Chapter 556: The Ashen Knight

"Who are you clowns?"

The words landed heavy, as if the mountain air itself had decided to carry them farther than Kaiden intended.

For a heartbeat, the gathering ground froze.

Conversations cut off mid-sentence. Boots stopped crunching against gravel. Even the fluttering banners seemed to still, caught in an awkward suspension as dozens of awakened turned their attention toward the source of the disturbance.

Shock rippled outward in visible waves.

The ash-blond man’s eyes widened first, his smug expression cracking just enough to betray genuine disbelief. Beside him, the three women stiffened, their alert stances sharpening as they quickly reassessed Kaiden. He visibly went from a useless loser to a rude, useless loser in their eyes.

"You..." the blond man began slowly with incredulity bleeding into his voice, finding it hard to accept that this was reality. "You really don’t know who I am?"

Kaiden tilted his head. "Should I?"

That did it.

A scoff burst from the man’s lips, sharp and derisive, though there was tension underneath it now. "If you don’t know an S-tier awakened in your own country, then that says a lot about your competence."

S-tier.

That single designation carried immense weight.

Kaiden’s gaze sharpened. He studied the man properly now. The posture. The aura density. The sigils on his jacket. The faces of the women flanking him.

Nothing clicked.

Which was impossible.

Kaiden knew every S-tier awakened in the country. Not vaguely. Not by reputation alone. He knew their names, their abilities, their combat footage, their guild affiliations, and their public records. He’d spent nights doing exactly that: learning the people who could become allies, rivals, or existential threats.

This man was none of them.

Which was exactly why Kaiden called them clowns. If he knew he was speaking to an S-tier, he might’ve been a bit more selective with his words. In his eyes, these were just wannabe troublemakers who were either simply jealous of him or opportunists who wanted something, something they could gain by talking smack to him.

In either option, he just wanted to dismiss them and get on with his day.

But, alas, it was not meant to be.

After a few seconds of scrutiny, Kaiden spoke again.

"Were you imported from some obscure country or something? I know most of the A-tiers in the country, let alone S-tiers."

The reaction was immediate.

"No!" the blond man snapped, offense flaring hot and fast. His composure slipped further, irritation bleeding into his aura as it spiked unconsciously. "I was born and raised in the States!"

That answer only made the silence worse.

The crowd grew tense, the air thickening as people began to realize things were going south. The blond man’s ego was clearly hurt, and Kaiden did not seem to be in the mood to apologize for his rudeness. Those who were not so sure about their own abilities began to back away slowly, electing to watch from a safe distance.

While the association forbade attacks between competitors, it didn’t hurt to be safe. Even if the attacker was seriously punished for their actions, that did not help much if you were already turned into pulverized meat.

Someone in the crowd clearly reached the same conclusion. Except, instead of backing away, they chose to intervene.

"Oi!" a voice shouted from somewhere behind the second ring of onlookers. "He’s the Ashen Knight!"

The effect was instant.

The murmurs didn’t just grow—they exploded.

Kaiden raised an eyebrow.

Ashen Knight.

Of course, he knew the Ashen Knight.

Everyone did.

An awakened who had appeared barely two years ago, then vanished from the public eye for more than a year and a half while his guild forged him into a weapon. When he finally stepped onto real battlefields, he hadn’t climbed - he’d exploded, tearing through dungeon after dungeon, his level skyrocketing at a pace that made analysts sweat. Last estimates put him somewhere in the high seventies, possibly even brushing eighty, though no one outside the association had confirmation.

A monster in human form.

And yet...

Kaiden stared harder at the man’s face, searching desperately for recognition that refused to come.

Because the Ashen Knight was never seen like this.

He never removed his helmet. Not once. No interviews. No press. No publicity stunts. Even his occasional streams were nothing but raw battlefield footage, consisting of monsters charging, steel crashing, ash drifting through the air as he carved through hordes like an executioner. Always armored. Always masked. Always silent except for combat callouts.

Kaiden had watched those streams.

He’d studied them.

But he’d never seen the man underneath.

Understanding clicked into place at last, and Kaiden exhaled slowly.

"... Oh. Where did you forget your helmet? Isn’t your whole thing being a faceless murder machine?"

The silence that followed was lethal.

The blond man’s eye twitched.

Veins stood out along his temple as his already-fractured composure finally shattered completely. His aura flared, heat and pressure rolling outward in a way that made nearby awakened flinch.

"I didn’t forget my helmet!" he snapped. His face was twisted in pure, unfiltered annoyance. "When will you get it through your thick skull, you dumb fucker?"

The shift was immediate and unmistakable.

Aria’s playful air vanished first, her eyes narrowing into sharp slits as her posture subtly adjusted, weight settling into a stance Kaiden knew all too well. Bastet’s expression hardened next, her golden gaze turning cold and assessing, solar mana stirring just beneath her skin like a restrained sunstorm. Calypso’s smile disappeared entirely, replaced by a flat, dangerous calm, while Nyx’s lips curled.

Kaiden himself didn’t react to being called names. Not even a little. Being spoken to rudely by another man meant absolutely nothing to him; Ash’s opinion held no weight whatsoever in his eyes.

But the girls reacted totally differently. They did not like how casually, how crudely, someone spoke to their lover. Just as Kaiden would have turned vicious if anyone dared speak to his girls that way, Aria, Bastet, Calypso, and Nyx felt the same spark of hostility ignite in their chests.

Ash, short for the Ashen Knight, as people often called him, had crossed a line, and they had no intention of letting it slide.

Across from them, the tension was answered in kind.

The three women flanking Ash stepped forward as one. Their glares locked onto Aria, Bastet, Calypso, and Nyx, sharp and unapologetic.

"Is there a problem?" one of them, a blonde, asked coolly while her chin lifted in challenge.

Another, the one with the most delicate body out of the three, scoffed. "If you want to fight, say it properly. We can go to the arena right now."

The air between the two groups tightened with invisible lines being drawn as nearby competitors instinctively widened the circle again. And in the middle of it all, Kaiden frowned.

Something about this didn’t sit right.

Ash was supposed to be a stoic monster. A silent juggernaut who let results speak for him, an S-tier whose reputation was built on discipline, not ego. The Ashen Knight didn’t bark insults. He didn’t snap at nobodies. He didn’t care what people thought of him, especially not enough to get visibly worked up over a man he had never met before failing to recognize him.

So why now?

Why did he care so much?