Chapter 53: Fighting Guner in the new feature

Chapter 53: Chapter 53: Fighting Guner in the new feature

These days were dry. The kind of dry that settled into the bones of the lower district, where dust clung to every cracked cobblestone and the air carried the perpetual scent of unwashed bodies, old smoke, and desperation. No big catches. No easy marks. Just the endless grind of survival under a sky that seemed too pale, too indifferent. Even the wind felt tired, stirring only enough to lift the edges of discarded rags and send them tumbling down alleys that never saw proper light.

Guner rested his heavy pistol against his shoulder, the metal warm from the afternoon sun. His eyes, usually sharp with the restless energy of a Fifth Wave thief who had clawed his way up through sheer stubbornness, looked grim now. The lines around them were deeper than usual. He stood on the rooftop of a half-collapsed tenement overlooking Carkas’s house, the wind tugging at the edges of his worn coat. Below, the street moved with its usual slow, broken rhythm—beggars, scavengers, the occasional half-starved child darting between shadows.

Beside him, Nene and Falco waited like twin shadows. Nene sat idly, legs dangling over the edge, her posture loose and almost bored, though her gaze never truly left the street. Falco stood tall, orange hair catching what little light filtered through the haze, his massive axe resting easily across his shoulders as if it weighed nothing. They looked relaxed. They were not. Experience had taught them that the quietest moments were often the ones that ended in blood.

Guner had reached the Fifth Wave through determination and will alone. He had made it his quiet, burning duty to become the greatest thief the capital had ever seen—not for glory, not for the thrill of the take, but to feed the lowly district at the far end of the city. The forgotten ones. The ones the nobles stepped over without noticing. A noble cause for a Calamity, some might say. A fool’s cause, others would sneer. Guner didn’t care what they called it. He stole. He distributed. He survived. And in the process he had learned that survival and purpose often wore the same face.

But things had grown harder since Angle vanished from the public eye. Josephine lay in a coma that showed no signs of ending, her breathing shallow, her presence reduced to rumor and uneasy silence. The factions—Liues especially—had tightened like a noose. Calamities were being hunted to the brink of extinction within the capital’s walls. The "good-deeders," as Guner privately called the self-righteous hunters and enforcers, prowled every street with increasing boldness. He did not fear them the way some did. But after his brutal clash with Bailon, he had sworn to stay out of the open. Bailon had promised, with that cold, precise voice of his, that the next time Guner showed his face, he would be killed like the rat he was. Guner hadn’t liked the comparison. Still, he was reckless, not stupid. Fear of what Bailon could do sat heavy on his shoulders, a constant weight that never quite lifted, no matter how many rooftops he crossed or how many quiet nights he spent counting the day’s meager gains.

That was when he saw the figure in the black hood moving through the wretched crowd below.

Morgan walked with his head bent, steps hurried, the hood pulled low. Even in the filth of the lower district, he stood out. Something about the way he moved—the contained tension, the way people unconsciously parted around him—marked him as different. Special. Dangerous. The kind of presence that made the air itself feel tighter.

They waited. Patient. Silent. Morgan entered Carkas’s house. Minutes stretched into something heavier. When he finally stepped back out into the narrow street, Guner moved.

In one fluid motion he dropped from the rooftop, landed lightly behind the hooded man, and pressed the cold muzzle of his pistol against the base of Morgan’s skull. The metal kissed skin. The street noise seemed to dim around them.

He had expected the other man to notice sooner. To tense. To react. But Morgan’s mind had been elsewhere—deep in thought, distant, weighed down by whatever private calculations had brought him to this part of the capital. For a single heartbeat, surprise held him still.

*Shit... shit shit shit shit...*

The frantic thoughts raced through Morgan’s head even as his body remained frozen. He could feel it clearly now. Guner was no joke. The two elites on the rooftop—Nene and Falco—radiated the kind of quiet power that came from people who had survived too many fights to bother with unnecessary movement. They watched with complete indifference, as if this was just another afternoon chore in a life already filled with them.

A translucent screen flickered across Morgan’s vision.

**[Mana points: MIDDLE TIER]**

Fifty percent. Still enough juice left in him, but he had been saving it. He had planned to conserve every drop for the long road north, for whatever waited in the colder lands beyond the capital’s reach. Plans changed. They always did when someone pressed a gun to the back of your head.

A weak, exhausted smile touched Morgan’s lips beneath the hood.

"So you’re Liues Morgan, huh?" Guner’s voice carried a smirk that didn’t quite reach his eyes. The pistol remained steady. "I’ve heard so much about you. Didn’t think I’d run into you this soon, though."

Morgan said nothing. The silence stretched, heavy with possibility.

"Every faction would pay a heavy sum for your head," Guner continued, the words almost conversational, as if they were discussing the weather rather than a bounty that could change lives. "Especially that filthy monk."

That was the opening.

Morgan’s wrist flicked once. A swirling vortex of distorted space bloomed into existence exactly where the pistol’s barrel pointed. Reality bent. Guner felt the shift a split second too late. The bullet left the chamber with a sharp crack—and vanished into the vortex as if the air itself had swallowed it whole.

On the rooftop, Falco moved.

His body spun in one continuous, practiced arc. The heavy axe came down in a brutal overhead strike aimed at Morgan’s waist, meant to bisect him cleanly. Morgan’s other wrist flicked. A second vortex opened beside Falco. From its depths, Guner’s own redirected bullet erupted, screaming toward Falco’s face with the same force that had been meant for Morgan.

Falco twisted mid-air with impossible grace. The bullet grazed the side of his head, drawing a thin line of blood that painted his orange hair darker. He landed, already spinning the axe again. This time mana poured into the weapon in a visible surge.

"Second Wave: Aznafail."

Lightning crackled along the axe’s edge, blue-white energy pulsing in violent veins that raced from the handle to the blade. The strike came down harder, faster, heavier—an attack that carried the weight of practiced lethality. Morgan had no choice. His scythe materialized in a blur of black metal and curved edge. He raised it to meet the blow.

**PENG!!!**

The impact rang out across the district like a temple bell struck by a giant. Shockwaves rippled outward, rattling shutters and sending loose tiles skittering from nearby roofs. Morgan was launched backward, crashing through the wall of a nearby building, then another, then a third. Rubble exploded outward in clouds of dust and splintered wood. Screams rose from the civilians who had been close enough to feel the pressure wave. Chaos spilled through the lower district in an instant, the dry afternoon suddenly alive with panic and the smell of broken stone.

Guner lowered his smoking pistols slightly, a rough laugh escaping him. "Well, aren’t you a clever one."

He kept both barrels trained on the pile of rubble where Morgan had vanished. He waited for the man to emerge, bloodied but defiant, the way most fighters did after a hit like that. Seconds passed. Nothing moved except settling dust. Guner’s eyes narrowed. Something was wrong. He fired into the debris, bullets punching through broken stone and wood, kicking up fresh clouds. Still nothing.

Realization hit him like a second impact.

Morgan was already gone.

"After him!" Guner barked, the words sharp with sudden urgency.

Nene’s head turned, eyes scanning the rooftops and alleys with calm precision. "Where are we supposed to start?"

Guner didn’t answer. He launched himself toward the nearest high wall that ringed this part of the district. His body moved with the fluid economy of long practice. He slammed the butts of his pistols into the hard brick, using them as temporary anchors, then yanked upward. Another slam, another yank. In moments he crested the top of the wall and stood balanced on the narrow stone edge, the city falling away behind him.

The open fields beyond stretched out under the pale sky, dry grass and uneven earth rolling toward the distant haze. And there—already a significant distance away—was the black-hooded figure of Morgan, moving fast across the uneven ground, his form small against the open expanse.

Morgan would have preferred to appear directly at headquarters. Melena’s technique was powerful, but it drank mana like a dying man drinks water. Even a short teleport left him dizzy, the world tilting for several heartbeats afterward, his thoughts momentarily scattered. He had no choice but to flee on foot for now, conserving what remained of his reserves and hoping the distance would buy him enough time to think.

Guner’s eyes locked onto the fleeing form. A cold smile stretched across his face, equal parts admiration and hunger.

"Cunning piece of shit..."

He raised one pistol, lining up the shot across the distance. The weapon felt familiar in his grip, an extension of his will. His finger began to tighten on the trigger—

Then a translucent light screen bloomed directly in front of his eyes, bright and insistent, cutting across his vision like a sudden command.

**[New feature Unlocked]**

**[Battle Arena]**

**[Do you wish to activate?]**

Guner froze. His aim wavered for half a second as he stared at the unfamiliar interface. He had never seen this before. Carefully, almost warily, he focused on the description that unfurled beneath the prompt.

**[Battle Arena teleports you and your enemy into an invisible arena where only you and your opponent exist. The only way to finish the battle is if one is dead... or if the loser forfeits their Wave to the winner.]**

**[Do you wish to activate Battle Arena with Copy Calamity Liues Morgan?]**

For a long moment Guner simply stood there on the wall, the wind pulling at his coat, the distant figure of Morgan growing smaller across the fields. The dry air tasted of dust and possibility. Then a wide, almost feral grin spread across his face. The kind of grin that belonged to a man who had spent years walking the knife’s edge between survival and extinction, and who had just been offered a chance to settle something properly—away from the eyes of the capital, away from Bailon’s reach, away from everything except the fight itself.

The dry days had just become interesting.