Hide, Sora, and the grey-haired girl stood frozen at the jagged lip of the cavern, their eyes wide as they stared into the churning abyss of the storm.

The bruised-purple clouds had violently parted, ripped open by a force far greater than the hurricane itself.

Plummeting from the heavens, its luminescent blue scales short-circuiting and dying out like shattered glass, was the majestic dragon. The gate keeper was falling in a catastrophic, lifeless spiral.

But it wasn’t the death of the Gatekeeper that made Hide’s breath hitch in his throat. It was the horrifyingly calm silhouette standing at the center of the beast’s massive, antlered head.

Through the torrential rain and howling wind, Hide’s True Sight locked onto the falling figure. It was a man. He stood with effortless, impossible balance against the velocity of the freefall, the fabric of his red combat trench coat snapping violently around his legs.

Both of his hands were wrapped tightly around the hilt of a massive broadsword that had been plunged straight down, burying the steel entirely to the crossguard directly into the dragon’s skull.

BOOOOOOM!

The leviathan struck the base of the mountain range. The impact was apocalyptic. A massive shockwave of displaced air and pulverized stone exploded outward, completely flattening the rocks and instantly vaporizing the remaining hail into a blinding cloud of steam.

The entire dimensional grid groaned, the atmospheric pressure violently shifting as the core of the gate was extinguished.

Hide gritted his teeth, his jaw locking tight as he stared at the rising mushroom cloud of debris. The dragon was the Gatekeeper. And it had just been slaughtered by someone else.

Julian’s arrogant, manic voice echoed mockingly in the back of Hide’s mind. ’My team is already inside the gate...’

Hide’s glowing blue eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. According to the S-Rank Commander, this man—and the scrappy girl standing right next to Hide—were members of Julian’s tournament squad. They were by no means a weak team. That person had just butchered a dragon alone.

If Hide had to gauge the density of the mana radiating from the epicenter of that crash, the man standing on the dragon’s head was most likely a True A-Ranked Awakener.

He was an elite veteran who had undoubtedly faced brutal, insurmountable odds to reach his current level of power. He was a monster, just like Julian and Maddox!

Hide slowly turned his head. He saw that Sora had lowered her daggers, her dark eyes completely wide as she stared at the rising steam. Beside her, the unknown grey-haired girl was also looking at the scene in awe, her jaw slightly slack, as if she had not expected her own teammate to execute such a magnificent, devastating kill.

"I want..." Hide’s voice was a low, chilling rasp that instantly cut through the lingering rumble of the earthquake. "...Information."

The grey-haired girl snapped out of her daze. She whipped her head around to look at Hide. His glowing blue irises, ringed with a terrifying hint of violet, were staring straight into her soul. The suffocating weight of his gaze made her instinctively flinch, a sudden tremble running down her spine.

"Information on your teammates!" Hide demanded, taking a single, slow step toward her.

The girl’s eyes widened, taking a defensive half-step backward. "Wh... what?" she stammered, her raspy voice laced with disbelief. "That’s cheating, you can’t be serious. You are a member of another team who will be competing against us in the international bracket. I can’t give you that."

Hide didn’t break eye contact. His expression remained a mask of flawless, deadpan ice. "No, it’s not cheating," he corrected her smoothly. "Information is just another weapon to be used against your opponents. It’s basic tactics. You owe me a life. Pay it back."

The girl’s jaw tightened. She dug the heels of her boots into the stone floor, her hands balling into fists. Deep azure mana began to spark and crackle violently around her fingertips, illuminating the dark cavern. She was terrified, but the fierce, stubborn loyalty in her eyes refused to yield.

"No... I won’t," she declared, her voice losing its tremble and hardening into absolute defiance. She raised her chin, glaring right back at him. "You can kill me right here if you want to. But I will never betray them. I will never tell you."

The heavy tension hung in the air for five long, suffocating seconds. Sora tightened her grip on her weapons, ready to strike if the girl unleashed her azure threads.

But Hide simply closed his eyes. The suffocating, heavy aura bleeding from his body instantly vanished. He let out a long, quiet sigh. He had been testing her.

If she had sold out her comrades at the first sign of a threat, she would have been nothing more than a liability—a coward whose words couldn’t be trusted anyway. He actually respected her stubbornness.

"Then I don’t want anything," Hide said flatly, opening his eyes and turning his back on her to look out at the dying storm. "You are free to go."

The girl blinked a couple of times, the azure mana fizzling out at her fingertips. She stared at the back of his silver head, completely thrown off balance by the abrupt dismissal. She did not expect him to drop the interrogation so fast. A sudden, unwanted blush creeped onto her pale cheeks, a mix of lingering embarrassment from earlier and confusion.

"What, you don’t want to?" Hide frowned, glancing over his shoulder with genuine perplexity when he didn’t hear her footsteps leaving.

"No... no, I am going," she blurted out quickly, her cheeks burning hotter. She took a swift step back, channeling her mana into her legs, and executed a powerful, backward leap. She landed gracefully on a rock formation a few yards away, just outside the perimeter of the cave.

She paused for a fraction of a second, looking back at the boy in the blue jacket.

"Thank you," she said softly over her shoulder. Then, she pivoted and darted away, rapidly disappearing into the misty, broken terrain of the mountain.

Sora stood in silence, watching the girl’s silhouette vanish. She finally relaxed her posture, sliding her serrated daggers back into their sheaths with a crisp metallic click. She turned to Hide, tilting her head curiously.

"Why did you let her go like that?" Sora asked, a faint hint of bewilderment in her tone.

"Her teammates would be looking for her soon," Hide replied pragmatically, adjusting his collar. He gestured with his chin toward the rocky path leading down the mountain, indicating for Sora to take the lead.

The catastrophic hailstorm had finally stopped, the dark, bruised-purple clouds above them beginning to slowly fragment and dissipate now that the Gatekeeper was dead. The monolithic typhoon that had dominated the horizon was rapidly dying down, reducing the hurricane-force winds to a manageable, albeit freezing, gale.

They both began the precarious walk down the slick, steep incline, carefully navigating around the pulverized craters left by the lightning.

After a few minutes of silent descent, Hide added subtly, his voice calm, "Plus, she is not our enemy, nor was she actively doing us any harm. There is no logical reason to hurt her."

Sora looked over her shoulder at his completely stoic, serious face. She couldn’t help it. A soft, amused giggle escaped her lips.

Hide halted for a half-second, giving her a very sharp, highly suspicious side-eye. "Why are you laughing?"

"It’s nothing," Sora smiled brightly, her dark eyes sparkling with mirth. Despite his terrifying summons and his cold logic, the boy possessed a strangely rigid, almost endearing moral compass. He was completely clueless about how to handle a flustered girl. "Let’s run faster. The others would be looking for us too."

And it was true. They didn’t have to search the desolate landscape for long. Before they could even clear the base of the mountain, a flash of pristine, glowing white light darted through the rocky crevices. It was Yuki, Evelyn’s majestic Fox Shikigami. The ethereal beast let out a soft, echoing yip, its golden eyes locking onto them before it turned and darted away, clearly prompting them to follow.

Hide and Sora trailed the glowing fox through a maze of shattered boulders. A few minutes later, they finally arrived at a wide, relatively flat plateau overlooking the center of the dimensional grid.

When Hide and Sora stepped onto the plateau, they immediately saw seven people gathered there.

The atmosphere was incredibly tense. Standing near the left side of the clearing were three members of their own team. Gideon was leaning heavily on his massive shield, rubbing his temples with a pained grimace, clearly still suffering the lingering migraines from the dragon’s psychic roar. Rol was slouching against a jagged stalagmite, his grey eyes narrowed and alert. Evelyn stood at the front, her posture rigid and perfectly professional, flanked by the massive white fox.

Standing opposite them were four unfamiliar figures. They were members of the other team—Julian’s vanguard. They wore highly customized, incredibly expensive tactical gear, their postures radiating the relaxed, dangerous confidence of veteran killers.

Evelyn’s tense shoulders dropped slightly as she spotted them approaching. She offered a relieved smile. "Where were you two?" she asked, her voice carrying over the whistling wind.

Hide scratched the back of his head, his expression completely blank. "We were left behind because of a landslide," he lied smoothly, not missing a beat.

He moved a little further into the clearing, bypassing Gideon and Rol to get a better view of the perimeter. It was then that his glowing blue eyes spotted the remaining two missing persons from the opposing squad.

They were not so far away, isolated near a cluster of sharp rocks just at the edge of the plateau. Hide’s eyes instantly narrowed into dangerous, icy slits as he registered exactly what was happening.