ROARRRR.
A crushing aura pressed against the cave, thick and suffocating.
Vaeris's eyes narrowed. The small beasts he had slain earlier… they were cubs.
And the mother had come.
He had suppressed his presence until he felt no different from the stones beneath him—just enough to avoid alerting any other beast.
Quietly, he rose and stepped out of the cave.
A few meters away, a massive bear loomed on its hind legs—over four meters tall. Its metallic fur shimmered under the moonlight, each strand like interlocked armor. Razor claws glinted like blades. Madness burned in its crimson eyes.
An Arcane-ranked beast, and not a low one.
Vaeris extended his left hand. Tonbokiri shimmered into form, the bracelet on his wrist vanishing.
The bear caught the motion. With a wild snarl, it lunged.
Vaeris didn't flinch. He hurled the spear with explosive force. It tore through the air with a crack, the attack splitting the silence of the night.
BOOM.
The bear was flung backward, dirt and debris flying. But as the dust cleared, it rose again—unharmed. Angrier.
Vaeris calmly walked forward, retrieving the spear and turning it back into a bracelet. Then, in a fluid motion, he drew his katana and vanished.
A thunderclap marked his reappearance above the bear's skull, blade descending like judgment.
The bear met it mid-strike. Claw met steel in a screech of metal on metal.
They clashed again. And again.
Flashes of movement blurred the clearing. Each blow shook the ground. Shock waves cracked stone. Dozens of strikes per breath, a storm of speed and precision. Vaeris deflected and countered with growing rhythm, his blade glinting through the dark.
He was faster.
Sharper.
Dominating.
Then, the beast changed the rules.
A pulse of mana.
CRACK.
Gravity increased by fivefold. Vaeris staggered, caught off guard—his limbs suddenly leaden, his breath crushed by invisible weight.
The beast was unfazed.
It charged.
Vaeris barely raised his katana in time. The impact hurled him back. Dozens of meters.
He twisted mid-air and landed, boots digging into the earth. His arms trembled. His lungs burned.
"Still alive," he mumbled.
He sprinted again, closing the distance. At the last second, he pivoted, using all momentum to whirl.
Tonbokiri flashed into his hand.
CRACK.
The spear slammed into the bear's side—sending it skidding like a meteor through stone.
It roared—and lunged right back, claws descending like a guillotine, gravity magic warping the air around them.
Vaeris met it head-on.
Steel clashed against claws.
Throughout the fight, Vaeris had landed dozens of clean strikes—yet the bear showed no sign of injury. It charged again, unflinching, its monstrous confidence rooted in its ironclad defense.
He was losing ground.
The next blow crashed into him, and he used the force to launch himself away, skidding across stone. He exhaled sharply, eyes narrowing.
No more holding back.
Valtren's words echoed in his mind:
"Only use Air. Never release all your mana—unless there's no other choice."
No explanation. Only steel in his voice.
Now wasn't the time to question it.
Vaeris inhaled. The air around him stilled. The forest held its breath.
He dropped into his stance—katana low, body poised.
Modified Katana Art: Air Rend.
He vanished.
Reappearing directly before the bear.
His sword flashed.
BOOOOM.
The world cracked.
A single slash cleaved the beast cleanly in half.
A trench tore through the land for a hundred meters behind it, etched deep into the earth.
The bear's body split, then fell.
Vaeris stood still, blade already sheathed.
"Guess I used a bit too much mana," he muttered, collecting the beast's corpse.
Air Rend—his makeshift answer to using just his Air affinity.
Void Rend had been cleaner, sharper, faster. Space bent to his will. But Air was different—wild, invisible, unstable. He had rebuilt the technique from scratch—compressing and spinning air around the blade's edge, shaping the currents with microscopic precision until it could slice and shred. It lacked the elegance of the original, but it worked.
And that was enough.
He vanished into the night.
The others would arrive at the camp days later, exhausted from travel, wide-eyed at what lay ahead.
Vaeris would already be there.
Rested. Unbothered.
Training.