So Ren’s iron-clad alibi was the manual, back-breaking labor of tower installation...

But the reality was vastly different.

In practice, Ren actually finished constructing the massive defensive structures in a microscopic fraction of the time he officially reported.

Before his descent into the ruins, he had meticulously faked his own limitations when installing his previously made runes.

But those being hard to make and taking time had been true...

He had spent agonizing hours carefully carving the mana-absorption runes by hand, utilizing a disgusting, tedious solvent made from acidic Golden rank beasts blood just to make the runes.

Now? He executed the entire process in a matter of minutes.

Utilizing his newly downloaded techniques, he effortlessly molded raw mana crystals. But he wasn’t using the previous standard Gold-tier shine and density anymore; he casually compressed them into flawless, hyper-dense Platinum-tier-and-shine cores.

He mentally imprinted the updated, highly complex molding parameters directly into the roof of the structure of the stone tower, and just slotted them into the wooden main body with a terrifying ease that would have left any veteran magical engineer gaping in absolute shock.

More often than not, he didn’t even bother waiting for the designated squad of Earth Tamers he was officially supposed to be directing in making the frame. He simply erected the entire colossal tower entirely by himself. He violently commanded the bedrock to part and the thick wooden roots to weave together, operating with an explosive, god-like efficiency that the humble "Installation Sergeant" definitively was not supposed to possess.

The massive surplus of hours left over from his accelerated workflow belonged entirely to him.

Once he flew for a bit and was completely alone, standing in a sector sufficiently far from his "leadership training" area, Ren immediately utilized the shadow network. He teleported directly into a massive, heavily shielded, and heavily monitored subterranean vault located deep within Selphira’s territory.

It was an absolute safe zone. A heavily fortified proving ground where a giant, roaring Platinum size and Diamond power beast spontaneously materializing out of thin air wouldn’t trigger any kingdom-wide alarm.

There, in the quiet dark, he spent his stolen hours practicing the fusion.

The three-headed Hydra came to be... The sheer, crushing weight of the spell began to feel less like a mountain on his chest and more like a heavy, familiar armor. Ren meticulously learned how to optimize the biological matrix, sustaining her colossal mass with vastly less mana burn.

He practiced the delicate, dangerous art of canceling the spell without letting the energetic rebound completely hollow out his core.

Every single grueling session was a fraction of a millimeter cleaner than the last. The apocalyptic spell that had initially almost brought him to his knees was slowly, inevitably, bending to his absolute will.

And when the clock finally ran out, he teleported back to the surface.

♢♢♢♢

The transition back into the "Red Pathfinder" persona required its own highly specific, physical ritual.

Before officially stepping back onto the crowded stones of the Great Wall, Ren would deliberately slump his shoulders. He would rapidly cycle his breathing, faking the exact, ragged exhaustion that naturally belonged to a man who had supposedly just spent the last eight hours hand-carving runes and screaming at a squad of Earth Tamers under the blistering sun.

He made sure to look appropriately sweaty, his muscles hanging with feigned lethargy.

Absolutely no one on the perimeter had any reason to suspect that his genuine exhaustion, when it actually managed to bleed through the facade, didn’t come from that, but from violently sustaining a legendary, three-way beast fusion that the majority of the military wouldn’t have believed possible even if they stared directly at it.

The irony of the entire situation did not escape him.

The harder Ren deliberately tried to look like an ordinary, exhausted, blue-collar installer and absolutely nothing more, the more profound admiration he accidentally harvested from his ranks.

The frontline grunts spoke his alias with deep, genuine reverence. High command officially had him flagged on a very short, highly exclusive list of young officers worth aggressively grooming for promotion. Every single new autonomous tower he " painstakingly installed" violently reinforced the public image of an exceptionally capable, fiercely dedicated young sergeant.

The hilarious, hidden truth was that the tower installation was the absolute easiest part of his day. Faking for the alibi was what actually tired him out more.

Ren was undeniably winning the people over. But standing in the cold wind of the Wall, he wasn’t entirely sure he was actually learning how to be a leader.

That had been the entire foundational point of Julius and Selphira’s grand social experiment: ask him to serve from the absolute bottom of the food chain. Make him understand the visceral reality of being a grunt who takes orders before he is ever allowed to give them. Make him earn the absolute loyalty of the men based on his own merit, without leaning on the terrifying, world-altering fame of his real name.

And in a strange, twisted way, he was succeeding too easily. The men followed his orders just like his advice with the bow. They respected him.

Whenever a new tactical problem arose on the perimeter, they instinctively looked to him for the solution.

But Ren deeply suspected they weren’t following him for the noble, charismatic reasons Victor had envisioned. They were following him because of an accumulation of results that Ren was producing almost entirely by accident, operating half in the shadows, hastily squeezing in world-saving infrastructure between his secret, apocalyptic fusion practices.

Perhaps that was a valid form of leadership too... Perhaps it wasn’t.

Ultimately, Ren told himself as he deliberately slouched his spine and perfected his exhausted grimace before walking back toward position seventeen, the philosophical label didn’t really matter.

He had a massive, impossible looking, job to do. And he was doing it.

If the price of executing that job was forcing his masquerade as a humble, overworked logistics grunt disguise to fail and make his work too easy... then it was a price he would have to pay.

As he stepped back onto his designated sector, Garret immediately spotted him. The grizzled veteran didn’t offer a salute. Instead, he just grinned a toothy, scarred smile and casually pointed his chin at the worn wooden dice board resting on a nearby crate.

Red Pathfinder, Section Sergeant, master tower installer, and the soon to be absolute worst-kept secret in the entire world to everyone except the men standing directly in front of him, let out a quiet sigh.

He walked over and sat down, fully prepared to deliberately lose the very first game before systematically taking Garret’s extra crystals so he couldn’t drink too much.