Avian moved.

  Fargrim sang through the air as he closed the distance to Tobias. The big man met him head-on, both axes coming down in a brutal cross-slash meant to bisect him at the waist. Avian dropped low and slid beneath the strike, obsidian blade cutting upward in a vicious arc. Tobias twisted—barely fast enough—the demon sword grazing his ribs instead of opening his chest completely. Blood sprayed across the forest floor.

  Tobias grunted and jumped back to create space, already assessing the damage.

  An arrow whistled past Avian's ear before he could press the advantage. He spun hard, bringing Fargrim up to deflect the second shot. The impact jarred his arms all the way to the shoulders, and the arrow exploded against his blade in a burst of concussive force that threw him sideways. A golden fist punched through the space where his head had been a heartbeat before.

  Dorian was already there, golden armor manifesting across his body in flowing plates with inhuman speed. Another punch came. Then another. Avian managed to block the first, dodged the second by inches, but the fourth caught him square in the ribs. Bones cracked with an audible snap. Air exploded from his lungs. He rolled with the impact to bleed off the worst of it and came up bleeding from a split lip.

  Why the hell are they so coordinated? I thought they were competing.

  But they moved like a team that had trained together for years—covering each other's openings, rotating pressure, never giving him space to breathe.

  Lux materialized in a burst of gold-sparked lightning and slammed into Dorian's side like a battering ram. The Hunter King's armor absorbed most of the impact, but he stumbled back a few steps. Space. Breathing room.

  Avian sucked in air and tasted copper on his tongue.

  Tobias circled left while Elara repositioned to the right, her arrow already tracking his movements with professional precision. Dorian stood center, golden gauntlets reforming around his fists. Professional killers who should be tearing each other apart for fifty thousand gold, instead fighting like they'd done this a thousand times before.

  Avian didn't give them time to set up their formation.

  Gravity surged around Tobias in a crushing wave. The big man's knees buckled under the suddenly multiplied weight, his axes dipping toward the ground. Avian closed the distance in three quick steps, Fargrim carving toward those exposed ribs. Tobias roared and pushed through the gravity field with pure physical strength, his axe coming up just in time to block. The impact sent Avian sliding backward across the dirt, boots tearing twin furrows in the earth.

  He released the gravity before it drained more mana. Tobias straightened up slowly, breathing hard, sweat dripping down his scarred face.

  Elara loosed three arrows in rapid succession. Avian twisted his body to dodge the first, brought Fargrim up to block the second, barely managed to slip past the third. It still caught his shoulder, tearing through muscle and drawing a fresh line of blood. Fargrim hummed with satisfaction as it drank in the spilled vitality.

  Dorian blurred forward in a rush of golden light.

  Avian brought his sword up on pure combat instinct. Golden fist met demon blade with a sound like a thunderclap. The shockwave flattened grass in a perfect circle around them. The impact cratered the ground beneath his feet, but instead of taking the full force, Avian twisted his blade at the last second.

  Dorian's momentum carried his punch past Fargrim's edge—redirected just enough.

  Tobias charged in during what looked like an opening, both axes raised—

  Dorian's golden fist caught him square in the face.

  The big man's head snapped back. He stumbled, axes dropping slightly as he jumped back and away. Blood streamed from his nose.

  "What the hell are you doing?!" Tobias spat blood, eyes locked on Dorian.

  "My bad—he redirected my punch!" Dorian reset his stance.

  Got one.

  Avian didn't give them time to recover. He released a focused gravity field around Tobias's legs while the man was still off-balance from the hit, multiplying his weight tenfold.

  Then reversed it.

  The sudden shift from crushing weight to weightlessness sent Tobias stumbling forward. Avian's boot caught him in the chest with all the force of an 8th Tier kick.

  Tobias flew backward like he'd been hit by a battering ram. He crashed through one tree trunk with a sound like a gunshot, then a second. Wood exploded. Both trees toppled. The big man hit the ground hard thirty feet back, axes flying from his grip.

  Bought myself maybe ten seconds.

  Avian spun to face Dorian and Elara. Two on one. Better odds than three.

  Lux hit Elara with a bolt of lightning from an unexpected angle. The archer's aura flared bright, absorbing most of the electrical discharge, but her next shot went wide by a full foot.

  A roar came from the treeline.

  Tobias burst back through the broken trunks, both axes recovered, murder in his eyes. Blood streamed from a cut on his forehead where he'd hit a tree. His wounded leg buckled slightly, but he was moving. Still in the fight.

  Fuck. Less than ten seconds. He's tougher than I thought.

  Five seconds of furious combat. Ten. Fifteen.

  Three on one again. The brief advantage gone.

  Avian was bleeding from a dozen cuts scattered across his body. His ribs screamed with every breath he took. Mana reserves dropping steadily as he burned through power to maintain combat speed and fuel his gravity manipulation.

  Can't keep this pace up much longer.

  Three professionals versus one. Math doesn't work in my favor.

  Every exchange cost him more than it cost them. Three against one, and they were rotating pressure perfectly—one engaging while two repositioned. Professional hunting tactics.

  Elara's arrow took him in the side.

  The world tilted dangerously. Avian looked down and saw the shaft embedded just below his ribs, glowing faintly with her aura. Bad. Not immediately lethal, but definitely bad if he left it in.

  No time for careful.

  He gripped the arrow shaft and yanked it free. White-hot pain. Blood poured from the wound.

  "Lux—cauterize it!"

  The spirit wolf didn't hesitate. A thin bolt of lightning hit the wound. Avian's vision went white as electricity seared flesh. The smell of burning meat. His own. The bleeding stopped, wound sealed shut with burned tissue.

  Getting sloppy. Can't track all three at once.

  Dorian's golden fist caught him across the jaw before he could fully process the injury.

  Avian hit the ground hard enough to see stars. He tasted dirt mixed with blood. His vision swam in and out of focus.

  Tobias's axe came down toward his skull.

  Avian rolled desperately. The blade buried itself deep in the earth where his head had been a moment before—and kept going. The impact split the ground in a jagged line that tore through roots and stone. A nearby tree tilted as the earth beneath it collapsed, roots ripping free. The trunk crashed down in a shower of dirt and leaves.

  Avian lashed out with his boot and caught Tobias in his still-wounded leg. The big man cursed viciously and stumbled back through the settling dust cloud.

  Avian tried to stand. Made it to one knee before his body protested.

  He pulled gravity toward himself in a defensive sphere—Dorian's incoming kick slowed as it fought against the gravitational field. Not enough to stop it completely. The golden boot still caught him in the chest, but with less force than intended. Ribs that were cracked before? Definitely broken now, grinding against each other with every movement.

  He went down again, coughing blood. Released the gravity field before it drained what little mana he had left.

  Lux tried desperately to cover him, lightning crackling in wild arcs. But Elara put an arrow cleanly through her flank. The spirit wolf yelped in pain, her physical manifestation flickering like a guttering candle flame.

  Avian's hand found Fargrim's hilt. He gripped the demon blade tight and used it to lever himself back to his feet, swaying but upright.

  Three Hunter Kings closing in slowly. Professional. Patient. Waiting for the perfect moment to deliver the killing blow.

  Stolen story; please report.

  His mana reserves sat somewhere around sixty percent. Maybe less. Hard to tell accurately through the pain signals flooding his nervous system.

  Elara's arrow remained trained on his heart. "Relax, kid. It'll be over pretty quickly."

  Avian let out a laugh. Sharp. Bitter. The kind that had nothing to do with humor.

  "Okay. Fuck it then."

  His aura exploded outward in a visible shockwave.

  Trees bent under the pressure, trunks groaning as wood strained. The ground cracked in spiderweb patterns that spread for dozens of feet. Dead leaves didn't just scatter—they disintegrated into powder from the raw pressure. Smaller branches snapped off and flew through the air like thrown daggers.

  The three Hunter Kings braced themselves, expecting another gravity-based attack.

  Instead, the air itself began to darken around them.

  One sword appeared first, embedded point-down in the ground.

  Then ten more materialized.

  Then a hundred.

  Then thousands.

  They manifested everywhere throughout the clearing—thrust into tree trunks, hanging suspended in midair at physically impossible angles, scattered across every surface. A forest of blades, all humming with the same resonant frequency that set teeth on edge.

  The forest floor began to shift and change.

  Obsidian spread beneath their feet like spilled ink, black and polished to a mirror shine. The entire clearing transformed before their eyes—dirt and grass and roots becoming the floor of a throne room that shouldn't exist.

  The thousands of swords sang in harmony, a sound felt in the bones rather than heard with ears.

  And at the very edge of the manifestation, barely visible through the forest of blades—

  A throne of black stone.

  Empty. Waiting.

  Lux emerged fully from her ring, all wounds gone as if they'd never existed. Lightning crackled across her evolved form in cascading waves, gold sparks mixing with white electricity in patterns that hurt to look at directly.

  Avian stood at the center of his projected inner world with Fargrim held loosely in one hand.

  For the first time in this life, he looked like what he'd been five hundred years ago.

  The three Hunter Kings froze completely.

  "God dammit." Elara's voice came out strangled. "A domain. That's why—" She cut herself off, future sight showing nothing but black void. "I can't see anything past this moment."

  Dorian's golden armor flickered as the domain's oppressive presence washed over him. "A fully manifested domain?" He sounded almost awed. "That's some crazy talent."

  Tobias just stared at Avian standing there.

  The kid stood at the center of it all, surrounded by manifested power that made the air itself feel heavy. This wasn't the same wounded seventh-tier fighter he'd barely survived against four days ago.

  Okay. The circumstances have changed.

  Tobias ran the calculations in his head with brutal practicality.

  Three eighth-tier Hunter Kings versus one eighth-tier domain user.

  Domains drained mana incredibly fast. Three experienced professionals working together should theoretically win this. Wait him out, let the manifestation collapse from mana exhaustion, then capitalize when he was vulnerable.

  But this kid had nearly killed Tobias before, back when he was objectively weaker.

  And Tobias's leg still wasn't fully healed from that first fight. His vitality remained partially depleted. If this engagement went badly, he'd be the first one to go down.

  We might win. Probably sixty-forty odds in our favor.

  But that forty percent? That's the scenario where I die.

  And with my leg still fucked? I'm definitely the one who goes down first in that timeline.

  Fifty thousand gold wasn't worth dying over. No amount of money was worth dying over when you couldn't spend it from a grave.

  Tobias took a deliberate step backward.

  Elara's head snapped toward him, eyes wide. "What the hell are you doing?"

  "Math." Tobias took another step back, hands moving to sheath his axes. "Kid's obviously stronger than he was four days ago. Domain manifestation means he has complete home field advantage in here. My leg's still healing and my vitality's depleted." He locked the axes into place on his back. "This isn't a fight anymore—it's a coin flip with my life as the stakes."

  "So we flip the fucking coin," Dorian said sharply. Golden armor was manifesting across more of his body, piece by piece. "Three of us can still take him if we coordinate properly—"

  "You're welcome to try." Tobias looked directly at Avian, who stood perfectly still in the center of his domain, just watching and waiting. "I'm out."

  "Fifty thousand gold!" Elara's voice cracked slightly.

  "Not worth a single copper if I'm dead and can't spend it." He held Avian's gaze for a long moment, then gave a slight nod of respect. "Nothing personal, kid. This is just business, and the business calculation says you're too dangerous now. The price isn't worth the risk anymore." A pause. "If we meet later, no hard feelings, okay?"

  He turned his back on the domain and broke into a run, wounded leg barely slowing him down. Getting distance. Getting out.

  Elara's arrow wavered. Dorian hesitated.

  And Avian smiled.

  The domain shifted at Avian's will like a living thing responding to his thoughts.

  Phantom swords ripped themselves free from the ground, the tree trunks, the air itself. They flew at Dorian in a metallic hurricane that screamed through the air, leaving contrails of disturbed space behind them.

  The Hunter King's golden armor took the first dozen impacts without failing, each strike sending off cascades of sparks that lit the domain like lightning. His manifestation held firm under the barrage.

  Then one sword punched through his shoulder. Another through his thigh. His armor cracked.

  Dorian threw himself sideways, golden gauntlets forming shields. The swords kept coming.

  Elara loosed an arrow at Avian.

  Three phantom swords intercepted it mid-flight. The arrow exploded. The swords shattered.

  Six more swords flew at Elara from different angles.

  She dodged. Rolled. Her aura flared, deflecting two. The third grazed her arm. The fourth buried itself in her leg.

  She gasped in pain and pulled it free with shaking hands. Blood poured from the wound in steady pulses.

  Avian moved through his domain.

  Phantom swords parted before him like a curtain, formed protective barriers behind him, attacked his enemies from angles that should have been impossible. Reality bent to his will within these boundaries.

  Fargrim carved reality with every swing. Black tears hung in the air where the demon blade passed, wounds in existence that took several seconds to slowly seal themselves.

  Dorian blocked one spatial cut with hastily formed shields. They shattered on impact like glass. His armor rebuilt itself, slower than before.

  "We need to separate!" Dorian called out to Elara desperately. "Split his focus between multiple targets!"

  They tried to execute the plan.

  Elara broke left in a sprint. Dorian broke right in the opposite direction.

  Avian sent dozens of phantom swords between them, creating a whirling wall of steel that cut off line of sight completely. The blades spun and weaved, blocking any attempt to coordinate.

  My world. My rules. My victory.

  Avian went for Dorian first since he was the more immediate threat up close.

  Dorian saw him coming and braced himself. Golden armor thickened across his torso and arms. Gauntlets reformed into massive fists that could crack stone.

  They clashed in the center of the throne room.

  Sparks flew in cascading showers with every impact. The obsidian floor cracked and cratered beneath them from the force of their strikes, spider-web fractures spreading outward with each exchange. Chunks of black stone flew up and shattered mid-air.

  Dorian was good—fast, experienced, trained by decades of combat against powerful opponents.

  But he was fighting in Avian's projected inner world now, where normal rules didn't fully apply.

  Phantom swords attacked from behind, from the sides, from directly above. Dorian blocked desperately, dodged when he could, but each deflection cost mana. Each reformation drained him further.

  Cracks spread across the golden armor. The manifestation flickered.

  Avian pressed his advantage without mercy. Fargrim carved a spatial cut straight through Dorian's chest in one clean motion.

  The Hunter King's armor took most of the damage, but deep cracks spider-webbed across the entire golden manifestation like it had been struck by lightning.

  Dorian stumbled backward, coughing blood.

  Lux hit him from the side with a concentrated bolt of lightning. Gold-sparked electricity tore through the weakened armor and into flesh beneath. Dorian screamed in genuine agony.

  Avian moved in to deliver the killing blow—

  An arrow slammed into his back with brutal force.

  Elara had found a vantage point on top of one of the obsidian walls and was firing through narrow gaps between the phantom swords. The arrow buried itself deep between his shoulder blades.

  White-hot pain exploded through Avian's nervous system.

  He spun around hard and sent a wave of phantom swords at her elevated position in retaliation.

  She was already moving, having anticipated his response. She fired three more arrows while falling back to a new position.

  Avian dodged two of them. Barely managed to block the third with Fargrim's blade.

  His mana was dropping alarmingly fast.

  The domain burned through power constantly—every manifested sword, every technique. Down to maybe forty percent.

  Need to finish this engagement. Right now.

  Dorian was attempting to reform his armor, but it manifested thin and weak, flickering like a dying flame. Nearly done.

  Elara's leg wound was obviously slowing her down significantly. She favored it heavily, couldn't move with her previous fluid grace.

  But Avian was rapidly running out of time and mana both.

  He pulled more power into the domain despite the cost. Dozens of phantom swords converged on Dorian's position from every possible angle.

  The Hunter King tried desperately to block them all. His golden shields shattered completely on the third impact.

  Avian didn't give him time to recover.

  Fargrim carved through the air in a horizontal arc. A spatial tear followed the blade's path—black void cutting through reality itself.

  The cut passed through Dorian at the waist.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Dorian's eyes went wide. His mouth opened.

  Then his top half separated from his bottom half.

  "Fuck..." Dorian's voice came out weak. His upper body tilted, then toppled.

  He hit the obsidian floor in two pieces.

  Elara saw her partner fall—saw him literally fall apart. Her face went pale. The professional mask cracked.

  She turned and ran.

  Not tactical repositioning. Pure flight. Sprinting toward the edge of the domain, toward normal reality where future sight would work again. Where she could see her own survival.

  If I can just get out of his radius—

  Phantom swords chased her. She blocked them while running, arrows firing backward without looking. Her future sight was blind but her combat instincts were sharp. She deflected three blades. Four. Five.

  The sixth caught her leg and embedded deep in the ground, pinning her in place.

  She stumbled, tried to pull free. Blood poured from the wound.

  She looked back over her shoulder at the carnage, at Dorian's corpse in two pieces.

  "I should've stayed home."

  The words came out bitter. Resigned.

  A phantom sword punched through the front of her head and erupted out the back.

  Elara's body went limp, pinned upright by the blade through her leg.

  Avian stood there for a moment, breathing hard. Two Hunter Kings dead. Tobias fled.

  Finally. It's over.

  But... why does everything end with a dead body with me?

  He looked around at the carnage. Dorian in two pieces. Elara pinned and dead. Blood on obsidian.

  The domain flickered—mana reserves dropping fast. Twenty percent. Maybe less.

  Need to dismiss this before I burn out completely.

  Avian dismissed the domain.

  The obsidian floor shattered like glass struck by a hammer. The thousands of phantom swords vanished into nothing. The throne room dissolved back into normal forest.

  They were back in regular reality. Normal physics. No more advantages.

  Avian let out a slow breath. His mana bottomed out at barely ten percent.

  His legs almost gave out completely under him. He caught himself awkwardly on Fargrim, using the demon blade like a cane to stay upright.

  Finally. Just need to—

  Footsteps.

  Dozens of them. Maybe more. Coming from the south through the trees.

  Of course. Can't even rest for a fucking minute.

  White cloaks emerged from the treeline, moving with military precision.

  Avian's heart sank.

  Church forces.

  Brother Harren led them—massive frame armed for war, holy power radiating from his fists. Ten elite Church knights fanned out behind him in practiced formation. Two battle mages took positions to provide magical support.

  And Seraphina.

  The girl looked like she'd aged years in just three weeks. Her face had gone harder, sharper. Eyes that had once held warmth now burned with something cold. The blessed sword in her hand burned with divine light that hurt to look at directly, and her aura screamed seventh tier to anyone with the senses to detect it.

  She stared at Avian with pure, undiluted hatred.

  This day cannot possibly get any worse.