Trevor watched the tense standoff with growing fear, his calloused hand gripped so tightly around the leather hilt of his broadsword that his knuckles were completely white. The heavy iron armor he wore suddenly felt suffocating in the quiet, dimly lit bedroom. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

​He had started working as a guard for the Thorne estate just two months ago. He was desperate. After his father passed away from a sudden illness, Trevor was left with a mountain of gambling debt that threatened to crush him and his remaining family. There was a well-known saying among mercenaries and sellswords in the Trillah Kingdom: "If you are in desperate need of money, you just have to swallow your pride and go to the Thorne family."

​As a Third-stage Aura user—the most common tier of strength for average fighters and town guards in the kingdom—finding high-paying work was incredibly difficult. The market was flooded with men just like him. But the Thorne family, desperate for protection and shunned by the rest of noble high society, offered him triple the normal mercenary rate. It was supposed to be easy money. Less danger, more pay. Just standing by doors and looking intimidating.

​That was, until Young Master Ian was almost assassinated in the dark forest yesterday. Lady Caroline had explicitly ordered the guard detail to protect her son at all costs. If any harm came to him while they were on duty, they wouldn’t just be fired; they would be blacklisted by every merchant in the city. Losing this job would completely ruin Trevor’s life.

​If the Young Master gets himself killed trying to play hero against a trained assassin, we are all doomed, Trevor thought, his eyes locked intensely on the maid. A cold sweat dripped down the back of his neck. At first, I thought she was just a normal woman crying for her family. But looking at her stance now, the way she breathes and shifts her weight... she is incredibly close to becoming an Aura user! She hid her presence perfectly. There is absolutely no way the Young Master can win against her in a straight fight!

​He shifted his weight, dropping his center of gravity into a low combat stance, fully prepared to jump into the fight the exact second the assassin twitched.

​"Do you really think you can take me alone, you noble trash?" Jenna sneered, her eyes darting between Ian’s relaxed posture and the heavily armed guards blocking the only exit.

​"I’m more than enough," Ian replied calmly, dropping into a loose, unfamiliar boxing stance he remembered from his past life. "And even if I somehow can’t kill you, the guards at the door will just finish you off. You’re nothing but a trapped rat in a cage."

​Jenna’s mocking smile vanished, replaced by the cornered, wild desperation of a trapped beast. "Yeah, you’re right. The plan didn’t go as expected. You were just supposed to eat your food and let the poison do its silent work. But if I’m going to die in this room anyway, I might as well finish the job! Aaaah!"

​With a vicious, ear-piercing battle cry, she lunged at Ian with terrifying speed, her boots barely making a sound against the floorboards.

​Shit, the Young Master doesn’t even have a weapon! Trevor panicked, his leg muscles tensing to spring forward and intercept the blade. But before he could even take a single step, he witnessed something that completely shattered his entire understanding of the martial world.

​Time to test out this technique properly, Ian thought, keeping his golden eyes wide open and entirely focused on the incoming blade.

​Jenna swung her serrated steel dagger directly toward Ian’s face in a lethal, sweeping arc meant to slit his throat. Instead of dodging backward like a normal person, Ian snapped his left arm up and grabbed the moving steel blade with his bare hand. The Adamantine Ox Hide Technique made his skin incredibly tough, dense like cured ironwood, but catching the sharp edge of a blade moving at that extreme velocity still managed to break his skin. A few drops of warm, red blood dripped from his palm onto the polished floorboards with a soft pat-pat.

​"WHAT?!" Jenna exclaimed in pure, unfiltered shock, feeling as though her dagger had just been caught in an iron vice. She pulled with all her might, but the blade wouldn’t budge an inch.

​Before her panicked brain could even calculate what had just happened, Ian smoothly stepped into her guard, completely closing the distance between them. He stared dead into her terrified, wide eyes and drove his right fist directly into her stomach.

​With both of his feet firmly planted flat on the marble floor, the passive trait of his technique activated, multiplying his physical strength by three.

​CRACK.

​It wasn’t a normal punch. It sounded like a massive wooden battering ram striking the castle gates. The sheer kinetic force behind the blow lifted Jenna entirely off her feet. The air was violently forced from her lungs in a sickening gasp. She was sent flying backward through the air like a discarded, broken doll, flying a full ten feet before slamming violently into the solid stone wall of the bedroom with a sickening thud. The impact was so hard it knocked a painting off its hook.

​Ian was left standing perfectly still in the center of the room, holding her discarded knife in his bleeding left hand, looking down at his own right fist in dumbfounded silence.

​I guess I don’t have that much strength yet, Ian thought to himself, slowly flexing his right hand and feeling the knuckles pop." I honestly thought a punch that took everything I had would have killed her instantly. I need to get stronger".

​By the heavy oak door, Trevor and the other three knights stood frozen exactly like stone statues. Their jaws were practically on the floor. Wasn’t this young master trash like the rest of the family.... What the hell was this? He just punched an assassin across the room with his bare hands!

​I’m too terrified to even ask where that monstrous, inhuman strength came from, Trevor thought, swallowing a hard lump in his dry throat. And he’s standing there complaining that he isn’t strong enough? What the hell is that? Is he a monster?

​"Blaarghh!"

​Jenna coughed violently, vomiting a dark mouthful of blood onto the floor. Her eyes were completely bloodshot, tearing up from the agonizing, suffocating pain radiating from her crushed abdomen. The exact imprint of Ian’s fist was already bruising deeply into her pale flesh, turning purple and black. She didn’t have a single ounce of strength left to stand up or fight back. She could only stare up at Ian with an expression of sheer, unfiltered terror.

​"Please... Young Master, spare me!" she gasped, her voice barely a wet, pathetic whisper. Tears streamed rapidly down her ruined face. "Please, Young Master, I will do anything for you! Please, just don’t—"

​"I don’t need to listen to your bullshit," Ian cut her off coldly, his voice devoid of any emotion. He slowly walked toward her, the bloody knife still in his hand, his golden eyes looking like chips of glacial ice. "If you need me to spare you, you should tell me who your employer is."

​Every single step Ian took echoing on the floorboards sent violent shivers down Jenna’s spine.

​"I... I don’t know who the employer is!" she cried, hyperventilating, pressing her back against the cold stone wall to get away from him. "We are just tools! But I can tell you where our headquarters is in exchange for my life!"

​Initially, she had been entirely willing to die for the sake of her guild’s mission. But that single punch had brutally woken her up to reality. She had felt a level of agonizing, body-breaking pain she had never experienced before in her entire life as an assassin, and she absolutely refused to experience it again. She just wanted to live.

​"I only wanted to know the one who paid you guys to come for my head, and who killed my father," Ian said, getting closer to her, his shadow falling over her trembling body. "As for the location of your guild, I can basically pay anyone in the criminal underworld to investigate, and they would find your little lair. That basically means you are so useless."

​Jenna began to shake uncontrollably, sobbing openly.

​Ian came close, grabbed her firmly by the collar of her maid’s uniform, pulling her slightly off the ground, and raised his blood-stained fist into the air.

​"Young Master, please! I have a family!" she shrieked, desperately throwing both her shaking hands up in front of her to block her face.

​Ian’s expression didn’t change even a fraction. His face was a mask of cold stone. "I already know about your talent for acting."

​He brought his fist down, smacking directly through her weak guard and punching her squarely in the face. With one sickening punch, her nose was completely broken, spraying blood across the wall. Because both his legs were firmly planted on the ground, his strength was tripled once again.

​"Young... pfft... please... pfft... pfftt!"

​Ian kept punching. It wasn’t a wild, angry frenzy; it was a cold, mechanical execution. The rhythmic, wet thud of his fists hitting flesh echoed terribly in the room. He didn’t listen to her cries until she couldn’t speak anymore. His eyes were so icy. All the frustration, the stress of the assassination, and the anger he had felt today was being finished on her. He didn’t know how many punches he threw, but you could see by the completely ruined, unrecognizable face of the victim that there were many.

​He abruptly stopped punching her only when he saw that she wasn’t moving her legs anymore. Her arms dropped limply to her sides. She had died.

​Ian slowly stood up, breathing slightly heavy. This was the second time he had killed someone, but as he looked down at the gruesome sight, he didn’t feel anything. He didn’t feel remorse, and he didn’t throw up like other normal people do when they kill someone for the first time. It felt like stepping on a poisonous bug that had tried to bite him.

​The guards watching the whole scene were so deeply scared that when he had started punching her repeatedly on the floor, some of them actually had to look away, their stomachs churning at the brutal display. But they all knew one absolute truth from this moment onward: the kind, gentle Young Master they once had was gone forever.

​Ian sighed, wiping a splatter of blood from his cheek with the back of his hand.

​"Now this is a bloody mess," Ian said calmly, turning his gaze toward the door. "You, it’s Trevor, right?"

​Trevor flinched visibly, snapping to attention. "Ye... yes, Young Master," Trevor answered quickly, unable to hide the lingering, deep fear in his shaky voice.

​"Find me a better room to sleep in for the time being," Ian ordered, stepping casually over the dead body as if it were just a piece of broken furniture. "I can’t even sleep in a bloody room."