The blaring alarm was a physical thing, a hammer of sound beating against the sterile walls of the underground facility.
Red lights strobed, casting the terrified faces of Yuhon's unconscious classmates in a hellish glow.
The six remaining guards fumbled for their weapons, their training momentarily overridden by sheer, disbelieving shock.
The skinny farm kid they'd just dumped in a cell was now standing free in the middle of their secure operations room, his expression not one of fear, but of chilling, placid calm.
"Subdue him!" one of the guards roared, finally finding his voice. He raised a rifle equipped with a mana-suppression cartridge.
Yuhon didn't give him the chance to fire. His hand dipped into the pocket of his school slacks, and what he withdrew defied logic.
It was a small, black cloth pouch, utterly mundane. But as his fingers brushed against it, the air around his hand shimmered.
From the seemingly impossible space within the pouch, his fingers closed around cool, familiar ceramic.
In one fluid motion, he pulled out the stark white, grinning fox mask. The hoodie followed, a billow of black fabric.
He moved faster than their eyes could track, a whirlwind of motion behind the relative cover of the console bank.
The school blazer and tie were off, the hoodie was on, pulled up over his hair. The mask settled onto his face, its vacant, cheerful grin a terrifying contrast to the situation.
As he changed, his body shifted. It wasn't a magical transformation, but something far more practiced and controlled.
The muscle tension technique his parents had taught him—a subtle flexing and contraction of specific muscle groups combined with a minute projection of his aura—altered his silhouette completely.
The lanky teenager vanished, replaced by the broad-shouldered, imposingly tall frame of the vigilante known throughout the city.
The Grinning Fox stood before them.
"It's him!" a guard shrieked, his voice cracking with panic.
"The Fox!"
The first mana-suppression round fired. Yuhon didn't dodge. He simply raised his hand, and a wall of Silver Frost crystallized in the air before him, the round embedding itself harmlessly in the ice before both shattered into glittering dust.
"You shouldn't have taken them from their classrooms," the Grinning Fox said, his voice modulated by the mask into a low, gravelly echo.
It was calm, almost conversational, yet it cut through the alarm like a knife. "That was a mistake."
He moved.
To the guards, it was like being attacked by a storm. He was a blur of black and white. He didn't use the spectacular Blue Flame or Scarlet Thunder. This was close quarters. Brutal. Efficient.
A fist wreathed in a faint, frosty aura drove into the first guard's chest. There was a sickening crack, and the man was thrown backward into a monitor bank, sparks erupting around him. He didn't get up.
"You're… you're just a vigilante!" another guard yelled, firing his sidearm wildly.
Yuhon sidestepped the bullets, his movements preternaturally fluid.
He closed the distance, his hand snapping out to grip the man's wrist. There was a sound of snapping bone.
The man screamed, a short, sharp sound that was cut off as Yuhon's other hand, fingers rigid and tipped with frost, struck his throat.
"I'm the consequence," the Fox's voice echoed as the man crumpled.
These weren't low-level thugs like the Black Pigeons. These were enforcers for a organization that kidnapped children and sold them.
They were complicit in a system that erased loose ends with mass overdoses.
His parents' rule echoed in his mind: Never hold back in a fight. He wouldn't. Not here. Not for them.
He moved through the remaining guards like a reaper.
A kick reinforced with aura shattered a kneecap.
A precise, icy jab to a temple silenced another.
He was a master of martial arts they had no name for, each movement ending a life. It was over in seconds. The blaring alarm now underscored a new silence—the silence of the dead.
The only sound was the soft hiss of the containment cells and Yuhon's own steady breathing behind the mask.
He stood amidst the carnage, the grinning ceramic face looking down at the fallen guards without pity.
His work wasn't done.
He turned toward the reinforced door where Hanjin Tian had retreated.
An 'office'. A place to 'finalize the transport'. Rage, cold and precise, settled in his heart.
He didn't bother with the keypad. He placed both hands on the metal door.
Intricate, beautiful patterns of Silver Frost radiated from his palms, crawling across the surface.
The metal groaned, becoming brittle and blue. With a final, concentrated push of aura, he shattered the entire door inward, sending a cloud of frozen shrapnel into the room beyond.
Hanjin Tian was on his feet behind a desk, his personal sidearm drawn. His eyes were wide, his professional calm utterly shattered.
"You! How did you—? The gas! The cell!"
"You talk too much," the Grinning Fox intoned, stepping through the wreckage.
Hanjin fired. Three rounds. Yuhon flicked his wrist. Three small, perfect shards of ice intercepted each bullet in mid-air, deflecting them into the walls with a spang.
"I am an A-rank hunter!" Hanjin screamed, throwing his emptied gun aside.
His aura flared—a muddy, brown earth attribute. He slammed his hands on the floor, and jagged spikes of stone erupted, shooting toward Yuhon.
Yuhon didn't break stride. He took two steps forward and vanished, reappearing in a blur of motion directly in front of the desk.
He brought his foot down. The entire stone spike technique shattered under the force of his stomp, the aura behind it completely overwhelming Hanjin's.
"You're a kidnapper," Yuhon stated, his masked face inches from Hanjin's terrified one. "And a dead man."
Hanjin tried to summon another technique, but a hand wreathed in crackling Scarlet Thunder shot out and gripped his face.
The smell of ozone and burnt flesh filled the small room. Hanjin's body convulsed violently for a second before going limp.
Yuhon released him, and he slid to the floor, a wisp of smoke rising from his scorched features.
It was done.
The immediate threat was neutralized. Yuhon's eyes scanned the office. There were files, a computer, ledgers. Evidence. But he couldn't be here when the Guild arrived.
He grabbed Hanjin's comm unit from his wrist. He fiddled with it for a second, finding the public emergency channel for the Hunter Guild.
He keyed the mic, his voice the low growl of the Grinning Fox.
"Attention Guild. This is the Grinning Fox. I have located a Grey Fog trafficking operation. There are multiple hostages, students from Hongxing High. The location is beneath the school's gymnasium. The primary threat is neutralized. Send medical and recovery teams. Now."
He dropped the comm and immediately went to the computer. He found the main console controls and initiated a full system lock-down, sealing all exits. That would keep any other potential accomplices out—or in—until the Guild arrived.
Now, for the hardest part: the cover-up.
He rushed back into the main chamber. The red lights still flashed. His classmates were still unconscious in their cells. And there was his cell, its door still swung open, the lock a frozen ruin.
They couldn't find him outside his cell. They couldn't find his cell uniquely broken.
He moved to his own cell, stepping back inside. He took a deep breath, focusing his Silver Frost power with extreme precision.
He couldn't just refreeze it; he had to make it match the others.
He sent a pulse of cryogenic energy through the door's mechanism, not just shattering it further, but melting and warping the components internally to make it look like it had been overloaded by a external system failure.
Then, he moved down the line. With a touch, he sent precise jets of frost into the locking mechanism of every single cell.
Ping. Ping. Ping.
One by one, the doors of all twenty-five cells hissed open, their locks permanently disabled by the deep freeze.
Satisfied, he returned to his own cell. He quickly changed back into his school uniform, stashing the mask and hoodie back into the spatial pouch.
He released the muscle tension technique, his body returning to its usual, slimmer build.
He sat down on the cold floor, slumped against the wall exactly as he had been when they dragged him in.
He closed his eyes, slowed his breathing to a shallow, steady rhythm, and forced his racing heart to calm.
He was just Yuhon Kalmas again. A victim. A lucky student who had been rescued by the timely intervention of the Guild.
It felt like an eternity later, but was probably only minutes, when he heard the new sounds.
The grinding of metal being forced. Shouted orders. The heavy, confident footsteps of professional hunters.
"Clear!" a voice boomed.
"Gods above… look at this place."
"The guards… they're all down. The Fox did this?"
"Forget that! Get the medics in here! The kids are in these cells! The doors are already open!"
Yuhon allowed himself to 'stir' groggily. He blinked his eyes open, feigning confusion and disorientation.
He saw men and women in the crisp uniforms of the Crimson Phoenix guild moving through the room, their faces a mix of horror at the scene and relief at finding the students alive.
A medic was at his cell in moments, a woman with a kind but worried face. "Easy there, son. You're safe now. Can you tell me your name?"
"Y-Yuhon," he mumbled, rubbing his eyes. "What… what happened? The gas… Mr. Yun…"
"It's alright," the medic said softly, helping him to his feet. "You're alright. Everyone is safe."
He saw Jin being helped out, the boy looking dazed and confused. Then he saw Mei. Her cell had required extra work to open, but Guild technicians had managed it.
She was already conscious, her eyes sharp and scanning the room, taking in every detail—the dead guards, the shattered office door, the open cells.
Her gaze swept over him, and for a heart-stopping second, he thought he saw a flicker of something in her eyes—calculation, suspicion—but it was gone, replaced by weary relief.
She gave him a small, shaky nod. He returned it, doing his best to look just as scared and confused as everyone else.