Chapter 79: Fist Of Fury
James stood in the quiet street, the distant hum of the festival crowd bleeding faintly through the air between the buildings around them. A silence stretched between the two men, taut and still before James finally spoke. "Tyler, what do you mean? What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that I can see dark mana inside of you." Tyler's voice was steady, but there was no ease behind it. "Every time I use my skill, it's there. Inside of you. The dark mana."
The words landed slowly. James's expression shifted, something between disbelief and unease moving through his face like a shadow crossing still water. "What? That doesn't make any sense. I've never eaten a monster in my life. I don't even have a dark skill."
"I know," Tyler said. "That's what makes it confusing."
His gaze drifted to the center of James's chest, to the place where, just moments ago, he had seen it. He reached up and scratched the back of his head, the gesture doing nothing to loosen the tightness sitting behind his sternum.
"Just what exactly do you see?" James asked.
Tyler dropped his hand. His eyes found James's face. "Your ordinary mana is there, I can see that clearly. But there's a large amount of dark mana particles alongside it. And the strange part is that they're coexisting inside your body. They aren't evading each other the way they're supposed to."
"Evading each other?" James's brow pulled together.
"Yeah." Tyler nodded. "I've seen it before, whenever a dark mana particle drifts close to a light one, the light particle pulls away from it. Like a physical revulsion. Like the two can't stand to be near each other." He paused. "But inside of you, that isn't happening."
He blinked. The faint blue light kindled behind his eyes as the skill came alive, and he looked at James's mana core once more, drinking in what was there. The mana churned in slow, steady currents the way it would in any healthy core, but threaded all through it were the silver-gray particles of James's own mana and, wound between them like something that had no business being there, the dark particles. The same dark particles Tyler had only ever seen coiled inside monsters.
"Both types are in there together," Tyler said quietly, "and they're moving in perfect sync. Like they belong to each other."
"No." The word left James like the air going out of him. His eyes fell to his open hands, and for a long moment he just stared at them, at the creases in his palms, the roughness of his knuckles, as though they might tell him something different. "You have to be mistaken. That can't be possible." His jaw tightened. "How the hell would I have dark mana?" He said the word again, lower this time, almost to himself. "That's impossible."
Tyler watched the panic take root beneath James's composure, the way his breathing had shifted, the stillness that had replaced the easy weight he usually carried in his shoulders. A cold guilt pressed against Tyler's ribs. He had put him in that state. He had pushed on it because he felt like he had to, but standing here now, watching it, he wasn't sure the question had been worth the answer. He closed the distance between them by a step.
He hesitated. Then he spoke. "James... maybe that's what's causing it. The reason you can't level up the way everyone else does."
"It can't be." James's reply came fast and sharp, a reflex more than a response. "Even people with dark mana level up normally, same as anyone. And Benedict had your exact skill. If I had dark mana inside me, he would have seen it. He would have told me."
"You're right," Tyler said, the certainty draining out of him as quickly as it had come. His gaze dropped to the cobblestones at his feet.
*Then what the hell is causing all of this? And if he didn't eat a monster, is there another way to get dark mana without doing that? James said people's bodies reject dark mana outright, that they only passively absorb the light mana drifting around them, never dark.*
The thought stopped him cold.
His eyes went to his own hands, his skill still running, the faint blue tint still bleeding at the edges of his vision. His own mana core shone with the same silver-gray light as James's. But there were no dark mana particles. He already knew why. His mana operated by different rules than anyone else's, it neutralized dark mana even as it was drawn in, folding it into light. At least, that was what he believed was happening.
Tyler lifted his head. James was still staring at the cobblestones, his thoughts leaking out through his lips in small, barely audible whispers, his brow drawn tight. Tyler watched him for a moment, then spoke. "Let's just go back." James looked up at him. "You said they'd both be worried. We'll figure this out sometime."
James knew they wouldn't. He was leaving tomorrow, and there wasn't enough time left between now and then to arrive at any answer worth having. But he understood what Tyler was trying to do. There was no use standing here letting it eat at him. "Yeah," he said, with a single nod. "Let's go."
They started back toward Times Square, falling into step together. Tyler noticed the look still sitting on James's face, the quiet, restless weight of a man turning something over and over without anywhere to put it, and sparked a conversation to pull him out of it.
He started asking about different plants and ingredients he had come across in the system, where they could be found, what they were used for, whether James had ever seen them. It worked. James's answers came gradually, growing more natural as they went.
"Really? You're looking for those?"
"Yeah, do you happen to know about them?"
A small smile crossed James's face. "You're pretty lucky. Lisa sells them."
"She sells them?" Tyler's eyebrows lifted.
"Don't you remember me telling you she sells different types of herbs?"
"Oh, right, yeah. I remember you mentioning that." Tyler nodded. "Are you saying she has all of those?"
"I'm not entirely sure," James said, his gaze drifting ahead as he pinched his chin, turning through his memory. "I think she may have uprooted some of them, she mentioned wanting to take them with her. But wait... no, I don't think she did. I think she said she'd do it tomorrow. She can't leave a plant out too long before she needs to transplant it."
"So can I buy them from her?"
"Buy them?" James glanced at him. "I think you can just have them. She's generous enough for that."
"I don't mind paying," Tyler said, reaching up to scratch the back of his head.
"No, you won't need to. I'll talk to her about it." James picked up his pace slightly. "Come on, let's move."
Tyler matched him, and together they pushed into the crowded streets, weaving between merchants calling out over each other, townspeople moving in loose, unhurried clusters, the whole avenue thickening with the warm, restless energy of the celebration building around them.
***
Meanwhile, Bernardo stood alone inside the bedroom, the door shut behind him. His cloak hung close around his frame, dark enough to swallow whatever light crept in through the curtains. The room smelled of lavender, clean and deliberate. Everything in it spoke the same language. A king-sized bed with a deep red comforter, crisp at the edges. A dresser of quality timber with fresh paint along the walls behind it, not a scuff on any surface. The kind of room that didn't need to announce anything.
He moved quickly, pulling drawer after drawer open and pushing them shut. *Where is it?* He stood at the foot of the bed, his eyes cutting left then right. He dropped to a crouch and looked beneath it, nothing but flat, empty darkness stretching to the other side.
But before he straightened up, something caught his eye. There, tucked beneath the dresser at the far edge, something that didn't belong to the shadow around it. He crossed to it, worked his fingers into the narrow gap beneath the dresser's base and lifted slowly. He drew it out with both hands and set it down without a sound.
It was a small wooden chest with a flower pattern carved carefully into the lid, golden metal lines tracing along the edges of the wood with the kind of detail that suggested whoever had commissioned it had paid well for it, and a small padlock seated at the front keeping it shut.
He closed his fingers around and twisted hard, the lock snapping instantly under his grip with a sharp click that froze him in place, his eyes cutting to the door as he waited and listened to the stillness of the room, and when nothing stirred beyond it he turned back and flipped the lid open.
His eyes widened.
Golden bracelets lay inside, tangled loosely with others strung with shiny white pearls. *Moon pearls,* he thought, and a slow grin spread across his face. *I hit the jackpot.* Nestled in the center of it all sat a small pouch. He lifted it and gave it a slight shake, the weight shifted with the dense, heavy slide of coins. Silver or gold, he guessed, given everything else the room had told him.
He worked fast. He tucked the chest back beneath the dresser, stripped everything from inside it, crossed to the open window on the far side of the bed, and shoved it all down into the sack. Then he gripped the sill, swung himself up, and dropped. He landed in the backyard below with a thud so faint it barely disturbed the air. He scanned left, scanned right, then moved, slipping out through the back and into the narrow space between buildings.
He ran. Through alleys, between walls close enough to brush both shoulders, cutting across empty stretches and back into shadow whenever the street opened up. His eyes stayed ahead of him. *I hope those bastards are actually doing something.*
The thought gnawed at him as he ran, slipping through another narrow alley with his sack pulled close against his body. He had his doubts, the kind that sat heavy in the gut and didn't quiet down no matter how fast he moved. But he had no choice but to trust them, and that was perhaps the worst part of it, being forced to put his faith in people who didn't deserved it.
***
Tyler and James arrived at the Town Square, and Tyler slowed instinctively at the sight of it. In the few hours he had been gone, the place had transformed entirely. Vendors had set up along the square in rows, their stalls loaded with goods and draped in color, and the tent that had been little more than a frame when he last saw it now stood complete, its interior lined with chairs and a long table dressed with flower pots and decorations, women moving in and out of it with purpose, adjusting and arranging. The noise of it all rolled over him in waves, voices layering over each other, the scrape of chairs being moved, the occasional burst of laughter cutting through the general hum.
"Where's Lisa?" Tyler said.
"She must be helping prepare the food for the festival. I'll go talk to her." James left him there and Tyler watched him pass the tent, heading straight for the large building of the church until the crowd swallowed him.
He felt the mild strangeness of being left standing alone on this side of town. He had only ever been here once before, passing through briefly when he was registering as a hunter, and that familiarity hadn't stuck. He looked around, turning the options over in his head.
*Maybe I should just stay here until he comes back.*
He spotted the large stack of wooden logs piled near the side of the tent , the same ones he and James and some of the other men had helped unload from the wagons earlier. He pulled one free and set it upright, dropping onto it and resting his forearms on his knees as he faced the church.
*Might as well look at my ingredients while I'm waiting.*
He pulled up his system panel and it appeared in front of him, invisible to everyone around him, the people passing through his line of sight completely unaware of what hung between them and him, moving through the space it occupied without a second glance.
*Those are a lot of things I still have to craft. I haven't made nearly enough of them.* He exhaled slowly. He had been hunting far more than crafting lately, his skills were climbing, his stats were pushing higher with every reward, and yet there was a dissatisfaction sitting beneath all of it that he couldn't quite shake.
*If I keep letting these pile up, I'll never get through them all. I have to start crafting.*
He pressed his hand to his chin and stared into the panel. *That is my class. I have to actually use it.*
His mind drifted back to the previous night, when he had sat down and properly calculated his stats.
His jaw had dropped. He had known the numbers had climbed significantly, the system had made that obvious enough, but he hadn't understood the true scale of it until he had actually worked through the math. Which had taken him longer than it should have. He pulled his stats up again and spread them out in front of him.
SPECIES: HUMAN
NAME: TYLER EVANS
RANK: D
LVL: 45
CLASS: CRAFTSMAN
HP: 200/200 MP: 170/170
STR: 198 AGI: 200
DEF: 162+[5] STM: 153
SKILLS: WEAPON CRAFT-LV2, ARMOR CRAFT-LV1, ACCESSORY CRAFT-LV1, ALCHEMY-LV1, RUSH LV2-MC20, CHAMBER-MC:50
PASSIVE SKILLS: WEAPON MASTERY-LV1, ASSIMILATION, MANA SIGHT, PRIMAL SUBJUGATION
He crouched forward and began drawing numbers into the soil between his feet, working through the calculation from the beginning one more time. He wanted to be completely certain.
*Oh man. If this is right, then my strength alone is sitting at the equivalent of level 94. That's insane. That's almost A-rank. It's solidly B-rank plus.* He wiped the workings away with the sole of his boot and started on his agility. The number that came back made his eyebrows climb. Level 97.
*Again,* he thought. *Just like last time.*
*This isn't wrong. I thought I had made an error before, and I had, but I eventually got it right. To think that my agility is this close to A-rank.*
He paused on that for a moment. *Actually... if I were to activate Rush on top of that, would I be comparable to an actual A-rank?* He let the thought sit, then pulled back from it. He hadn't tested his full output since the rewards, hadn't been hunting, hadn't been pushed to use his skills in a real situation, so he had no concrete sense of what his body could actually do at this level. His stats had climbed so dramatically that he genuinely couldn't picture it yet. The curiosity itched at him but he shook it off. *Next, stamina.*
He worked through the remaining calculations. His defense came out at the equivalent of level 77, his stamina at level 71, the lowest of the four, but still, taken in full, the numbers were staggering.
On paper, even the system itself had him recorded at level 45. But his stats told an entirely different story, one that had long since stopped looking like a cheat and had started looking more like a glitch in the fabric of how this world was supposed to work.
*I'm so much stronger now. If only I could take on higher-ranked quests. I should make sure to reach C-rank as soon as I go back to hunting.*
He pressed his palm flat against his face. *Ugh. This is exactly the problem. Why am I thinking about getting stronger again? If I keep that one-track mindset, I'm never going to craft anything.*
Movement ahead pulled him out of it. The system panel dissolved as he caught sight of James making his way back through the crowd, growing larger as the distance between them closed. Tyler stood as he arrived.
"Did you find her?"
"Yeah. I talked to her about it. She said you can have some."
"Really? Thanks."
"No worries." James reached into his pocket and produced a ring with four keys hanging from it, two bronze, two silver and held it out. Tyler put his hand forward and took them, the metal cool and slightly heavy against his palm. "They were supposed to be in the garden, but she pulled most of them out already. So they're in the kitchen. Make sure you only take a few, alright?"
"A few? How many is that?"
"Not sure. She just said a few." Tyler frowned.
"I already told you what they look like, so you'll know them when you see them, right?"
"Yeah," Tyler nodded.
"Alright. Go get what you need. Just make sure you're back before the festival starts."
"I will," Tyler said, and turned and walked, leaving James standing by the tent behind him.
As he moved away from the square and back into the quieter streets, he turned the keys over in his hand, feeling the slight weight of them shift against each other. He thought about how easily James had handed them over, the keys to his own home, offered without a second thought and he remembered what James had said up on the rooftop, that Tyler had earned it, and a small smile crossed his lips before he could stop it. He slipped the keys into his pocket and kept walking, already thinking about what he was going to craft first.
Tyler walked in silence until the shadow of the house fell over him, the afternoon warmth cutting off as he stepped into the yard. He pulled the keys from his pocket and looked down at them, the metal catching what little light reached him there.
*Right, he never told me which one to use. I'll just go one by one.*
He singled out a silver key and pressed it into the lock. It turned on the first try, and the door gave a clean click that resonated through the quiet of the yard.
Then something shattered inside the house.
Tyler's hand was already on the door before the sound finished, throwing it open and he stopped dead.
The window across the room had been destroyed, the frame hanging open with broken edges catching the light. And standing in the middle of the room, completely still, was a figure draped in a dark brown cloak that Tyler recognized before his mind had even finished processing what he was looking at.
Bernardo.
Bernardo had gone rigid the moment the door opened, his eyebrows climbing as his eyes landed on Tyler, on the face of the boy he had left bleeding in an alleyway, the boy he had been certain he had left for dead.
The memory came back without warning, vivid and immediate, the cold cobblestones beneath his palms, the taste of blood filling his mouth and spilling onto the ground in front of him as he crawled, leaving a dark trail behind him as he tried to drag himself toward the road, toward people, toward anything, the helplessness of it pressing down on him like a physical weight, the tears that had burned down his face at the certainty that he was going to die there. He remembered all of it in the span of a breath.
Something ignited in his chest.
It rose slowly at first, then all at once, a heat that had nothing to do with the afternoon outside, a rage that climbed up through his ribs and into his throat and sat there, boiling. His fist closed at his side, the knuckles going white. It didn't matter that Bernardo was clearly an intruder, that there was a rational sequence of events that had led to this moment. None of that mattered. If he had passed Bernardo on the street, the result would have been exactly the same.
His eyes shimmered, a faint blue light bleeding into his irises as he moved.
Bernardo saw the speed and felt his stomach drop before his mind caught up with what was happening, the boy was already closing the distance between them, his expression carrying something that had no name for it except wrong, a kind of flat, focused malice that didn't belong on a face that young, and his fist was drawn back and coming forward and there was nothing casual about any of it. It felt like looking directly at something that intended to end him.
Bernardo's heart slammed against his ribs so hard he felt it in his throat. His face had gone pale before he could stop it.
"You bastard," Tyler muttered, and his fist connected.
The impact landed flush across Bernardo's nose and mouth with a force that had no right to come from someone that size, and Bernardo left the ground entirely, his body hurled backward into the interior wall of the house with a crash that tore through the structure, plaster and timber giving way around him as he hit.
Then something hit Tyler.
An invisible force, identical in weight and direction to the blow he had just thrown, detonated against his own nose and mouth and the world tilted. He was airborne, his back finding the door behind him and blowing straight through it, the wood splintering into pieces around him as he tumbled out into the yard and kept going, his body rolling hard across the ground until the wooden fence caught him and the momentum carried him through that too, and he crossed the street unconscious, his body ramming straight through another building on the other side, people walking by froze where they stood, some screaming, scattering away from the destruction as the structure gave way around him and the dust rose and settled and he lay there, motionless inside it.
Bernardo hauled himself up from the rubble, plaster and broken timber scattered around him, his breath coming in ragged, tearing gasps, his eyes wide and his hands trembling. *What the hell?*
Then the pain arrived.
It came from his face in a wave so immediate and total that his vision blurred at the edges, and he pressed both hands over his nose as blood began to pour from it in a heavy, unrelenting stream, spilling between his fingers and dripping from his chin onto the ground. *I'm hurt?* The thought felt wrong, almost absurd. *This shouldn't have happened. How did this happen?*
He could already hear the commotion building across the street, voices rising, people gathering, drawn by the sound and the destruction. He knew exactly how much time he had. He grabbed his nose, sack and he turned and ran at a full sprint, his boots loud against the cobblestones for just a moment before he found the first alley and disappeared into it, the darkness swallowing him whole.
He kept running, the pain radiating through the center of his face in deep, throbbing pulses that made his eyes water, and no matter how fast he moved he couldn't outrun the single thought that chased him through every turn.
He still couldn't make sense of what had just happened.
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