The portal didn't lead to a stone dungeon. It led to The Emerald Overgrowth, a C-Rank jungle-type gate where the trees were as tall as skyscrapers and the humidity tasted like Mana and rot.
Twenty rookies stood in a clearing, clutching their new government-issued weapons. Most were shaking. Kaizer, however, was adjusting his gloves. His 24 Agility made the rustling of the leaves sound slow, like a vinyl record spinning at half-speed.
"Formation!" shouted a D-Rank Vanguard, trying to take charge. "Shields up! The scout says there are Leopard-Spiders in the canopy!"
High above, sitting on a branch of a Great Oak, Rin Kusanagi watched. Her white-and-gold cape fluttered in the stagnant air. Her hand never left the hilt of her katana. To the students, she was a guardian angel. To Kaizer, she was a thermal camera looking for a leak.
"She is bored," Paimon's voice echoed in Kaizer's mind. "But she is also sharp. If you use even a drop of Abyssal Mana, she will perceive the 'temperature' change in the air. You must be... physical, my Contractor."
"I know," Kaizer muttered.
SCREE!
From the emerald canopy, a dozen Leopard-Spiders—beasts the size of small cars with eight feline legs—dropped into the center of the group.
"Help! My shield is melting!" one girl screamed as acidic silk sprayed her arm.
Kaizer didn't draw a weapon. He didn't have one. He stepped forward, his boots crunching on the moss.
A spider lunged at him, its fangs dripping with neurotoxin. Kaizer didn't dodge; he parried the beast's mandibles with his bare forearm, his 22 Strength making his skin feel like reinforced carbon fiber.
CRACK.
With a single, explosive jab, Kaizer's fist went through the spider's chitinous head, spraying green ichor across the grass.
[SKILL IMITATION: 'Shockwave Strike' (Faked)] [Description: By concentrating raw physical force, you mimic the effects of a Mana-burst.]
From her perch, Rin's eyes narrowed. 'No Mana activation? Just raw muscle? That's impossible for a C-Rank. His density is... wrong.'
The Hidden Commander
As the group pushed deeper into the jungle, the monsters grew more aggressive. The rookies were exhausted, their Mana pools hitting the red zone.
"We can't go further! We need to rest!" the Vanguard panted.
"If we stop, we're dead," Kaizer said, his voice cold. "The Jungle King (C-Rank Boss) is already tracking us."
He looked into the darkness of the trees. He couldn't kill them all himself without looking suspicious. He needed a way to thin the herd.
'Fenris,' Kaizer thought, sending a silent command through the shadow-link. 'Stay 200 meters ahead of the group. Pick off the stragglers. Do not leave bodies. Consume them.'
Deep in the foliage, a pair of violet embers flickered for a second before vanishing.
For the next hour, the "Evaluation Raid" became eerily easy. The rookies would hear a distant scream or the snapping of a tree, but when they arrived, there was nothing but disturbed dirt.
"Is... is the dungeon malfunctioning?" one boy asked, wiping sweat from his brow. "There should be hundreds of Poison-Toads here."
Rin Kusanagi felt it too. She leaped from her branch, landing silently next to Kaizer. The rookies jumped, but Kaizer just stopped walking.
"Something is eating the monsters before we get to them," Rin said, her blue eyes fixed on the treeline. She unsheathed an inch of her blade, and the air around her began to hum with S-Rank pressure. "Kaizer Gold. You've been leading the way. Have you seen anything?"
Kaizer looked her in the eye. "Just shadows, Vice-Captain. It's a jungle. Shadows are everywhere."
Rin's hand tightened on her sword. She didn't believe him. She could feel a "void" in the Mana ahead of them—a hole in reality that shouldn't exist.
Suddenly, the ground began to shake. A massive, vine-covered gorilla—the Overgrowth Behemoth—burst through the trees. It was twice the size of the werewolf from the school.
"S-Rank... no, it's a mutated C-Rank!" the Vanguard yelled. "Fall back!"
The Behemoth roared, a sound that sent three rookies into a state of paralysis. It raised a fist the size of a boulder, aiming directly for the group.
Rin reached for her blade to intervene—this was beyond the rookies' level. But before she could move, Kaizer was already in the air.
"Let me help, Contractor," Paimon whispered.
Kaizer's hand glowed with a faint, dull grey—not the violet of the Abyss, but a faked "Grey Mana" he'd forced his system to produce.
"Dominator's Touch," Kaizer hissed.
He slammed his palm into the Behemoth's chest. The monster froze. Its heart stopped beating for a microsecond as Kaizer's shadow-will flooded its nervous system.
BOOM.
With a follow-up kick fueled by his 24 Agility, Kaizer sent the five-ton monster flying back into the trees, where it crashed and went silent.
The rookies stared in awe. Rin Kusanagi stared in suspicion.
"You're a 'Physical Reinforcement' user," Rin said, her voice dropping to a dangerous whisper as she walked toward him. "But that monster didn't fly back because of a kick. It stopped moving because it was afraid of you."
She stopped inches from him, her S-Rank aura flaring like a miniature sun. "Who are you, really?"