All eight members had entered the gate.

"Hey Rean, so what have you been up to, and how dare you show up late. I trust you’re now like plenty strong." Porter bombarded him with questions.

"Look out," Rean said.

Before Porter could react, Zeta swept past both of them and slayed an ice bear in one clean motion.

"Woah, impressive," Miles exclaimed.

’It’s just one of those weaker ones,’ Rean thought.

He was about to summon something—

’I was about to go overboard,’ he said to himself.

"Hey Porter, let’s skip the reunion for awhile. We’ll do all that later, ok," Rean said.

"Yeah, sure," Porter replied.

"Agro Talent. No 100. Domain of Roots." Rean chanted.

"No 100?" Michael was shocked.

Description: Domain of Roots is not an Agro Talent. The technique does in fact look like roots, but in actuality it’s just an application of mana shaping method, something the vessels only recently learnt from the council.

This Domain of Roots ability was to draw all mana to one root source. Weaker mana gets drawn in. Stronger mana draws less strong mana in—or the reverse can also be the case, depending on the caster’s intention.

"Right now is your technique reaching the ends of this dungeon?" Zeta asked.

"What do you think?" Rean replied.

"You guys should be expecting incoming, I’ve sent all the top dogs our way."

"Where did he go?" Charles asked.

"Huh?" Porter turned back.

He too noticed that Rean had disappeared.

"No time to think about all that. Look, we’ve got incoming," Zeta said.

The march was perfectly synced.

Ice orcs.

"Damn, about 10 of them to boot. I doubt any of them are the dungeon boss," she said.

"We’ll have to clear the fodder before we’re graced by his majesty’s presence, I presume," Michael added.

Rean hadn’t just disappeared—he was being drawn to the other monsters. He was going to clear all the weak ones first. Thanks to Domain of Roots, he was being spawned right in front of ice bears, ice wolves, hell—even ice moles—and pretty much just one-shotting them.

The forest didn’t stay still.

It couldn’t.

Every few seconds, space snapped—and Rean was somewhere else.

No transition. No travel. Just absence, then presence.

He appeared behind an ice wolf mid-stride, its paws barely touching the frost before his hand drove forward. No wind-up. No hesitation. His fingers speared into its side with brutal precision, mana surging just at the moment of contact—

The wolf dropped instantly.

Before its body even hit the ground, Rean was gone.

Another snap.

This time, he stood in the middle of a burrow field, the ice beneath him trembling. A moment later, the ground ruptured as an ice mole burst upward, jagged claws reaching—

Rean moved faster.

His foot came down.

Hard.

The impact crushed the creature back into its own tunnel, the force collapsing the surrounding ice inward. The ground caved with a dull crunch, silencing it completely.

Gone again.

The forest blurred between frozen trees and white silence, but Rean never stayed long enough for it to matter. Each teleport was exact—no wasted placement, no random jumps. Every arrival put him within striking distance of something weak enough to end instantly.

An ice bear roared the moment he appeared.

Too late.

Rean stepped in, his bare hand rising to meet it. When his fist drove upward into its jaw, the sound echoed like cracking stone. Mana surged—not explosive, but dense, concentrated.

The bear’s entire frame lifted.

Then dropped.

Dead before it landed.

Rean exhaled lightly.

Gone.

He reappeared low this time, already crouched as two ice wolves circled from opposite sides. Their coordination was clean—predatory instinct honed for the frozen terrain.

Didn’t matter.

The first lunged—

Rean caught it.

One hand gripping its snout mid-air, stopping its momentum completely before slamming it into the ground with crushing force. The second wolf came in immediately after—

This time, his blade flashed.

A short draw.

A single cut.

The wolf split cleanly across the midsection, its body sliding apart across the frost. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

Rean stood, already sheathing the blade as the space around him twisted again.

Gone.

He appeared mid-motion, already striking.

An ice mole barely had time to emerge before his heel crushed its skull, frozen shards scattering outward from the impact. Another snap—

Ice bear.

Larger.

Stronger.

Rean adjusted.

His blade came out this time—not rushed, not desperate. He stepped forward into its charge, timing it perfectly. As the bear swung, he slipped just off its line—

And cut.

The blade passed across its neck in one smooth motion, mana reinforcing the edge just enough to ensure it didn’t stop halfway.

The bear took two more steps.

Then collapsed.

Rean was already gone.

Again.

And again.

The forest became a sequence of executions—disconnected, immediate, precise. No wasted energy. No extended fights. Just appearance, action, disappearance.

Sometimes his hands.

Sometimes the blade.

Always one strike.

The dungeon tried to overwhelm him with numbers, scattering weak monsters across the frozen expanse.

Rean turned it into a map.

A network of targets.

Each jump was a decision already made. Each kill already finished in his mind before his body even arrived.

Snap.

A wolf died.

Snap.

A mole crushed.

Snap.

A bear fell.

The ice forest grew quieter with every step he never took.

Two minutes later—

"It seems that just about does it," Rean said. "I better head back to clear some of the bigger threats before I make my way to the dungeon boss’ chamber."

In an instant, he recoiled the spell, sending him back to the origin point.

Zeta was struggling to hold her own against a single ice orc. Michael himself was struggling as well. Charles and Porter were pretty much backed into a corner. Miles and the other girls were doing the worst.

Rean clapped his hands.

Summoning intent.

All ten orcs’ attention was drawn to this sole hunter.

They all left their prey and marched in unison toward Rean.

"What is he doing," Michael muttered.

Ten in front. They surrounded Rean in a circle.

They towered over the hunter. The others couldn’t see his frame—just a curvature formed by the orcs.

"Ok, ’come’."