Leon took in the scene unfolding before him, and sothing tightened in his chest.
Not a sharp spike of panic, nothing loud or dramatic. Just that quiet, treacherous squeeze that cos when your mind is still trying to rationalize what your eyes are seeing, while your body already knows the situation crossed the line a long ti ago.
In the middle of the campus buildings stood a monster the size of a solid bunker, too big to belong here, like soone had dropped a chunk of an entirely different world between university halls. Heat shimred off its massive body. Strange, hot steam rolled upward, warping the air and bending the view behind it.
The beast was around four and a half ters long. Low-slung, compact, and horrifyingly dense, it looked built to break things. Thick red fur coated its body, but it didn't look like fur at all, it looked like organic armor, packed and hardened, as if every strand was another layer of protection. Its four legs were as thick as heavy doors, and whenever it shifted its weight, concrete trembled under the pressure.
A massive horn jutted from its forehead, nearly two ters long, slightly curved, dull and chipped, like it had already torn through living things and smashed anything that dared get in its way.
"Holy shit…" Leon muttered, staring. "Since when did boars get that big… and this one's red, too. Must be a one-of-a-kind in its species. A unicorn boar."
In the sa instant, the hairs on the back of his neck rose.
The beast's huge head lifted slowly, and its gaze locked onto him, two green eyes glinting in the dim light, filled with pure, undisguised intent to kill. It started moving toward him, unhurried and heavy, like it had all the ti in the world and absolute certainty in the outco.
Valeria slapped the back of his head. Not hard, but enough to snap him out of the reflexive, nervous humor.
"Stop joking," she said sharply, the last of her usual lightness gone. "That thing has already gone through its first evolution. It's a First-Order entity."
Leon nodded once, silent. There was nothing to comnt on.
Adrenaline hit. He broke into a sprint toward the nearest building. When he reached the wall, he planted a foot, kicked off with a heavy thud, and shot upward, three ters in a single burst.
A few days ago, before Essence Record, that would've been impossible for any human.
He landed on the roof and turned.
From up here the giant red boar looked even worse. The heat-steam rising off its body drifted toward him, carrying suffocating warmth and the sll of scorched at and wet earth. The pressure of that gaze was so overwhelming that, for one dangerous heartbeat, Leon wanted to turn and run, run as far as possible before it decided to stop walking and start charging.
Cold Mind triggered.
A chill swept through his skull, washing his nerves clean, and he looked at the monster again, this ti without the haze of instinctive terror.
Seeing that flicker of hesitation, Valeria appeared at his side and did the only thing she could: she spoke fast, blunt, factual.
"Once an entity reaches Level 25, it gains the option to choose a class," she explained. "And with evolution, power increases in leaps, not in a straight line. The difference between an entity that has crossed Level 25 and one that's rely reached it isn't one-to-one. It's bigger. Often comparable to the gap between Level 1 and Level 24."
She paused, eyes hard.
"Sotis it's even greater."
Leon drew a slow, cold breath. He knew exactly how massive the difference was between him and a Level 1, so huge that comparing an ant to an elephant didn't even feel like exaggeration. It felt like an accurate simplification.
"Thanks," he said shortly, never taking his eyes off the approaching beast. At this point, knowledge was the only thing Valeria could still give him.
He let his eyelids lower for a fraction of a second, letting everything go quiet inside, letting his breathing settle into sothing steady.
When he opened his eyes again, the boar was less than thirty ters away.
Low, throat-deep rumbles rolled out of its mouth, vibrating through the air and echoing off the surrounding buildings. Its green eyes never left Leon for even a mont, locked on him as if the rest of the world had stopped existing.
The killing intent pouring off the creature was so thick even the steam above its back seed to pulse, thicken, ripple with aggression. Leon had no doubt it could sense the Essence Power circulating through his body, and it wanted it in the most primal way possible, not as a challenge, but as food.
And Leon, despite being only Level 14, had been fighting above his weight from the start. He'd killed enemies stronger than him, over and over, absorbing fragnts of their essence. Not just strengthening his muscles, but feeding the structure of his soul itself, making it richer, denser, saturated with energy.
If that boar managed to devour him, it wouldn't gain at.
It would gain sothing far more valuable.
But the boar wasn't the only one looking at the other side as an opportunity.
Leon stared straight into its eyes, licking his lips. Sothing wild sparked in his gaze, sothing that hadn't been there before, sothing raw and disturbingly honest. In that one mont, he stopped pretending this was only about survival.
He rembered the very first real clash, when he killed that massive wasp and felt Essence Record reward him. The sensation had been hard to describe as anything but pleasure, almost relief. With every fight he could feel his body changing: muscles hardening, ligants strengthening, bones becoming more resistant, reactions sharpening, his entire system tuning itself to this new brutal reality.
It wasn't just a tool to stay alive anymore.
That feeling of growth, physical and ntal, was addictive, and he wasn't going to lie to himself about it. The stronger he beca, the clearer it got: he wanted more. Not only so he wouldn't die, but so he wouldn't have to bow, beg, or rely on anyone's rcy.
And sowhere deep inside, though he hadn't said it out loud yet, he wanted the day to co when others would lower their heads to him.
Valeria, standing beside him, assud his silence was stress. She didn't speak again. She was simply there, as if her presence alone could steady him.
Then she heard him speak, quiet.
"I'm wondering…"
She turned, ready for a question, maybe doubt, maybe a request for a plan. But when she saw his face, she froze for a split second.
Leon's eyes were wide, and a broad, almost insane grin spread across his mouth, an expression that didn't belong on anyone staring at sothing this monstrous.
"…how much my stats are going to jump," he finished softly, "when I kill that giant boar."
And then, like a switch flipped, his gaze sharpened into sothing absolute. The chaos vanished. The emotion vanished. The wildness didn't disappear; it was simply locked behind steel.
For the first ti in his life, Leon used his ability at full capacity, no hesitation, no restraint.
Mana stirred around him, responding. Energy began to bleed from his body in thin, nearly invisible waves as he focused on the shadow beneath the giant boar, black, heavy, unnaturally dense, like it had been waiting for soone to finally decide to move it.
For a brief mont, Leon didn't move at all. He let his thoughts narrow onto the only active skill he possessed:
[Darkness Manipulation (Phase One Skill) – Tier: Initiate]
He'd used it a handful of tis and knew it could be lethal even in its simplest form, but sowhere in the back of his mind, he'd always felt it. Everything he'd done so far was surface-level. A shallow use of sothing far bigger.
He rembered the description perfectly, those dry system words saying the effectiveness of shadow manipulation depended not only on mana and Intelligence, but also on the user's imagination.
The longer he sat with that, the more obvious it beca: reducing this power to chains, brief restraints, simple reactive tricks was a waste. Shadow wasn't just a tool.
It was a dium.
And a dium didn't have one fixed shape.
Ideas sparked through his mind all at once, forms, thods, ways to influence the world. Warping space. Altering density. Giving shadow temporary physical properties. And when he looked at the boar's enormous body and the massive shadow spread beneath it, dark, thick, unnaturally sharp, he couldn't suppress a small smile.
The conditions for experintation were perfect.
"Status," he snapped.
A full system window appeared, but Leon didn't even look at it. The decision had been made earlier. There was no room for hesitation now, no ti for careful math.
"All free points into Intelligence," he said calmly.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then Essence Record responded, and a single clean ssage appeared before his eyes.
[Intelligence (INT): 20 → 44]
Leon lifted his gaze to the giant boar and smiled coldly, without a trace of emotion, like he wasn't looking at a lethal threat, but a technical problem he finally had the right tools to solve.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "This is how Darkness Manipulation is supposed to be used."
He extended both hands in front of him.
Mana began pouring out of his body in an unbroken stream, thick and heavy, as if it was answering a new way of thinking…
And the shadow beneath the giant boar moved for the first ti.
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