Nero stood in the aftermath, smoke rising from his shoulders, breath steady.
His body ached. His arm was singed where the axe had grazed him. But more than that, something inside him had shifted.
He had learned.
No smirk. No cocky grin. Just a quiet nod to himself.
"Until I’m truly invincible, I don’t have the right to look down on anyone."
He turned, stepping over the scorched ground.
The hunt wasn’t over.
Back to Khione’s location—just as Nero was engaging the two orcs.
High above the clearing, Khione floated in silence.
Her crystal wings barely shimmered in the light. She was completely still—invisible to the senses, her presence erased like mist on the wind.
Below her, four orcs gathered at a narrow bend in a stream. The water was clear and slow-moving, winding through moss-covered rocks and low ferns. Shafts of sunlight cut through the canopy overhead, glinting off the surface like blades of silver. It might have been a peaceful scene, if not for the monsters crouched around it.
Khione’s gaze was sharp, cold, calculating.
Four targets. No unnecessary movement. No mistakes.
She watched for another few seconds.
Two of the orcs had already finished drinking. They rose with lazy grunts, stretching their limbs and turning to walk toward the forest’s edge—no doubt to resume patrol or head back to wherever they had emerged from.
Khione’s eyes narrowed.
Perfect.
Her slender fingers rose, clutching the wand—a pale rod of glimmering crystal, humming with latent energy. With a flick of her wrist, she called upon the ambient prana, drawing it into her core. The air around her grew colder. Moisture thickened. Even the light dimmed slightly as the temperature dropped.
Then she willed her Law of Ice into motion.
Her will flowed downward—not at the orcs, but at the stream.
The water below shuddered, then, in an instant, froze solid.
It wasn’t a slow process. One moment the stream was flowing freely—the next, a thick, jagged wave of frost raced across its surface, crawling over rocks and climbing up the legs of the two orcs still kneeling within it.
Crack!
Snap!
Their limbs froze mid-motion, bodies trapped in icy restraints, mouths parting in shock but unable to scream. The two orcs on the shore turned at once, snarling, sensing danger—but it was already too late.
From above, Khione moved her wand again—this time slower, more deliberate.
She etched intricate runes in the air, delicate and complex like frost patterns forming on a winter window. Ice condensed around the tip of her wand, taking shape—not as one, but as two long, barbed arrows, their edges gleaming with a deathly chill.
She aimed.
And fired.
Two streaks of shimmering blue light tore through the air.
Swoosh—Swoosh!
The arrows hit their targets with bone-cracking precision.
One pierced through an orc’s chest, bursting out the back in a shower of icy shards. The second embedded itself directly into the skull of the other, freezing even the scream that had just begun to rise in its throat.
Crack.
In the next instant, both orcs were completely transformed—their bodies crystallized, turned to jagged, glassy ice sculptures, frozen forever in the positions they died in. One still kneeling, the other twisted back in confusion.
They didn’t fall.
They simply froze in place, like grim monuments.
Khione hovered overhead, her expression as calm and indifferent as ever.
To her, it wasn’t cruelty—it was efficiency. Precision. A clean strike with no wasted movement or mercy.
She didn’t even watch them crumble.
•••
High above the frozen stream, Khione remained statuesque—an unblinking observer cloaked in invisibility.
Below, two orcs scrambled to their feet, panic etched into every movement. They split apart—venturing in opposite directions along the icy bank.
Khione’s lips never twitched. Her serpentine crystal wings gave no hint of emotion. Every thought had been distilled into one purpose: eliminate them efficiently.
She spread her senses to cover the clearing, tracking the orcs’ trembling presences like predators slipping into silence. Each step they took across ice-crusted ground sent microfractures underfoot—their panic betraying them.
Without hesitation, Khione raised her wand, channeling ambient prana. She invoked the Law of Ice once more—the temperature dropped instantly, air crackling with frost. Snow began to spiral downward, forming a thin curtain that camouflaged her descent.
Clouded in ice mist, she glided down behind the first orc, who was stumbling through knee-high snow.
She stopped mere meters away—far enough to avoid detection, close enough for lethal accuracy.
With a graceful flick of her wrist, she formed an ice crystal dagger in her palm—a compact, barbed spike born of pure cold.
With surgical precision, she threw it without hesitation.
Thud!
The dagger sank into the orc’s neck. No sound, no scream—just the soft creak of bone as his body froze mid-breath.
Meanwhile, the second orc heard the hit and pivoted—delayed by his confusion. Khione’s second dagger formed instantly.
Whizz!
It struck the small orc in the shoulder, pinning him against a snow-dusted rock.
She moved like a ghost. No flourish. No delay. In one fluid motion, a fragmenting ice shard erupted from her wand, slicing across the second orc’s throat in a single sliver of violence. The moment ended before it began.
Both orcs collapsed—one kneeling, dagger buried in his throat; one slumped, pinned to stone. Their bodies crystallized instantly, turning to icy statues. It looked more like frost-work than murder.
Still hovering above them, wings petal-still. She observed their transformation with the same dispassionate detachment she used to plan the assault.
No triumph. No mercy. Just precision.
At the same time her smart bracelet vibrated updating their scores. Nero happened to have finished killing the two orcs on the other side. Previously they have 301 points, adding Nero’s two kills, their score rose to 311 points, now that she had finished killing the four, it added 20pts to their total tally, bringing to 331 points.
´´So, you killed two orcs bringing your total kills to four ahead of me but with my recent hunt. We are tied to the same place.’’
She who rarely smile, now wore an enchanting smile. Now that she had caught up, she had no intention of losing, she would win.