Kanos stood perfectly still in the center of the vast concrete room. He held the iron bowl filled with the heavy, bruised violet ink in his left hand. His right hand tightly gripped his wooden brush. The air around him felt incredibly heavy. The new ink mixture did not just look dense; it literally drained the ambient moisture and static energy from the air within a two meter radius.
He closed his eyes and synchronized his breathing. His mind projected the blueprint he had just drawn on the table onto the empty space in front of him. A hollow, hyper agile bone frame. Dual hinged jaws. Razor sharp claws optimized for tearing through armor. Kanos opened his eyes. They were cold and completely devoid of hesitation.
Kanos dipped the brush and swung his arm. He did not paint on paper. He painted directly onto the fabric of reality.
A thick, dark violet line trailed behind the tip of his brush. The line did not fade. It hung solidly in the empty air, crackling with an intense, quiet energy. Kanos moved faster. His arm became a blur of precise, calculated strokes. He drew the elongated skull first. Then the jagged spine. The complex leg joints designed for explosive acceleration.
The moment he closed the final line connecting the tailbone to the ribs, a massive shockwave of cold air blasted outward.
Sili yelled in shock, falling backward onto the stone floor. Belida had to stab his greatsword into the ground just to keep his footing steady against the sudden gale. Kanos gritted his teeth. A sharp, stabbing pain spiked directly into his temples. His nose immediately started dripping fresh, warm blood. The mental cost of manifesting this new material was terrifyingly high.
"Manifest," Kanos rasped through clenched teeth.
The dark violet lines exploded into thick, heavy smoke. The smoke rapidly solidified, wrapping around the invisible blueprint frame. The sound of shifting bones and grinding shadows echoed loudly. In less than five seconds, the creature stood completely formed in front of Kanos.
It was a nightmare ripped straight from a dark fantasy horror sketch. The creature was the size of a large leopard. Its body was incredibly sleek and made entirely of densely compressed dark violet smoke. It had no eyes, only empty, glowing gray sockets that radiated the exact same anti magic aura as the crushed crystals. The beast let out a low, vibrating growl that did not use vocal cords, but directly shook the air pressure in the room.
Kanos dropped to one knee. He panted heavily, wiping the blood from his chin. His vision swam for a few seconds before finally stabilizing.
"Boss," Sili whispered in pure terror from the back of the room. The broker crawled backward slowly. "That thing... looking at it makes me feel like my soul is being slowly vacuumed out of my chest."
Kanos forced himself to stand up. He ignored the throbbing pain in his head. He walked slowly toward the newly created beast. The dark violet hound did not move. It waited for him perfectly still. Kanos reached out his hand and touched the creature’s head.
The sensation was shocking. It did not feel like touching dry ice or smoke anymore. It felt like touching a solid block of vibrating iron submerged in freezing water. Kanos’s own natural mana instantly tried to rush out of his fingers, heavily drawn into the creature’s body. Kanos quickly pulled his hand back before he lost a chunk of his own energy.
"It works perfectly," Kanos smiled coldly. He turned to look at Belida. "Big guy. Come here. I need to test its durability against physical and magical impact."
Belida pulled his greatsword from the stone floor. The giant knight walked forward with heavy steps. He looked at the dark violet hound with a mix of respect and deep suspicion. Belida knew exactly how lethal Kanos’s creations could be.
"What do you want me to do?" Belida asked, gripping his sword handle with both hands.
"Coat your sword with your heavy shield aura," Kanos instructed flatly. "Just a thin layer. Then swing at its ribs as hard as you can. Do not hold back. I need to know if the frame will shatter."
Belida nodded slowly. The knight took a deep breath. A faint, sturdy yellow glow immediately coated the pitch black steel of his greatsword. It was the manifestation of his passive defensive skill, repurposed to add crushing weight to his attack. Belida raised the massive weapon high above his shoulder.
"Get ready, Kanos," Belida warned.
With a loud roar, Belida swung the greatsword down in a devastating diagonal arc. The heavy blade sliced through the air with a terrifying swoosh, aiming directly to cut the shadow hound entirely in half.
The hound did not dodge. Kanos mentally commanded it to take the hit dead on.
CLANG!
A deafening metallic crash echoed throughout the concrete workshop. Belida’s eyes went wide in absolute shock. The impact sent a violent tremor straight up his muscular arms, nearly forcing him to drop his weapon. The greatsword bounced off the hound’s ribs as if he had just struck a solid mountain of titanium.
But that was not the craziest part. The moment the glowing yellow blade touched the dark violet smoke, the aura on Belida’s sword instantly fizzled out and died. The hound’s body literally drank the magical energy from the attack in a fraction of a millisecond.
The dark violet hound did not even flinch. It simply stood there, absorbing the kinetic force and the magic simultaneously.
"Crazy bastard," Belida muttered softly. He pulled his sword back and inspected the blade. The steel was perfectly fine, but his aura was completely drained. "My arms went completely numb on impact. The magic coating was instantly sucked dry before the blade even fully connected. This thing is a walking black hole."
"I call them Null Hounds," Kanos said, his voice dripping with dark satisfaction. He wiped the remaining blood from his nose and picked up his wooden brush again. "One is not going to be enough to massacre an entire Executioner squad. The headache is killing me, but I have enough ink and crystal powder to make two more."
Sili scrambled up from the floor. He aggressively pushed his cracked glasses back up his nose. "Boss, you are literally building an army of system breaking anomalies. The Sensor Bureau is going to completely lose their minds when they see these things eating their high tier spells."
"That is exactly the point, Sili," Kanos replied coldly.
For the next hour, Kanos tortured his own brain to the absolute limit. He drew two more Null Hounds in the middle of the workshop. By the time the third hound solidified into reality, Kanos collapsed onto the floor, vomiting a mouthful of stomach acid and saliva due to the extreme mana exhaustion. His entire body shook violently.
But as Kanos lay on the cold stone floor, looking at the three terrifying dark violet beasts standing obediently in front of him, he could not stop a vicious, triumphant laugh from escaping his lips.
The silent workshop suddenly echoed with the sound of light footsteps. Papuyu walked in through the broken steel gate. The female hitman looked at the three terrifying hounds for a brief second without showing any change in expression. She walked straight to Kanos and dropped a small, bloody silver badge onto his chest.
"An Executioner scout team just passed through the ninth floor perimeter," Papuyu reported with a deadpan voice. "Three men. I killed the scout. The other two are tracking my blood trail back up toward the lower district sewer entrance."
Kanos stopped laughing. He grabbed the bloody silver badge and pushed himself up to a sitting position. His tired eyes suddenly burned with a lethal, focused intensity.
"They are trying to lure us back into the signal zone," Kanos said quietly. He grabbed the edge of the iron table and pulled himself up to his feet. He looked at Belida, Papuyu, and Sili. "They want to fight where their system algorithms work perfectly."
Kanos turned to his three Null Hounds. The beasts growled softly in unison, their anti magic auras humming with deadly anticipation.
"Let’s go up and give them exactly what they want," Kanos ordered coldly. "It is time to hunt."