The Multiverse Hunter

Kale saw his son losing himself — slashing, lunging, swinging with reckless abandon. He could read the doom in it. He snarled through his teeth as he locked swords with the towering Black Knight, his boots grinding deep furrows in the dirt under the brute's savage, heavy strikes.

"BOY! FOCUS— THOMAS!" Kale roared over the clash of steel, his voice cracking through the field like a whip. But his breath was forced out in a grunt as the Black Knight slammed his massive blade down, forcing Kale to brace with both hands — knees buckling, aura flickering.

The Black Knight's burn-scarred face twisted in a grin. His booming voice dripped with mockery as he leaned close, eyes glinting behind his helmet.

"Your boy's finished, old man. Lord Edwin will burn him alive."

The knight's next strike nearly wrenched Kale's arms out of their sockets. Kale dug his boots in, mind flashing back to his son — to that reckless orange blaze tearing across the battlefield. He had no breath left to shout — only prayers that Thomas would hear him through the steel.

High above, Ali watched it all on the cold glass of his phone — his mask hiding the faint grin as he studied the chaos frame by frame. Nobody was dying yet — every knight locked in a duel that matched his weight and skill perfectly. The battlefield was a chessboard — no surprises, no breaks.

Except for the one duel about to change everything.

Edwin moved like a snake — slipping under Thomas's wild slash, his blade parrying hard to the side. In the same heartbeat, his right hand shot forward, runes spinning like angry fireflies.

"FIRST CIRCLE MAGIC: FIREBALL!" Edwin barked the spell's name, feeding it power through sheer force of will and the ritual of the word. A searing sphere of flame — the size of a full-grown man — roared from his palm straight into Thomas's path.

Kale's eyes widened in horror as he saw the burning death hurtling for his boy — the Black Knight's cruel grin widening as victory gleamed in his eyes.

House Cinder's line erupted in cheers — they saw it too. The end.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

But Thomas didn't step back. Didn't dodge. Didn't even flinch.

Ali tilted his head behind the mask, voice a quiet echo in his mind: 'An angry man in war is a dead man… or not.'

Thomas's roar ripped through the valley, raw and primal. His aura ignited like dry grass under lightning — a blazing surge of orange so bright it turned his steel blade into a sun. The power spilled out of him in waves — shaping, coiling, sharpening until it became a ten-meter blade of pure ethereal orange fire that engulfed the metal beneath.

That sword came down like a god's hammer. It slammed through Edwin's fireball, splitting it apart — the exploding flames ripped harmlessly to either side as Thomas thundered through.

'FOURTH LEVEL!' The thought crackled through every knight's skull — their training drilled in what that meant: Aura, shaped outside the body. A master's threshold. A knight's dream.

Edwin's eyes widened behind his visor as the towering orange blade swallowed him whole. He yanked his right fist back — the runes around his knuckles flared crimson, then morphed to brilliant blue, spinning faster as he poured every last scrap of mana into them.

"FUCK!" Edwin cursed, his teeth grit as the circle expanded and flared. He thrust his fist out just as Thomas's ethereal sword came down.

DIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Thomas bellowed, his voice cracking with raw fury and the taste of impossible strength. The orange blade slammed down onto Edwin's conjured barrier — a perfect, gleaming blue bubble that wrapped him in desperate salvation.

BVVVVVVVVVVV!

Steel and spell clashed with a shriek that split the air. Sparks danced in the wind. The ground shuddered — shockwaves rippled out, toppling lesser knights to their knees and sending loose stones skipping across the field.

The barrier held — barely — flickering, cracking, veins of white-hot stress racing through the dome. Edwin saw it fracturing second by second. But that was all he needed — two seconds to kick himself backwards, break the clash, live.

Thomas's ethereal blade roared down, tearing open the earth where Edwin had stood. It split the dirt like soft bread — a crater three men deep and wide enough to swallow a warhorse whole. Dirt and stone rained skyward as Thomas stood at its edge, chest heaving, his aura blade flickering in and out like a dying star.

Ali watched the clash below flicker across his phone screen — the ethereal sword, the shattering barrier, the crater Thomas left behind. His black eyes flicked to the battlefield's edges — reading all the pieces in play.

'Mana is strong… but the Demi-humans I'm about to walk into? They're stronger than these toy soldiers.'

He shut off the feed with a flick of his thumb, stowed the phone in his pocket, and straightened to his full height atop Eldora's scaled back.

High above, Abeloth carved lazy circles in the sky — a drifting shadow biding its time for the moment Ali would whisper now.

Ali rolled his shoulders once — the night air crackling faintly where his Force should have been. Severed for now, he reminded himself. No flying. He gave Eldora a small tap, and the green dragon dipped a wing — cutting through the clouds and diving fast toward the ground.

Down below, back in the hollow belly of House Cinder's abandoned camp, a single tent remained occupied. Inside, a Korean woman sat cross-legged on an old silk mat, her eyes closed — a faint circle of pale blue runes hovering over her lap. Her Spirit spilled down the invisible thread that tied her to her puppets on the battlefield — knights moving faster, striking harder, living longer on borrowed power.

She chewed her lip — a slight tremor of worry fluttering at the edge of her focus. If even one of them dies, she thought, all that Spirit wasted—

HUH?

Her eyes flew open — the world seemed to tilt sideways. There was a terrible wrongness in her neck — a crackling pop like dry twigs splitting under a boot.

Her mouth opened — but her eyes were already empty. Her neck was twisted grotesquely, her chin nearly brushing her shoulder, before her body slumped sideways onto the silk.

Outside the tent flap — already gone — the mask of gold vanished.

[Reward for Killing a Player: +15 PC]

Up on the hill, the remaining three Koreans ran in tight zigzags through swirling smoke — swearing, spinning, spitting bullets into every flicker of shadow. Metal clanked on metal as their sleek exo-suits whirred with overdrive power, servos buzzing against tense muscle.

"WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING?!" one screamed — his voice cracked, raw panic slicing through the comms. He slammed a fresh mag into his SMG, boots crunching over fallen brass. He flicked a glance at his interface — saw the blinking kill alert for their teammate. His mind spun. How? When? The smoke closed around him like a fist.

He jumped. The exoskeleton's hydraulics hissed — catapulting him up through the smoke, hoping for a clean line of sight. He broke through the haze for half a heartbeat.

STAB

A gold mask met him the moment he escaped the smoke. Ali's arm punched through the man's armoured chest like it was paper. Steel plates buckled inward, ribs shattered. Ali's hand emerged slick with blood — then he let go. The corpse dropped like a bag of rocks back through the smoke.

On the hill, the remaining two Koreans saw the death icon pop up — and sanity cracked.

"FUUUUUUUUUUUCK—!" They both shrieked, overlapping, as the squad leader — one hand missing — slammed a red code sequence into his suit's forearm pad.

A faint beep. A whir of metal. Then —

BOOOOOOOOOOOOM

The dead man's armor went critical — a shaped explosion that punched a rolling shockwave through the hilltop. The smoke vanished in a single breath, sucked apart by the blast. Dirt and torn grass rained down.

When their visors cleared, the last two players finally saw what was hunting them.

She stood in the open — framed in swirling dust. A black battle skirt. A single thin katana held loose at her side. Her eyes glowed red — twin Sharingan spinning with a cold hunger that pinned them in place like prey before a blade.

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