The adrenaline from the fight faded, and the pain in Ren's side flared into a hot, searing fire. He gritted his teeth, tearing a strip of fabric from the hem of his uniform and pressing it tightly against the wound. It was a shallow but vicious cut, and it was bleeding freely.
He stood over the unconscious form of the Pagoda Infiltrator. His first instinct, the cold, pragmatic voice of survival, told him to finish it. To eliminate the threat permanently.
But as he looked at the shattered helmet, at the still form in the sleek black armor, he hesitated. This was not a mindless Aether Beast. This was a soldier, a person, and he had won. To kill them now felt less like an act of might and more like a simple murder.
"Do it," Zephyrion's voice was cold and hard in his mind. "This is not a duel of honor. This is a war. A wounded enemy is a future threat. A dead enemy is a lesson. End it."
Ren ignored him. He was a Raijin, yes. But he was not a butcher. Not yet.
He quickly and efficiently stripped the Infiltrator of its gear. The soul-decay rifle was a terrifying and powerful weapon he couldn't leave behind. He also took a small pouch from the assassin's belt, finding within it several high-potency nutrient paste packets—a treasure more valuable than gold in his current state—and a small, advanced medical kit.
He used the kit to apply a self-sealing bio-bandage to his wound. The bleeding stopped, and the sharp pain receded to a dull, throbbing ache, but the damage was done. His body was now running on fumes and sheer willpower.
He looked at the unconscious assassin one last time, then vanished back into the shadows of the labyrinth, leaving them to their fate.
He found a new hiding place, a deep, defensible cave higher up the spire, and forced himself to consume one of the nutrient paste packets. It tasted like metallic slime, but the concentrated energy that flooded his system was immediate and potent. The gnawing hunger vanished, and a small trickle of strength returned to his limbs.
He settled down to meditate, to finally begin the slow process of drawing Aether from the environment to refill his empty core. But the world had other plans.
He felt it first as a faint vibration through the stone. A low, rhythmic thump… thump… thump… that was growing steadily closer. It was not the light footfalls of a GAMA patrol. It was something heavy. Something massive.
He crawled to the edge of his cave and peered out.
What he saw made his blood run cold.
A new beast was lumbering through the canyons below. It was a "Stonehide Behemoth," a creature that looked like a horrifying fusion of a rhinoceros and a golem. It was easily thirty feet tall, its body made of thick, overlapping plates of solid granite, and its single, massive horn was a spear of sharpened obsidian. It was an Aether Master-level threat, a living siege engine.
And it was not alone.
Riding on its back, strapped into a crude saddle, was the young, arrogant nobleman from House Barracuda, the one Ren had left whimpering at the entrance to the outpost. His face was twisted in a mask of triumphant, vindictive fury. He held a strange, glowing orb in his hand, a "Beast-Taming Lure," and it was pointed directly at the cave system Ren was hiding in.
"I know you're in here, you rat!" the nobleman shrieked, his voice echoing through the labyrinth. "You thought you could humiliate me? You thought you could leave me for dead? I am the heir of House Barracuda! This entire peninsula is our territory! And you are just a bug to be crushed!"
He had not been idle. He had used his knowledge of the local fauna and his house's resources to tame one of the peninsula's alpha predators. He had brought a sledgehammer to kill a fly.
The Behemoth lumbered closer, its massive footsteps shaking the very foundations of the spire. It lowered its head, its obsidian horn aimed at the base of the rock formation. It was preparing to charge, to bring the entire spire crashing down.
Ren was trapped. He was wounded, his Aether was almost nonexistent, and he was facing a Master-level threat controlled by a vengeful fool.
He looked at the soul-decay rifle in his hands. It was a powerful weapon, but he had no idea how to use it, and he lacked the Aether to power it even if he did.
"It seems your mercy has come back to haunt you," Zephyrion noted, his voice grim. "You left the insect alive, and it has returned with a monster. There is no escape from this. Your vessel is spent. This is the end."
Ren gripped the rifle, his knuckles white. The Behemoth let out a low, rumbling roar. The nobleman laughed, a high, unhinged sound of pure malice.
The situation was impossible. It was hopeless.
And then, a new voice spoke, cutting through the air like a shard of ice.
"Stand down, Lord Barracuda. The target is under the jurisdiction of my House."
Ren's head snapped up. On a spire opposite his own, a sleek, silver skiff had silently appeared, hovering in the turbulent air. And standing on its open ramp, her expression one of cold, absolute authority, was Anya Volkov. She was no longer wearing her academy uniform. She was clad in a set of elegant, silver-and-white battle armor, the insignia of House Volkov emblazoned on her chest.
She had left the GAMA patrols behind. She had come alone. And she had just staked her own claim in this deadly, three-way war.