Chapter 112: Something Is Wrong

Sir Van gave a small smile, carefully hiding his own surprise. He hadn’t expected the fight to end in only a few seconds. Even knowing Ethan’s strength was formidable from the earlier mission reports and Marcus’s own evaluation, actually witnessing it with his own eyes had erased whatever small doubts still lingered.

It seems the Commander didn’t exaggerate the Young Master’s strength at all.

"You two," Ethan said, looking at Vera and Finch, his eyes calm and analytical as they studied them both.

Vera and Finch swallowed involuntarily under the weight of his gaze.

"Why are you standing there like statues?" Ethan added, his tone entirely even as he turned toward Sir Van. "Take them to the healers."

Sir Van drew out the captain’s insignia and handed it over to Ethan without a word. Vera and Finch carried their unconscious comrades out one after another, until at last the training room stood completely empty.

"The Beast Tide will arrive in four to five weeks," Sir Van said, "but you should always remain prepared, Young Master." He offered a handful of further instructions before finally taking his leave.

A few hours later, in the Healer’s Chambers

Brier woke first, letting out a low groan as her eyes slowly adjusted to the vaulted ceiling above. One by one, the others followed within a few minutes, nearly everyone stirring awake except Stone, who had taken the brunt of Ethan’s initial strike. Even with the healers having already treated the most critical injuries, they said it would still take some time for full consciousness to return.

Every face in the room carried the same lingering fear as the memory of what had happened settled back in, fresh sweat beading across their foreheads. The healer’s chamber itself did little to ease the mood: rows of narrow cots lined against pale stone walls, the sharp scent of medicinal herbs hanging thick in the air, traces of holy energy still glowing along a few of the more severely injured patients’ bandages. Outside the tall windows, the afternoon sun had already begun its slow descent, casting long shadows across the floor.

Vera and Finch, who had been quietly shaking in their boots since the fight ended, finally managed to steady themselves enough to speak.

"You idiots," Vera snapped as she slammed her fist onto a nearby wooden table. "I told you to keep your mouths shut." She’d warned every one of them beforehand not to act like unruly fools, especially given this was their first Beast Tide.

Every face in the room went pale. None of them could have imagined, not even in their wildest dreams, being humiliated so thoroughly. Corvus and Stone were Advanced and Intermediate Knight Commanders respectively, Taz sat at Early Knight Commander, and even the weakest among the rest were at least Peak Great Knight, and every single one of them had been taken down within a matter of seconds.

"Do you have any idea what would have happened if you’d provoked him outside Northwatch?" Vera asked, her gaze icy as she looked over her squad.

No one answered. None of them dared to.

"You’d already be buried six feet under."

"He... he’s a monster," Corvus muttered, clutching his head, still visibly reeling from the shock of it all as he stared at the blanket.

SMACK!

Vera’s palm connected with his cheek hard enough to leave a red imprint behind. Silence fell over the room instantly. Corvus may have carried the title of group leader, but Vera was the one who actually held them all together.

She glared around at every one of them in turn. "Idiots. Did any of you stop for even a second to wonder why he’d be carrying dozens of elixirs in the first place?" she growled. "You were practically drooling the moment he pulled them out."

She let the silence hang a moment before continuing. "Even if this entire group worked for an entire year straight, do you honestly think we could afford even a single Epic-grade elixir? And did you forget who brought us here? He’s one of the higher-ups within the Black Raven Knights. He personally selected us for this and came in person just to deliver the captain’s badge. Do you understand what that actually means?"

"He’s someone close to the Commander," Finch added, his face growing paler with every word.

The mercenaries’ eyes widened until it looked as though they might pop straight out of their skulls. Every one of them remembered Stone’s earlier insults with a growing sense of dread along with the scene they had caused.

"It seems you two are useful, unlike these idiots."

Ethan’s voice cut through the room as he stepped calmly out from the shadows. He had come earlier, right after Sir Van departed, intending to check on their condition, but decided instead to see how they would react once they believed themselves alone. Using the Night Sovereign Art, he had concealed his presence completely.

The moment his voice registered, every hair on their bodies stood on end, terror deepening further as they watched him emerge from the shadows without a sound. Vera and Finch were the only two who managed to hold onto some semblance of composure. Everyone else’s faces went white, as though they were staring at a ghost.

"What’s your name?" Ethan asked, looking directly at Vera.

"Vera," she answered.

"Hmm. Alright—you’ll serve as Vice-Captain of the group. Gather everyone in the training grounds in two hours."

"Ah—yes, Captain," Vera said aloud.

Ethan vanished the instant the words left her mouth.

A few minutes later, Stone finally woke, shouting at the top of his lungs as he remembered what happened.

"That brat! How dare he! I’ll kill him!"

Smash! Bang! Slap!

The sounds of everyone ganging up echoed once again, but this time, it was an entirely different person.

For the following week, after finishing his morning routine, Ethan spent several hours each day getting familiar with the mercenaries and putting them through rigorous training. He started them on basic conditioning first, running drills to build discipline before moving into actual technique refinement, correcting their footwork and aura control after learning that, apart from one or two, almost everyone neglected the basics.

Vera proved a quick study, absorbing corrections almost immediately, while Finch, though physically unremarkable, showed a surprisingly sharp eye for reading openings in an opponent’s stance. Even Corvus and Stone, still visibly humbled, threw themselves into the training with a renewed, almost desperate intensity, clearly determined to prove themselves after witnessing Ethan’s strength.

Whenever Ethan had a spare moment, he continued feeding the unknown energy both aura and raw mana, watching the sphere grow slightly larger with each session, while Rune slept peacefully curled against his side, occasionally cracking one eye open to watch the training unfold before drifting back into his nap entirely unbothered.

———

In the Winterveil Mountain Range

The scout units of Northwatch traversed the rocky outer reaches of the Winterveil Mountain Range, gradually making their way toward the deeper regions as they re-verified beast movements under Marcus’s direct orders.

"We’ve already searched this same stretch three times in the past three weeks," one of the younger scouts complained, wiping frost from his brow. "There’s nothing out of the ordinary. It’ll probably be a smaller tide than last time."

The moment the words left his mouth, a veteran scout beside him snapped his jaw shut and shot him a sharp look.

The group’s leader, a green-haired man with decades of field experience, turned toward the new recruit with a serious expression before facing forward again. Neither he nor his men could sense the faint purple mist drifting through the air, nor detect its presence in any way at all.

"Something is off," the leader murmured, crouching near a ridge overlooking a beast habitat. His instincts, honed over decades in the field, stirred uneasily. The region below had been teeming with thousands of beasts only a few weeks earlier. Now, barely a few hundred remained.

Are they migrating?

No... That can’t be it. Never once, in all his years, had he witnessed beasts migrate away from their territory this close to a Beast Tide.

His expression gradually turned grim. He slowly activated his talent, focusing his vision on the distant terrain.

Hawk’s Eye.

Within seconds, his vision extended dozens of times beyond its normal range, every detail sharp and clear across kilometers of terrain, as though nothing could escape his sight. He scoured the land methodically, territory by territory, and in nearly a dozen separate regions, all but three or four repeated the exact same troubling pattern. A sudden, searing pain shot through his pupils.

"Gah—!"

The vice-leader quickly stepped forward, handing the captain a canteen of water, already sensing what his captain was going through.

"Don’t overdo it, Captain." He had seen their captain push the talent for hours before and knew how heavily it drained him.

Several hundred kilometers away, deep within the inner regions of the Winterveil Mountain Range, Riennal and the four-eyed demon stood atop a jagged crag, silently watching the distant scouting party and sensing their every movement.

They waited patiently. The orb had only dissolved by a third so far.

"Should we eliminate them?" the four-eyed demon asked.