation-like thorns growing inside his lungs.
"Blue," Valen whispered, his face pale. "Henry is fighting something Blue. Two of them."
Valen's Green Core spun violently. He looked at the Yellow Mage destroying his home, then at the distant forest where his mentor was fighting for his life.
"I have to go," Valen said.
"Captain-"
"Handle the Earth Mage, Marcus!" Valen shouted over the roar of collapsing timber. "If you can't kill him, stall him!"
Valen didn't wait for an answer. He didn't run. He condensed his wind mana under his boots and detonated it.
He launched himself across the camp, soaring over the Yellow Mage's head like a green comet, heading straight for the tree line.
Marcus was alone.
He looked at the Yellow Mage. He looked at the devastation. To his left, near the wreckage of the mess tent, he saw a body.
Elias.
The Peak Rank 2 Squad Leader was slumped against a crate, his chest cavity blown open. A few feet away lay the charred remains of the second Orange Mage. They had killed each other.
Marcus felt a cold, hard weight settle in his gut. His Peak Rank 3 body-the Steel Viscera that made him tougher than iron-tightened.
"Hey!" Marcus roared.
The Yellow Mage turned on his floating platform. He looked down at Marcus, his eyes glowing with the gritty, heavy light of a Yellow Core.
"Another rat?" the Mage sneered. "I thought I crushed all of you."
Marcus didn't speak, he charged.
To a normal man, Marcus was fast. To the Mage, he was a blur.
Marcus closed the fifty-yard gap in three seconds. He didn't weave. He didn't dodge. He ran in a straight line, a battering ram of flesh and steel.
"Predictable," the Mage scoffed.
He flicked his wrist. A section of the earth rose up-a wall of solid granite, three feet thick-blocking Marcus's path.
Marcus didn't slow down. He screamed, channeling every ounce of his Vitality into his shoulder.
CRASH.
He hit the wall. The stone spiderwebbed, then exploded.
Marcus burst through the debris, covered in dust but unharmed. His Iron Bones had taken the impact that would have pulverized a horse.
He was inside the Mage's guard. He swung his heavy broadsword in a rising arc, aiming for the Mage's legs.
Clang!
The sword didn't cut flesh. It sparked against a layer of jagged rock that instantly coated the Mage's skin. Stone Skin.
The Mage grinned. "Brute force? Against Earth? You're a funny little ant."
The Mage stomped his foot.
The ground beneath Marcus erupted. A stone spike shot up, aiming to skew him. Marcus twisted mid-air, the spike grazing his armor, tearing the leather but failing to pierce the Copper Skin underneath.
Marcus landed and rolled, coming up with a horizontal slash.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
He struck three times in a heartbeat. Each hit chipped the Mage's rock armor, but none broke through. The Mage was a walking fortress.
"My turn," the Mage said.
The floating dais dissolved. The earth around Marcus turned to liquid mud.
Quicksand.
Marcus sank to his knees instantly. The mud clamped around his legs like a vice, then hardened back into stone. He was trapped.
"Goodbye, ant," the Mage said.
He raised both hands. Above him, he gathered his mana. Dust, rocks, and debris swirled together, compressing into a single, massive boulder the size of a carriage.
It hovered over Marcus's head, casting a long, dark shadow.
Marcus strained. He pulled. His muscles bulged, the veins in his neck looking like steel cables. The rock holding his legs cracked, but it didn't break.
He looked at his sword. It was chipped. The edge was rolled. It was a piece of dead metal trying to fight a living mountain.
"Die," the Mage whispered.
He dropped the boulder.
Marcus roared. He didn't try to block. He thrust his sword upward, bracing the pommel against his palm, trying to catch the falling mountain.
CRACK.
The boulder slammed into the tip of the sword.
For a split second, the steel held. Then, with a high-pitched scream of metal, it shattered.
The blade snapped into a dozen pieces. The boulder continued its descent, slamming Marcus into the ground.
Dust billowed out, choking the air.
The Mage laughed, rising up on a new pillar of earth. "Pathetic. Physical strength has limits, bandit. Magic is infinite."
Silence settled over the crater.
But then, the boulder shifted.
Grind.
The Mage frowned. "What?"
The massive rock lifted an inch. Then two.
Underneath it, Marcus was on one knee. His armor was shredded. Blood poured from a gash on his forehead, blinding one eye. His hands were pressing up against the ton of stone, his triceps trembling violently.
He was lifting it.
Peak Rank 3. His body was a masterpiece. His organs, his bones, his muscles-they refused to be crushed.
With a primal heave, Marcus shoved the boulder aside. It crashed to the ground with a tremor that shook the camp.
Marcus stood up. He was empty-handed. He was bleeding. He was trapped in stone boots.
But he was smiling.
"Limits," Marcus wheezed, spitting a mouthful of blood. "You're right. I hit the limit."
He looked at his hands. They were glowing now. Not with the reflected light of the fire, but with a white, internal pressure.
For years, Marcus had been banging his head against the Wall of Rank 4. He had thought the answer was more. More strength. More speed. More repetitions.
He had tried to force his Vitality to be stronger than the world.
Wrong, he realized.
He looked at the broken shards of his sword. The metal had failed because it was empty. It was just a tool.
The body is full, Marcus thought. The cup is overflowing. Stop trying to hold it in.
He didn't need to push harder. He needed to let go.
He looked around. Lying in the mud, near the crushed body of a recruit, was a simple, rusty longsword.
Marcus reached out.
He didn't just grab the hilt. He poured himself into it.
The Vitality that had been trapped in his Dantian-the overflow of a Peak Rank 3 body-surged down his arm. It didn't stop at his skin. It flooded into the rusted metal.
The rust didn't vanish. It ignited.
A haze appeared around the blade. It wasn't Green. It wasn't Blue. It was transparent. A shimmering distortion, like the air above a hot road. It extended three inches off the steel, humming with a sound like a high-tension wite.
Raw Aura.
The Mage's eyes widened. He sensed the shift. The mana in the air was suddenly vibrating, agitated by a new, violent frequency.
"What... what is that?" the Mage stammered.
Marcus shattered the stone bindings on his legs with a simple flex of his calves. He stepped out of the hole.
"You Mages," Marcus said, his voice strangely calm. "You build walls."
He raised the glowing, distorted sword.
"I break them."
The Mage panicked. "Earth Spike! Stone Wall! Crush him!"
The ground erupted. Three spears of diamond-hard rock shot toward Marcus.
Marcus didn't dodge. He swung.
He didn't swing with strength. He swung with Will.
Break.
The Aura-coated blade didn't chip. It didn't bend. There sheer density of the white light acted like a wedge, shattering the mana structure of the rock on impact. The stone didn't dissolve; it exploded outward, unable to withstand the pressure of the Aura.
"Impossible!" the Mage shrieked. He pulled more mana. He raised a wall of granite, thicker than before, reinforced with iron ore. "Nothing gets through this! It's impenetrable!"
Marcus stopped in front of the wall. He could hear the Mage hyperventilating on the other side.
Marcus held the sword with two hands. The heat haze around the blade grew wilder, buzzing aggressively.
He didn't aim at the wall. He aimed at the Mage behind it.
I am a sword, Marcus thought. And you are in my way.
He thrust.
The sword pierced the granite wall like it was wet paper. The Aura simply outweighed the mana and blasted through without slowing down.
And then it slid through the chest of the Mage behind it.
The Mage looked down. The tip of a rusty sword was protruding from his sternum, surrounded by a shimmering distortion that was burning his robes.
"Oh," the Mage whispered.
Marcus ripped the sword out.
The wall collapsed. The Mage collapsed with it, his Yellow Core flickering and dying as his lifeblood pooled in the mud.
Marcus stood over him. He flicked the blood off the blade. The transparent aura faded, retreating back into his body, leaving the sword rusty and mundane once more.
Rank 4.
He breathed in the smoky air. He had ascended. He was a true Swordsman now.
But as he looked around the decimated camp, at the bodies of his men and the ruins of his home, he felt no triumph. He looked at Elias's corpse one last time, offering a silent nod.
He turned his gaze north, toward the forest where the sky was flashing blue and green light.
"Hold on, Captain," Marcus whispered.
He began to run.