The night in the barracks felt like an eternity distilled from pure suffering. On the creaky bunk bed, my body rolled left and right, creating a symphony of spring groans sharp enough to wake even the laziest demon in the depths of Hell. I allowed my face to contort, a grimace of pain polished to perfection, fake yet convincing, like the saccharine promises of a politician on the brink of an election.
I forced cold sweat to pour, soaking the hard, musty pillow. I deliberately let this performance be savored by the eyes of my neighbors. Let them see my weakness. Let the seeds of doubt grow in their heads. What happened to the genius who slew the demon? After living for over two thousand years, acting is no longer just a play for me. It is metabolism. I can play the role of a loser brilliantly even in my deepest sleep.
A Morning of Judgment
When the first rays of sunlight crept through the cracks of the dusty curtains, I jolted awake. I sat on the edge of the bed, wiping the sweat from my forehead with the corner of a coarse blanket. I could feel an unnatural silence in the room. All eyes were on me.
"Zhenya, are you... are you okay?" Igor approached. He sat on the edge of his own bed, his voice low, laden with an empathy that almost made me nauseous. "You were restless all night, man. It was as if a demon was skinning your soul. You are deathly pale."
I glanced at the other members of the squad. Svetlana, the redhead with usually sharp amber eyes, now stared at me with a mixture of sleepiness and anxiety. Artem, our pragmatic leader, continued chewing his sandwich, but his ears were pricked to catch every vibration of my voice. This is the dynamic of the Free Hunters Guild in Novosibirsk, a place where portals appear more often than shawarma stalls, and solidarity is the primary currency.
"It is nothing," I massaged my temples, faking the raspy voice of an exhausted man. "Just insomnia, lingering fatigue after excessive physical training."
"That is not ordinary insomnia," Igor interrupted, his eyes staring straight at me. "We are all tired, but you... something terrible is chasing you, Zhenya. Talk to us. We are comrades."
I let out a long sigh, a bait I had already prepared. "Fine. If you really want to know," I hissed, letting a note of controlled anger creep in. "Are you ready to defend me? Against the nobility? Ready to protect me if they decide to eliminate me because I am seen as a threat to their position?"
The silence that fell after that was so heavy it felt like a physical weight. Igor immediately shifted his gaze to the cracked concrete floor. Svetlana suddenly found the article in her worn out magazine very interesting, hiding her face behind the paper. Artyom coughed, scratched the back of his neck, and muttered about how internal politics are complicated.
This is the true face of their solidarity. For these people, the nobility is not an opponent to be fought, but a natural disaster to be avoided.
"I thought so," I sighed, rising with a deliberately stiff movement. "You are good people. Keep it that way. Mind your own business and do not interfere if you do not want to get burned. See you on the field."
Drama on the Training Field
I stepped into the cramped, sweltering barracks bathroom. In front of a mirror blurred by limescale, I washed my face. Cold water swept away the remains of last night's fake sweat. I stared at my own reflection. There was a bitter irony here. In Hell, you have to pay for every breath you take, yet here, in this shabby hunter's dormitory, I get soap, towels, and lunch for free. For some, this is poverty. For me, it is a ridiculous luxury.
At the stadium, the morning air began to warm up, carrying the scent of hot asphalt and sweat. Student hunters began running around the track. Oleg Gromov, the veteran instructor whose face looked as if it were carved from granite, stood in the center of the field with his arms crossed.
I started running. Without a pack on my back, this should have been easy, but I chose to drag myself. I timed my breathing to sound like an old engine on its last legs. I forced my skin to turn pale, my eyes to go dull. And then, as I passed a crowd of veteran and rookie runners, I performed the climax.
My foot intentionally caught a small pothole. My body hurtled forward, hitting the stadium dust with a thud loud enough to turn heads. My knees were scraped, my lip bleeding because I had bitten it on purpose.
"Look at that, Krivtsevich fell. He tripped over his own shadow," someone whispered behind me. Pity and contempt mingled in the air. For a hunter, weakness is a death sentence.
Gromov walked over. His footsteps were heavy and rhythmic. He stopped right in front of me, his shadow looming over my weak body.
"Krivtsevich, what is this?" His voice was heavy like the roar of a diesel engine. "Yesterday you ran like a bull, now you fall like a drunkard. If you are sick, go to the medical room. If you are crippled, I will give you a military deferment letter."
He reached out a hand. There was a glimmer of sympathy in his cold eyes, a fatal mistake for an instructor. I brushed his hand away with a violent, resentful gesture.
"What business is it of yours, Gromov?" I shouted, my voice cracking and trembling with manufactured rage. "You wanted to see me fall? Here. You have seen it. Do not coddle me with your first aid kit."
Gromov was stunned. Before he could react, Dima appeared and put an arm around my shoulder.
"I will handle him, Instructor. He is just being stubborn," Dima said, dragging me toward the shade.
As soon as we were behind the shadow of the building, my mask of suffering dropped instantly. My face became flat, cold, and perfectly healthy.
"Tell me," Dima asked softly, his eyes narrowing inquisitively. "I know you are not sick. What is the plan?"
"The nobility wants to meet you," I replied emotionlessly. "After training, behind the sports building. They want to talk."
Dima paused for a moment, then a terrifyingly wide grin appeared on his face. He rubbed his palms together as if preparing for a feast.
"Oh, a social gathering? I like that. My tongue has been itching for a chat, or maybe to break something. Thanks, man. I will not forget your help."
The Banquet in the Narrow Alley
The alley behind the sports building was a place where sunlight was reluctant to enter. It smelled of a mixture of rotting garbage and cheap magical cigarette smoke. There, seven noble youths stood waiting. They wore jackets emblazoned with ancient family crests, but the nervousness in their eyes could not be hidden by expensive fabric.
Viktor Sokolov, the leader of the group, blew cigarette smoke into the air. "Baron Linevsky paid well for this," he muttered. "Our task. Break Voronov. Snap his bones, make him crawl, and record his apology. His son, Edik, is still in the hospital because of this peasant's actions."
"What about Krivtsevich?" asked the redhead, a girl with a snobbish Phoenix lineage. "My father is interested in his bloodline. He wants to know how a junkie could make a demon commit suicide."
"Change of plans," Viktor nodded after looking at his phone. "We take both. Krivtsevich must be destroyed too."
Soon after, I appeared, leading Dima into the trap. Dima laughed loudly when he saw the seven men surrounding us.
"Wow, what a warm welcome. Are you people so poor you cannot afford whiskey and have to huddle in a dumpster like this?"
"Shut your mouth, commoner," Viktor screamed.
In an instant, magic exploded in the air. Fire began to envelop the redhead. Toxic liquid dripped from the bald man's mouth. But Dima moved faster than they could imagine. He was a shadow dancing in the middle of a storm. Within seconds, the bald man was choking on his own poison after an elbow smashed into his jaw. The redhead was slammed against the wall until the concrete cracked.
Dima was feasting. He broke the arms of the physics twins who tried to gang up on him. He crushed the telepath's mind with his own shadow energy. When it all ended, the seven nobles lay like piles of dirty laundry on the ground.
"Are you sure you are nobles?" Dima spat on the ground, taking pictures of the battered faces with his phone. "Embarrassing. Seven against one and you lost miserably. Thanks, Zhenya, I feel very refreshed now."
Dima walked away whistling, leaving me alone with the seven predators who were now prey.
The Real Monster
The nobles tried to rise with groans of pain. Viktor glared at me with bloodshot eyes full of hate.
"You set us up, you bastard. Now it is your turn..."
But his sentence was cut short.
My eyes flashed with an ancient golden light, a light that came from an era before humanity knew civilization. The magical pressure radiating from my body was so massive that the air around us distorted. The temperature in the alley plummeted instantly.
"W what is this..." the redhead whispered, her teeth chattering with primordial fear.
One of the twins who still had one intact arm tried to attack me. I did not dodge. I took his punch right on the jaw. A horrifying crack sounded, but it was not my jaw that broke. It was the bones of his hand shattering into pieces as they hit my skin.
"You are weak," my voice resonated directly inside their skulls, cold and merciless. "You rely on titles and surnames, while I am the disaster you invited yourselves."
I snapped my fingers. A dome of absolute silence enveloped the alley. No screams would be heard outside.
I approached the redhead who had insulted me yesterday. With a slow motion, I grabbed her index finger. I tore it off as if it were a dry twig. She roared, but her voice was swallowed by the void. I did the same to the twin.
Then, before their wide eyes, I did something impossible. I attached the redhead's finger to the twin's hand, and vice versa. With high level alchemical magic, I fused their flesh and nerves in reverse.
"Now," I whispered in their trembling ears, "every time you move your finger, your friend will feel the pain. And every time he moves, you will feel the tug. A souvenir so you never forget who I am."
I turned to the bald man who had passed out from terror, then stared at the telepath whose soul was already shattered.
"Listen carefully," I said, throwing a small vial containing the remains of Crimson Dew at Viktor's feet. "From this second on, you are slaves to my narrative. You will spread rumors that you blackmailed and tortured me. You will say that my victory over the demon was nothing but a magic trick you devised. If there is even one word different from my script..."
I pointed to the vial.
"Security forces will find tons of this substance in your family's warehouse. And you know what the punishment is for nobles dealing drugs at the border?"
Viktor nodded frantically, his face kissing the dust of the road.
I turned and walked out of the alley, putting back on my pale face and staggering gait. Ahead, the hospital awaited me. I needed an official diagnosis of core damage to complete my disguise.
The world saw me as a dying loser, while those nobles knew a more terrifying truth. They had just met a peak predator who was playing with his prey.