Schwing!

  Another low-tier forest critter bit the dust, dissolving into a puddle of green muck. I quickly stepped back, wiping a stray splatter of monster blood off the sleeve of my pristine Azure Frost jacket.

  "Damn it," I muttered, brushing off the fabric. "If this stains, I'm finding the forest manager. This drip was expensive."

  I looked up through the thick canopy of the Death Forest. The sky was turning that bruised, dark purple color that usually meant it was time for the really nasty shit to wake up and start their shifts.

  "Night's almost here," I sighed, sheathing my Black Knight sword. "I should head back to the guest house before the D-Rank insomnia club decides I look like a midnight snack."

  I turned around to begin the trek back, but suddenly, my Spirit Sense spiked.

  It didn't scream like it did when the Earth Drake ambushed me. It just... hummed. It was a heavy, suffocating pressure, like a massive, dormant volcano was standing right behind a tree, casually watching me.

  I crept forward, parting the thick bushes with utmost caution.

  "Who's that?" I called out into the shadows.

  Standing in a small clearing, perfectly illuminated by a single shaft of moonlight, was a figure. Long white robes. Stark white hair.

  My breath hitched.

  I marched right into the clearing, pointing an accusing finger at him. "You! The creepy guy from the Colosseum! Is this the 'time' you were talking about in my head? Because if it is, I have like, a million goddamn questions."

  The man turned. He still had that resting murder-face that made him look like he could vaporize a city just by frowning, but as his eyes locked onto mine, his expression softened just a fraction.

  "Yes, the time has come," he said. His voice wasn't telepathic this time, but it still carried that heavy, mountain-crushing weight. "Hi, Ragna. I'm Jase Crimson. But most people around here know me as... the Death Incarnate."

  My brain bluescreened.

  "What?!" I blurted out, my voice cracking slightly. "You're a Crimson?! But... you have white hair! My dusty old geezer of a grandfather threw me out like expired milk because I didn't have the trademark red hair and green eyes! If you're a mutant Crimson too, why the hell are you sitting next to the King?!"

  Jase chuckled—a deep, vibrating sound that rattled my ribs. "Yes, I am a Crimson. Just like you, I also evolved into a True Demon. And I have cultivated for hundreds of years."

  "Wait, hold the fuck up," I raised my hands, doing the mental math. "Hundreds of years? What exactly is your age? Because you look like you're in your mid-twenties. Drop the skincare routine, right now."

  Jase looked up at the moon, rubbing his chin as if he were trying to remember what he had for breakfast. "I don't completely remember. Maybe eight hundred something?"

  Eight. Hundred. Years.

  "You have got to be shitting me," I whispered, my eyes bulging out of my skull. A True Demon who had been grinding for eight centuries? I gulped, feeling my arrogant protagonist bravado shrink to the size of a peanut. "And... what's your cultivation level?"

  Jase looked back at me, his expression completely flat. "I recently reached Saint Stage 1."

  My soul briefly left my body.

  Saint Stage 1.

  Level 11 on the official power scale. The 'You Get A Halo Maybe' tier. The absolute nightmare tier where Mizuki and Phiona used to blow up mountain ranges for fun before they ended up as my roommates.

  "What?!" I shrieked, totally losing my cool, stoic vibe. I took three rapid steps back, raising my hands defensively. "Um... what do you want from me?! Please don't kill me! I have very important protagonist shit to do! I have an Academy to conquer! I have a Princess to strategize with!"

  Jase sighed, shaking his head at my panic. "Ah, don't worry. I will not kill you. Talestia told me about you."

  I blinked, lowering my hands an inch. "Talestia? You mean that arrogant, glowing lightbulb Goddess? She actually did something useful?"

  "Yes," Jase continued, stepping closer. The sheer density of his aura made the air feel thick like water. "She requested me to teach you how to transform. Because the Crimson family forbade you and abandoned you, you never learned it."

  "Oh, really?" I dropped my hands completely. The fear was instantly replaced by that sweet, sweet gamer greed. A secret transformation technique from a Level 11 Saint? Hand it over. "Then what is this transformation you are talking about?"

  Jase didn't just tell me. He showed me.

  "It is this," Jase shouted, the air around him suddenly dropping below freezing.

  "BLUE ORIGIN!"

  The shockwave hit me like a physical wall, nearly blowing my damn eyebrows off.

  Jase had been standing there wrapped in those heavy, obscuring robes, his hands completely hidden inside the long, draping sleeves. But the sheer, explosive force of his mana output rejected the fabric entirely.

  His upper garments practically vaporized, tearing away like wet tissue paper. The sleeve covering his left arm shredded into confetti, completely exposing the limb.

  A blinding, suffocating blue aura erupted around him, thick and violent. His eyes glowed with an intense, electric sapphire light, and the aura literally leaked from his irises like smoke trailing from a fire. It was the most intimidating, undeniably badass thing I’d ever seen.

  Then I noticed his skin. A True Crimson Mark shone brightly through the chaotic blue energy. My hyper-observant brain registered that it looked slightly different from the standard Crimson crest I knew, and even a bit different from the jagged True Demon mark on my own back.

  But honestly? I didn't give a single flying fuck about the exact geometry right then. My eyes were glued to his left hand.

  The shredded sleeve revealed an appendage that didn't look human anymore. It was pitch black—not just a dark skin tone, but a terrifying, void-like black that seemed to swallow the moonlight. The shadows of the forest made it hard to see the exact details, but the silhouette was sharp, jagged, and predatory. It looked exactly like the hand of a monster.

  "Damn!" I breathed out, completely mesmerized, my arrogant facade melting into pure awe. "How the hell can I do this?"

  Jase’s terrifying, glowing blue eyes shifted to me. The smoke-like aura continued to drift from them. I braced myself for a complex, 400-IQ lecture on Qi pathways, atomic mana structures, and spiritual density.

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  Instead, he looked at me and said, "You just have to believe in your own body and yourself. Then, focus on the flow of your mana in your body and just shout 'Blue Origin'."

  I stared at him. The silence in the forest was deafening.

  "...Are you fucking kidding me?" I thought. That's the secret technique? The legendary training advice from the 800-year-old Saint? 'Believe in yourself'? What is this, a cheap self-help seminar?

  But arguing with a guy who had a monster arm and a smoking blue gaze seemed like a bad survival strategy.

  "Cool," I said dryly, nodding. "I will try."

  I stepped back, took a deep breath, and squeezed my eyes shut. I focused on the immense, swirling pool of Qi inside my Elemento Draco-Phoenix core. I pushed it through my veins, felt the heat, felt the pressure, believed in myself so hard it actually hurt my brain, and yelled:

  "BLUE ORIGIN!"

  Nothing. Not a spark. Not a breeze. Just a twelve-year-old boy screaming in the middle of a dark forest like an absolute idiot.

  I frowned, adjusted my stance, and tried again. "BLUE ORIGIN!"

  Still nothing. A cricket chirped somewhere nearby, just to mock me.

  I tried five more times, my voice getting hoarser and my dignity dropping lower with each failed attempt. I dropped my arms, thoroughly disappointed and feeling like an utter clown.

  Jase watched my struggle, the intense blue light around him finally starting to dim.

  "Don't worry," Jase said, his voice returning to that calm, rumbling baseline. "I too had faced difficulties unlocking it. You will achieve it soon. And yeah, after that, you can enhance it to the next level."

  Next level? My ears perked up. There's more? "I don't have time to show it to you," Jase continued, completely ignoring the burning curiosity he just sparked in me. "So find it out yourself. Now I'm going, bye!"

  "Wait, what? You're just leaving—"

  "And also remember," Jase interrupted, his tone suddenly dropping an octave, carrying a weight that pinned my feet to the ground. "You have to work three times harder than me. Good luck."

  And just like that, the aura vanished. The pressure lifted. Jase was gone, leaving me alone in the dark with nothing but a bruised ego and a magical catchphrase that didn't work.

  "Three times harder than an 800-year-old Saint," I muttered to myself, kicking a rock into the bushes. "Fucking fantastic."

  By the time I finally navigated my way out of the Death Forest and snuck back into the Academy's guest house, it was pitch black outside. The entire estate was dead silent.

  I slowly eased the heavy oak door shut, wincing as the hinges let out a tiny squeak. I tiptoed into the main parlor, hoping to just slip into my room and collapse.

  "Ragna."

  I jumped, nearly summoning my sword out of pure reflex.

  Sitting in a high-backed armchair in the corner of the dark room was Celestia. She had her arms crossed, tapping her foot on the marble floor. Even in the gloom, I could see the golden glow of her eyes narrowed in serious mom-mode.

  "Where were you?" she demanded, standing up. "It's so late!"

  I sighed, running a hand through my messy white hair. I was too exhausted to lie. "I told you, man. Right? The man on the left of the King?"

  Celestia stopped tapping her foot. Her posture stiffened. "Right..."

  "I met him," I said casually, tossing my spatial bag onto the table.

  All the blood instantly drained from Celestia’s face. Her authoritative guardian act shattered into a million pieces. She took a step back, her eyes wide with unadulterated terror.

  "W... Wha... What..." she stammered, her voice trembling so badly she could barely form the words."What did he say?"

  The words barely made it out of her mouth. She was stammering, her golden eyes wide with a kind of primal dread I hadn't seen since the Earth Drake. She looked like she had just been told the sky was falling.

  "What happened, Celestia?" I asked, genuinely confused, dropping my spatial bag onto the table. "Why are you stammering?"

  "Just te..." She swallowed hard, gripping the back of the armchair so tightly her knuckles turned white. "Tell... tell me."

  I sighed, leaning against the wooden table and crossing my arms. "Nothing much, really. He just taught me how to transform. Well, 'taught' is a strong word. He essentially flexed a glowing monster arm, shouted a catchphrase, and told me to figure the rest out myself. I haven't achieved it yet. Anyway, his name was, uh... J... Ja..."

  "Jase Crimson!" Celestia shrieked, the fear completely overtaking her voice.

  I blinked. "Yeah! Exactly. But how do you know? I mean, I know you have that highly informative 'cousin' who supposedly tells you everything, but this guy feels a little above the standard Academy gossip tier."

  "Everyone knows him," Celestia breathed out, her legs finally giving out as she collapsed back into the armchair. "He is known as the—"

  "Death Incarnate, I know," I interrupted, waving a hand dismissively. "He pitched that title to me himself. Very edgy. But why? What's the deal with him? He casually dropped that he's around eight hundred years old and at Saint Stage 1, which, mathematically speaking, is absolutely terrifying."

  Celestia just stared at me for a long moment. She looked at me as if I had just strolled back from having a casual tea party with a hurricane and was complaining about the weather.

  "Because of his history," she whispered, her voice deadly serious.

  "Then who was he?" I pressed, pulling up a chair and sitting across from her. If I was going to be taking homework assignments from an immortal ancestor, I needed the full biography.

  Celestia took a deep, shuddering breath, her eyes dropping to the floor as if reciting a sacred, forbidden text.

  "As you know, there are five half-demon families that live in peace with humans," she began, slipping into a historical lecture mode, though her voice still trembled. "Those are: Velkryss, Crimson, Cosmos, Varythys, and Tempest."

  I know the three of them, they used to be my friends when I was a child and I'm the fourth but I have no idea about the fifth.

  "These all were started from the exact same ancestor," Celestia continued, looking up at me. "He was known as the Lord of Death. No one had ever seen him. No one had heard him. But the only things people knew about him were that he had completely surpassed the limits of a demon, evolving into a Demon Lord."

  I raised an eyebrow. "A Demon Lord. Sounds like a lovely guy."

  She ignored my sarcasm, too wrapped up in the mythos. "After the Demon King lost the great war, this Lord of Death actually thought of protecting humans instead of destroying them. But one major thing stopped him: he was nearing the end of his lifespan. He was near his death."

  "So, what did he do?" I asked, actually getting invested in the lore.

  "He gave birth to five pure demons," Celestia explained softly. "Those five demons later on married humans and created these current generations—the five noble families. All of those five original demons reached incredibly high cultivation levels, but eventually, time caught up with them. At last, they all died."

  She paused, and the room seemed to drop ten degrees.

  "Except one," she whispered. "The creator of the Crimson lineage. Jase Crimson."

  I sat back, absorbing that. So the guy standing in the forest wasn't just a Crimson. He was the Crimson. The literal founding father of my bloodline.

  "He protected humans with his extreme powers," Celestia went on, her eyes reflecting pure awe mixed with that lingering terror. "He didn't just survive; he evolved to the absolute next level of demon. A True Demon. He even enhanced the transformation you were talking about. His aura alone always gave off such suffocating death vibes to his enemies that the world gave him the title 'Death Incarnate'."

  She looked me dead in the eye. "It also was given due to his lifespan... a lifespan that has not ended still, even though he's over eight hundred years old."

  Celestia swallowed hard, looking like she was telling a ghost story around a campfire. "He even defeated the Invincible Dragon, Mizuki, and the Phoenix Empress, Phiona. Both at once. And his only ally in that fight was a single human."

  I blinked.

  Wait. Mizuki and Phiona? The two arrogant, bickering divas currently renting space in my spiritual core? No wonder Mizuki was shaking like a leaf when he saw my True Demon mark in the forest. He had ancient PTSD from getting his scaly ass handed to him by my great-great-great-grandpa!

  "Then why do people fear him so much?" I asked, genuinely curious. Beating up a couple of overgrown, cocky mythical pets sounds like a public service, not a horror story.

  "People don't just fear him, Ragna," Celestia explained, her golden eyes dead serious. "They fear the aura he emits. It's... suffocating. It feels like death itself is standing right next to you, breathing down your neck."

  I frowned, crossing my arms. "Really? Because I stood right in front of him, and I didn't feel anything like that. I mean, sure, the mana pressure was heavy when he blew his clothes off to show me his arm, but he didn't feel like the grim reaper."

  Celestia looked at me like I was the densest material in the known universe.

  "Because you are a True Demon yourself, you idiot," she sighed, rubbing her temples. "On top of that, you are a Crimson. His literal blood runs in your veins. Why would his aura crush his own direct descendant?"

  "Fair point," I admitted, nodding slowly. Logic checks out. "Honestly, he sounds like a cool, badass person to me. A bit dramatic with the whole 'shredding his sleeves' thing, but definitely badass."

  "Pretty much," Celestia muttered, rubbing her arms as if trying to ward off a chill. "But I would still say he is utterly scary."

  "Yeah, he definitely has that resting murder-face going on," I agreed, remembering the absolute scowl he wore while sitting in the royal box. "But when he smiles, he actually looks amazing. Very... forgiving, almost."

  Celestia froze.

  The color that had just started returning to her cheeks vanished all over again. Her jaw dropped, and her golden eyes widened in pure, unadulterated confusion.

  "He... smiled?" she whispered, staring at me like I had just sprouted a second head. "But he never smiles. Ever."

  I shrugged, completely unfazed by her panic. "Well, he did at me. Maybe I'm just incredibly charming."

  "Huh... whatever," Celestia sighed, clearly done trying to process the sheer absurdity of my existence. She stood up, smoothing down her apron. "Let's just go to bed. It's getting late, and tomorrow we have to go back to the Academy. They will introduce you to your teammate for the next exam."