The hollow thud of his feet against the wooden steps were a reminder of reality as Aiden ascended.

  Those he had just killed had been nothing but normal people. They were killers, but that was all there had been to them. The only thing that had made them stand out was in their crime of cannibalism. As for their combat prowess, they had none.

  The people he was about to meet now, they were different. They were the protectors. Men and women who fought when it was time to fight.

  Aiden brought his hands together and weaved an enchantment into being.

  [You have used class skill Enchanted Weave]

  …

  [You have used Weave of Lesser Speed]

  [Effect: 40% increase in movement speed]

  [Duration: 00:06:00]

  When you fought with a weapon like the sword, speed was always your most important trait. You always had to move first. Your strikes always had to land first. Unless you were fighting a brute of a man, in which case you needed more strength than you would normally use.

  With [Enchantment of Lesser Void Dismemberment] running through the blade of his sword, Aiden knew he would not need more strength.

  “Hey! Nemet, get me a bottle of beer. Mine’s finished.” The voice was followed by the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs. “Don’t think I don’t know that you like to hide away the good—”

  There was a flat ground just before the stairs turned in the opposite direction. The owner of the voice came down to it as he came into view. His voice ended abruptly before he could complete his statement. He was a small man, shorter than Aiden, smaller even in size. Men his size were always fast.

  “What the heck are—”

  Speed was often hindered by surprise and Aiden took the man’s head before his sentence was complete.

  [You have dealt Dede a Fatal Blow!]

  [Congratulations! You have slain Dede Lvl 49!]

  …

  [You have slain one with the title Cannibal]

  [You have slain an unnatural predator of your kind]

  Darting upwards, he ran the man’s body quietly into the wall, catching his falling head with his free hand before it hit the ground.

  Aiden held his breath, waited. His eyes moved in their sockets, trailing a path up the stairs. Certain that no one had followed the man or been alerted, he let out the breath he was holding. He lowered the man’s body to the ground gently and placed his head beside him.

  Aiden went up the stairs.

  Attention as sharp as they could be, he walked slowly, carefully, ensuring each step he took was as quiet as he could make it.

  The second floor was nothing like the floor beneath and Aiden cursed how much knowledge he could not remember from this time of his life. He’d known that they were all gathered here, a piece of information gained only when it had been too late, but he did not know the actual layout of the building.

  While the floor beneath had been nothing but an open space with chairs and tables. This floor had a straight hallway. Surprisingly, the stairs stopped here. All the way on the other side, at the end of the hallway was a flight of stairs that went to the higher floor. It was poor architecture.

  Intentional architecture. Almost as if someone didn’t want to be reached without their visitor going through the process of meeting everybody.

  Between him and the second flight of stairs, the hallway possessed six doors on each side. Aiden’s best guess was that each door led to an occupied room. [Detect] was not at a level where he could get basic information of what was on the other side of each doors. The same could be said for the enchantment of lesser detection. Not even [Enchanted Weave] would help him push the enchantment far enough to engulf the entire space.

  Aiden looked down at his blackened arm. Half his hand was red. The remaining part of it still black slipped beneath the covers of his long sleeve. But what of its void form?

  Giving it some thought, he discarded the idea. When you used [Detect] on a person, they felt it, knew it. It was like a thousand eyes looking at you. Whether the skill worked or not, the feeling was the same.

  Even if the void form of the enchantment could push its reach far, he doubted it would envelop the entire space. All it would do was end the little element of surprise that he had going for him.

  Aiden needed another plan, and he needed it fast.

  Alright, he thought to himself. Let’s see how this works.

  Walking up to the first door closest to the staircase, he turned the knob. From its connection with its frame, it was a door that opened outwards not inwards. Even though it was not locked, Aiden pretended to jimmy and struggle with it as if it was. He wiggled the knob around violently once, twice, then let go. He knocked very loudly, banging against the door with his fist in irritation. Through the entire thing, he kept his ears as attentive as they could be.

  “What the hell, D!” a pissed off voice bellowed from inside the room. “Door ain’t locked.”

  “Short ass’ always been dull in the head, Jode,” another voice called out, raising a ruckus of laughter from multiple voices in the room. “Just pull, short ass!” the person bellowed when the voices died down. “Pull with your short ass arms.”

  Aiden counted three male voices in the laughter, maybe two females. He couldn’t say it was all. He was sure of the voices he’d heard, but he was working with the minimum number here.

  Not less than five, he concluded. Definitely more.

  He jimmied the door again, ears attentive, not only on the room in front of him but the area around as well. Any of the doors could open suddenly and at any moment.

  In a steady rhythm, he banged against the door once more, this time with his fist and entire forearm. Then he jimmied again with twice the annoyance, like a man pissed off at being locked out of his room by his roommate.

  “For fuck sake’s, D!”

  Aiden didn’t recognize this voice. Then again, it wasn’t an easy thing knowing the sound of a talking voice from the sound of a person laughing.

  Not less than six, he counted, choosing to err on the side of more rather than less.

  Footsteps followed after the voice.

  “I swear I’m going to knock you on top of your freaking head when I get there,” the voice swore with a touch of laughter that let Aiden know the words were simply used in good nature.

  The friendship of cannibals was not his business.

  “You fools best let him in!” a voice bellowed from one of the other rooms with enough weight to fill the passage.

  As had been the case with the room in front of Aiden, the voice was followed by a chaotic round of laughter. Aiden almost swore under his breath as he moved to the side of the door. He wished he had been paying enough attention to get a vague number of the people in the other room.

  The footsteps from within the room came to a stop at the door. The person inside was about to open it. From where Aiden stood, pressed up against the wall, once the door opened, he would get a quick partial view of the room before anybody would see him.

  Unclipping one of his soldier belts, he allowed an enchanted orb to drop into his hand. When you fought against a group of unknown numbers, crowd control was always a good strategy to start with.

  The knob turned, the clicking sound of a door unlocking filled the air.

  “I swear I’m going to pick you up and let your legs dangle a little,” the voice joked as the door opened outward. Again, those inside laughed.

  Aiden channeled mana into the orb in his hand, bent low and rolled it along the ground. In the chaos of the laughter, the sound of the rolling orb was lost and Aiden stabbed up with his sword, sheathing a portion of it inside the man’s head through the bottom of his jaw.

  The man let out a gargled sound as his eyes rolled up inside his head.

  [You have dealt Blent a Fatal Blow!]

  [Congratulations! You have slain Blent Lvl 49!]

  The subtle sound of the enchantment engraved on the orb he’d rolled inside filled the room a moment before Aiden’s interface alerted him of it and he was already slipping into the room, pushing Blent forward as a body shield as he charged in.

  [You have used Enchantment of Lesser Madness]

  [Effect: 19% disruption of ambient mana.]

  [Duration: 00:00:02.]

  [Radius: 0.004km.]

  Aiden had sacrificed duration for greater effect and wider radius intentionally.

  Someone let out a muffled grunt from the effect of the enchantment but Aiden ignored it. Instead, he charged in, sword held low and in both hands.

  He needed to be quick and efficient. He needed to be silent and so did the corpses he was about to create.

  His eyes darted around as he moved. The first man closest to the door did not lose his head. Aiden simply dragged the edge of his sword along the man’s throat as he moved past him. Two more lost their head.

  Aiden saw an eye slowly come into focus and knew that he would not be fast enough. That was something that he could not allow. Feet carrying him to the next [Cannibal], he drew his second sword. What followed was a dance of death. A slaughter.

  Blood was spilled. Lives were lost. Death throes were not given the time to happen.

  The last man held his arms out in front of him and the air materialized into a thin but solid plane in front of him, a skill designed to shield him from attack as a sound of fear slipped from his throat.

  The only problem was that the shield materialized around the blade of Aiden’s sword. Only silence met the entire room.

  The shield dematerialized with no mana to hold the skill that summoned it in place. When it was gone, Aiden got a look at the man, seeing what he expected to see. The end of his sword had trailed a path through the man’s open mouth, pinning his head to the wall and silencing whatever sound he had intended on making.

  Aiden withdrew the sword and held up the body, letting it down quietly. He counted eleven people as his interface came up.

  [You have dealt a Fatal Blow! x11]

  [You have slain one with the title Cannibal x11]

  [You have slain an unnatural predator of your kind x11]

  Plus the man he’d killed at the door, that was twelve.

  Aiden unclipped a pocket and two orbs fell into his hand. Two orbs enchanted with lesser madness and five more doors. They were nowhere enough for the same strategy to work five more times. Besides, he wasn’t counting on the same strategy to work five more times. There was bound to be a failure at some point.

  Looking around at the blood, bodies, and silence, he knew using a technique would’ve worked better and faster. But he couldn’t have used a technique, and it had not been advisable. For one, techniques only worked properly when you had the time to take into account the number of your enemies, their positions, and their exact placements. It wasn’t something you just use on the fly. Then there was the complication of the techniques. Crowd control techniques—techniques used to kill in numbers—consumed greater stamina than techniques used against single opponents.

  The technique he had used downstairs to end seventeen lives had already cost him thirty eight percent of his stamina. The last thing Aiden wanted was to find himself passing out when he needed to be strongest the most.

  Aiden was walking back to the door, boots stepping on pools of blood without concern when the numbers hit him. He had taken seventeen lives on the floor below. Now, he had taken twelve.

  Twenty-nine. His brain did the math seamlessly as his feet stopped moving under him.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  He had killed far more in his lifetime. He’d fought in four battles and three wars at the behest of the Order, after all, helping those the Order deemed to help and executing those it deemed to execute. Sapient beings and monsters alike. He doubted there was a species on Nastild that he had not killed or at least tried to kill.

  He had even been a part of a party that had tried and failed to kill a dragon.

  But this was different. Not the cause or the reality of what he was doing. No. It was the situation. He was no longer of the Order. He had a new life and a new path he could choose to take.

  So, you would abandon revenge?

  Aiden suppressed a snort, almost laughing at his own slight misunderstanding. That was not what this was about.

  He looked down at the corpses around him. Bloodied and severed, scattered amidst chairs and round wooden tables as brown as the cleanest tree, they were silent. Only a few empty eyes stared back at him. But none of them looked at him. None of them judged him. Even now, Aiden felt nothing for them. Even in his vengeance they were nothing but a necessary task to be carried out. Taxing, yes. But just a task. Like washing the car or mowing the lawn. Or running a long distance.

  He cared nothing for what he had done. Felt nothing.

  Once upon a time, regardless of how terribly deserving his victims were, he would’ve felt something. Anger. Hate. Justice. Even the slightest disgust at himself or the enemy… Something.

  It was not a simple thing to kill something that had life and intelligence in its eyes. To watch yourself snuff out something so beautiful, something so similar to you, even if the owner had been deserving of it. Such an act took a little something from you, evoked... something.

  Twenty-nine men and women, and Aiden felt nothing.

  He ran a hand through his hair. It was wet and bloody, sleek upon his head.

  The Order has made a monster of me.

  Now, he understood why Valdan was angry with him for killing Derendoff. At least he liked to think that he understood now. There existed two possibilities. The first—more suitable to the knight in Valdan—was the fact that Aiden had not been permitted by the king or that he had killed a fellow knight, or at least someone that had once been a fellow knight. But Aiden's money was on the king part of it.

  The other possible reason was more suited to the Valdan that thought of Aiden as a child who needed to tread the right path. Valdan was angry because no matter what he had tried to do, no matter what they had gone through or how close they had grown, Aiden was still unaffected by the idea of taking a life. No. Not just the idea of it but the very action itself.

  If Aiden was right, then it made Valdan’s anger and confusion when he had not allowed him try to kill Tarot—Torat—understandable.

  “But what does it matter?” he muttered to himself.

  Of what use was the revelation now. He was still going to do what he was supposed to do.

  With a calm heart and a calm mind, he walked out of the room, stepping over bodies and limbs, weaving around tables and chairs, stepping on pools of blood and leaving his footprints behind.

  It wasn’t sad or worrying that he killed easily. If he even enjoyed it then that would have been something to focus on. What was worrying was that he felt nothing.

  As his mother had once said to him as a child: it was easier to make someone who felt something feel nothing than it was to make someone who felt nothing feel something.

  Aiden slipped the unenchanted sword back into its sheath before he left the room. As he walked up to the next door, jimmied angrily and knocked with false frustration, he wondered at a single question.

  Did he even want to change?

  “What in the name of the dead god do you want?!” someone called from inside the room as the other voices within came to life with the silent mumblings of simple conversations held by a handful of people.

  Aiden said nothing. Like clockwork, he jimmied the knob once more and banged against the door.

  Is there even a need to change? He asked himself, slightly distracted by things unnecessary just before a fight.

  He couldn’t see the need for change. He had gotten a second chance at life, but he had no intentions for peace. It was an option not a necessity. He wasn’t even planning on being a hero or the good guy just as easily as he wasn’t planning on being the bad guy.

  Ted was what mattered.

  Aiden would scour the whole of Nastild looking for a way to stop Ted from becoming the [Demon King]. But if he could not save his brother from that fate and find them a way home, then he would at least be powerful. Strong enough to be a difference in this world.

  If Ted became the [Demon King] once more, then Aiden would be an ally that would make the world tremble. An ally that would keep his brother in check if he had to.

  Aiden was not here to be good or evil. He was here to be necessary.

  He sighed, slightly saddened to know that while he understood Valdan, it changed nothing. Because it was one thing to disagree with what you don’t understand, and it was another to understand and still disagree.

  As the sounds of footsteps approached the door from within the room, Aiden’s thoughts evaporated into the void of nothingness as he noted something.

  The voices behind the door had gone silent.

  He drew his second sword very slowly from its sheath and stepped away from the door, placing himself to the side.

  They know I’m here.

  There would be no more silence. No withheld control. What was about to happen would be a bloodbath.

  …

  Please be alive, please be alive, please be alive.

  The words rang continuously in Fjord’s head as he crept through the forest. He walked with slow steps and kept his head down. As a poacher he had learned that it was the best way to stay alive when you were doing something you were not supposed to do in a forest. This way you could stop abruptly and stay still if you needed to, or you could take off as if the dead god was on your heels if you needed to.

  He really hoped that he wouldn’t need to do any. He was only here to see a girl. To know if she was alive to be helped or dead to be mourned.

  Don’t forget missing, he mocked himself, remembering the generous third surprise option his own interface had given him.

  Not for the first time he wished he had chosen something other than [Gambler]. Other people had skills that worked to keep them alive. He had skills that could just as easily get him killed as it could get someone else killed.

  You keep wishing you hadn’t chosen [Gambler] but what would you have chosen? He thought to himself. [Baker]?

  He’d been offered the [Baker] class, the [Farmer] class and the [Gambler] class. Sometimes he’d helped his mother bake as a child, but he was no baker. And his father was a [Farmer]. He’d seen what being a farmer had done to his old man. Fjord would rather die than pick up a hoe or a rake or some farm implement as a source of livelihood.

  So, he’d gambled on the [Gambler] class, which was quite ironic. He’d told himself that if nothing truly good came out of it, he could at least make a living going from one pub and tavern to the other, making money by gambling.

  Then he’d gotten the class and seen the skills. Realization had hit him hard enough. To hold the class meant to gamble at life with your life.

  He bent lower, ducking under a low hanging branch. With the canopy of trees around, even the evenings seemed like nighttime. Now that it was night and the moon and stars barely shined down on the normal world, the forest was almost pitch black. An orb of light wrapped in a cloth was what he used to see. It was an old farmer’s trick he’d learnt from his dad. When you wrapped the orb in a cloth, it released a very dull light that allowed you see right in front of you and not much farther.

  It was good when you didn’t want to risk being seen by someone or something else. Unless that something else was nocturnal, then you were entirely on your own.

  Fjord got to a tree he remembered—at least hoped he’d remembered—and took the turn that was supposed to lead him to the girl merged with a tree. As he walked, he reminded himself of the insanity of what he was doing. It had been a day since he’d seen the girl. Coming out to help was stupid—a gamble.

  I guess I’m a gambler at heart.

  It was funny since he’d never gambled a day at a gambling table before. But he had taken a lot of risks as a child. Maybe if he’d spent time at gambling tables the class would’ve been tailored to gambling tables.

  Fjord shook his head, dispelling the thoughts.

  He walked for what could have been a mile longer before the sound of voices forced him to duck behind a tree. He released his swaddled orb of light, sliding it into his pocket and plunging himself into darkness.

  “Why do we have to go through this mess,” a voice asked, uncaring of the silence that the night deserved. “We can just leave them there. It’s not like they’re going to find anything.”

  “Just shut up and get to work,” the second voice snapped.

  Fjord recognized the first but not the second. Since he’d arrived at Elstrire and started the takes Lord Lacheart had given him, he’d heard the first voice a lot. He’d even seen the man’s face a few times from his spots hiding behind trees or in their branches.

  In fact, he knew the man’s name. Denal.

  And Denal was scum. Brash, shallow and rude scum. Once upon a time he’d come into the forest with a woman and had hit her when she’d dared to challenge his opinion just the way he’d challenged his companion’s just now.

  Please hit him, Fjord hoped, listening for the sound of a palm striking flesh.

  The sound never came.

  “Just get things in order,” Denal’s companion groaned. “We don’t want the meat to spoil.”

  Denal chuckled. “Boss will eat anything as long as it’s flesh. He’s got the stomach of a Halutat.”

  Fjord’s grin couldn’t have been any wider when the sound of a swinging palm striking flesh echoed through the forest.

  “What the heck was that for?!” Denal hissed.

  His companion did not seem threatened. “That’s for talking about the boss and flesh. Learn to shut up and do you job.”

  There was subdued grumbling from Denal. It was followed by the sound of rummaging and shuffling. It took Fjord a moment to realize where exactly he was. In his days surveilling the forest, he’d learnt that this was where these people, whoever they were, disposed of their dead.

  From his days of traveling, Fjord had come to learn that everyone had the way they treated their dead, so he’d never ventured too close to the spot. He’d only gone out of his way to confirm the corpses once upon a time. What he’d learnt was that they piled them up carefully and cast a skill on them that turned them into grass.

  Fjord almost smacked himself on the head. How the hell had he for one second thought that it was some tribal way of dealing with their dead.

  Maybe because Denal always came with someone new? He tried creating an excuse for himself.

  But he could not. They weren’t handling their dead, Denal was hiding corpses.

  Why?

  The words of Denal’s companion popped in his head immediately. You don’t want the meat to spoil.

  In his former poaching group, the older members had always told him that he was a little slow on things. Back then, he had thought that they were just making fun of him, bullying him. Now, however, maybe they were right.

  How had he not seen it. They were eating people.

  Really? he thought dryly. How exactly were you supposed to piece it together that bad guys are also eating their dead?

  What were the chances that Lord Lacheart had known and that’s part of the reason he’d sent him here?

  First the missing people, now cannibals. How is he supposed to know all that? He scolded himself. Next thing you’ll start saying he’s some kind of god incarnate. He’s not all knowing. It’s just a coincidence.

  Coincidence or not, however, Fjord turned to make his way around them and to the girl. He would record this when he got back to Elstrire. Maybe Lord Lacheart would use it to get some kind of justice.

  That’s if he really comes back for me.

  Three steps into his resumed journey, Fjord heard a sound that made him stop. It sounded like gargling or, more accurately, someone drowning.

  He turned, returning his attention to Denal and his companion. He froze at the sight he saw.

  Denal stood, choking on his own blood as a sword protruded from his neck. The blade shown a bright yellow with lightning crackling through it. Behind the man, standing a little too close, was the knight that had been with Lord Lacheart at the Naranoff estate while Ded’s companion staggered away as if trying to escape.

  The knight’s presence gave Fjord a touch of hope that Lord Lacheart would be somewhere nearby. But Fjord couldn’t bring himself to feel relief or elation. Not when the face of the knight was twisted in rage.

  With his face stained in the blood from the dying Denal, the knight looked like something from a horror story told to scare children.

  …

  A few moments ago, perhaps five minutes ago, the entire building had gone eerily quiet. Norlam had heard the absence of sound, listened to it, before everything had erupted in a cacophony of grunts and struggles and cries of pain.

  Through it all he had sat in his chair behind the desk he hated in the office he hated. While the chaos had been happening, he had looked to the side and confirmed that his axe was within reach. It was.

  The option of going down to help had crossed his mind but he had not left his office. There was something most of the people that worked with him did not understand. Some of them had made fun of the architect that had constructed this building, laughing at things like the arrangement of the stairs or how the final floor seemed like a designer’s mistake.

  Norlam had never thought to correct them. But even now, as he heard the footsteps approaching the door to his office, he knew why the building had been made the way it was, why he was the only one occupying the final floor.

  He got up from his chair, the action slow and purposeful as his guest came to a stop outside his door.

  Those on the floors below and those in the town, they were nothing but weak sub-products. They basked in the miniscule detritus of perks that came with the title of cannibal. They were weak. Pathetic.

  They were poor imitations of him. Why? Because, unlike them, the world had chosen him.

  [Cannibal] was a predatory title earned when you’d eaten enough flesh from your species, and it was strengthened by the more flesh you ate. No one in this town had eaten as much as Norlam had.

  But that was not the reason he knew he was chosen.

  The door to his office opened slowly and a man—no, boy—stepped inside. He wore a simple cotton shirt and black pants.

  Illuminated in the light of the orbs in the room, Norlam couldn’t tell what the color of the shirt really was because of how much blood covered it. The boy had even used some of the blood as some kind of hair product, using it to pull his hair back from his face so that it was sleek.

  The boy was of average height. Not short but not tall, although he was closer to being tall. He had two sheathed swords dangling from his waist, one on each side, and he had tracked blood into Norlam’s office.

  Norlam felt as if he should be angered by the blood stain, but he didn’t really mind. It wasn’t as if he liked the office to begin with.

  “Are any of them alive?” he asked, knowing that it would be a headache to train a new group of men to do the necessary jobs.

  The boy moved his head from side to side slowly. His eyes never left Norlam.

  Norlam gave the action a word. No.

  He nodded slowly. There was no surprise there. “Where you sent by the crown? Does the king have a vendetta against me?”

  Again, a slow shake of the head. Again, the eyes never left him.

  Norlam sighed. If the boy had killed all his men, then there was no point to picking up the axe. In fact, there was a chance that the boy knew about the [Cannibal] title and had somehow worked a way to killing those who had it.

  It would’ve built a certain level of confidence in him. Prepared him for what was about to happen.

  Norlam could respect that. After all, it was the reason he’d had the builders construct the building this way. In the event of an attack, he was, by all insinuations and ramifications, the final boss. You had to go through everyone else to prove that you were worthy of coming to him.

  Being able to stand in front of him in hostility said that you were worthy.

  Curious, Norlam activated his [Detect] skill.

  The boy cocked a brow even before Norlam’s interface informed him of the activation, as if he had expected it. The information he needed appeared over the boy’s head.

  Norlam was surprised. The boy had two names which made him a noble. There were rumors that they had killed a relative to a noble. Had that noble come for his head?

  Another surprising thing he learnt was the boy’s level. Forty-nine. It was impossible to believe that the boy had gone through an entire building filled with people that were level forty-nine and below by himself and was still standing here. And he was a [Weaver] at that. A basket maker.

  But the final surprise, the greatest one, that left Norlam confused was one he had not seen before.

  [Aiden Lacheart—Weaver—Lvl 49 (Not Prey)]

  At level forty-nine there was something very ominous about the words in the bracket. Norlam had never come across anyone his interface had captioned as ‘not prey.’

  In someone with a higher level, Norlam would’ve been worried. But he was not. The child before him was nothing but a child. His level was impressive for his age, but that was all there was to it.

  Norlam was nothing like the [Cannibals] the boy had experienced before him. Still, he would not make his pride as a predator turn into hubris.

  He placed a hand beneath his table and flung the table aside. It crashed violently into the wall. The boy did not flinch. He did not draw his sword. He stood as calmly as ever with his hands behind him.

  Norlam felt the unwelcome attention that came with having the skill [Detect] used on you. With how many levels stronger than the boy he was, it was not uncomfortable.

  For the first time since entering the office, an expression crossed the boy’s face. Mild surprise.

  “Not a title,” he said with a touch of surprised disinterest, like a man who’d just found out that the small, clustered sand he’d past was actually a small rock.

  He was right.

  The reason Norlam was nothing like the weak men and women of the town, the reason he was chosen by the gods, put upon the path that he followed was because he did not have the title of [Cannibal]. When he had come of age, he had not received two or three classes to pick from like everyone else. He had received one.

  A single class that he was more than happy to take. He had received the class [Cannibal]. And the class came with far more glories than the title.

  [You have used Manifesting skill Apex Predator]

  He reveled in the glory and power that came from the skill as his muscles grew harder and tighter, swelling to rip his shirt into pieces. His teeth grew sharper, fangs growing more pronounced. His powerful fingernails became short claws and his thighs ripped his pants.

  He felt himself grow taller, larger, more powerful. He did not become a beast, only a larger, more powerful man. He became an apex predator.

  At level fifty-nine, he would grace the boy with a perfect death.

  The boy, Aiden Lacheart, looked up at him with a single expression. It was a raised brow.

  “I did not know you could do that,” he said as if on a side note. Then he sighed. “No matter.”

  Removing his hands from behind him, revealed different orbs and plaques and cubes in them. With his heightened senses, Norlam counted eight different items before he’d even looked at them.

  Aiden Lacheart opened his hands and the items fell forward.

  They were all enchanted.