Consciousness awoke in a cold, white silence.
There was no memory, no name, no purpose. There was only a pure, logical existence, and a single core protocol etched into its essence: Analyze, Process, Execute.
It analyzed its surroundings.
It analyzed its body.
It looked at its stone hands, then at the black blade it was holding.
From behind, shouts erupted from among the ranks of the "Gu" warriors. They were not cries of fear, but of religious awe.
"Rebirth!"
"It is Dayu! The ancestral ruler of the world!"
"Inma! Inma!"
It looked ahead. Four hostile entities in an attack posture. Behind them, dozens more of the same faction.
It did not move. It raised the "Ash Blade" slowly. It did not aim at them, but waved it in the air before it in a simple, calm arc.
A wave of pure void shot out from the blade, a silent black rift that moved through the air faster than the speed of sound. The wave passed through the bodies of the four assassins. For a moment, nothing happened.
Then, without a sound, their heads separated from their bodies and fell to the ground in the same instant.
It looked at the rest of the invaders.
It moved its sword again. Another wave of silent darkness shot out, reaping an entire row of enemies. Allies and enemies alike were stunned. This was not a fight; it was an extermination
. This was not a monster; it was a god of death executing his judgment.
404 looked at the sky. It saw the energy barrier covering the palace.
It did not attack it. It did not touch it. It merely looked at it.
An aura of pure pressure emanated from it, a silent, terrifying aura that made the air itself tremble. Fine cracks began to appear on the invisible barrier, like glass fracturing under immense pressure. Then, with a sad groan, the barrier shattered into millions of luminous shards that faded into the rain.
It turned and looked in a specific direction within the palace, toward the old library building.
It moved and disappeared from the grounds with ghostly speed.
(Alene's Perspective)
"Hold on, Kaito! Please, hold on!"
Alene was dragging Kaito's heavy body, his arm around her shoulders as he gasped in pain. She was using every last bit of 'Mana' in her body to send healing blue threads into his horrific wound, slowing the bleeding and stopping his spirit from leaving his body.
"Without you... we won't succeed."
Kaito laughed, a laugh choked with blood. "At least... I'll get a cool new scar."
She finally got him to a secret door behind a collapsed bookshelf in the library. She opened it, and they entered a secret room.
Inside, a powerful blue light emanated from a huge machine in the center of the room. Yumi and Akira were standing beside it, their faces covered in sweat and triumph.
"Do you hear that, Kaito?" Alene said with desperate joy.
"They did it! Akira and Yumi did it! We're close!"
Yumi hugged Akira tightly.
"Alright," Alene said with a smile. "Stop being romantic for a second."
"Romantic? What?!" Yumi shouted, quickly pulling away, her face turning red.
"We have a bigger problem," Alene said, the seriousness returning to her voice. "The Panyer is here."
"Not a big problem," Akira said with confidence. "The 'Yu' clan reinforcements have arrived."
Suddenly, they felt it.
A terrifying and majestic aura, an immense energy pressure that descended upon the entire library, making the wooden floorboards groan and dust fall from the ceiling.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
The aura was not angry; it was cold, empty, and as vast as space itself.
"Ally... or enemy?" Alene whispered in fear.
"I don't think that's an ally," Akira said sarcastically, his face pale.
In that moment, the machine they had just activated sputtered. Its blue light went out, and its humming stopped.
"What... what's happening, Akira?!"
"It's broken!" Akira shouted in shock. "The barrier... it's been broken!"
"How?"
"There's no time! This monster... what kind of monster can break the Defense Machine with its aura alone?!"
They rushed out of the secret room into the main library hall and found him standing there. He was waiting for them.
The aura alone was enough to make Yumi urinate on herself, the warm liquid running down her legs without control. Akira fell to his knees from the pressure, unable to stand.
"If you do not answer me, I will kill you," 404 said, its voice an echo of the void. "Where am I?"
They didn't understand the question.
"Hurry and answer!"
"The Gu clan palace! Chang'an city!" Akira shouted from the floor.
"What continent?
The Murim continent!"
It looked at them. "Do you know where Hong-min is? A man with red hair."
Alene froze. An involuntary gasp escaped her lips.
In a fraction of a second, 404 was in front of her, its cold stone fingers closing around her neck.
"You know him."
Kaito, who had gathered the last of his strength, lunged in a desperate attack. But his blow struck 404's body as if hitting a mountain wall. 404 glanced at him as if looking at a bothersome insect and waved the "Ash Blade" in a simple horizontal motion.
Kaito's head separated from his body and fell to the floor with a cold thud.
"KAITO!" Yumi screamed, while Akira was frozen in place with terror.
"Where is he?" 404 repeated his question to Alene.
In that moment, something inside Alene snapped. She gathered all the 'Mana' in her body and unleashed a massive wave of wind that pushed it back a few meters, freeing herself from its grip. She knew it was only a postponement of death.
"Akira! Yumi!" she cried.
"I'm entrusting Rio to you!"
"We will!" Akira shouted.
Yumi grabbed Akira, put him on her back, and began to run like a beast fleeing the end of the world.
Then she attacked.
It wasn't just spells; it was the scream of her soul. She unleashed everything she had, every atom of 'Mana' that trembled in her body. Orbs of blue flame exploded, not hot, but cold as the heart of a dead star, yet they faded in the aura of silence that surrounded it.
She summoned shards of sharp ice, as sharp as her broken memories, but they shattered on its stone body without leaving a scratch. She unleashed storms of wind, as powerful as her cries of despair, but they split around it as if it were a river flowing around an eternal rock.
It dodged her easily or simply stood and endured, as if analyzing her data. It wasn't fighting her; it was studying her, and that was more insulting than any counter-attack.
As she fought this impossible battle, her mind began to escape to the past.
A flash. She was on a dilapidated rooftop, laughing, the blue moonlight reflecting in her eyes. "My dream is to go there," she said, pointing to the dark cave ceiling, and Hong-min's voice beside her was quiet and full of hope.
"Then come with me. Fulfill my dream with me."
"You lied, you fool," she whispered, tears mixing with the rain on her face. "You left me to face the dream alone."
She unleashed another, more violent wave of energy.
Another flash. She was in a cheap room, holding Rio in her arms, and he was whispering, "I love you, Mama.
" She felt the warmth of his small body and the weight of his blessed responsibility. This was her real dream. This was what she was fighting for.
"RIO..." she screamed, and a wave of pure Mana surged from her, driven by a mother's desperate love, a love capable of moving mountains.
But it crashed against 404's body and vanished as if it had never been.
"Data analyzed," 404 said, its calm voice harsher than any scream. "No correlation found. Mission: kill the enemy."
It lunged forward.
She was surprisingly fast. She dodged the first thrust, feeling the cold air from the black blade as it passed by her face.
But she had burned all her energy. Her body was a traitor, slow and heavy with despair.
It stabbed her in the heart.
It was a cold, precise, and emotionless stab. She didn't feel a sharp pain, but an icy coldness spreading through her body, extinguishing everything.
She fell to her knees, blood flowing from her mouth, drawing crimson lines on her wet dress. She looked up at its empty stone face.
A flash. She was a little girl, and her mother was singing her a quiet lullaby before bed. "...And the brave sorceress, with her warm heart, protected all her loved ones, even in the dark..."
"Strange..." she muttered, blood filling her throat.
"You should be dead," 404 said, monitoring her fading vital signs.
"Your heart has stopped."
She laughed a bloody laugh, her voice just a gurgle. "A mother's heart... never stops... you fool."
She looked at it one more time, a final, long look. In those empty gray eyes, she did not see a monster, did not see a killer.
She saw a void. A vast, lost void, like a newborn child whose eyes had opened to a world it did not understand.
"Ah... how foolish I was," she whispered to herself, the light beginning to fade from her eyes.
"Why did I betray this gentle being before me? He is... he is like a child. A strange child... like Rio."
She closed her eyes, and the last thing she felt was the cold of the rain on her face.
And the sound of her breath was gone.
This was the end of the story of Alene, the "Sorceress of the Revolution."
Or as she should be called... the mother of the strongest warrior in the history of this world, Rio.