The fourth day in the eastern dungeon started the same as the others.
Cold air. Blue moss light. The low grind of crystal against stone as they pried another cluster free. Aya’s tiger held the front of a wide chamber while the wolf cleaned up stragglers. Lira stood ready with green light already gathered in her palms, though she barely needed it. Most wounds never happened. The ones that did closed in seconds.
Renji stayed at the rear, hands in his pockets, eyes half-lidded.
A pack of six crystal-backed spiders dropped from the ceiling at once. Aya’s summons moved to intercept. Renji simply looked at the three on the left.
Mana gathered behind his eyes, denser than before.
“Erase.”
All three vanished mid-air. The remaining spiders hesitated just long enough for the tiger to crush two and the wolf to tear the last one apart. No one commented. Aya glanced back once, expression unreadable, then returned to harvesting.
They pushed deeper than the previous days. The mana density climbed. Monsters hit harder. Renji’s private window kept ticking upward in quiet increments. By the time they turned back with full packs, the numbers had shifted again.
**Level 24**
**Magic: 287**
**Strength: 33**
**Agility: 36**
**Defense: 31**
Physical stats still crawled. Magic kept climbing like it was the only thing that mattered. Multi-target felt smoother now—three simultaneous deletions no longer carried any strain.
{Still feels like cheating. Good.}
They exited the dungeon in the late afternoon, packs heavy with crystals. The outpost clerk barely looked up as they passed. The walk back to town was quiet. Lira stayed close to Renji’s side, occasionally brushing her wing against his arm when the path narrowed. Aya walked slightly ahead, scanning the road out of habit.
The first wanted poster was nailed to a tree just outside the town gate.
Renji stopped walking.
The drawing was rough but clear enough—dark hair, average face, the same bored expression he wore most of the time. Underneath, in thick black letters:
**WANTED**
**Renji Hayashi**
**F-rank summoned. Suspected responsible for multiple disappearances and the death of a royal knight.**
**Alive preferred. Dead acceptable.**
**Substantial reward.**
Aya stepped up beside him and stared at the paper in silence. Lira’s eyes went wide. She looked from the poster to Renji and back again, wings twitching under her cloak.
More posters lined the main street. They were on the notice board. On the side of the guild hall. One was even stuck to the door of the inn they had been using.
Someone had been thorough.
Aya spoke first, voice low.
“We need to leave. Tonight.”
Renji nodded once.
They didn’t return to the inn. Instead they cut through side alleys, bought three deep hooded cloaks from a quiet clothing stall that asked no questions, and walked straight out the western gate before the sun finished setting. No one stopped them. The posters made people look twice, but the hoods and the fading light did enough.
The road west stretched long and empty.
They walked until full dark, then left the main path and set up a cold camp in a shallow depression screened by low trees. No fire. Just bedrolls, the last of the dried meat, and the quiet weight of being hunted.
Lira sat close to Renji, knees drawn up, cloak wrapped tight. Aya checked the perimeter once, then settled on his other side with her back against a tree, eyes still scanning the dark.
Renji stared at the black outline of the hills ahead.
Three months to the outskirts of the kingdom, if the maps were right.
Longer if they had to keep avoiding roads and towns. The capital’s reach clearly extended farther than he had expected. Someone had connected the erased knight, the vanished monster, and the F-rank who never seemed to be where the danger was.
{Wondered when this would happen. Didn’t think posters would show up this fast.}
He had leveled today. Magic 287. Multi-target steady. The power was still climbing, but he knew it wouldn’t stay this easy forever. Sooner or later the people hunting him would send something that didn’t die from a single word.
Renji leaned back against the same tree as Aya, one arm loosely around each girl, and let the night settle.
If they really wanted him dead, they were welcome to try.
He would simply erase them first.
The wind moved through the trees. Lira’s breathing slowly evened out against his side. Aya stayed awake longer, silent and watchful, until even she finally let her eyes close.
Renji remained the last one awake, staring into the dark toward the distant capital, already planning how many targets he could delete at once when the hunters finally caught up.