Jayden made his way back home, the morning air finally starting to warm. When he walked into the living room, he found the girls along with Aileen gathered around the couch.

Jessica chuckled, scrolling through a news feed. "Yo, I heard some guy has been going around the city the past few nights, absolutely wrecking gang members and smuggling rings. Left a whole crew tied up outside a precinct."

Aileen chuckled. "Well it’s about time someone stood up to these gangs."

Tasha leaned back, sipping a glass of juice. "I wonder who it could be," she murmured. Then a sudden realization hit her. "Wait... do you think it could be..."

Click.

Jayden closed the front door behind him, the soft click drawing their attention. They all turned to him, their expressions suddenly shifting into knowing, scrutinized stares.

Jayden paused,stared back in confusion. "What’s wrong?"

Tasha offered a completely unconvincing, innocent smile. "Oh, it’s nothing."

Jessica laughed, unable to hold it in. "We saw a post online about there being some vigilante who beats up thugs every night, and Tasha thinks it’s you."

"Jessica!" Tasha snapped, her cheeks flushing red as she swatted at Jessica’s shoulder. Then she turned to Jayden with an innocently guilty expression. "I... I didn’t say that."

"You were about to!" Jessica teased.

"No I wasn’t!" Tasha retorted.

Jessica snickered. "You were literally mid-sentence, sis."

"I said I wonder who it could be, which is not the same as I think it’s Jayden." Tasha stated, insistent on proving her innocence.

Jessica grinned, not willing to let her sister off easily. "But you were thinking about him when you said it."

Tasha scoffed. "You can’t prove that."

"I don’t need to." Jessica shot back.

They went on and on, bickering continuously, neither one refusing to let it go.

Sitting quietly on the armchair, Aileen watched the exchange in silence. A soft, innocent giggle escaped her lips as she observed the chaotic energy of the room.

Jayden let out a relaxed chuckle, walking past them toward the stairs. "It’s not me," he said quietly.

Tasha and Jessica paused mid-argument. They turned to look at him in unison, both having this particular, synchronized look of two people who had known each other long enough to reach the same conclusion at the same time without consulting each other.

Then they both started laughing.

Jayden blinked. "What?"

"Nothing," Jessica managed, pressing her lips together.

"We believe you," Tasha added, in a tone that made it perfectly clear she did not.

Jayden just shrugged, a faint smirk playing on his lips. "Whatever. Believe what you want."

Tasha sighed, her smile fading into something much more serious. "Some vigilante crusading around the city is honestly the least of our problems right now," she said. "The global tournament is in a month. We need to focus on our training now more than ever."

Then, she paused and turned to Jayden. "Will you be joining us for training tomorrow?"

"No," Jayden said, shaking his head slightly. "I have some other stuff to do."

Jessica smirked. "Stuff like beating up thugs?" she chuckled.

Jayden just shook his head, offering a tired smile. "I’ll see you guys later."

"Bye, Jayden," Tasha said.

"Have fun beating up those thugs. Hehe." Jessica added.

"In fact, i will," Jayden chuckled.

As he turned to leave, his eyes caught Aileen’s. The teasing atmosphere in the room seemed to evaporate for a brief second. They locked gazes, a heavy, unspoken tension hanging thickly between them. It was a silent acknowledgment of the complicated dynamic brewing in the background of his chaotic life.

Jayden offered her a faint smile and broke the gaze, turning to climb the stairs. Right now, his singular focus had to be Black Cobra. He could deal with Aileen and whatever this was between them later.

From the couch, Tasha had caught the brief, loaded look between them. But she say anything.

Jayden stepped into his room and closed the door behind him, the click of the lock sealing him in silence. He leaned against the door, his jaw clenching. There was something Tasha had said downstairs that had immediately put him on edge;

"One month before the tournament."

It wasn’t the tournament itself that had him bothered. He had spent the last few weeks grinding relentlessly; he was confident in his abilities and knew he could easily stand a chance at winning, or at the very least, placing in the top ten. What terrified him was the deadline it represented.

He had exactly one month to finish his goal of taking down the Black Cobra syndicate. He had to finish off all the Pioneers before the tournament. Because after the tournament, with his projected performance, it was highly likely he would be offered admission to an off-world university. If he accepted, he would have to leave Emerald City. He would have to leave Alpha.

He didn’t want to leave with a target on his back. If he left the planet while Black Cobra still breathed, his family would be wide open to their brutal retaliation. He had to finish all his business here before stepping foot on a ship. It was the only way to ensure they were safe. Once the syndicate was ash, he could fully focus on his other ultimate goal: working with Kate to finally find Jasmine.

He stripped off his gym clothes and stepped into the bathroom, turning the shower on high. He stood under the spray, letting the scalding water run down his scarred body, washing away the tension of the morning.

After showering, he got dressed in his reinforced hunting gear. When he headed back downstairs, the house was empty; the girls had likely already left for Cassie’s place to hangout.

Jayden also left the house and made his way straight to the woods, delving deep into the beast-infested territories. He needed EXP, and he needed practice.

For the first few hours, he focused entirely on combat mastery. He wanted to refine his fire abilities, trying to form intricate constructs like the ones Cassie and Carl wielded so effortlessly. But manipulating raw plasma was different from what they did. Whenever he tried to shape the flames into weapons or shields, the energy became unstable. All he could manage were condensed, explosive fireballs.

It was a start.

And he made sure to put them to good use.

He engaged a pack of E-Rank Howlers using his agility to weave through their heavy charges. Whenever one missed, he pivoted, driving a condensed fireball directly into their flanks. The explosions shattered their natural armor, allowing him to finish them off with swift, brutal strikes from his knuckle claws.

Later, he took on a nest of tremor gators, using his telekinesis to rip them out of their swamp before incinerating them mid-air. It was a solid grind, his Exp rising steadily.

But as he ventured deeper into a dense, overgrown sector of the forest, he noticed something wrong.

He stepped into a small clearing and found the corpse of a massive wolverine stalker.

Jayden approached it cautiously, keeping his senses dialed to the maximum. The large bear was dead, but there was no sign of a struggle. No bite marks. No scorch burns from another hunter. No lacerations from claws.

He placed his hand on the beast’s chest, waiting for the System prompt to extract the beast crystal.

Nothing happened.

Jayden frowned. He drew his dagger from his inventory and carved a deep line down the bear’s sternum, prying the ribs apart. The chest cavity was a mess, and the crystal was gone.

He stood up, his eyes scanning the treeline. This made no sense. If a human hunter had killed it, they would have carved the chest to get the crystal, or simply stored the whole corpse in a spatial ring. If the chest wasn’t carved... how the hell was the crystal missing?

He began to investigate, tracking a faint path of crushed leaves. A mile later, he found another corpse. An E-Rank Razorback. Same exact condition: no external wounds, but dead, with the crystal hollowed out from the inside.

He followed the trail until he heard a faint, unnatural humming sound. He crouched low, creeping toward the edge of a wide clearing where the sound was coming from, to get a closer look.

What he saw defied the very laws of physics.

It was a D-Rank beast, a predatory feline that looked like a glitch in reality. Its fur wasn’t fur; it was shifting, violent TV static, a cascade of black and violet energy that constantly rippled. It didn’t walk. It glitched forward, its paws hovering a fraction of an inch above the grass, producing absolutely no scent and making no sound.

Jayden watched in stunned amazement as a territorial Howler lunged at the static creature. The glitching feline didn’t dodge. It simply stepped forward. As the Howler’s claws swung, the static feline’s body became semi-transparent, and the physical attack passed right through it like mist.

Then in a terrifyingly fast motion, the static beast pushed its intangible paw directly into the Howler’s solid chest. Jayden watched, horrified, as the paw solidified for a split second inside the beast, wrapped around the Howler’s crystal, and then phased back out, taking the crystal out with it. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

The Howler dropped dead instantly, its heart and crystal ripped out from the inside.

The feline casually tossed the crystal into its mouth and consumed it.

Jayden, who had seen everything, was in shock. He immediately activated dragon eye to inspect the beast’s info.

——————

*Name: Ghost-lynx

*Rank: D

*Ability: Intangibility

*Hp: 650/650

——————