Hide stood perfectly still at the edge of the plateau, his glowing blue eyes narrowing into absolute, icy slits.

A few dozen yards away, amidst the rocks, the man in the dark red combat trench coat held the grey-haired girl completely suspended in the air. His thick, leather-clad fingers were clamped around her throat.

She kicked frantically, her hands desperately clawing at his unyielding forearm as she was violently choked.

This was the same man who had just ridden a dying dragon to the earth. The dragon killer.

Suddenly, as if sensing Hide’s gaze fixed upon his back, the man in the red coat stopped. He didn’t release his grip on the girl’s neck, but he snapped his head over his shoulder to look directly at the him.

Hide didn’t flinch. He didn’t look away or lower his posture. He stared right back into the stranger’s face, meeting his gaze with a cold, terrifying apathy.

Up close, the man’s face was a horrifying canvas scars. He only possessed one functioning eye—a piercing, deadened brown iris that carried the heavy, suffocating weight of countless slaughters.

His left eye was missing. In its place was a massive, sickening scar that looked deep enough to have scraped his skull, a wound that had clearly never healed properly.

A layer of unnervingly pale, almost translucent skin stretched tightly over the sunken cavity, and beneath that fragile membrane, thick, pulsing purple veins throbbed.

The wind howled across the dying gate, but neither of them blinked.

They maintained eye contact for ten agonizingly long seconds.

Finally, the scarred man’s single eye twitched. He broke the silence with a dismissive scoff. With a careless flick of his wrist, he simply threw the girl away like a piece of discarded garbage.

She sailed through the air and hit the hard, slick surface of the plateau with a sickening thud. She tumbled helplessly across the ground, her temple violently clipping the jagged edge of a protruding stalagmite. A sharp cry escaped her lips as blood immediately began to trickle down the side of her face, staining her grey hair crimson.

Hide used Phantom step and dissolved into a blur of dark, inky mist. Bypassing the physical space entirely, he materialized directly behind the fallen girl, intending to help her.

But the moment Hide’s boots touched the stone, he froze.

A heavy tip of a dark-metal lance was resting exactly half an inch away from the center of Hide’s chest, aimed flawlessly at his heart.

Hide’s pupils shrank to pinpricks. The scarred man hadn’t lunged or stepped forward; he had simply manifested the massive polearm and closed the distance with a speed that utterly defied the laws of physics.

The talent and reaction time required to anticipate and counter Hide’s skill instantly was staggering. This guy was by far the most talented one hide had ever seen.

The man in the red trench coat looked at Hide, his single brown eye entirely devoid of emotion.

"Mind your own business," the man warned. "And she is not your business."

Hide didn’t step back from the spear point. He slowly shifted his gaze downward, looking at the grey-haired girl lying on the stone floor. She was clutching her bleeding head, coughing violently as she desperately tried to drag oxygen back into her bruised windpipe.

Hide’s eyes darted toward the other three members of Julian’s team standing across the clearing. They were casually checking their weapons or adjusting their gear. Not a single one of them even bothered to glance in the girl’s direction. They watched their own teammate get choked, thrown, and left bleeding on the dirt without a shred of concern.

A profound, sickening wave of disgust swelled in Hide’s stomach. They weren’t a team.

"Step back..."

The urgent, strained whisper came from directly behind Hide’s shoulder. Gideon had silently moved up. The tension was on a razor’s edge. A single flinch would ignite a bloodbath between the two squads.

"All the beasts are dead."

Evelyn’s clear, authoritative voice broke the suffocating silence. She stepped forward as Raiko, her massive, lightning-striped Shikigami, returned to her side, its jaws stained with fresh monster blood.

The gate was officially cleared.

The scarred man glanced at the glowing tiger, then back at Hide. Very slowly, he lowered the tip of his weapon, the dark-metal lance dissolving into a mist of ambient particles.

"I have no intention of making enemies before the tournaments even begins," the red-coated man declared coldly, turning his back on them. He raised a hand, gesturing lazily to his indifferent team. "My squad will get out first. You all can follow behind."

Without waiting for a response, the four others along with him began walking toward the swirling exit portal that had just manifested at the highest peak of the plateau.

Hide slowly exhaled, the dark mana pooling in his palms dissipating. He looked down at the grey-haired girl, who was still trembling on the ground. Without a word, Hide crouched down and extended his hand to help her up.

Smack.

The girl violently jerked her arm, slapping his hand away. She glared at him, her eyes shining with a mixture of humiliation and stubborn pride, before scrambling to her feet. Ignoring the blood dripping down her temple, she turned and sprinted after her squad without a single backward glance.

Hide watched her go, his expression returning to a mask of flat, unbothered stone. He slowly stood up.

"Let’s move out," Evelyn instructed, her voice tight with relief that a fight had been avoided.

Hide and his team followed quietly behind the vanguard, hiking up the final stretch of the incline. The atmosphere was somber.

The sheer display of power from the opposing team had firmly reminded everyone exactly what kind of people they would be facing in the international tournament.

They reached the summit. The exit portal hummed violently, casting a strange, rippling light over the cracked stone.

Evelyn stepped through first, followed by Rol, who gave the surrounding area one last paranoid sweep. Gideon offered Hide a respectful nod before vanishing into the tear. Sora paused at the threshold, looking back at Hide with a soft smile.

"Coming?" she asked.

"In a second," Hide replied flatly. "Go on ahead."

Sora nodded, stepping through the spatial distortion and leaving Hide entirely alone in the gate.

Hide stood at the threshold of the exit, the violet light washing over his silver hair. He should have left.

But Hide couldn’t take the final step.

Something weird was echoing in his mind. It wasn’t a sound; it was a strange pull.

Hide turned his head away from the exit portal and looked back down the mountain.

Resting at the base of the crushed valley, half-buried under thousands of tons of pulverized rock, the colossal corpse of the blue lightning dragon lay motionless.

The Gatekeeper had been slaughtered by another, but It seemed as if it was calling out to Hide.

Hide gulped hard.

Instead of stepping into the exit portal, He turned his back on safety, triggered Phantom Step, and plunged back down the mountain to the corpse.