The apartment walls bore witness to my exhaustion. Three years of running had carved hollows beneath my eyes and etched lines into my face that belonged to someone twice my age. I traced a finger along the windowsill, collecting dust—evidence of a life lived in transition.
Outside, the city breathed its evening rhythm. Streetlights flickered to life, one by one, like hesitant stars. I watched them, remembering nights spent in darker places, without even this meager comfort of artificial constellations.
The envelope sat on my table, pristine and official amid the scattered remnants of my temporary existence. The Hunter Academy's crest gleamed in gold embossing—a winged serpent encircling a blade. My fingers trembled slightly as they hovered over the seal.
"Three years," I whispered to the empty room. "Three years of safety."
If they accepted me.
I had deliberately presented a facade during the trials—a unique ability that could get me past their scrutiny. A calculated risk. Showing my true power would have drawn attention I couldn't afford, yet I needed the Academy's protection, so I focused on an ability that could definitely get me accepted—healing.
With a deep breath, I tore open the envelope. The letter inside was stark, almost brutally direct:
Congratulations, Kai Renfield. You have been accepted into The Hunter Academy. The new term begins in one week. Do not be late.
Relief flooded through me, a rare sensation these days. I collapsed into my chair, tilting my head back. The ceiling above was a map of cracks and water stains—constellations more familiar to me than the real ones I rarely saw anymore.
I remembered the first time I'd seen the Academy's advertisement. I'd been huddled in a coffee shop, nursing a lukewarm drink that justified my presence, scanning a newspaper someone had abandoned.
The Hunter Academy: A Sanctuary for the Gifted. Three years of free academic training with living facilities inside the campus. Away from the ordinary world, we will make your dreams become reality…
At the time, I'd dismissed it with a bitter laugh. I was already stronger than Hunters my age, and my abilities—the thing that had marked me for pursuit—existed in a gray area that ordinary law wouldn't sanction. Besides, they didn't accept students below eighteen. But soon I understood its true meaning and I decided to join when I would be eighteen.
Until then, I ran. I ran from everyone, never staying in one place for long. And then my eighteenth birthday came, and I applied for the entrance exam. Ever since, I'd been living in this apartment and working as a pizza delivery boy. Staying here was necessary, at least until they sent me the result letter.
This was probably the longest I'd ever stayed in the same place, and it was making me worried about the bounty hunters catching up.
But before I could brush off these negative thoughts, they became reality.
Ding Dong!!
A sharp ring at the door scattered my thoughts.
"Pizza delivery for you, sir," called a voice, the syllables too precisely enunciated, too carefully casual.
My body tensed, muscles coiling. "Really? This again?" I called back, shifting my weight forward in the chair.
Ding Dong!!
"Sir? Your pizza's getting cold."
I closed my eyes briefly as I readied myself. "They don't deliver in this area at night. Why don't you stop pretending?"
Of course, that was a lie. But that voice was something I recognized in an instant. This was a bounty hunter I had escaped three months ago without engaging in a fight. He must have been searching for me.
The silence that followed lasted three heartbeats.
Then the door exploded inward with a thunderous crack, wood splinters and dust billowing through the apartment. Through the haze stepped a figure—broad-shouldered, his face partially obscured by a tactical mask, but his eyes visible and cold.
It was him.
"We meet again, boy," he said, voice rich with satisfaction. "Good job hiding for the past quarter. Almost had me thinking you'd left the country."
My gaze swept over him, noting the subtle differences from our last encounter. His stance was wider, more grounded. New scars peeked above his collar. But it was the confidence in his eyes that troubled me most—not the arrogance of before, but the certainty of a man holding a winning hand.
"Breaking and entering is a crime, you know," I said, keeping my voice deliberately flat. "The neighbors might call the authorities."
He laughed—a sound like gravel underfoot. "No one would dare. They know what happens to those who do. Isn't that why you live here? So you could handle intruders your own way."
"What do you want?" I asked, though I knew. I'd always known.
"Don't play dumb. It doesn't suit someone with... a high price." He took a step forward, and light glinted off something in his hand—a blade, glowing with crimson energy—a mana blade. "My employer's interest in you has only increased. Your head is quite the prize."
"I'm not a lab rat for your boss to dissect."
"No." His smile widened beneath the mask. "You're a goldmine."
Without warning, he flung the red blade. I twisted aside, movement flowing from countless hours of training, countless days of survival. The blade sank into the table behind me, and the Hunter Academy letter erupted into fragments as the weapon exploded in a burst of scarlet energy.
I launched forward, driving a fist toward his solar plexus—a testing blow, meant to gauge his defenses. His body barely reacted to the impact, though I felt bone and muscle beneath my knuckles.
With unnatural speed, his fingers grazed my arm—just a touch, but intentional.
Pain seared through my triceps as skin and muscle separated, blood spilling warm down my arm. I stumbled back, gritting my teeth against the scream building in my throat.
"Like it?" he asked, flexing his fingers. "Explosion type Attribute. Anything I touch can be split apart at my will. Extra powerful when I use particular mana crystal blades."
I retreated, creating distance between us. My apartment suddenly seemed tiny, each piece of furniture—though there weren't many—an obstacle rather than cover.
"How many people did you kill to get those? They must be expensive."
Something flickered in his eyes—annoyance? Guilt? It vanished too quickly to identify.
"Fewer than you've killed running from the inevitable," he said with a cruel grin. "Your Attribute might be a secret, but there's nothing my explosions can't break."
"You're pretty confident in your skills."
"There's no crowd like last time, boy. No civilians to hide behind. I'll end you here, and my employer can extract your secrets from whatever's left."
He moved with practiced precision, hurling three blades in rapid succession—left, right, center—while his body became a blur, charging directly for my chest. A coordinated attack pattern, designed to eliminate escape routes.
He was cornering me with those decoys. He probably wanted me to get confused and react too late.
Time seemed to crystallize as understanding dawned.
No crowd like last time. He thinks I got away in the marketplace. He thinks that was luck.
Just as his outstretched fingers neared my chest, I vanished from his sight.
I had to finish this soon. I couldn't risk being discovered in conflict while my official identity only stated me as a healer. The academy might suspect me if that happened.
The bounty hunter skidded to a halt, confusion replacing confidence. "What? Where'd you go, you shit?!"
He spun around, searching frantically, before freezing at the sound of my voice.
"Here."
His eyes widened as a translucent blue crystal sword—formed of pure energy—protruded from his chest.
I called it Attribute Blade. It was a unique weapon that directly drew mana from the Attribute Core and manifested as I imagined it.
Blood bubbled between his lips, dripping onto the pristine blade.
"Two... Attributes?" he gasped, looking down at the weapon, then over his shoulder at me. "How...?"
Normal people had one unique Attribute per person, powered by the Attribute Core which generated mana to fuel the user's Attribute.
I stepped closer to face him, keeping the blade steady. "Since you're dying, I'll tell you my secret—I can steal Attributes. And once you die, I'll take yours too."
"You—" Blood interrupted his words.
"I guess that's understandable," I said softly. "You wouldn't want me to snatch your power. But guess what, that's how I killed them all. Some were lucky I had to run, but... well, you were before... but you had to come after me."
The bounty hunter's knees buckled, but I held him upright with the blade. His eyes, once cold with purpose, now filmed with approaching death, remained fixed on mine.
"It's not... fair," he managed.
"No. It's not."
Slowly his eyes closed, and he died. I removed my blue Attribute Blade. He fell to the ground with a heavy thud, blood pooling beneath him like a crimson halo.
My Attribute had the ability to steal other Attributes by absorbing their Cores. But taking power from the living was harder than from the dead. And even from the dead, extraction needed to be done just after death. Even that took several minutes of concentration which I couldn't afford with every enemy.
I knelt beside him, placing my hand on his still-warm chest. His core was red-colored and had started to weaken due to my Attribute Core blade. Through my palm, I could feel its power pulsing, diminishing but still vibrant.
"Broken as expected. Well, I was in a hurry."
Finishing off opponents in this fashion was more harmful than good for my future plans.
Even after taking his core, I wouldn't be able to use his skill due to it being broken. Even so, I had another use for the shattered cores: my Attribute Blade.
There were two ways I could use the cores I extracted. I could either use their normal skills—which didn't cost me anything except my mana reserves that naturally recharged—or I could create a blade of energy out of the cores I'd extracted. The blade was like a side effect of Attribute extraction.
But killing with Attribute Blade harmed their core. I needed to rely less on it and more on absorbing their skills.
Beneath my palm, I could sense the pulsing energy of his Attribute Core—a sphere of crimson power, already fading but flowing toward me to be stored in my own core.
As I completed the extraction, I surveyed the wreckage of my apartment. The table was shattered, my few possessions scattered, and the acceptance letter lay in torn fragments on the floor.
Three years of safety. Three years to prepare. I'm going to a place where the best students are accepted. I'll become stronger in the meantime and then... I'll end whoever is sending this filth.
I had one week to disappear completely, to become simply Kai Renfield, one of the many uniquely gifted students at the Hunter Academy. One week to bury my true ability, the collector of cores, beneath a facade so convincing that not even the Academy's masters would sense the truth.
Outside, night had fully descended. The streetlights no longer seemed like stars, but like eyes—watching, waiting.
I began to pack.