The morning in Oakhaven smelled of yesterday's rain and stale smoke. I yawned powerfully, opening my eyes slowly in my room. I stretched my stiff muscles. The joints in my shoulders popped with a dry crunch. Night regeneration in the safe tavern did its job. My internal reactor worked silently, pumping sapphire mana straight into my bloodstream. I walked down the creaky stairs. Elena was bustling by the hearth, preparing a meal. I grabbed a piece of roasted meat from the oak counter and took a bite, chewing slowly.
"We are going for a morning walk," I threw to Shnee, who was already standing in full gear by the door. The white-haired elf nodded. Her diamond eyes shone with readiness in my presence. We stepped outside. The city was slowly waking up, and the muddy streets were filling with morning noise. The City Council was located at the very top of the Upper City. The walk took us several minutes. I completely ignored the arrogant gazes of the armored guards at the gates. I had no intention of asking for an audience. I kicked the massive gates open. The heavy wood groaned and opened with a crash. We entered the spacious assembly hall.
Over a dozen councilmen of Oakhaven sat at a large table. They wore decorated silk robes. They smelled of fear, cheap perfumes, and corruption. Around them stood the remnants of the Crimson Trail mercenary guild with weapons in hand. The armed men immediately drew their swords. Their commander took a step forward.
"How dare you?!" roared a bloated official, slamming his fist on the table. "You are in the heart of power! Guards, kill them on the spot!".
I scratched my neck. I yawned shortly, baring my teeth, and my Brazen chill completely filled the room.
I had no intention of casting any spectacular fire spells. I did not even release a wave of destructive aura. On pure logic, I saw a much simpler, bloodless solution. The human body is ultimately just a collection of soft tubes pumping fluids. If you cut off their oxygen supply, all this aristocratic pride simply fades in a few seconds. I focused my point telekinesis. The invisible force penetrated directly into their bodies, bypassing thick armors. I tightened mental pincers right on their carotid arteries. I blocked the blood flow. A split second later, I tightened a second loop on their windpipes.
A dead silence immediately fell in the assembly hall. The councilmen and officials turned purple in a fraction of a second. Their eyeballs bulged from their sockets. The armed mercenaries dropped their swords, and the steel hit the marble floor with a loud clink. Every single one of them fell to their knees. They choked on their own saliva. They greedily gasped for air that physically could not reach their lungs. They wheezed pitifully, scratching their necks in panic. I crushed their blood vessels from a distance with surgical precision.
I walked across the hall with a slow pace. I kept my hands deep in the pockets of my coat. I looked down at the establishment writhing at my feet.
"The market abhors a vacuum," I stated coldly, and my voice echoed through the chamber. "You ordered the murder of my personnel. That was a critical mistake. Oakhaven is passing under new management. Silas takes over your ledgers, debts, and tolls. If anyone tries to block his interests, I will simply forget to release this grip. Understood?".
The councilmen nodded spasmodically, spitting on the carpets. I released the telekinetic blockade. Air rushed into their flaccid lungs with a loud whistle. They coughed, vomited, and writhed on the floor, completely stripped of their dignity. I turned on my heel. We left the building in silence. The bureaucracy was successfully utilized.
We returned to the Golden Griffin. The atmosphere inside our base was idyllic. Luthia was wiping the oak counter. Mina was arranging clean mugs on the shelves, and Ria was helping in the kitchen. I stood at the bar, pouring myself a cup of cold water from a jug.
The idyll was interrupted by a deafening roar. Someone from the outside hit our front doors. It was a massive momentum. Some paid thug, a survivor of yesterday's purges, tried to force the gates with his own body to exact revenge. The raw physics of destruction worked. The autonomous kinetic barrier, which I had connected to the vibrating core in the basement last night, reacted flawlessly. Instead of absorbing the hit, it simply returned one hundred percent of his own momentum to the intruder. A terrifying crack resounded. I clearly heard breaking ribs.
I opened the surviving doors. On the pavement, across the muddy street, lay a massive mercenary. He was thrown back by the rush of his own charge like he collided with a speeding wagon. His chest was completely caved in. He gasped for breath with difficulty, spitting thick blood onto the mud. He misjudged the physics of hard collisions. They paid him to swing a sword, not to think. I stepped outside with the cup in my hand. I took a long sip of cold water.
"Autonomous security system test concluded with absolute success," I murmured indifferently.
I did not draw my weapon. I did not unleash flames. I simply extended an empty hand. I focused destructive will in space. I used hard telekinesis. Invisible pincers closed on the limp body of the mercenary choking on blood. I clenched my fist with ruthless force. The space around him literally imploded with a dull crack. I crushed him on an atomic level. The body, thick armor, bones, and blood simply ceased to exist, compressed in a fraction of a second into fine ash. No chopped corpses to clean up. No traces in front of the tavern. The wind immediately blew the small cloud of dust down the empty street. I erased the problem from the map, solving it at the very foundations.
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"Give me your hands," I said calmly. They did not ask questions. They placed their hands on my palms. I closed my eyes. I gathered raw mana in my reactor. Sapphire energy flowed from my fingers. I forced it into their ruined bodies. It was not a gentle massage. It was hard body engineering. I burned the toxins lingering in their veins. The girls hissed from the sharp pain. They clenched their teeth. Smoke began to rise from their skin. It smelled of burned rot. The sapphire current cleared the blocked channels. It pushed pure power where dead emptiness previously ruled. It took only a minute.
I withdrew my hands. I opened my eyes. Luthia breathed heavily, but her skin regained a healthy glow. Mina moved her shoulders with relief, and her cat ears twitched with vibrating energy. Ria looked at her small hands with pure awe. They looked healthier.
"Reset complete," I informed them coldly. "Your channels are finally clean. You have entered the Mud Phase."
They looked at me with complete misunderstanding.
"The Mud Phase is your current foundation," I explained on pure logic. "Your mana is thick now. It leaks slowly from the core like wet clay. You do not have hard gems formed in your weaves yet. The time for higher stages of evolution will come in the future. I will not artificially accelerate your growth. You must mature naturally. For now, you simply have regenerated bodies."
Ria smiled broadly, flashing her fangs. Elena brought a jug of water to soothe their dry throats. We all breathed a sigh of relief.
And in that fraction of a second, the oak floorboards literally exploded. The wood broke with a deafening roar. Ethereal beings burst from the darkness of our cleared basement. They were the remnants of rot from yesterday's anomaly, which survived our purge in the dark and mutated overnight. They bypassed the external barrier of the tavern because they spawned directly inside the building. They looked like translucent beasts. Their open maws were full of rotten teeth. With a wild growl, one of them threw itself straight at terrified Elena. The second one jumped towards little Ria with murderous momentum.
My newly formed family found itself in mortal danger. An invisible blockade cracked with a roar in my head. It was not anger. It was a hard instinct to protect my own pack. My human vessel immediately rejected its biological limits. I felt a completely new drive awakening deep inside me. It was not ordinary magic. It was not plastic mana flowing in the veins. It was Soul Power. I awakened KAI. The raw drive stored deep in my spiritual core struck straight into the tissues. It built an unbreakable bridge with my physical body. In a fraction of a second, I activated Gōtai.
The skin on my forearms darkened drastically. It took on the color of pitch black. It became a shining monolith. The density of this defensive coating completely broke the known laws of physics. It was unpierceable. Raw sparks began to jump aggressively around my black armor. It smelled of burned ozone. I did not draw my sword from its scabbard. I stepped between the ethereal phantoms and the shocked girls with Brazen chill.
The first mutated beast was already falling onto defenseless Elena. I hit it with my bare fist. My black monolith collided with the ethereal body of the monster. Gōtai did not need a material target to inflict damage. The absolute density of my armored soul simply crushed the immaterial being in mid-air. A hollow roar echoed. The space cracked with a sound resembling a broken anvil. The phantom was utilized in a fraction of a second. It crumbled into gray dust. The sapphire sparks immediately burned the remains of the ectoplasm to a crisp.
The second monster tried to tear Ria apart with fury. I closed the distance with two quick steps. I grabbed it by its ephemeral throat with my soul-coated hand. I crushed it with murderous force. The beast squeaked dully. I twisted my wrist ninety degrees. The structure of the phantom collapsed under the pressure of my armor. It disappeared in a cloud of falling ash.
A dead silence fell. The dust slowly settled on the ruined floorboards. I extinguished the drive in my soul. The pitch coating absorbed back under my pale skin. The sparks died with a quiet hiss. My hands looked completely normal again. I yawned briefly and indifferently brushed my shirt cuffs.
The girls looked at me with paralyzed shock. They realized that I had just used power from a completely different domain. Even Luthia opened her mouth wide.
"Dave... what the hell was that?" Elena gasped, getting up from the floor with trembling hands. "Your skin turned black."
I looked at them. I wiped my hands of the dust. I decided to explain this to them on pure logic.
"It was not magic," I said with a firm voice, leaning against the surviving pillar. "Magic is just plastic energy trapped in tissues. It can be suppressed by anti-magic. What you just saw is KAI. Soul power."
Luthia frowned, absorbing every word.
"KAI is a raw biological drive stored directly in your spiritual core," I continued coldly. "Instead of casting spells, you use the soul itself as a tank. This phenomenon ignores absolutely every barrier, because it simply operates on a higher frequency. To shield you, I activated Gōtai a moment ago. It is a hard Armoring. I pumped the raw drive into my weaves. My body became an unpierceable monolith of the soul. It crushes to atoms everything I physically hit."
Mina nodded with reverent admiration. They understood it. Elena slowly stood up from the floor. Her hands were still trembling after the attack, but sincere relief already smoldered in her eyes. She approached a nearby shelf. She pulled an old map from a deep drawer. She spread the parchment on the surviving fragment of the oak table.
"This rot didn't come out of nowhere today," Luthia said quietly. She stood right next to me. She looked at the smoking hole in the floor.
I leaned over the yellowed map. My gaze instantly traced the attack line from the basement. I scanned the fading energy trail left by the killed beasts. The signature of this rotting magic stretched far beyond the thick walls of our safe tavern. It led straight to an abandoned district in the west of Oakhaven. It clearly indicated a hidden entrance to the deepest dungeons under the city. I smiled predatorily. I scratched my neck.
"The source is still beating underground," I said coldly, tapping a specific point on the parchment with my finger. "It is time to clean up this mess. We are tackling the core of this problem. Shnee, pack the gear. We are entering the dungeon."