The elevator doors slid open on the executive floor of Quantum Nexus Tower. Daniel Voss stepped out with his usual calm and composed stride, followed closely by his assistant, Peter, who carried a tablet, files, and a business bag. Bringing up the rear was Knox, his bodyguard—an F-rank Hunter.
He nodded politely to the receptionist as he passed. She smiled back—too tightly, too quickly, her eyes darting away. Further down the hall, two employees near the coffee station fell silent the moment they saw him, pretending to be absorbed in their cups. The air felt wrong, thick with something unspoken.
Daniel frowned faintly but kept walking—first toward his private lab at the end of the corridor. The reinforced door stood slightly ajar. The electronic lock panel was cracked, wires exposed, the seal broken.
He stopped. Stared for a long second. Then, without a word, turned on his heel and headed for the executive conference room.
Peter noticed the broken door too. “Sir—”
“Not now,” Daniel said quietly.
The frosted glass doors to the conference room were closed. Through them, he could see shapes moving. He pushed them open.
Inside, Liam sat at the head of the long table. Flanking him were five senior executives—finance, operations, HR, two division heads. On the massive wall screen behind them, a video conference grid showed the faces of the major shareholders, all watching in silence.
Liam looked up, calm and composed. “Daniel. Right on time.”
Daniel stepped in, letting the doors swing shut behind him. Peter and Knox followed.
On the screen, one of the shareholders—a gray-haired woman who had invested in the very first seed round—cleared her throat. “By majority vote of the board and shareholders present, effective immediately, Daniel Voss is removed from his position as CEO and Chairman of Quantum Nexus. Liam Hale is appointed interim CEO until a formal election.”
The words hung in the air.
Daniel’s expression didn’t change. He looked slowly from the screen to Liam. “So I take it I’m to understand that you and these executives have betrayed me. Some of the shares needed for that vote are in your collective hands. This only works if you all turned.”
Liam gave a small, almost apologetic shrug. “It’s business.”
Peter exploded forward a step, face red. “Business?! Liam, are you insane? Mr. Daniel pulled you out of a mountain village with no roads, no power, nothing! He paid for your education, your apartment, your braces, your first suit—everything! He gave you a job, a department, a directorship—over people with decades more experience—because he saw something in you! And this is how you thank him?!”
Liam turned to Peter with mild, patient amusement. “There it is. The rescue story. I knew it would come up.”
“It’s not a story,” Peter snapped. “It’s fact. You had nothing—”
“And I made something of it,” Liam cut in smoothly. “I took what he gave me and multiplied it a hundred times over. That’s the part you always forget.”
“You only had the chance because he trusted you!”
“Trusted me to run day-to-day operations on a shoestring budget while he funneled every spare dollar into his private quantum obsession,” Liam said, voice sharpening. “He kept us scraping by on routine Hunter gear contracts—profitable, yes, but small. Safe. Boring. He never let us touch the real future. Never let us invest in anything bold. All the capital went to his solo project, locked away in that lab no one else was allowed to enter.”
“I was always ‘the boy you saved,’” Liam said, spreading his hands. “Always supposed to be grateful. Always supposed to wait for your nod. How many years, Daniel? How many times did you say ‘not yet’?”
He leaned forward.
“I’m not ungrateful, Peter. I’m ambitious. There’s a difference.”
Daniel spoke for the first time since the announcement, his voice low. “Your new boss isn’t just interested in that small, safe, boring business, is he?”
Liam smiled—this time genuinely, almost with admiration. “Sharp as ever. Yes, they wanted the quantum energy technology you’ve been developing for yourself. You turned them down, calling their vision ‘insufficient.’ Too proud. So they came to us instead. Quietly bought up loose shares and persuaded certain board members that the company needed a new direction. Last night, they gained access to your lab.”
He spread his hands.
“Nothing there. Cleaned out. Just some empty drives and a very neat desk.”
Liam’s smile faded into something colder.
“So now we’re left with the less friendly option. We need the full schematics, Daniel. The real ones. The ones only you know.”
Daniel’s eyes narrowed. “This is illegal. Theft, coercion, breach of fiduciary duty—”
Liam burst out laughing—sharp, genuine, echoing off the glass walls.
“Illegal?” He wiped his eye, still chuckling. “Daniel, please. Don’t insult me. Law is for the little people. Down there.” He gestured vaguely toward the city far below. “Up here, in the new world—Gates, monsters, Hunters who can level buildings—the law is a joke. Power decides. Always has.”
He nodded once.
From the shadows behind him, two broad-shouldered men in dark suits stepped forward—both radiating the unmistakable pressure of awakened Hunters, mid-rank at least. Their eyes glowed faintly.
At the same moment, Knox—Daniel’s own bodyguard—reached back and turned the lock on the conference room doors. The click was soft, final.
Peter took an involuntary step back, eyes wide.
Liam rose slowly from the chair.
“Last chance to do this the easy way, Daniel. Give us the designs. Walk away rich and alive. Or…”
He didn’t finish the sentence. The two Hunters flexed their fingers, faint auras flickering to life.
Peter stepped forward, placing himself squarely between Daniel and the approaching hunters.
Liam sighed dramatically. “Peter, Peter… always the loyal stray. You should just step aside and pretend you don’t see it. Daniel isn’t worth you risking your miserable life for. You need to understand that Daniel only keeps you around because you’re foolish enough to stay—he doesn’t value you at all.”
Like Liam, Peter was also a young man rescued by Daniel from the depths of society—a drunken thug left to die beneath a bridge. Unlike Liam, Peter hadn’t had much education and didn’t grasp many principles. It was clear that Daniel kept him close precisely because his mind was simple. And because of that simplicity, Peter could only understand straightforward truths—like the idea that a debt of gratitude must be repaid.
“I’m not moving,” Peter said, voice low but unwavering. “You want him, you go through me first.”
Peter struck first. Having survived life on the streets and countless brutal alley fights, he understood all too well that an ordinary person stood no chance against a hunter—especially not two. Yet, low-level hunters like these often ended up as mere lackeys for the wealthy. They weren’t invincible; he just had to be fast enough, dirty enough, and there would always be a way to take them down.
He snatched the thick stack of briefing files from under his arm and flung them like a shotgun blast of paper toward the two oncoming Hunters. Sheets exploded in a white storm, slapping faces, fluttering into eyes, buying him a heartbeat of confusion.
In that heartbeat, Peter was already grabbing the heavy crystal water glass from the table. He smashed it full-force into the nearest Hunter’s head as the man clawed papers away. Glass shattered on impact; the Hunter reeled, blood streaming from a split brow.
Peter followed without pause, swinging the sleek metal-framed tablet in a vicious arc. It slammed into the already-broken glass , the crystal exploded a second time, razor-sharp fragments spraying outward. The shard caught square in his eyes. The man screamed, clutching his face, staggering blindly.
But the other Hunter's mana-reinforced fist crashed into Peter’s side, lifting him off his feet and hurling him three meters across the room.
Pain detonated in his ribs—something definitely cracked. He hit the carpet hard, gasping.
The Hunter ignored him now, eyes locked on Daniel. Easy target. Real prize.
He stepped over Peter’s crumpled form.
Big mistake.
Peter’s fingers closed around the leg of a office chair. With a guttural snarl he surged up, swinging the chair two-handed like a club.
The Hunter turned, smirking, and lazily raised an arm to block—Peter let go of the chair mid-swing.
It clattered harmlessly against the Hunter’s forearm.
In the split second of surprise, Peter drove forward and buried a brutal uppercut straight into the man’s groin. The Hunter’s face twisted in agony, breath hissing through clenched teeth, legs buckling inward.
Not enough.
The awakened body held.
With a roar of fury, the Hunter backhanded Peter across the room again. Peter slammed into the wall and slid down, coughing blood, vision swimming. Yet he forced himself to rise—he wasn’t beaten yet, not by a long shot.
Across the conference room, chaos erupted in heartbeats.
Daniel didn’t hesitate. The moment Knox locked the door and turned with that smug flicker in his eyes, Daniel was already moving—sliding sideways along the length of the long table, putting the heavy slab of polished wood between himself and hix ex-bodyguard.
Knox snorted, a low, contemptuous sound. “Running already?”
He bent his knees and pushed off—not a jump, but a Hunter’s leap. His body rose effortlessly, clearing the table in a shallow arc, high enough that no ordinary human could ever hope to match it. From above, he looked down at Daniel like an eagle spotting a rabbit, eyes glowing faintly with awakened power, lips curled in a predator’s sneer.
But he wasn’t the eagle.
The instant Knox’s feet left the floor, Daniel stopped retreating. He planted his weight, shifted into a tight guard, and waited.
Knox descended.
Just before his boots touched the marble, Daniel exploded upward—a sharp, whipping hook kick that caught Knox’s supporting leg mid-air. The impact jerked Knox sideways; balance gone, he crashed head-first toward the floor.
Daniel was already following through. His fist hammered down like a piston toward Knox’s temple.
Knox twisted at the last second, rolling away. The punch missed flesh and smashed into the marble instead.
CRACK.
A spiderweb of fractures radiated from the impact point—deep, clean breaks that no unawakened human should have been able to inflict.
Knox sprang back to his feet, staring at the cratered floor in disbelief. He had guarded Daniel for months. He knew the man was ordinary—brilliant, yes, but ordinary.
“What the hell…?”
His eyes narrowed. He activated [Observe].
A faint, almost laughably thin thread of mana flickered inside Daniel’s body—barely a wisp compared to the torrent that roared through any true Hunter. But it was there.
Knox’s shock lasted half a second. Then it turned into a grin.
“So the nerd has some mana now? How adorable. But it’s pathetic— that tiny trickle won’t save you.”
He lunged, raw and aggressive—pure awakened strength and instinct, no finesse, no technique.
Daniel met him calmly.
A jab came high; Daniel slipped it with a subtle lean. A wild hook followed; Daniel ducked under and answered with a crisp counter to the body. Every strike Knox threw was powerful enough to shatter bone, but they were telegraphed, clumsy. Daniel moved like he’d drilled these exchanges a thousand times—kickboxing footwork, tight angles, perfect distance.
Each of Daniel’s counters carried that faint mana thread. Not enough to pierce Hunter-reinforced skin, not enough for lethal damage—but enough to hurt. Ribs, head, solar plexus. Knox grunted with every clean hit, surprise turning to anger.
“Keep scurrying like a rat,” Knox growled, circling. “You’ll still go down. You can’t break through a real Hunter’s body with that toy mana.”
The moment the words left his mouth, Daniel exhaled—slow, deliberate.
His stance shifted.
Shoulders dropped, weight settled lower, hands looser at his sides. He looked almost relaxed.
But the air around him changed.
Knox felt it immediately—a prickling at the back of his neck, the instinctive alarm every awakened fighter knows. He didn’t understand where the danger was coming from, but his body reacted anyway. He charged harder, trying to overwhelm before whatever was coming could arrive.
Daniel didn’t meet him head-on anymore.
He flowed.
Slips became tighter. Parries became redirects. Every time Knox committed, Daniel was already elsewhere—then back in, fist snapping into the exact same spot on Knox’s left flank, over and over.
Once. Twice. Five times.
Knox snarled, trying to guard the bruised area, but Daniel never gave him the chance. A feint high drew Knox’s arms up; a low kick forced him to drop his elbow; a blinding jab toward the eyes made him flinch—always opening that same vulnerable rib for another punishing shot.
Ten impacts. Twelve.
Each one drove deeper, the faint mana concentrating like a needle behind the knuckle.
Knox’s breath hitched. Pain bloomed hot and sick under his ribs.
He staggered, trying to create distance, but Daniel stayed glued—calm, relentless, surgical.
The final body shot landed with a dull, wet thud.
Knox folded.
He dropped to one knee, then both, clutching his left side. Blood flecked his lips; his face had gone gray.
The liver—that’s the true target of Daniel’s punches. Internal bleeding occurs as the liver is repeatedly lacerated from trauma inflicted on the exact same spot.
Daniel silently thanked Bella for all she had done for him—for enduring his unreasonable demands and loving him. Thanks to her, he now had a bit of mana within him, allowing his punch to finally break through the defense of a true Hunter.
Daniel spun toward the commotion on Peter’s side of the room—just in time to see a mana-charged fist rocketing straight at his face.
He twisted at the hips, riding the punch instead of blocking it head-on. The impact still glanced off his temple, sending stars exploding across his vision and a dull ring through his skull. He staggered half a step, blinking hard to clear the haze.
Through the blur, he caught the rest of the scene.
Peter lay crumpled against the wall, motionless in a spreading pool of dark blood. A few feet away, the other Hunter was on his knees, clutching his face and screaming, blood seeping between his fingers.
The last Hunter didn’t give Daniel much time to think.
He came in with a wild, sweeping kick, mana flaring around his shin like blue fire.
Daniel ducked under it, feeling the wind shear across the top of his head. The Hunter was just like Knox, raw power dumped into an ordinary body with no discipline, no technique. A lottery winner swinging a sledgehammer.
The problem was, Daniel’s own mana—the thin, hard-won thread he had coaxed into existence—was spent. The fight with Knox had wrung him dry.
The Hunter sensed it. His grin widened, feral and confident.
“No more tricks left, boss?”
Daniel didn’t answer with words.
His eyes flicked to the sleek black briefcase Peter had carried in and set beside the door. It was still there, untouched amid the chaos.
He lunged for it.
The Hunter laughed and charged after him—but Daniel managed to grab the briefcase just in time.
A low mechanical whir filled the room.
Panels unfolded. Segments telescoped. Servos clicked and locked.
In three seconds, the briefcase had reconfigured itself into a heavy, matte-black gauntlet that clamped seamlessly around Daniel’s right forearm and hand, glowing circuits racing across its surface like living veins.
The remaining executives—Liam included—went very still.
Daniel flexed his fingers once, the gauntlet humming in response.
“I really didn’t want to use this,” he said quietly, voice steady despite the blood trickling from his temple. “It’s still unstable. If the core overloads in a confined space like this… we all die. No exceptions. Don’t blame me if it happens.”
The people in the room panicked at what he said. Liam opened his mouth to speak, but his words were drowned out by a surge of energy. The hunter hesitated, his bravado wavering.
In his open palm, a brilliant white-blue light condensed—intense, focused, and humming with quantum fury.
He fired.
The beam punched clean through the Hunter’s right shoulder in a flash of ionized air. Flesh and bone vaporized around the entry wound; the exit left a fist-sized hole cauterized black. The man screamed once—a raw, animal sound—before collapsing, unconscious or worse.
Silence crashed over the conference room.
Every face had gone ashen.
They were staring at exactly what they had come for.
Not the gauntlet itself—though that was impressive enough—but the energy it had just unleashed. A contained quantum micro-core discharge. The kind of power that could punch through mid-rank Hunter reinforcement and monster hide like tissue paper. The kind of power that made conventional firearms obsolete against anything that crawled out of a Gate.
And the man they had just tried to strip of his company, his life’s work, his freedom—was the only person on Earth who could reliably produce it.
Liam’s mouth opened, then closed. For the first time, real fear flickered behind his eyes.
The surviving executives shifted nervously. A few glanced toward the locked doors, as if suddenly remembering the world outside.
Because none of this mattered anymore.
The plan was to control Daniel and seize his technology; everything behind the scenes would have been easy to handle. But now, letting Daniel escape is no longer that simple. His younger brother and father are both powerful Hunters, and they won’t allow Daniel to find himself in such a situation again.
As for them, who failed to steal the technology from Daniel—they have become nothing more than discarded pawns, unwanted and unprotected. Prison would be the kindest fate any of them could hope for.
Daniel lowered the gauntlet slowly. The core’s glow dimmed, but the hum remained, a quiet warning.
He hurriedly checked Peter’s condition and sighed with relief upon seeing that he was still breathing. Quickly picking him up, he glanced across the ruined conference room—at the groaning Hunters and at Liam’s pale, frozen face—before heading out.
Then he spoke, voice soft but carrying perfectly in the stunned quiet.
“Meeting adjourned.”