Vareth’s bloodied hand rose from the wreckage. His voice, gurgling and wet, screamed a single word.

The ground split open.

A golem erupted from beneath the street, but this one was different. Massive. Eight meters tall, its body made of compressed stone and reinforced metal from the surrounding infrastructure. It raised a fist towards the fox.

The fox didn’t dodge.

It raised both paws and caught the fist.

Starlight energy exploded from the fox’s body, blindingly bright, casting sharp shadows in every direction. The energy traveled down the golem’s arm like a disease, cracking stone, melting metal, unraveling the mana structure that held the construct together.

The golem’s fist shattered into a thousand fragments.

The fox’s body expanded. Its three-meter frame grew, stretched, swelled until it matched the giant golem in size. Starlight fur became a cascade of cosmic energy. Nine tails split into streams of concentrated power.

The giant fox and the one-handed golem exchanged punches. Each collision sent shockwaves rippling through the abandoned city, shattering windows in buildings a block away. The golem hit the fox’s shoulder. The fox hit the golem’s torso. Stone cracked. Starlight flared.

Then the fox finished it.

One punch, driven straight through the golem’s chest, starlight energy detonating on contact. The construct froze, cracks spreading across its entire body like a broken mirror, and then it exploded outward in a shower of rubble and dissipating mana.

Vareth, still buried under the collapsed vehicle, coughed blood. His connection to the golem severed, the feedback hit him like a sledgehammer. His eyes rolled back.

The last thing he saw before consciousness left him was the starlight fox towering over him, its gold eyes burning in the dust.

The starlight fox had been Rooley’s first summon.

He remembered the day clearly. Twelve years old, standing in the Slanders family summoning chamber, surrounded by elders who expected him to call forth something respectable. A wolf. A hawk. Maybe a bear if they were lucky. The Slanders family were beast summoners, and their children typically manifested creatures that matched their innate affinity.

Instead, the shadows had split open and something ancient had crawled out.

A fox pup, no bigger than a house cat, with midnight blue fur and eyes like molten gold. It had yawned, stretched, and looked around the chamber with an expression so profoundly unimpressed that the head elder had burst into nervous laughter. No one in the Slanders family had ever seen a starlight fox before. No one in any family had seen one in over four hundred years.

Its potential was absurd. Even as a pup, its mana density ranked above most adult summoned beasts. By the time Rooley entered Heaven’s Gate Academy, the fox could compete against Cassian Vale in straight combat. A summoned beast matching a human cultivator with time manipulation. The instructors had written pages of analysis about it.

But over time, something changed.

The fox grew. Not just in size, but in awareness. Its eyes gained depth that no beast should possess. It started making decisions during combat without Rooley’s input, sometimes contradicting his direct commands. It began refusing summons it deemed beneath its attention. Once, during a training exercise, it simply didn’t appear when Rooley called. It stayed in the shadow dimension and Rooley felt its displeasure like a cold lump in his chest.

It had developed an ego.

The strain of summoning it increased proportionally. Where the wolves and the wyrm flowed out of his mana like water through an open gate, calling the starlight fox felt like forcing a boulder through a pipe. It consumed enormous amounts of mana just to materialize, and maintaining its presence drained Rooley at a rate that made extended combat impossible.

So Rooley had stopped relying on it. He built his fighting style around the wolves, the wyrm, the snake, and the rocs. Versatile, efficient, sustainable. The starlight fox became a last resort that he hoped he would never need.

The only reason it answered him now was because his life was in genuine danger, and because he had promised it something it actually wanted.

More resources. Better feeding. The starlight fox didn’t care about glory or loyalty. It cared about growing stronger, and that required mana-rich materials that cost a fortune.

Rooley had just signed a very expensive contract.

The fox stood over Vareth’s broken body, its massive starlit form casting long shadows across the ruined parking lot. The criminal was barely conscious, blood bubbling from his mouth, eyes unfocused, one arm twisted.

The fox looked down at him with those ancient gold eyes. No emotion. No cruelty. Just the cold indifference of something that had killed creatures far more powerful than a Mana Heart Rank 3 criminal.

Its paw came down.

Schlick.

Vareth’s head separated from his body with a sound like a cleaver through wet wood. The body slumped. The head rolled twice before coming to rest against a chunk of broken concrete, eyes still open, mouth still frozen mid-gurgle.

[650 → 1,050 PTS]

Four hundred points from the Mana Heart Rank 3 criminal.

The Astral Zenith student was running.

The maniac grin was gone, replaced by something far more ordinary. Fear. He had watched the fox dismantle Vareth and a giant golem in seconds, and whatever madness had been driving his impact absorption euphoria had evaporated. He turned and sprinted toward the far end of the parking structure, legs pumping, arms swinging.

The roc, still circling overhead despite its earlier failures, folded its wings and dove to intercept. Lightning crackled along its talons as it aimed for the student’s back.

The student didn’t even look up. He threw a single punch backward without breaking stride.

BOOM.

The roc took the hit directly in the chest. The impact absorption ripple effect surged outward, and the bird was launched backward like it had hit an invisible wall. It tumbled through the air, wings flailing, lightning sputtering and dying, before crashing into a concrete barrier fifty meters away.

The student kept running.

Rooley watched him go. Then he looked at the fox.

The starlight fox was already moving. It didn’t run. It simply wasn’t in one place and then was in another, each reappearance accompanied by a faint shimmer of displaced starlight. It intercepted the Astral Zenith student at the parking lot’s exit, materializing directly in his path.

The student skidded to a halt, eyes wide.

The fox swiped a paw at him. He raised his arms, and the impact absorption ripple flared. The paw connected, energy surged, and the student was pushed back maybe half a meter. Still standing and grinning.

"Can’t hurt me!" he shouted, voice cracking. "Every hit makes me stronger! Keep coming!"

The fox tilted its head. Then it looked back at Rooley.