Chapter 1

Three long, piercing whistles broke the silence of the early spring playground.

I pressed the stopwatch and herded the last few students who were still jogging on the playground into the locker room.

"Teacher Kane!"

With light footsteps, the blonde girl Mia ran towards me, carrying a travel bag stuffed full.

She was one of the few girls in this arrogant high school who would sincerely thank me, a teacher from a lower social class, after every class.

At this moment, the sunlight shines on her vibrant face.

"I'm going to Europe for the carnival, so I need to ask for leave from next week's physical fitness test!"

I stopped tidying up the track and field equipment: "Where in Europe?"

"A border town in the Balkans."

Upon hearing this place name, my gaze slowly turned cold.

Past muscle memory and an absolute sense of danger, like a lurking beast, awaken uncontrollably in this instant.

In this North American university, the teachers and students only saw me as a low-level physical education teacher who worked from dawn till dusk and had no presence. No one knew that two years ago in the underground world, I had a code name that terrified countless overseas armed groups and bloodthirsty tyrants—"Tyrant".

I was once a top-tier special forces elite who climbed to the top by stepping over the corpses of countless enemies. With just one sentence, I could make the international black market tremble.

But the years of beheadings, crushing, and bloodshed made me utterly weary of that cold throne of power.

To bury that past filled with killing, I forcibly sealed all confidential files about myself, cut off all contact, hid in this campus under an assumed name, and willingly wore the mask of "mediocrity".

I thought I had long since washed the blood off my hands, but the words "Balkans" instantly triggered the tactical radar etched into my very bones.

In the world of ordinary people, it might be a row of cheap hotels with exotic flair, but in this lawless place, it is a den of iniquity where guns, drugs, and black market arms intertwine.

"It's dangerous over there." I looked into her eyes, my voice involuntarily taking on a stern tone.

"Don't exaggerate, teacher. I went with my boyfriend Brad. His family can handle anything there!" Mia laughed nonchalantly. "I'll bring you some local souvenirs when I get back!"

"That border region is controlled by warlords, and it's not a playground for rich kids like you to explore. The black market area is ruthless and cannibalistic. If you absolutely have to go there, never leave the main road."

"Okay, teacher!"

I watched Mia's retreating figure, forcibly suppressing the almost imperceptible sense of foreboding in my heart, and turned to walk back to the equipment room.

However, just three days later.

The school received a video blackmail attempt.

In the video, Mia is tightly bound to a rusty iron chair. She is desperately screaming silently at the camera. Her once sunny face is now covered with horrifying bruises and bloodstains.

The image was violently ripped apart, and a burly Eastern European man wearing a tactical communication headset arrogantly took over the frame.

"Give us five million dollars! If you don't see this payment within twelve hours, I'll cut this woman's parts into pieces and send them back to your school!" The man laughed arrogantly. "Don't even think about getting your uniformed trash! In the Balkans, your European and American special police, and those so-called Interpol agents, are not even as good as our guard dogs!"

The video abruptly ended, the image freezing on Mia's despairing face.

I stood at the very end of the long table, coldly scrutinizing every detail in the video.

"This is simply impossible!" The town sheriff slammed the folder onto the table, wiping the cold sweat pouring down his forehead, hastily making excuses for his incompetence. "The crime scene is in a black market segregated zone on the Balkan border. We have absolutely no cross-border law enforcement authority! Moreover, the enemy undoubtedly possesses heavy firepower. This is not an ordinary rescue; this is military warfare!"

"So, the police are refusing to come forward?" The chairman of the board of directors leaned back in his leather chair with a cold expression.

"We can't do anything about it. Sending people there would just be sending them to their deaths," the sheriff bluntly deflected.

The chairman of the board of trustees showed no anger; in fact, a hint of relief appeared on his old face. He crossed his arms, looked around, and issued a firm order: "Since we can't save her, we absolutely cannot let the media smell a single drop of blood. If the outside world finds out that our student has been kidnapped by criminal gangs, our Ivy League acceptance rate and donations for the second half of the year will completely collapse!"

"What does Mr. Chairman mean?"

"Classify it as a routine missing person incident during a trip!" The chairman made the final decision, his tone showing no pity for the young life. "Press her family, and the school should handle this completely quietly, absolutely not getting involved in this quagmire!"

Just as they reached a consensus, I strode to the front of the conference table.

"Judging from the faint background sound at the fifth second of the video, there is vibration from a heavy underground water pump every thirty seconds. Considering the type of air-raid shelter and the limestone dust, their location can only be the abandoned mine D-4 area on the Balkan border."

All the school board members and detectives looked at me like I was mentally ill.

I snatched the map from the sheriff, pulled out a tactical pen from my pocket, and drew three cutting lines with extreme precision, as if I were marking the enemy's head on a battlefield sand table.

"This is a low-lying area. Although their defenses are solid, there are serious blind spots in their air defenses. As long as there is a low-altitude flight path, plus a set of basic individual tactical equipment, we can break into the underground ventilation system of this building before sunrise tomorrow, destroy their defenses from the inside, and bring them out alive."

Silence reigned.

After a ten-second moment of stunned silence, a flash of annoyance crossed the sheriff's eyes.

"Are you crazy?!" The chairman of the board of directors slammed his fist on the table. "Kane! You're just a gym teacher who doesn't even know where the safety is on a gun! What are you pretending to be, playing the lone hero? Get out of this meeting room right now! We've already made our decision!"

The sheriff, enraged, stood up and walked a few steps toward me.

Taking advantage of his large size, he contemptuously extended his thick index finger, almost poking my nose: "Listen, you muscle-bound idiot! Don't think you know tactics just because you've watched a few Hollywood movies. Leave the murders to God, then go back to your playground and collect your exercise equipment!"

I glanced down at the finger that had almost touched me, but neither argued nor got angry.

Those warlords who dared to point at me with such gestures amidst the mountains of corpses and seas of blood in North Africa have had their skulls crushed into powder by the treadmills.

I slowly raised my eyelids.

At that moment, I completely shattered that docile, composed, and submissive mask of mediocrity.

A cold, violent, and death-like oppressive aura poured out of my pupils without reservation, crashing into the sheriff's face as if it were a tangible object.

The sheriff's arrogant finger suddenly froze in mid-air.

His mouth was open, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down frantically and laboriously, the curse he wanted to utter was stuck in his vocal cords.

"you……"

His legs went weak uncontrollably, and to avoid my emotionless gaze, he staggered back three steps.

I can't be bothered to look at this group of people in suits anymore.

I casually ripped off the name tag that identified me as a "physical education teacher" from around my neck, threw it on the conference table, and turned away, leaving everyone with pale faces.

"Since the authorities can't solve it, I'll do it my way."

With less than twelve hours left, the cross-border deployment of private armed forces and funds would take at least several hours to process, and Mia couldn't afford to wait even a second longer.

No matter what means I have to use, I must raise the five million dollars within twelve hours to buy Mia's ticket to life.

Before Mia left, she said that she was going with Brad, the son of the richest man.

Since they were all tied up, the Brad family manor on the west side of the town would definitely not stand idly by and watch their heir die.

Five million dollars is nothing more than the cost of a party for a wealthy family.