The morning after Grand Scholar Vane stumbled out of my tavern, the wards on the roof of The Hungry Griffon chimed softly.

  I was at the main sink, washing a set of mythril carving knives, when I felt it. A greasy, invasive tendril of divination magic, probing the reinforced ironwood hull of my restaurant. Someone far away—likely an Inquisitor of the High Council or a paranoid noble who had felt the shockwave of Vane's forced advancement—was trying to peek inside.

  I didn't even look up. I merely flared my aura for a fraction of a second, snapping the divination tether like a dried twig. A continent away, some scryer was probably nursing a massive migraine.

  Let them wonder. I had prep to do.

  "Myria!" I called out, drying my hands. "Tell me you didn't burn the flatbread."

  "I didn't burn it!" Myria shouted back from the ovens. She emerged in a cloud of flour and steam, her golden tail twitching defensively. She held up a tray of perfectly risen, golden-brown loaves. "I held the fire mana at a slow simmer, just like you said. Kept it even."

  "Good. Set them to cool." I turned as the pantry door opened.

  Yuno walked out, carrying a clipboard. He looked exhausted, his dark hair a mess, but his eyes were sharp. "Master Adamas, we have a problem. Last night’s rush cleared out half our stock. We’re out of Star-Thyme, we have no more Wyvern-honey, and if we serve another Ember-Tusk tonight, the locals won’t be able to afford it. We need C-rank or D-rank meat. Plentiful. Cheap."

  "An astute observation, Yuno," I said, unhooking my heavy leather apron and grabbing my walking staff. "Which is why we aren't opening for lunch. We are going into Oakhaven."

  Myria’s ears perked up instantly. "The city? We're going into the market?"

  "We are going to the Adventurer’s Guild," I corrected, tossing her a clean cloak. "If I want a steady supply of fresh, unsullied monster meat, I’m not buying it from a merchant who let it rot in a wagon for three days. We’ll hunt it ourselves. And we need a Guild license to clear out the local bounties without the city guard harassing us."

  The walk down the plateau and into Oakhaven’s massive iron gates was an exercise in patience.

  Myria was practically vibrating. Coming from a life in chains, the sheer chaos of a free merchant city was overwhelming. She darted from stall to stall, her nose twitching at the scent of spiced skewers and cheap perfumes. Yuno, on the other hand, walked two paces behind me, his eyes coldly analyzing everything.

  "Notice the blade on that mercenary, Myria?" Yuno said quietly, pointing a thumb at a passing warrior. "Chipped edge. Poor maintenance. If he fights a stone-scale basilisk with that, it'll snap. Don't let yourself get distracted by the shiny things."

  Myria flattened her ears, glaring at him. "I'm looking at the mana lamps, Yuno. They use crushed glow-crystals, but the arcane loops are inefficient. I could wire them better blindfolded. Stop treating me like a child."

  "Then stop acting like a tourist," he shot back, his hand resting on the hilt of his glass boning knife. "We're here to work."

  "Enough, you two," I said softly, though the command carried enough weight to make them both snap their jaws shut.

  We stopped in the center of the mercantile district. Looming over the cobblestone square was the Adventurer’s Guild. It was a massive, ugly building made of reinforced stone and iron grates, designed to withstand the temper tantrums of overgrown children with too much power.

  The moment we pushed through the heavy oak doors, the smell hit me. Stale ale, unwashed armor, and the metallic tang of dried blood. The hall was packed with heavily armed men and women shouting over bounties, drinking away their coin, and bragging about near-death experiences.

  I hated it instantly. It lacked refinement.

  I walked straight toward the main reception desk, ignoring the glares of a half-dozen heavily scarred veterans. A bored-looking clerk with a monocle was stamping paperwork.

  "Three licenses," I said, my voice cutting easily through the din of the hall. "And the rights to whatever bounties are lurking in the Whispering Woods."

  The clerk didn't look up. "Registration fee is ten silver a head. Must pass a combat aptitude test in the courtyard. Next."

  "I don't have time for a test," I replied, my tone flat.

  That caught the attention of a massive, heavily armored man leaning against the bounty board. He wore the silver pauldron of a B-rank adventurer. He pushed off the wall and lumbered over, a cruel smirk on his face.

  "You hear that, boys?" the giant rumbled, drawing a crowd. "Grandpa here doesn't have time for the test. Thinks he can just waltz in with his little kitchen boy and a stray cat and claim the woods."

  Myria hissed, her claws extending instinctively. Yuno shifted his weight, his eyes dropping immediately to the giant’s exposed throat, calculating the quickest angle for a fatal strike.

  "Stand down, both of you," I murmured to my disciples. I finally turned to look at the giant. "I'm a chef, not a brawler. But if you're so intent on a demonstration of aptitude..."

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  I tapped my wooden staff lightly against the stone floor.

  I tapped my wooden staff lightly against the stone floor. The dull thud echoed through the sudden silence of the Guild hall. A dozen seasoned adventurers tensed, their hands dropping to their hilts, expecting a shockwave of lethal magic to obliterate the B-rank giant.

  Instead, I sighed, leaning my weight onto the staff.

  "Actually," I murmured, looking up at the towering, armored brute. "I'm off the clock."

  I turned my back on him entirely, looking instead at my two disciples.

  "Yuno," I said, my voice calm and instructional, as if we were back in the kitchen staring down a side of beef. "This man is a tough, over-armored brisket. He relies on brute force and sheer mass. Tell me, how do we break down a tough cut?"

  Yuno’s cold, dark eyes locked onto the giant. He didn't draw a sword. He reached to his belt and unholstered his six-inch, glass-edged boning knife.

  "You don't hack at the bone, Master. You sever the connective tissue at the joints. You dismantle the structure."

  I nodded approvingly. "And Myria. He's wearing full steel plate. The pan is entirely too cold. How do we prepare the surface without burning the ingredients?"

  Myria’s tail gave a sharp, excited flick. A wicked grin spread across her face, baring her pronounced canines. "Rapid, localized thermal induction. Warm it up until the meat releases itself."

  The B-rank giant let out a bark of incredulous laughter. "You senile old fool! You're sending a kitchen rat and a slave to fight me?" He drew his heavy, two-handed broadsword. The blade alone weighed as much as Yuno. "I'll mount all three of your heads on the—”

  He didn't finish the sentence.

  Yuno didn't use a drop of mana. He didn't need to. He moved with the terrifying, practiced efficiency of a master butcher who had spent a thousand hours repeating the exact same motions. He blurred forward, stepping inside the arc of the giant’s clumsy, telegraphed swing.

  Snick. Snick.

  Two flashes of glass. Yuno didn't aim for the steel plating. He aimed for the cheap leather straps holding the giant’s greaves and right gauntlet in place. The leather parted like wet paper. The heavy steel leg guards instantly crashed to the floor, tangling the giant’s feet.

  "Little bastard!" the brute roared, stumbling forward and raising his broadsword for a devastating overhead cleave.

  "Myria, the pan!" Yuno called out, not even looking back as he smoothly pivoted out of the drop zone.

  Myria stepped forward, her golden eyes blazing. She didn't throw a chaotic fireball or summon a wild vortex. She remembered the lesson from the hearth. She narrowed her focus to a pinpoint, locking her arcane senses entirely onto the dense iron core of the giant's broadsword.

  She snapped her fingers.

  A concentrated surge of pure thermal mana bypassed the air entirely and ignited directly inside the steel blade. In a fraction of a second, the middle of the broadsword went from dull gray to a blistering, cherry-red heat.

  The giant howled in agony as the heat flash-fried the leather grip and blistered the palms of his heavy gauntlets. He dropped the sword instinctively. It hit the stone floor with a loud, sizzling hiss, scorching the flagstones.

  Before the giant could even cradle his burned hands, Yuno was there.

  The boy kicked the back of the giant's unarmored knee, forcing him down with a heavy, humiliating thud. In the same fluid motion, Yuno stepped up behind him, grabbed a handful of his greasy hair, and pulled his head back.

  The razor-sharp glass edge of the boning knife rested flush against the giant's exposed, throbbing jugular. A single drop of blood welled up where the glass met the skin.

  "Service complete, Master Adamas," Yuno said, his voice as cold and flat as a frozen lake. He didn't even sound out of breath.

  Myria blew a wisp of smoke off her fingertips, her chest puffed out in pride. "Temperature stabilized, Master."

  The entire Adventurer's Guild was dead silent. A room full of killers, mercenaries, and mages stared in absolute shock. The B-rank giant was on his knees, trembling in terror, defeated in less than five seconds by a teenager with a kitchen knife and a beastfolk girl who hadn't even chanted a spell.

  I walked past the kneeling giant, not giving him a second glance, and stopped at the reception desk. The monocled clerk was staring at Yuno with a slack jaw, the ink from his quill dripping onto a stack of bounties.

  "As I was saying," I told the clerk, tapping a gold coin onto the mahogany desk. "Three licenses. And the rights to the Whispering Woods. We have a dinner rush to prepare for."

  The Sanctum of the High Council, perched at the very pinnacle of the Ivory Tower, was built to be completely insulated from the mortal world. The walls were lined with Void-Stone, the air was heavily filtered of ambient impurities, and the massive, rotating astrolabe in the center of the room mapped the continent’s mana leylines in perfect, sterile silence.

  It was a place of quiet, measured theory.

  That silence was broken by the sound of a man weeping.

  Grand Scholar Vane knelt on the polished obsidian floor. He was a complete mess. His star-silk robes were stained, his kinetic orbs were gone, and his eyes were wide and bloodshot. Yet, radiating from his trembling form was the unmistakable, oppressive pressure of a Tier-7 Luminary Core.

  He had advanced. He had shattered a twenty-year bottleneck overnight. And he looked like a man who had stared into the abyss and realized the abyss was wearing an apron.

  Seated around the raised dais were the six remaining Archmages of the Council, their faces a mix of profound greed and outright terror. Above them all sat the Supreme Pontiff of the Divine Path, his golden robes cascading over his throne like liquid light.

  "Explain the mana signature again, Inquisitor," the Pontiff demanded, his voice echoing with absolute authority. "The leylines recorded a massive compression of raw elemental force in Oakhaven. A tribulation surge. Yet, the Heavens did not part. There was no trial."

  The Grand Inquisitor, a gaunt man wrapped in heavy grey chains, stepped forward. He held up a crystalline scrying tablet. "We have analyzed the residual aura clinging to Scholar Vane’s expanded mana channels, Your Holiness. It is... unprecedented. It is undeniably Tier-7 advancement energy, but it is heavily laced with the biomagical signature of a Thunder-Blight Manticore."

  The Inquisitor paused, his face twisting in disgust. "And... wyrm-honey, Your Holiness. The mana is caramelized."

  A murmur of outrage and shock rippled through the Archmages.

  "Alchemy?" one of them spat. "He distilled a Class-6 beast core into an elixir?"

  "No," Vane croaked from the floor, his voice raw. He looked up, his eyes hollow. "Not alchemy. Cookery. He didn't extract the core. He roasted the spine. He forced the lightning to submit to the meat, and he made me eat it. He bypassed the soul's refinement with a cast-iron skillet."

  Silence fell over the Sanctum. The implications were world-shattering. If an Archmage could artificially induce a core advancement without the Heavens' Tribulations—without the decades of meditation, the expensive elixirs, the church's blessings—the entire hierarchy of the world would collapse.

  Nobles would pay kingdoms for a single meal. Alchemists would be rendered obsolete overnight.

  "Adamas Soulsman," the Pontiff said softly. The name tasted like poison on his tongue. He stood up from his golden throne, his eyes burning with righteous fury. "He has abandoned the Ivory Tower to spit upon the Divine Path. To ingest the raw, chaotic flesh of a monster and force the body to bypass the Heavens' laws is not a miracle. It is a perversion of the System."

  The Pontiff raised a hand. "It is heresy."

  From the shadows behind the golden throne, a figure stepped forward.

  The ambient temperature in the Sanctum immediately dropped. The glowing runes etched into the Void-Stone walls flickered and dimmed. The Archmages shifted uncomfortably in their seats, their own mana cores instinctively recoiling.

  The man wore the white tabard of the Church over heavy, blackened steel armor. He carried no staff, no wand, and wore no rings of power. Slung across his back was a massive, single-edged greatsword wrapped in prayer beads and suppression tags.

  Bishop Malakai. The Mage-Breaker.

  He was not a spellcaster. He was a magic swordsman, an executioner bred by the Church specifically to hunt down rogue Archmages. His very presence acted as a vacuum, devouring the ambient mana in the room to feed his physical stats.

  "Your Holiness," Malakai spoke. His voice was like grinding stones.

  "Adamas Soulsman has blasphemed the System," the Pontiff declared, pointing down at the weeping form of Vane. "He operates a mobile heresy out of Oakhaven. The nobles will soon catch wind of this 'advancement cuisine,' and the Alchemist Guild will undoubtedly send assassins to steal his methods."

  The Pontiff looked Malakai dead in the eye.

  "You will reach him first. You will ground his flying tavern. You will seize his journals, his recipes, and every scrap of his research for the Church's vaults." The Pontiff's eyes narrowed into slits. "And then, Bishop, you will sever his head from his shoulders."

  Malakai didn't blink. He reached over his shoulder, his armored gauntlet wrapping around the hilt of his greatsword. The suppression tags fluttered as a pulse of anti-magic rippled out from the blade, snuffing out the nearest glow-crystals entirely.

  "The heretic will be purged," Malakai stated simply.

  He turned on his heel, his heavy sabatons echoing against the obsidian floor, and walked out of the Sanctum. The hunt had begun.