For the next three days, we did nothing. And for once, that wasn't a bad thing.
We had no reason to push ourselves deeper into insanity, not after dragging three tonnes of Synsiline out of a forest that eats people like appetizers. Each of us carried a tonne, which only felt like half a bag of cement due to the backpack's storage inventory, and I had 1.2 tonnes strapped across the collapsible harness on my back. It wasn't comfortable, but it was profitable.
It took us an entire day to sort the packs. Not just because of the weight, but because… well, we had to loot the corpses. Yeah, not exactly a shining moment for the soul.
We stripped what we coul. Backpacks, containers, emergency ration boxes, tracker cloaks. Those backpacks were extremely valuable, built for harsh traversal, and—according to Sunglasses—worth nearly 100k each on the black circuit. I guess that's what they call the Black Market.
So yeah. We each walked away with a small fortune. We should have been celebrating but that was wishful thinking.
On the sixth day, the problems began.
It started as a shadow passing too close to the dome, a vibration beneath the rocky plateau we were squatting on and whispers across the bracelets that shouldn't have been active.
They were hunting us and obviously, we didn't need a briefing to figure out why.
A group walks out of the Spooky Forest with nearly 3.2 tonnes of raw Synsiline with reinforced packs and no security detail? Yeah. That screams rob me.
"We could just fight," I said, mostly to test the water.
"No," Baldie answered sharply. "Remember the rules. We kill, we go to jail."
"Even if we don't kill?" I asked.
"Even hurting them is risky," he muttered, eyes scanning the environment. "Some of these idiots are streaming their routes and are from influential families. Harming them will cause us trouble in the future."
So we did what we had to. We ran. Or more accurately, we vanished.
Baldie's Flux kicked in. His invisibility was no joke. It didn't just bend light. It bent presence. When it was on, we weren't just invisible. We didn't make noise and didn't leave footprints. The rain passed right through us like we didn't exist.
I'd never felt anything like it. It was like moving as a ghost.
For hours, we evaded detection. We slipped past scouts, moved around traps and even watched two different groups fight each other in a full-blown loot scramble. The greed had reached terminal velocity.
Meanwhile… I was learning how to exist again.
My armor was shattered from the spider attack. Gauntlets bent inward like crushed cans. Most of it was beyond repair and the worst part? I felt naked without it.
So I put on what I had left in my backup—a dark, sleeveless blouse, fitted but breathable, and combat trousers designed for ease of movement. I didn't think anything of it… until I caught them staring.
All three of them. Even Rythe paused once.
It wasn't subtle. Their eyes lingered, looked away, then slid back.
"Something wrong?" I asked the second time I caught them doing it.
"No," Rythe said, too fast. "Not at all. Just… Flux looks good on you."
That was a lie. Flux had changed me.
Not just mentally but physically. I hadn't noticed at first—I was too busy trying not to die—but now that I was calm, breathing, and not being chased by arachnids or corpse-hunters…
I felt different.
I walked over to the reflective panel of a puddle of blue water and stared at myself.
What looked back was not what I remembered.
My face was more symmetrical. My eyes were sharper, with a faint blue sheen. My shoulder length hair was silkier, shinier, cascading in gentle waves instead of its usual flat limp state. My skin had this soft glow under the light of the storm dome like it had been polished and sculpted.
But it was my body that made my heart drop.
I wasn't just fit. I looked like I had been carved by the same deity that designed sculpture galleries. Waist pulled in, hips flared, chest larger than I remembered. Everything was balanced, hourglassed and glorified.
Voluptuous was the right word. Maybe too right.
And it didn't feel like a blessing.
It felt like a curse.
Because I wasn't trying to look like that. I didn't ask for it. But Flux had clearly finished something it started in that forest. That's what happens to Ennéas like me. The body changes to adapt. And apparently… to attract.
I wasn't naïve. I saw the way their eyes flicked back when they thought I wasn't looking. Buzzcut nearly tripped over a rock trying not to gawk. Baldie stayed quiet, but he adjusted his collar three times in twenty seconds. Sunglasses? He gave up pretending entirely.
Even Rythe looked like she was two seconds away from calling me a bitch, just to make herself feel better. And honestly? I couldn't blame them.
I felt uncomfortable in my own skin. The blouse clung in places it shouldn't. The pants were starting to feel too tight. I had to constantly tie the strings around my breasts just to stay grounded. My own Flux hummed like a heartbeat that never wanted to stop.
Was this the price? Power… or peace of mind?
My self-reflection was cut short.
Buzzcut raised a fist, the universal signal to freeze.
And that's when I heard them.
Voices. Dozens of them. We were surrounded.
Before I could react, the dome around us shimmered. The invisibility bubble shattered like glass against force.
They found us. I didn't even get the chance to breathe before the chaos erupted.
The ambush was clean. They came from every angle; crouched behind stone formations, ducking through broken vents in the cliffs, rappelling from above like silent, storm-bathed ghosts. I counted twelve, maybe more, all geared up with blades, grappling hooks, and none of them were amateurs.
They didn't waste time talking. Baldie reacted first.
"Stay behind me," he muttered, then snapped his fingers.
Instantly, his Flux lit up. I watched his entire form bend like a heatwave before vanishing completely. A second later, I heard the crack of someone's jaw breaking.
Invisibility and combat. He was playing modest this whole damn time.
Sunglasses followed up. He yanked his silver lenses off and for a moment I thought I was looking into the sun. A blast of raw white light surged from his eyes in a cone. The attackers screamed, stumbling backward as their retinas were fried. One poor bastard fell flat on his face, clutching at his eyelids and sobbing something about "seeing his ancestors."
Buzzcut didn't need powers to scare someone.
His Flux activated with a faint ripple. Skin hardened like obsidian, veins glowing faint bronze as his body bulked just slightly. One guy swung a blunt weapon at his face and it shattered. Not Buzzcut's face but the weapon.
He looked annoyed.
Rythe had vanished, which didn't surprise me. She was always a wild card.
And me?
At first… nothing.
They didn't come for me. Not right away.
Even they weren't stupid enough to mess with an Ennéa fresh out of the Spooky Forest. I saw the way they looked at me. Half-scared, half-confused. I wasn't wearing armor, just a blouse that hugged a little too close, combat pants clinging tighter than I wanted, and those glowing blue strings that danced lazily around my wrists like coiled ribbons.
But then it happened.
Three of them decided to test their luck. Maybe they thought the others were distracting my team enough. Maybe were just that greedy, or maybe they didn't believe I was a real Ennéa.
Their mistake.
They rushed me with synchronized movement. Two came from the sides, one from above.
The first went for a throat jab. I caught his arm mid-air, twisted, and dislocated it with the ease of snapping a twig.
The second tried to tackle me. I didn't even move. My strings moved for me, snapping out like vipers, wrapping around his legs, and slamming him face-first into the rock hard enough to knock him cold.
The third actually got close. He swung a blade.
I let him. It skimmed my shoulder. It didn't even break skin. I stepped into his space, palmed his chest, and pushed. He flew ten meters, straight through a boulder.
I stood there for a second, breathing lightly, eyes wide.
What the hell? That didn't feel like a fight.
That felt like… swatting flies.
I looked down at my hands. My fingertips were glowing again, threads of energy crackling at my nails. My body hummed like a living battery. Every muscle moved with this sharp, fluid precision. Every motion was effortless.
The sounds around me dulled, like everything was underwater. And that's when the thought hit me—I'm too strong.
No, seriously. I'm way too strong.
These people weren't weak. They were Dio, Tria, maybe even Tessera ranked. That meant experience and I was treating them like they were made of paper.
What the hell was happening?
I spun around, eyes scanning the fight. Baldie was doing well, his invisibility flickering in and out as he fought like a ghost, hitting pressure points with surgical precision. He wasn't flashy. He didn't make noise.
Sunglasses was mostly crowd control ,blinding light bursts to disorient. He was support, not offense. I doubted he'd thrown a punch in years.
Buzzcut was a human wall. I watched him grab someone by the ankle and spin them into two others like a wrecking ball.
But none of them had range. None of them had destructive capabilities. Their Fluxes were utility-based. That's what most Fluxes were in the lower Ranks. They were tactical, not explosive.
Even Buzzcut's hardened skin wasn't a full combat type. He couldn't create barriers or throw projectiles or even control the battlefield.
And Rythe… she was a ghost.
A flicker in my periphery. A leg sweep here, a pressure-point jab there, she was good. Very good. It was martial arts in its purest form. She fought with restraint, like she didn't want to show what she really had.
Her Flux was still hidden. I didn't like that.
But me?
I didn't even know what I had but it was tearing through people like tissue paper. Every punch I threw knocked someone out. Every movement flowed like I'd done it a thousand times.
Someone tried to flank me. I dodged without thinking and back-kicked him so hard he vomited while airborne.
Another tried to pin me with cuffs. My strings reacted before I did, slashing through the cuffs and wrapping him in a cocoon of blue silk that pulsed with warmth. He passed out.
What kind of Flux was this?
I jumped to the top of a pillar to scan the battlefield and realized we were winning easily. These attackers were scrambling now and trying to retreat. Some were dragging their injured away.
One even shouted, "She's not Tessera! That girl's a damn Ennéa."
I landed back down and looked at my hands again. The blue strings were gone now, coiled back into my skin like they'd never left. But the feeling remained.
Buzzcut limped over to me, dragging a bruised attacker by the collar.
"You okay?"
"I think I broke someone's collarbone with my elbow."
He blinked. "Damn."
Sunglasses walked over next, wiping blood off his nose. "I don't get it. That was a full team of hunters. Well-equipped. And we just…"
"Wiped them," Baldie finished, appearing beside him mid-sentence. "We wiped them without casualties."
Then all three of them looked at me. Their eyes weren't just full of surprise. They were uneasy.
Like they didn't know if they should be impressed or afraid.
Even Rythe came out of nowhere, sweat trailing down her temple.
"You're… different. The way you movez the way you adapt... you weren't like this before."
"No," I admitted, slowly sitting down on a cracked boulder. "I wasn't."
Something changed in the forest. And it wasn't just awakening a Flux. I had a sinking feeling that I didn't just unlock something rare. Because if I could do this now, without proper training, without control…
What the hell was I going to become when I reached the pinnacle of Ennéa?