The Jangsberg Forest in autumn is a sea of gold and copper. Thousands of pine trees tower high, their brownish needles covering the forest floor up to ankle thickness.

  The evening air was cold, sharp, and smelled of drying tree resin. The sunset's rays penetrated the gaps in the branches, creating slanted pillars of light filled with drifting dust.

  After following the guiding wind for so long, Kars finally found them, the red scorpions. He glanced towards the distance where Mira was waiting, watching the battle that was about to unfold. He decided not to let Mira join the fight due to her unstable condition after last night's dream.

  Five figures surrounded Kars in a perfect pentagon formation. They didn’t utter a single word, yet their intent to kill was so thick that Kars could sense it heavily in his instincts.

  As Meir'Dea said, on their right arm, there was a red scorpion tattoo with a sharply curved tail.

  The swordsman stood in front of Kars. The man was emaciated, his face wrapped in bandages, leaving only a pair of black eyes visible. He wore simple all-black clothing. At his waist, a sword with a black wooden sheath looked old but well-maintained. A thin mist began to seep from the pores of his skin, enveloping his legs.

  On the left side stood the giant. This man was more than two meters tall, bald, with skin that was almost the color of dry mud. His muscles were so large that the leather armor he wore seemed tight. He carried no weapon; his hands alone were the size of sledgehammers.

  On the right side stood the hunched man, his back unnaturally curved. His hair was disheveled, covering a face whose snout was beginning to elongate. His nails were black and sharply curved. The metallic smell of blood emanated from him.

  Behind Kars, a little way back, stood the red-haired one. He stood upright with burn scars covering half of his face. In his hand, a small fireball was played with like a marble, moving from finger to finger.

  Lastly, farthest away, standing atop a tall tree, was the support. A petite woman in an old moss-green cloak. Her eyes were blind, pure white with no pupils, yet in her hands, she held a spinning, hovering energy orb.

  In an instant, battle erupted without a single shout of warning.

  The woman in the tree spun her energy orb. Green light shot toward the backs of her four companions. The muscles of the giant doubled in size with a terrifying cracking sound.

  The fog at the sword bearer's feet grew thicker and wider. The fire in the red-haired person's hand changed color from orange to blue.

  Kars still stood motionless, his hands hanging casually.

  The sword bearer vanished. Not running, but completely disappeared into white mist. The next moment, the sound of metal slicing through the air came right next to Kars's neck.

  Kars just tilted his head slightly to the left. The sharp blade passed an inch from his ear. But before the attack could finish, the giant had already slammed his foot into the ground.

  The ground beneath Kars's feet exploded. Three sharp stone pillars shot upward like spears aiming to pierce him from below.

  Kars jumped backward, his movements light and fluid as if gravity were no problem. But it was a trap. The red-haired one was already waiting at his landing spot.

  The fire wizard stretched out his hands.

  Fire Style: Hot Fire Stream.

  The forest floor, covered with dry needles, ignited simultaneously within a ten-meter radius. The fire devoured everything, creating a tornado of flames that trapped Kars in the center. The heat was so intense that the pine bark near Kars blistered and hissed.

  It didn’t stop there; the hunchback let out a long howl, a sound that seemed like a mix of a bear's roar and a wolf’s howl. His body grew larger, his clothes tore, revealing thick black fur and bulging muscles. He charged into the fire tornado, indifferent to the heat as his skin had been reinforced by the wizard's magic.

  The hunchback's claw, now as long as a dagger, swung toward Kars's silhouette in the midst of fire.

  Explosions of dust and smoke soared high. The forest trembled. Birds flew away in panic, leaving their nests.

  The five members of the red scorpions landed back in their respective positions, their breathing steady.

  It was a combination attack that had killed hundreds of kingdom knights and high-level monsters. No one could survive an invisible sword slash, a stone spear, a fire prison, and a physical monster tearing simultaneously.

  They each laughed, feeling satisfied that they had not given their opponent a chance to fight back and eliminated them in a short time.

  However, the woman on top of the tree suddenly screamed, her blind eyes wide open. The energy orb in her hand cracked.

  “ABOVE!”

  They looked up.

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  In the darkening evening sky, above the tops of the pine trees, Kars was floating. No wings, he was simply standing in the air as if gravity had forgotten him. His robe was still clean, without a single stain.

  Around his body, three small marble-sized glowing balls whirled dazzlingly.

  "Decent teamwork," said Kars. His voice was calm, clearly audible to his five enemies despite the distance. "For insects, that is."

  The five of them reacted immediately.

  The mist in the forest suddenly thickened, reducing visibility to zero. Within the dense fog, the sword wielder moved at the speed of sound. He bounced from tree to tree, creating dozens of afterimages.

  At the same time, the supporter on the tree chanted a spell. "Gravity Chain!"

  "Now!"

  The sword wielder appeared right behind Kars, who was being pressed by gravity. His sword glowed black, infused with Rotten Crystals. He slashed horizontally, aiming for the neck.

  Kars did not turn. The small balls of light surrounding him moved on their own.

  One of the balls of light streaked across, cutting the path of the sword. When it made contact with the steel of the sword, the ball of light didn’t explode; instead, it instantly melted the blade.

  The sword wielder's eyes widened in horror as he watched half of his sword vanish into molten metal.

  Light Style: Solid Photon.

  Before the sword wielder could retreat, Kars twisted his body. It wasn’t a rough or messy rapid movement, but a movement too fast for the eye to process. Kars' hand reached out, his index finger touching the sword wielder’s forehead.

  “Good night.”

  A flash of white light pierced through the back of the sword-wielder’s skull. There was no blood. The heat from the light immediately sealed the wound. The thin body fell through the air like a doll, landing on a pile of pine needles with a pitiful sound.

  One dead.

  “DAMN IT!” The red-haired one roared in anger.

  He brought his hands together. The fire in the forest was drawn toward him, forming a mini sun-like fireball above his head.

  Fire Design: Fireball.

  He hurled the gigantic fireball at Kars. Its heat caused the pine leaves within a fifty-meter radius to dry up and burn immediately.

  Kars stared at the fireball with a bored look. He raised his right hand, palm open.

  'You play with fire in front of the sun?'

  The air around Kars changed its nature. The air vibrated violently. The oxygen in front of his palm became ionized.

  Plasma Style: Plasma Roar.

  A purple-white beam as wide as a coconut tree trunk erupted from Kars's palm. The beam hit the enemy's giant fireball.

  There was no collision. Kars's plasma consumed the fire. The plasma's temperature, reaching thousands of degrees, made the wizard's fire look like cold water. The purple beam pierced the fireball, erasing it from existence, and continued toward the red-haired individual.

  The Red-haired didn't even have time to scream. The moment the purple light touched him, his body didn’t burn. He vaporized. Flesh, bones, and clothing disintegrated into atomic particles in a fraction of a second. The light kept moving, slicing through the forest, toppling hundreds of trees behind it in a straight line, leaving a trench of molten glass blazing on the ground.

  Two dead.

  Silence once again enveloped the forest, this time more ominous. The sharp smell of ozone replaced the scent of pine resin.

  The giant and the hunchback stepped back. Cold sweat poured down their backs. The monster before them was not human. It was a demon in human form.

  "Run..." whispered the woman atop the tree, her voice trembling violently. The energy orb in her hand fell and shattered into pieces. "We can’t win. Its Intian Level... is immeasurable."

  "No one runs," said Kars. He had now set foot on the ground again.

  The hunchback, driven by the instincts of a cornered beast, chose to attack rather than die in fear. It roared, its leg muscles tensing, and it leapt at Kars with bullet-like speed. Its mouth opened wide, ready to tear out a throat.

  Kars did not dodge. He merely raised his left hand, as if swatting a fly.

  Kars' hand was enveloped in a layer of transparent white light. When the hunchback's claws struck that hand, they shattered into pieces.

  Kars grabbed the monster's snout.

  His grip tightened. Light began to seep through the gaps between his fingers into the monster's facial skin.

  Starlight Purification.

  The monster screamed, a scream that slowly turned from the roar of a beast into a heartbreaking human scream. The light burned in his blood. Its feathers fell out, its muscles shrank forcibly, its bones crackled as it was forced back into human form.

  Within five seconds, the monster figure had returned to being a naked, skinny man whose skin was blistered red. He fell to his knees, his breath coming only one at a time. His nervous system was completely destroyed due to the forced change of form. He died from an extraordinary body shock.

  Three dead.

  Now only the giant and the Support Woman remain.

  The giant, seeing his companion die horribly, lost his sanity. He slammed the ground with both hands.

  Earth Style: Iron Prison Fortress!

  A two-meter-thick wall of stone mixed with iron ore rose up, surrounding him. He did not attack. He hid. He created the strongest protective dome he could, enclosing himself in a giant stone sphere.

  Kars walked slowly toward that stone dome. His footsteps could be heard crunching over the remnants of burnt ashes.

  He stopped right in front of the stone wall.

  “No matter how hard the material in this universe is,” Kars pressed his palm against the rough surface of the stone, “It will turn to dust in the face of a star.”

  He didn’t use a massive explosion this time. He channeled a high-frequency vibration through his palm.

  Star Style: Pulsar Resonance.

  A low buzzing sound could be heard. The stone dome began to vibrate. The vibrations grew faster and the pitch higher. Hairline cracks began to appear on the stone's surface.

  Inside the dome, the giant covered his ears, screaming in pain as the vibration shattered his internal organs. The frequency was tuned to break the bonds of every molecule.

  The stone dome didn’t explode outward, but crumbled into fine sand.

  The giant sat in the middle of the pile of sand, blood flowing from his eyes, nose, and ears. His brain had been liquefied by the resonance vibrations. His body collapsed forward, buried by the sand from his own magic.

  Four dead.

  Kars looked up, staring at the only one left. The Support Woman on the tree.

  The woman did not try to run. Her legs were weak. She cried silently, tears streaming from her blind eyes. She knew distance was not a problem for the man below.

  "Where is the seed?" asked Kars.

  "Mo-monster... Scorpion..." stammered the woman. "We... we were just told to..."

  "I know," Kars interrupted. "That was a rhetorical question."

  Kars raised his index finger, pointing it like a gun at the woman in the tree. The tip of his finger glowed light blue.

  "Please..." sobbed the woman. "I have a child... I..."

  Kars yawned, bored. "A cliché excuse," Kars cut in coldly. His gaze showed no mercy. “Where is the monster?”

  "Towards the sunrise... St-straight ahead."

  Light Bullet.

  A thin beam, no thicker than a needle, shot from Kars' finger. The beam pierced the woman's forehead, went through the tree trunk behind her, and disappeared into the night sky.

  The woman's body went limp, then floated down from the high branch. Her green cloak fluttered like the last dry leaf falling that season. She landed with a soft thud on a pile of pine needles.

  Five dead.

  The forest was silent again.