The saga ignites in the famine of a dying village. Seth's awakening with a single stone, an unheard-of feat for any commoner, should have been his liberation, yet the Primalist branding crushes the Warrior dream he has engineered for nine years. Worse, the Faertis tax collector, certain that a ragged peasant cannot be a prodigy, seizes Seth's house, burns the only painting of Seth's parents before his eyes, and saddles him with an impossible fifteen-copper fine meant to break his spirit forever. Overnight the newborn Wielder loses everything and becomes a fugitive in his own village. In exile Seth opens the wooden box Marcus delivered, discovering his father's inheritance, the Encyclopedia of Beasts, the Black Lion Keystone, and a blood-sealed letter warning that these gifts will place a target on his back for life. He activates the keystone without hesitation and is hurled into a colossal windowless chamber where a Lesser Black Cerberus, a Rank-8 nightmare of three snapping heads, is summoned to either forge his core or end his bloodline. The duel that follows is the novel's first masterpiece of escalation, a desperate brawl where Seth's left arm is crushed between the beast's jaws, where his crude toothblade rips through a monster nearly twice his Rank, and where every instinct screaming surrender is drowned by the image of his mother's hollow cheeks. When the Cerberus finally collapses, the Feral Instinct core crystallizes in Seth's chest, a testament that for a Primalist the only bridge between weakness and power is willingness to die. The milestone closes with a second gift of fate. Seth finds a Tenebrous Direwolf pup cornered by a venomous snake, forces the Link spell into the dying creature, and emerges with Nightmare, a bonded partner whose Silver potential and Darkness spells will become Seth's sharpest fangs. This first milestone plants the story's engine, Seth will not grow through grinding repetition but by brushing against death and stealing its spoils. His ordinary hunter's life is over. A predator's Path has begun.

At Arthuri's academy selections, Seth enters a tournament carved for nobles, where enchanted blades gleam against commoner rust and a Rank-14 Elementalist named Lucius Faertis wears a robe worth more than Seth's house. Seth's first bout ends in defeat against the aether-shielded Warrior Herbin, but his relentless arrow kiting earns grudging respect from the crowd. The real rupture comes in his second bout against Lucius. Seth dodges Fireballs, lands two humiliating strikes, and wounds the noble's pride in front of the House butler who documents every failure. Lucius answers not with honor but with ambush. On the forest road home, the noble's guards grab Seth and Renwal, and while Seth is pinned to the dirt, a golden shield descends upon the blacksmith's arms, shattering both limbs in a spray of blood and bone. The cruel horror of that moment transforms Seth's rivalry into a sacred oath. He will grow strong enough to break Lucius Faertis in return. The selections conclude with Professor Reat, the exhausted Battlemancer who has been studying Seth, revealing a hidden path for the Primalist class, twenty beaststones within a month will secure an academy seat regardless of the tournament's results. But what truly matters in this milestone is not the mechanical second chance, it is the emotional fracture that redefines Seth's motivation. He no longer dreams of simply protecting Sunatown. He dreams of crushing the House that grinds it to dust. The arena was never the real battlefield. The real war begins when Seth limps away from Arthuri carrying a broken friend, a bleeding vow, and the certain knowledge that no judge will ever deliver justice for a commoner. What remains is the cold arithmetic of power, his enemy owns soldiers, coin, and enchantments, so Seth must forge himself into something the noble Houses cannot break.

Hunting Stone-Scaled Sloths near the Black Mountain, Seth and Nightmare are cornered by an Inferno Bear and leap from a cliff into a raging river, only to stumble into a hidden cave where reality bends. The instant they cross the threshold, a strange force rips them apart, leaving Nightmare lost in the dark and Seth alone with a Ghoul in a rune-lit chamber. What follows is a survival gauntlet spanning days without daylight, waves of Undead Boreal Wolves, ambushing Ghouls, and the constant gnaw of hunger pushing Seth forward. In this underground death trap Seth learns to fuse his Feral Instinct with conscious tactics, discovers the cavern's bizarre aether density supercharges his regeneration, and watches his core guide him to evolve Quick Step into Haste under lethal pressure. The hierarchy of beasts teaches him a hunter's true lessons. A Ghoul can be slain by baiting its lunges. An Undead Wolf collapses when an arrow takes its throat. A Rank-20 Undead Rhinoceros can be crushed by dropping stalactites onto its armored skull. When Nightmare finally reunites with him, the direwolf has grown into a fierce hunter, and together they tear through the domain's guardian, claim the Iron-grade Domain Flower, and collapse the entire realm, which spits them back into the mundane forest as different creatures entirely. The Rift grants Seth more than a dozen attributes across two Ranks, proves that a Primalist can outpace every noble if fed sufficient danger, and plants a crucial suspicion. The core is not a passive amplifier but an active architect, carving grooves and reshaping spells in ways no academy textbook dares describe. Seth emerges with a new philosophy etched into his bones. A domain is not a prison, it is an opportunity, and the only sin is hesitating at the threshold. The boy who entered that cave would have begged for rescue. The hunter who walks out knows the rescue was never coming.

Seth enters Trogan Academy wearing the gray uniform of a commoner while two-thirds of the student body flaunts scarlet nobility, and the ranking board buries him in the middle of a thousand contenders. The academy's greatest resources are reserved for the top, the nobles hoard Friday classes on Path Theory and Spell Evolutions, and Lucius continues his vendetta with relentless creativity, crushing Seth inside Mud Hand during a sparring match, mocking Renwal's shattered arms in the entrance hall, then engineering an ambush outside the city walls. In that fight Seth releases Nightmare in self-defense, and when the Elementalist who saw the direwolf dies from the wounds of Shadow Bite, Seth stands accused of murdering a noble. Desperate, Professor Reat reveals that he recognized Seth's gold eyes as the mark of Draeria and drags him into the Champions of Chaos, the most powerful adventurer branch in Kastal, whose protection deters the Seralp and Faertis Houses alike. The double breakthrough arrives when Reat forces Seth and Nightmare to battle an Iron-tier Night Beetle, a fortress of chitin and lightning that nearly kills them both. But the lethal desperation ignites Nightmare's ascension to Iron, granting the direwolf Shadow Step and a hundred-point attribute surge that pours into Seth through Link. The story's final beat is a calculated gamble. Seth propositions Lucius with a duel wager for the Spring Tournament, binding the noble's obsession to a future fight so Sunatown can breathe, then secures a month of Rift Diving freedom. The narrative expands from a peasant's revenge into a national game of thrones, and Seth positions himself as the weed that will split the cobblestones of the Faertis Empire. The academy, once his dream, is now simply a stepping stone on the Path to something far larger. Every enemy he makes only sharpens his fangs.