“Don’t tell me... Rayne, you couldn’t get a girlfriend, so you settled for being gay instead?”

It was like thunder crashing down, splitting through an ancient tree.

Like an arrow loosed from the string, striking the bullseye.

In that moment, Muen clearly heard the sound of something shattering—like a heart cracking in two.

“You son of a—!”

Rayne’s eyes turned red again.

Bullshit! How dare you defile my pure love!

Watch me tear you to pieces!

And just as rage surged through his brain, Muen’s long-prepared attack came flying in.

[Shadow Step]!

Under cover of the dim lighting, Muen even concealed the only thing that could reflect cold light—his dagger—against the inside of his arm. Like a beast crouched in the shrubs waiting to strike, he made no sound before delivering the killing blow.

A frontal assault would never catch Rayne off guard—but rage, even momentary, could destroy reason. So by the time he snapped back to his senses, Muen had already crossed the not-so-far distance in silence, snapping his hidden dagger out like a claw and aiming it precisely at Rayne’s throat.

A real sense of impending death washed over him—Rayne’s pupils constricted.

But.

After their last fight, Rayne had replayed countless times in his mind what it would be like to face an enemy like Muen again. So even though the dagger was mere inches from his throat—it was still far from checkmate!

“RrrAAH!”

Rayne let out a roar.

A crackling noise rang from his powerful body like grinding bones.

His muscles bulged, his frame surged in size—and in less than a single breath, he visibly grew taller!

As a result, the dagger that should have pierced his throat instead stabbed into his chest. But the skin of his chest shimmered with a metallic luster—even with battle aura wrapped around the blade, it only left a faint trace of blood!

Muen blinked, briefly thrown off.

What the hell?

The Hulk?

You one of the Avengers too?

“Muen Campbell!”

This little transformation didn’t make Rayne as powerful as the Hulk—but it still increased his strength by more than thirty percent.

But brute force alone wasn’t decisive when facing an agile assassin.

In such close quarters and a cramped space, Rayne knew his massive horse-slaying blade wouldn’t be of much use—so he abandoned it entirely and lunged barehanded at Muen.

Muen twisted away gracefully.

But the retreat path he’d calculated had suddenly changed—Rayne’s reach had extended, and Muen was still within his grasp.

Though he tried to dodge, Rayne managed to grab his arm!

Muen’s expression flickered.

Rayne, on the other hand, burst into joyous laughter.

“I’ve got you now, Muen Campbell!”

A glass-cannon assassin being grappled by a brute-force warrior—anyone could guess the outcome with just their knees.

You dare mock me?

You dare stab me in the heart?

Watch me break your limbs one by one!

Rayne yanked Muen’s arm, jerking him forward with brute force.

He opened his arms wide, like he’d practiced alone in this room a thousand times to welcome a girlfriend that didn’t exist.

But to Muen, that embrace was anything but tender.

It was laced with hatred and rage—a hug that could reduce a man to pulp!

With Muen’s build, the moment he entered that embrace, over a hundred bones would be crushed instantly.

But just a moment before being pulled into Rayne’s arms, Muen’s shoulder popped with a sharp crack of bones grinding together.

Then, launching himself off the wall beside them, his body spun 180 degrees midair in a strange angle, dodging Rayne’s deadly bear-hug just in time—then flipped another 90 degrees, bent his knees, and slammed them down hard onto Rayne’s shoulders.

Seeing this, Rayne’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull.

What is this, circus acrobatics?

But you still have one arm in my grip, damn it!

But he didn’t have time to think further—because Muen had already raised the dagger in his other hand and was driving it straight toward Rayne’s vulnerable eye!

With his legs clamped around Rayne like a vice and no way to dodge, Rayne was forced to throw himself sideways. As he smashed through the wall of the dorm room, he flung Muen off and finally created some distance between them.

But even so, he couldn’t help but scream.

Because the sudden tilt of his body had shifted the blow—Muen’s dagger didn’t stab through his eye, but the blade still grazed his cheek and cleanly sliced off one of his ears!

Blood spurted out in a spray, staining the white wall crimson.

Clutching the wound, Rayne looked at the slowly rising Muen in horror.

“You... what the hell are you?”

“What am I? Now that’s a rude question.”

Muen rose to his feet, smiling calmly as he popped his dislocated arm back into its socket.

“Compared to someone like you, Rayne—tainted by a heretical god—I’m probably the more human one here.”

“Bullshit!”

Rayne roared—but in his current state, that roar only made his inner panic more obvious.

“Human? That move just now—you think a human could do that? Dislocating your own shoulder without flinching, then calmly popping it back into place? You really expect me to believe that a pampered duke’s son could pull that off?”

“No choice, really.”

Muen rotated his recently dislocated arm a few times. Confirming that it wasn’t affecting his movements, he nodded in satisfaction.

“If you had to fight for your life every day against someone ten times stronger than you—someone who was also a close-combat expert—and got killed by him hundreds of times, the first thing you’d learn would probably be how to break down and reassemble every joint in your body.”

“Because even if you didn’t learn it yourself—he’d make sure you did.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Rayne looked at him like he was insane.

“This is the Academy! Who’s out here killing you every day?!”

“Well, that involves a little secret of mine. Can’t share it with you, Rayne.”

Muen winked playfully, then added:

“Although—there is one thing I can complain to you about, Rayne.”

“Actually...”

Muen crouched, body tensing like a drawn bowstring.

“During our last fight...”

The corners of Muen’s mouth curled up in a smile—but hidden in that smile was a trace of ferocity even Muen himself didn’t realize.

“I didn’t get to enjoy myself.”

In that instant, a violent, bloodthirsty aura—like the scent of countless # Nоvеlight # deaths—erupted from the golden-haired young man who looked so clean and handsome on the outside.

For a brief second, Rayne thought he saw a mountain of corpses piled at this boy’s feet.

Corpses—of himself.

“Let’s start round two, Rayne!”

Muen charged forward again.

Before their distance fully closed, Rayne hooked his horse-slaying blade from the floor with his foot, gripped it tightly, and swung it in a wide arc.

A wave of wind surged like a crashing tide.

Dense battle aura coiled around the blade, causing its strike to explode in size—the slash’s range spread wide enough to cover nearly the entire room.

You think I’ll go head-to-head with a lunatic like you again?

Go to hell!

But just before the blade reached Muen, Rayne saw Muen raise one hand—fingers curled like a beast’s claw.

Huh?

Weird?

Isn’t that technique specifically meant to interrupt martial arts skills?

But I’m not using a martial technique right now.

Why would he—

In the instant that question formed in his brain—

Rayne heard a thunderous crash, like roaring thunder.

Then came the violent quake.

A shockwave exploded.

In that moment, it felt like he was being trampled by a herd of stampeding rhinos—Rayne’s organs, his body, even his brain screamed in protest.

His vision blurred for just a second.

And then—

When it focused again—

All he saw was a dazzling flash of blade light bursting from the darkness.