They soared through the morning air like crimson arrows, the wind tugging at their clothes and wings as the village disappeared behind them. Before them rose the jagged spires of the mountain range—vast, ancient, and cloaked in a quiet menace. Even from a distance, the peaks looked like the teeth of some slumbering titan, stretching endlessly across the land.
Beneath those sharp summits, monsters stirred.
This close to civilization, any hostile creature was a danger, but this one—a wyvern—had already made itself known. Its arrogance was written in claw marks upon farm walls, its wings casting dark shadows over herds before it snatched up livestock with unrestrained hunger. It had not yet attacked people, but it was only a matter of time. Rias knew that truth better than anyone. She had seen what unchecked monsters could do.
The wyvern's behavior was strange, however. These creatures were usually part of flocks or clutches, highly territorial and organized in their own primal way. For one to act alone with such recklessness suggested something more. Perhaps it was the last survivor of a hunt. Or perhaps—and more likely—it had been cast out. That meant it was dangerous, even by wyvern standards.
The team knew this. They had known it for days. That's why they had chosen this creature.
Rias flew at the front, her red hair trailing behind her like a banner. Her mind wasn't only on the hunt. A lone wyvern... a Rank 4 threat. If we're struggling now, what chance do we have against what's to come? Her thoughts drifted back to what she had learned—of dragons, and threats far beyond the scope of her current strength.
A single Rank 4 threat, like this wyvern, could destroy a village like Irz in hours.
A pack of them—a coordinated, violent group—was considered Rank 5. Enough to bring down cities if left unchecked.
And then there were Rank 6 threats. Dragons. Real dragons. Even the weakest among them could lay waste to a region the size of a small country, burning forests and shattering stone with ancient power. The thought made her fists clench.
And above even them... there were the Ten Rings.
The Apostles of the White Lord. Ten-Ring individuals. Their power wasn't measured in magic or martial prowess alone—it was sheer force. They were beings who could level cities with the same casual ease a human might swat a fly.
Only my brother, she thought with grim clarity, only he might be able to stand against such a foe.
And here she was, hoping to prove herself against a wyvern. One solitary beast.
Do we even have the potential?
She didn't know. But there was no time for doubt. Below them, the rocky path split open into a long ridge, and the signs were clear—charred grass, clawed rock, broken bones strewn carelessly like discarded kindling.
The wyvern had made its nest here.
And it would not be allowed to stay.
Rias tightened her grip, her magic pulsing beneath her skin like a second heartbeat. Behind her, Akeno flew silently, electricity crackling faintly between her fingers. Yuuto had already drawn his sword. Koneko, calm and stoic, was scanning the terrain with her keen eyes.
They had come to see the fruits of their training.
They had come to fight.
And whether they were ready or not… the mountain would judge them.
---------------
Before they had crossed the final stretch of air—less than a hundred meters from the jagged crags where the wyvern nested—the mountain trembled with its roar.
It had sensed them.
The wind howled, not with the gentleness of nature, but with savage intent. The wyvern took to the sky like a scaled thunderbolt, its enormous wings cleaving through the air in violent, sweeping strokes. The downdraft alone was enough to shake loose stone and stir the trees far below. The pressure in the air changed, the mountain itself reacting as predator met challengers.
This was no mindless beast. This was a creature bred for the hunt.
Akeno acted first, her voice calm but sharp with urgency as she raised a hand. Sparks danced like fireflies in the air before condensing into a barrier of shimmering force. The hurricane of wind collided with it, tearing at its surface with tooth and claw, but the barrier held.
Then came Rias—cool, focused, and utterly relentless. Her hands shimmered with red light as she cast her signature magic: bullets of pure destruction, faster than any gunshot, invisible to all but the most attuned. They streaked through the sky with terrifying speed, annihilating boulders and vaporizing chunks of cliff where they passed.
Yuuto Kiba moved like a shadow in her wake, his sword already forming in his grasp. It was long and gleamed like crystal, born of his unique ability—Sword Birth. This one pulsed with wintry energy, and as he slashed through the air, an arc of freezing light surged forward, sharp and elegant as a crescent moon.
But the wyvern twisted mid-air, wings folding tight against its body, and dropped like a stone. It slipped through the storm of magic and steel with the grace of an airborne dancer. The next moment, its wings snapped wide once more—and it retaliated.
No slow breath of flame, no mindless torrent of fire. It shot fireballs, each one glowing hot and dense, spheres of tightly packed heat that moved like artillery shells. They whistled through the air toward the devils with deadly precision.
Not just strong, Rias thought as she dodged one with a deft roll in midair. Experienced.
The fireballs burst around them in a storm of heat and pressure, lighting the mountainside with brilliant explosions. Rocks cracked. Flames licked at their heels.
"This isn't a newborn hatchling," she said quickly, her voice sharp as the wind that whipped around them. "It's a veteran. Smart. Dangerous. If we fight like this, we'll wear each other down—and it might even escape."
She glanced around—her team still aloft, still focused, but pushed on the defensive. That wouldn't do. Not against a creature that knew how to choose its battlefield.
"Surround it!" she barked, her eyes glowing with power. "Cut off its escape routes! We force it to fight us on our terms—or we lose the advantage!"
There was no hesitation. Akeno nodded and peeled off to the left, lightning crackling in her palms. Kiba vanished in a blur of motion, darting between jagged peaks to flank the wyvern from the right. Koneko—silent as snow—was already preparing to leap from the cliffside, ready to strike.
And in the center, her crimson aura blazing against the pale mountain air, Rias watched the wyvern with narrowed eyes.
--------------
High above the rugged peaks, where the air grew thin and the cold bit sharper than steel, the sky was torn by fire and fury.
The wyvern was fast—unnaturally fast for a beast of its size—its massive wings carving paths through the air as it wove between mountainous spires and dagger-like boulders. Koneko had leapt, her white hair streaming behind her like a comet's tail, her fist poised to strike with enough force to shatter stone—but the creature twisted at the last second, just beyond her reach. Her blow cracked a nearby cliff face, but the beast was already gone.
Hot on its trail, Akeno cast a thunderbolt streaking through the air, the crack of it loud enough to make the mountains echo with fury. But the wyvern dipped low, wings slicing the currents with terrifying precision, letting the bolt flash harmlessly above it. The mountain wind roared around it as it slipped past the electrified air, dancing perilously close to the rock formations that loomed like sleeping giants.
It knew it was outmatched. These weren't villagers with pitchforks. These weren't even knights. These were hunters, and they were dangerous.
And so, with a sudden screech, the wyvern surged upward—straight into the heavens. Its wings caught the wind and pulled it high above the others, soaring past the low-hanging clouds, where the sunlight made its scales glint like molten gold.
Rias narrowed her eyes.
"It's trying to escape!" she cried, already gathering power in her hands. "After it!"
There was no hesitation. Kiba blurred forward in a flash of motion, his form streaking through the air like a silver arrow. Akeno rose with him, lightning trailing from her fingertips in graceful arcs. Koneko kicked off the mountainside, propelling herself into the sky once more, her eyes fierce with determination.
But the wyvern, now well aware it couldn't outrun them, stopped short in the air.
And dove.
It descended like a meteor, its roar shaking the sky as it tucked its wings and fell—straight into Koneko's path. She had only a second to adjust before the creature crashed into her with devastating force. The impact slammed her against the mountainside, splitting the stone and sending a shower of rocks tumbling down the cliff.
"Koneko!" Rias screamed, horror flashing across her face as her friend vanished in a cloud of dust and rubble.
But there was no time to mourn.
The wyvern's jaws parted, and from its gullet erupted a blinding beam of fire—white-hot and crackling with fury. It roared across the sky toward the group like a wave of molten death.
Asia froze, her eyes wide with terror.
But Akeno was faster.
With a cry of power and desperation, she conjured a glowing wall of magic just in time. The flame slammed into the barrier with an explosive roar, fire and sparks scattering across the mountain air like a thousand shooting stars.
Behind her shield, Akeno gritted her teeth. "It's stronger than I thought!"
Kiba, wasting no moment, surged past the wall of fire. His blade—still iced from his earlier creation—flashed like the fang of winter. The wyvern snarled and twisted to meet him, claws slashing through the air.
But it had forgotten something.
Koneko.
Beneath it, bruised and bloodied, her white uniform stained with ash and grit, the petite girl rose with the eerie silence of a ghost. Her golden eyes blazed with fury.
And her hands clenched tight around the wyvern's tail.
With a roar of her own, Koneko pulled, using all her strength to anchor the beast midair. Its wings faltered, thrown off-balance. The fire sputtered from its throat as it struggled—and then Kiba was upon it, blade-first, a streak of vengeance in the sky.
Kiba's blade sang through the sky, a glimmer of ice and steel forged by sheer will. The sword found its mark, slashing deep into the wyvern's side as it roared in defiance, blood spraying like molten rubies across the wind.
But the beast wasn't done yet.
With a deafening shriek, the wyvern twisted midair, its wings flaring wide as its massive tail arced like a whip. Kiba barely had a heartbeat to react. The tail swung toward him, wide and brutal—but in that moment, his blade struck again, severing it clean from the base.
The tail crashed down into the rocks below with a thunderous boom.
The wyvern, screeching in pain, retaliated instantly—its chest glowing as it expelled another infernal beam of flame. The blast roared toward Kiba like a dragon's last breath.
Koneko moved without thought.
She threw herself in front of it, arms crossed, bracing with every fiber of her strength. The flames engulfed her—scorching heat and blinding light—but she held, feet digging into the stone, a silent wall between the beast and her friends.
"Koneko!" Akeno's voice cut through the chaos.
Electricity crackled through her fingers, divine and merciless. With a cry of wrath, she unleashed it. The lightning bolt cracked the heavens and struck the wyvern square in the chest. The beast convulsed midair, wings flailing, its scream choked by the electric surge coursing through its body.
That was the moment Rias had been waiting for.
Her crimson aura flared to life, her eyes gleaming with power. A glowing orb formed between her hands, growing brighter and hotter with every breath she took. It pulsed with the destructive might of her bloodline, pure and overwhelming.
"Disappear," she whispered.
The beam burst forth.
A straight lance of destruction, bright as the sun and cold as death, tore through the sky and struck the wyvern's head. There was no scream. No final roar.
Only silence.
The head vanished—disintegrated in an instant—and the wyvern's massive body froze for the briefest moment, then slumped as if the sky itself had dropped its weight. Lifeless, it began to fall, wings crumpling, blood trailing behind like smoke.
The mountain wind carried its corpse downward, crashing through trees and stone, until it vanished into the shadowy ravine below.
Silence returned to the peaks—broken only by the heavy breathing of the victors.
Koneko stood smoking, her sleeves scorched and torn.
Kiba knelt, his sword vanishing in a shimmer of ice.
Akeno let the last crackle of lightning fade from her palms.
And Rias—hovering in the sky, her hair whipping around her like a banner—watched the horizon, her heart still racing.
-------------------
The wind had quieted now, and the smoke from the scorched rocks began to dissipate as Rias and her team landed near the edge of the cliff. The scent of burnt stone still lingered in the air, but it was fading, carried away by the gentle breeze that swept through the mountain peaks.
Rias let out a soft sigh of relief, lowering herself onto a flat rock. Her red hair fluttered around her shoulders, her body humming with the afterglow of power. "Well," she said with a small smile, "that went better than expected."
"No cracked ribs this time," Kiba chuckled, wiping a smudge of ash from his cheek. "That's progress, right?"
"You say that like you didn't almost get tail-slapped into next week," Akeno teased, floating gently down beside him, her skirt rippling as she landed. "And I suppose I should be grateful you didn't freeze the mountain solid again."
"It was a tactical choice," Kiba replied with mock dignity. "Besides, I got the tail, didn't I?"
Koneko, her uniform slightly singed but otherwise intact, dropped down beside them with a dull thud. She dusted herself off and muttered, "Too slow. Should've punched it before it screamed."
Rias smiled softly. "You did well, Koneko. You held the flame for everyone. That wasn't easy."
Koneko blinked and looked away, but a faint flush dusted her cheeks. "Hmph… still smell like roasted tuna."
That earned a round of laughter.
Asia hurried over, worry written all over her face as she examined Koneko's arms. "You should've let me heal you earlier, Koneko-san! What if you got blisters?"
"She didn't," Akeno said lightly. "Though I'm beginning to think Koneko's secretly fireproof."
Koneko shot her a deadpan stare. "I'll test that theory. On you."
Rias giggled, a sound that felt strange and light after so much tension. "Relax, everyone. We actually did it. No injuries. No disasters. And one very dead wyvern."
"It's strange," Kiba mused, gazing out toward the smoldering ravine below. "Last time we faced one of those… it didn't end nearly this well."
"We're stronger now," Rias said, her voice gentle but firm. "We've been working for this. Training, growing—together. And today, we saw the result."
"Still think we're ready for another one?" Akeno asked with a grin, stretching her arms behind her back. "Because I wouldn't mind blasting something else before dinner."
"Only if it brings dessert," Koneko deadpanned.
Asia clapped her hands together. "How about we go back and have cake instead?"
"Cake sounds much safer," Kiba agreed.
Rias stood, brushing off her skirt as her wings shimmered faintly behind her. She looked at each of them, her eyes warm. "Let's return. We'll report the kill and rest. Tomorrow… we plan the next step."
"Do we tell Shirou?" Akeno asked, arching a brow.
Rias tilted her head thoughtfully, then smiled. "Let him find out. Maybe he'll be impressed."
"Or maybe he'll ask if we burned down the mountain range," Kiba quipped.
Akeno smirked. "If he does, I'll just tell him Kiba did it."
Koneko nodded solemnly. "He's very flammable."
Laughter erupted again, echoing across the cliffs and ridges. It was a moment of peace, of shared pride—and a fleeting glimpse of normalcy in a world where danger waited just beyond the clouds.
But for now, they were together.
And they were winning.