Ray’s Squad 1 sprinted for their lives. Their lungs burned, and their boots slipped on the moss-slicked roots of the jungle floor. They were fast, hand-picked for their agility leaping over fallen logs and swinging from vines like primates, but they couldn’t outrun the sheer, thundering momentum of Draven’s Cavalry on the flat ravine floor behind them.

The ground shook. The sound of fifty iron-shod hooves beating the earth sounded like a rolling landslide, drowning out the frantic breathing of the retreating soldiers.

“I’ve got you trash!”

Gunther howled, his voice muffled by his helmet. He spurred his massive warhorse, a beast clad in barding as thick as a fortress wall, thundering through the mud.

“Run them down! No mercy!”

But the massacre didn’t happen.

As the heavy cavalry closed the final fifty meters, the Squad Leader of Squad 1, a grim-faced Dune-Strider, didn’t turn to fight. He shouted a single, desperate command that Ray had drilled into them.

“Drop the package! Defensive Positions NOW!”

The soldier carrying the heavy crimson flag tossed it onto the mud as if it were burning him. The twenty soldiers immediately stopped running. They slammed their backs together, drawing their short swords and others their circular bucklers.

They moved with the desperate synchronization of men knowing they were about to be hit by a freight train. Shields overlapped, locking into a tight, prickly tortoise formation. They dug their heels into the soft earth, bracing for an impact that should have shattered their bones.

They weren’t trying to win. They were trying to become a roadblock. They were buying seconds with their lives.

Gunther pulled his warhorse to a skidding, mud-slinging halt just inches from the shield wall. The heat radiating from the beast washed over the cowering squad. But he ignored the soldiers entirely. His eyes were fixed on the prize lying in the mud, half-submerged in a puddle.

“Let the infantry clean up the trash!”

Gunther sneered, dismounting with a heavy clank of his plate armor.

“I will claim the prize!”

He walked over to the fallen flag. It lay there, the heavy crimson silk stained with dirt, the golden tassels shimmering mockingly in the dappled sunlight.

“You should have stuck to fixing toys, Croft.”

Draven murmured to the humid air, grinning in triumph.

“This is the difference between an artificer and a King!”

He reached down and grabbed the pole. He expected the solid weight of steel and the slick texture of silk.

SNAP.

The sound was small, dry, and utterly wrong.

As soon as his gauntlet closed around it, the illusion shattered. The Golden Aether holding the construct together unraveled upon contact with the opposing, aggressive mana of the enemy commander.

The heavy fabric vanished. The gold tassels evaporated into mist.

Gunther froze. He wasn’t holding a flag.

He was holding a dirty, rough-hewn branch, broken off from a tree. It was wet and covered in moss and mud.

“What?!”

Gunther said, staring at the stick in his hand.

“A… stick?”

A chill went down his spine, colder than any ice spell.

Gunther spun around. While his entire army was focused on the defensive circle of Squad 1, jeering at the trapped soldiers, no one had looked up at the cliff face behind them.

Above the ravine, Squad 3 had arrived already and had been waiting in absolute silence.

A single figure dropped from the overhanging ledge. He didn’t use a rope. He plummeted twenty feet, landing silently in the soft mud ten feet behind Draven.

This text was taken from NovelBin. Help the author by reading the original version there.

He looked like a generic grunt. Grey leather armor, a faceless cowl, and no rank insignia. Just another nameless foot soldier in the battlefield.

Gunther raised his sword, panic flaring into blind rage.

“You! Die, peasant!”

The foot soldier didn’t flinch. He didn’t speak. He simply raised his empty hands, taking a stance that looked deceptively relaxed.

Gunther roared, channeling mana into his blade. The greatsword glowed with a lethal red aura. He swung it in a horizontal arc meant to cleave the soldier in half, a strike that would have cut through a stone pillar.

The foot soldier didn’t block. He didn’t retreat. He stepped in.

The soldier moved with a fluidity that shouldn’t have been possible for a common grunt. He blurred, dipping his shoulder and slipping inside the guard of the greatsword. The massive blade missed his chest by a fraction of an inch, the wind of the swing ruffling his cowl.

It was the Stoic Assassin’s ‘Flowing Shadow’ technique, executed with a mastery that transcended a common soldier’s capability.

The foot soldier planted his boots deep in the mud. He opened his hand like a claw, aiming directly for the chest.

Blue sparks of standard lightning mana crackled around his fingers.

But then, the soldier’s eyes flashed gold.

“Fulmen… Overload.”

Ray flooded the cantrip spell: Shocking Grasp with pure Golden Aether. The erratic blue sparks vanished, replaced instantly by a silent, blindingly white aura of superheated plasma. The spell whined with the sound of a capacitor about to fail.

ZZZ-CRACK.

The soldier drove his open palm directly into Gunther’s solar plexus.

The impact wasn’t a thud; it was the sound of a lightning bolt striking a lightning rod.

Gunther’s heavy plate armor didn’t protect him, it betrayed him. The Aether-infused voltage bypassed the metal’s natural resistance, turning the armor into a super-conductor. The electricity didn’t just surface-burn; it dumped a lethal, paralyzing current directly into his nervous system.

Smoke erupted from the joints of his armor.

Gunther convulsed violently, his muscles locking up in a rictus of pain, before the explosive force of the discharge lifted him off his feet. He was blasted backward, trailing ozone and smoke, crashing into the mud five meters away.

Gunther gasped, clutching his smoking chest, his vision swimming in static. He looked up at the soldier standing over him.

A grunt?

Draven thought, his nerves still twitching from the shock.

I was beaten… by a foot soldier? By a nobody?

The foot soldier looked down at him, electricity still arcing faintly between his fingers. Under the leather cowl, amber eyes glowed, but the face remained hidden.

“Checkmate.”

The soldier whispered.

Gunther’s eyes rolled back. His body simply faded, turning translucent before vanishing entirely as the artifact ejected his consciousness from the simulation.

The fifty Heavy Cavalry and 50 Heavy Infantry who were encircling Squad 1 suddenly went rigid. Without a Commander to anchor them to the simulation, the mana holding them together unraveled. They dissolved into mist, leaving only empty suits of armor that faded away seconds later.

Ray stood alone in the mud, still wearing the guise of the nameless soldier. He looked at his Squad 1, who were lowering their shields, looking stunned, bruised, but alive.

Ray gestured to the Squad Leader.

“Secure the asset.”

The Dune-Strider nodded frantically, rushing forward to snatch the enemy flag from the mire, hoisting it onto his shoulder alongside their own flag.

Ray tapped his ear-cuff.

“Squad 1 secured,”

Ray said, his voice flat, still hiding his face behind the mask.

“Regroup at the second rendezvous point. We have seven more to go.”

“COMMANDER GUNTHER DRAVEN ELIMINATED!”

The booming voice echoed throughout the simulated world, rolling over like thunder. The announcement seemed to shake the very leaves on the trees.

[SKILLED APPLICATION DETECTED]

[EVENT: COMBATANT NEUTRALIZATION]

[PERFORMANCE EVALUATION: INSPIRED]

[ANALYSIS: Host demonstrated exceptional tactical adaptability and resourcefulness. By combining the ‘Stoic Assassin’s’ Flowing Shadow technique with innate ‘Aether-Infusion’ to enhance a cantrip spell, the Host successfully bypassed the defenses of the opponent. The decision to utilize the enemy’s heavy armor as a conductive medium for an Aetheric Overload rather than attempting a brute-force penetration demonstrates a profound understanding of magical physics and combat pragmatism. Largest mastery gain.]

[Tactical Assessment: +20% (CAPSTONE already reached, adding half of mastery gain to the next archetype skill ‘Survival Instincts (Passive)’), Flowing Shadow Technique: +15%, Aether Weaving +10%]

[MASTERY CAPSTONE REACHED: ‘Survival Instincts (Passive)’ at 100%.]

[You have transcended mimicry and achieved true artistry in this skill.]

[…]

Ray just glanced at the system notification and closed it out right away as he is making preparations to move out.

In the grand arena the audience erupted. The noise wasn’t just cheering; it was a wave of shock. Thousands of students, nobles, and faculty members stood up, their eyes glued to the massive projection crystals floating above the arena.

“AND DOWN GOES GUNTHER DRAVEN!”

Bruce screamed, his voice cracking with sheer disbelief.

“I don’t believe what I just saw! A common foot soldier just… one-shotted Draven who was equipped in heavy armor! That shouldn’t be possible! Is the artifact glitching?!”

The crowd buzzed with confusion. On the screen, the replay showed the grey-clad soldier stepping inside Draven’s guard with impossible speed and delivering the lightning-infused palm strike.

“Look at that movement!”

Doyle shouted, rewinding the footage.

“That’s not your standard movement technique! And that spell, that wasn’t normal blue lightning! That was white-hot plasma!”

In the stands, a group of students from the College Arcanum leaned forward, squinting at the screen.

“Wait a second, that palm strike… the lightning overload…”

One of them whispered.

“I’ve seen that before, earlier this year, during the Promotion Trials.”

Another student said, his eyes going wide.

A murmur rippled through the section. The memory surfaced. The image of a young Artificer dodging a Proctor’s attack driving a lightning-charged hand into his chest.

“That’s not a grunt, that’s him! That’s Ray Croft! He did the same move on Proctor Jarin!”

The student shouted, pointing at the screen.

“It’s the Artificer! He’s disguised as one of his own units!”

Someone else yelled.

The realization spread through the stadium like wildfire. The ‘glitch’ wasn’t a bug in the system; it was the anomaly himself, hiding in plain sight.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep