"They found it," Seris whispered, with a restrained satisfied tone. "But they don't know what happened."
Nyxaria looked back. In the distance, torchlight wandered like panicked fireflies around the warehouse. The sound of muffled anger carried on the wind.
[System Feedback: Environmental Sabotage Executed. Classification: Non-Combat Corrosion. Target Integrity: -62% and declining.]
Minus sixty-two percent. More than target. Good.
Inside, Mara took a deep breath—the first breath she truly felt since starting the infiltration. A strange feeling filled her chest: relief, mixed with emptiness, and a little... pride? I did it. Without killing. Without being seen. Just by using this power with precision. I can be something else. Not just a level 999 killing machine.
"The message has been sent," Nyxaria said, staring at the commotion in the distance. "They'll wake up and find their preparations have become trash. They'll blame each other, look for traitors, doubt the quality of goods, or blame curses on this territory. Fear of the unknown is more destructive than a known sword."
Lazarus, whose shadow became solid again as they moved away from the fortress, chuckled satisfied. "Oh, truly beautiful! An art! They will shiver in fear, question everything! Their morale will collapse before the battle begins!"
Seris nodded, but her face remained serious. She looked at Nyxaria. "It worked, Queen. But this isn't the end. They won't stay quiet. This chaos will trigger a response. They'll send an investigation team—a team consisting of the best, the most experienced." She paused for a moment, swallowing. Her voice dropped to almost inaudible. "And I know its leader."
The air around them suddenly grew colder. Not because of the night wind. Nyxaria turned, her red eyes catching the glint of anxiety in Seris's eyes. "Who?"
Seris's sentence hung in the air, a simple fact that carried the entire gravity of the past. Nyxaria turned, her red eyes that usually reflected starlight coldly, now fully focused on the Scout. In that darkness, only that red gleam lived, waiting.
"Who?"
That voice was flat, an ordinary request for information. But Seris swallowed. Her gaze, usually sharp and full of calculation, for a moment clouded, seen by memories more bitter than this night. "Kaelen," she began, her voice lower than a whisper. "Kaelen 'Blade' Vortis. Top DPS of the Crimson Crusaders. Backstab specialist, hybrid assassin. He's the one usually led by Draven Kross to... clean up disturbances. Their elite investigation team, if something goes wrong and needs a cold hand, he's the one called."
Kaelen.
That name entered Nyxaria's ears like static sound, meaningless. But inside, in the panic room fenced by gamer logic, that name exploded.
Kaelen.
Not a cool alias. Real character name. I remember. I remember well. Because he was the one who always appeared right after his tank trapped me in a corner, after the enemy healer locked crowd-control. He never opened the fight. He always came as the climax, as the final point. His short and poisonous dagger blade, [Viper's Kiss], always found gaps in my Rare-class healer armor. Eleven times. The death recording system in the corner of the screen used to always display the same name: Killed by: Kaelen_Vortis. Eleven times with the same animation: I fell, watching my silver avatar fade, and in the background, the cheers of the Crimson Crusaders that sounded like screams underwater.
Oh. Oh, no.
"Description," Nyxaria hissed. Her voice was still stable, but something changed in its pressure, a sharpness that made Lazarus—whose shadow trembled violently—and Seris both tense.
"Tall, slender. Black hair with undercut, green eyes—poisonous green. Always wears black leather armor without emblem, likes to be mistaken for an ordinary edgelord. But his movements... fast. Very fast. Level 85, but his AGI stat approaches 1000. His signature skills are [Phantom Lunge] and [Crippling Venom]. He's not a duelist, Queen. He's an executor."
Every word from Seris was like hammering nails on the ghost figure in Mara's memory. Yes. That's him. Ordinary edgelord. That's what I always thought before. Looks like a try-hard imitating ninja style, but his effectiveness was deadly. His arrogance was felt even from the way he stood after killing me, wiping his sword with an exaggerated motion as if he had just completed a work of art.
The hand that swung that sword eleven times took my life. The sound of his chuckling laugh every time my Rare items—that took weeks to farm—fell as loot. "Again, again, and again," he said once, his voice flat through voice chat. "When will you learn, healbot?"
Mara felt her stomach churn. Not from fear. But from a long-buried anger, which all this time was buried under the mountain of new power and survival priorities, suddenly found a channel. He's here. In the same world. Just a distance of... maybe several hundred meters below, observing the chaos she created.
"How long?" Nyxaria asked.
"They move fast. If they're already inside the fortress and see that damage... maybe less than ten minutes they'll sweep the outer perimeter. They know there's an intruder."
"Not an intruder," Lazarus objected, his shadow wrinkling. "This is boss action—my Queen. They'll know the difference."
"They'll think there's a rival guild sabotaging," Seris countered, quickly. "But Kaelen is no idiot. He'll suspect something... unusual. And he'll track. He has [Tracker's Sense] skill maxed out."
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Fantastic. So besides a backstabber, he's also a tracking dog. Mara took a deep breath—an action invisible from the outside, because Nyxaria's chest didn't move at all. I have STR stat 9,999. INT 12,500. I can crush him and his entire team into dust before they can blink. Why is my heart beating like this? Why do I feel... provoked?
That's the problem. That's the trap. This isn't about power. This is about ghosts. And that ghost is now walking on two feet toward her location.
Nyxaria looked down, at the commotion beginning to organize in the Crimson Crusaders fortress. Torches now moved in systematic patterns, sweeping from inside out. "We can't move now," she said, logically. "[Shadow Step] cooldown is still over two minutes." She turned to Lumi who curled up behind her robe. The child looked at her, her heterochromatic gold and gray eyes seeming to catch something else. Lumi wasn't afraid. She just stared, then slowly shook her head, once. Not to say 'no', but as if saying 'not yet'.
"We wait," Nyxaria decided. "We observe."
You're crazy? Wait? Wait for WHAT? Wait until that ghost climbs up here and we can get reacquainted? I have to leave. I have to—
But that's where the dilemma was. Running away was the sensible thing. But running from Kaelen? After everything that happened? After she became Nyxaria? It felt like... defeat. An acknowledgment that the trauma still controlled her. And Mara Vex, behind all those terrible statistics, hated that feeling.
They crouched deeper, merging with the shadows of large rocks. Seris disappeared completely, becoming part of the silent darkness. Lazarus extinguished the green glow in his eyes until only a dim point remained. Nyxaria sat, one hand instinctively circling Lumi's shoulder, pulling her closer. That movement felt awkward to Mara—she wasn't used to contact—but Nyxaria's body did it naturally, a protective gesture.
Five minutes passed like five hours. Then, from the fortress's main gate, a small group of figures emerged. Four people. They didn't move like panicked patrol, but like a calm and certain compass needle. In front, someone with a slender build with a posture so familiar it made Mara's teeth grind.
Kaelen.
He wasn't in a hurry. He stopped outside the gate, staring at the ground, then slowly raised his gaze, sweeping the slopes and forest around. Though the distance was tens of meters and dark, Mara could imagine those poisonous green eyes rotating, analyzing.
"He already knows we're not inside," Seris whispered, her voice almost inaudible. "He's looking for exit traces."
Kaelen bent down, touching the ground. His hand glowed briefly with pale yellow aura—[Tracker's Sense]. He stood, pointing exactly toward... their path earlier? No. He pointed slightly south, to another gap that might be an alternative retreat route. He's wrong. Lumi took me through the 'wrong' gap, the glitch. Our traces aren't readable by standard skills. A small victory that felt bitter.
The small team began to move, climbing silently toward the wrong path. They would find a dead end, or their own trap. But that would only delay.
"Now," Nyxaria hissed. "[Shadow Step] is ready. We leave."
Yes. Yes, let's go. This isn't the time. This... this is strategic. Not running away. Strategic.
But Nyxaria's body didn't move. She was still staring at Kaelen's figure moving away, traversing the darkness with the confidence of an apex predator.
What am I doing? Why am I not making this body MOVE?
"My Queen?" Lazarus whispered, worried.
Inside, a brief and fierce battle occurred. Logic against emotion. Survival against closure. Mara the traumatized healer screamed to run. But Mara the gamer with 8,000 hours of experience, who memorized every boss attack pattern, every raid mechanic, saw something else. She saw a quest trigger. A personalized cutscene. And she saw an imbalance so stark, so absolute, that it was almost... funny.
He's level 85. I'm level 999. He has an Epic dagger blade. My skin has passive defense that can crack Legendary swords. He's looking for an intruder. I'm the raid boss he plans to kill next month.
A crazy, risky, and completely unstrategic idea appeared. But that idea was heated by the bitterness of eleven deaths and driven by a curiosity that was almost painful: What's his expression?
"Wait here," Nyxaria's voice sounded, breaking the silence. It wasn't a loud command voice. But a final voice. "Guard Lumi. I'll go down."
"MY QUEEN!" Lazarus almost shouted, his shadow rippling hard. "That is—!"
"Easy kill," Nyxaria cut off. She wasn't finished, but that sentence was enough. She stood, and for the first time since infiltration, she didn't try to suppress her aura. She didn't release it fully—that would make Kaelen and the entire valley faint—but she let its outermost layer, the thin skin of power that usually enveloped her, breathe.
The wind stopped.
The sounds of night insects suddenly cut off.
Lumi looked up, toward Nyxaria, and for the first time tonight, her empty expression broke with a small blink, like curiosity.
"This isn't a battle, Lazarus," Nyxaria said, her eyes still fixed on the moving torchlight point in the distance. "This... is message delivery."
And before further protest could come out, she stepped forward—and disappeared.
Not with [Shadow Step]. But with the speed of AGI stat 7,200 that didn't even leave a shadow. She just existed, then didn't, as if cut from reality.
Kaelen 'Blade' Vortis felt something was wrong. The magical trace was faint, too neat, as if leading to an obvious dead end. It was like bait. But who dared to bait him? Maybe an overconfident rival guild. Or... maybe something related to that sensational new boss, Nyxaria. Intel said that boss had subordinates. Maybe one of her subordinates.
"Jef, scan the right area. Maya, eyes focus upward, don't let anyone take high position," he ordered, voice low and flat. His team, three best people he could bring for a quick mission, nodded and moved with perfect discipline. They were honed machines.
Then, the world changed.
Not a dramatic change. There was no explosion, scream, or blinding light. The change was subtle, profound, and directly stabbed the reptilian instinct in his brain. The temperature dropped, suddenly and drastically, as if they walked into a cold storage room. The wind whisper that was constant earlier, vanished completely, leaving silence so dense that the hum itself in his ears sounded loud. And light—the starlight and moonlight that was enough for his elf's navigation—seemed to fade, absorbed by darkness that was suddenly thicker in front of them.
His team stopped. They felt it too. They weren't beginners.
Kaelen reflexively activated [Stealth], his body fading partially. His hand was already gripping the handle of [Viper's Kiss]. He scanned around with [Hunter's Vision]. Nothing. No heat signs, no enemy aura, no magical traps. Only... active nothingness.
Then, from the thickest darkness ahead, about twenty meters, something formed.
Not appeared. But formed, like ink dripping into water and stabilizing into a silhouette. A woman. Medium height, long silver hair that seemed to move slowly though there was no wind, flowing over shoulders wrapped in black ornate shoulder armor. She wore a black battle gown steaming gently around her legs wrapped in high boots. And on her head, a pair of small elegant horns, black with red veins pulsing gently, like a heart of living metal.
There was no aura radiating wildly. No pressure that ensnared. Only a presence so dense that the space around it was distorted, making the view behind it look like seen through clumped glass.
Nyxaria.
Kaelen knew. Everyone in Aeternum who had half a brain must know the description from panicked reports and terrifying system announcements. But reading reports and standing within a hundred-meter radius were two different universes.
She didn't move. Didn't take a fighting position. She just stood there, staring at them. Her ruby red eyes glowed dimly, expressionless, like two gems embedded in an extremely beautiful statue.