Several days had passed since the incident at the Haven. And though the wounds, both physical and collective, had begun to heal, something still lingered in the air. A heaviness. As if the world had shifted and hadn't settled back into place.

Allison seemed... distant. Not from Luke exactly, but from everything around her. Seeing that woman, Erza Grimhart, had stirred something inside her. Something old. Something she'd clearly tried to bury. Luke noticed and gave her space. She hadn't asked for it, but she needed it.

He too had his own reasons for feeling restless.

Facing Kruger, Bartholomew's right hand, had been a gut decision. A reflex. One made in the heat of the moment. But now, in hindsight, it hung over him like a blade at his throat. By opposing Kruger, Luke may have signed his own death warrant. Not an immediate one. But people whispered that the Phantom Assassin never struck when expected. He came at night, unannounced. And all he ever left behind were corpses.

Some within the Haven had begun to treat Luke with newfound respect. Others kept their distance.

Over the next few days, Luke began digging. Quietly. Carefully. Asking the right questions to the right people.

It was Angelica who finally gave him what he needed: information about Erza Grimhart.

Everything lined up with what Allison had said. The Grimhart family was one of the most powerful on Earth. Direct representatives of a god, Lakarion, the God of Assassination. When the System first arrived on Earth, one of its earliest chosen had been a Grimhart. That connection vaulted the family to divine status.

In the old world, they might have been called nobility. But in this new order, they were known by a different name: the Global Government.

And suddenly, everything made sense.

The Global Government wasn't just a political force. It was an invisible elite made up of families, guilds, and cults, all bound by one truth. They served the gods. Every high-ranking member was the living extension of divine will on Earth. Erza's mother, for example, wasn't just important. She was one of the Queens of the new age.

Which made Erza a princess.

The realization made Luke uneasy.

What if Allison is one of them too?

She rarely spoke of her past. Always shifted the subject when it drifted toward Earth. But now the signs were undeniable. The way she knew Erza. The way Erza spoke to her, with familiarity, almost mockery. Allison could just as easily be a servant of one of those elite families or born from one.

I must be a magnet for trouble...

Still, Luke hadn't spent the past days only lost in thought.

His search had revealed more.

Erza lived inside the walls of Bastion like true royalty. Her domain was a neutral zone, untouched even by Bartholomew's soldiers. She didn't play politics. She didn't pick sides in the war between factions. She existed like a bored queen, watching chaos from a throne above the common rabble.

And everyone, Bartholomew included, knew one thing. Harming her was a death sentence.

Whether by her own hand...

Or by the cult that followed in her shadow.

What Luke found most contradictory, and what made everything more complicated, was Erza's presence inside Bastion.

If Bartholomew was truly delaying the activation of the mechanisms by choice, it wasn't just slowing down the progress of others... it was also undermining Erza Grimhart. A figure feared by all, and directly tied to the Global Government. No one in their right mind would dare lay a hand on her.

And if Bartholomew was deliberately stalling, that only raised more questions. Because even he didn't have the authority to go against her. Even if he ordered his army to hurt her, who among them would actually follow through?

Luke was trapped in his own deductions, looping in circles that led nowhere. No matter how he spun it, the logic always collapsed on itself.

"Charlie," he muttered, glancing at the skeletal companion standing nearby, "looks like it's time for you to return to my soul."

She crossed her arms, clearly reluctant. Ever since he'd told her about the incident with Kruger and Erza, she had been uneasy. She didn't want to leave his side. She wanted to see everything with her own hollow eyes.

They were in Luke's hideout, a forgotten house on the edge of the Safe Zone, right at the border of the Wild Zone. A crumbling place, long abandoned by the world… but not by him. He hadn't made much progress over the past few days, too busy digging through layers of secrets. But tonight, he was preparing for something else.

In front of him sat a spatial chest, resting atop the cracked stone floor.

A rare find. He'd discovered it in the ruins of a house deep in the Wild Zone, and with Charlie's help, dragged it all the way back. The chest couldn't be stored in his inventory, which made the journey painful, but worth it. The space inside was massive, far beyond his normal storage item. And more importantly, it was completely off-grid. No tracking. No system checks.

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Luke knelt beside it and began unloading his necklace. Seed packets. Canned food. Potions.

Why?

Because if, on the night of the incident, someone had ordered him to empty his inventory, he wouldn't have had a good explanation. Not when people were hunting down the one responsible for stealing from Bastion's storage. Not when the very same stolen items happened to match what he had.

Yes, the storage item was protected. No one could see inside it. But there were ways to prove whether it was truly empty or not. All someone had to do was command him to return the item to his inventory. If it went back, empty. If it didn't, he was hiding something.

"Goodbye, potions," he muttered, sliding a health vial into the bottom of the chest.

Then he hesitated.

"...Okay, maybe not all of you."

He pulled back three small bottles and set them aside. "Three health potions. That's believable. I can say I found them scavenging. Better than trying to explain where the hell I got eighteen health, thirteen mana, and four stamina potions..."

He sorted everything else inside the chest, then dragged a broken kitchen shelf across the room, positioning it to hide the entrance to the pantry where the stash was now buried.

A risk, but a calculated one.

Luke pulled up the hood of his assassin cloak and stepped through the front door. Night embraced him like an old friend. The streets were deserted. Cold. Silent. The moon barely lit his path.

It was time to return to the shadows.

Time to find Marshall.

***

Luke moved silently through the forest, feet light as shadows as he leapt from branch to branch. Occasionally, he triggered Dark Dash, gliding through the night air like a phantom slipping between the trees.

His goal was clear: find Marshall, the leader of the Renegades.

The war between him and Bartholomew had escalated to dangerous levels. Sabotaging Safe Zone defenses during an invasion? That alone proved both sides were willing to go all in. But caught in the middle of that war were the survivors, trapped in a cruel tug of war that kept them from ever escaping the damned tutorial.

Over the past few days, Luke had plunged deep into investigation. He shadowed Bartholomew's patrols in the Wild Zone, tracked rogue wanderers who crept along rarely watched paths. He wasn't just hunting information. He was building a map, a pattern, trying to understand what these groups were really doing.

Bartholomew's men were divided into tasks. Most worked in pest control, clearing out monster-infested zones. But others were engaged in something bigger, something infrastructural. They were building a passage through the Wild Zone: blocking streets with rubble, using makeshift forges to melt stone, shaping crude cement. Slowly, methodically, they were carving out a safe route, perhaps even preparing to cross the city itself.

At night, they all withdrew. None of them stayed behind.

Luke had watched every team. Even the ones assigned to mundane work, gathering herbs, planting trees, escorting Farmers as they accelerated vegetation with their skills. He wasn't looking for action. He was looking for cracks. For signs of internal rot.

And sure enough, sabotage was happening. Outposts were being disrupted. Tampered with.

But he still had no proof. No hard leads.

Now, he ran through the upper canopy, avoiding the infested streets below. In the distance, the glowing red eyes of the Midnight Wardens pierced the darkness. They patrolled the urban maze relentlessly, making that part of the city practically untouchable.

Marshall has to be somewhere nearby. He leads an entire faction, hundreds of people. Hiding a camp that big isn't easy. Bartholomew's been looking for him for years and came up empty. If the Renegades really are outside the Safe Zone, then the forest is the most likely place.

But Luke considered something else.

What if they're not outside?

What if the base was nestled right in the heart of the city, deep inside the Wild Zone's ruins? A place so hostile, so overrun with monsters, that no one dared to explore. No patrols. No scouts. No suspicion. A death zone so fierce it served as its own protection.

The Midnight Wardens.

Then he remembered the dungeon he and Allison had gone through. The staircase that led them into a remote part of the city. The underground tunnels.

If there's a base, it has to be down there.

Beneath the monsters. Beneath the chaos. Hidden in the guts of the city itself.

It was a risk. A big one. But it made sense. Down there, Marshall could operate freely, sheltered by the very hell that kept everyone else out.

Luke came to a halt and sat on a high branch. The wind stirred the treetops, rustling his hood. Before him stretched the broken city: a jungle of shattered stone and lurking red eyes.

"Shit…" he muttered. "I'm looking for a needle in a goddamn haystack."

But he wouldn't stop.

Because if he wanted to change anything in this world, if he wanted to survive, he'd have to find the other side of this war.

And finally learn what the hell Marshall really wanted.

***

Another day had passed, and Luke's search remained fruitless. Day or night, the Wild Zone felt even more desolate than usual. The attack on Bastion had shifted everything. Marshall, likely anticipating retaliation, had gone into hiding with his men, sheltered by carefully hoarded supplies and resources. With one of his own captured, retreat was the natural move.

Which meant… if finding him was hard before, it was now bordering on impossible.

Luke sighed, seated atop the ruins of an old building. The metallic footsteps of the Midnight Wardens echoed below, steady and relentless. The city seemed to breathe through the grinding of armor and the clink of steel on stone.

That's when he saw it.

A flicker.

Just for a few seconds, ten at most, a torchlight danced among the distant trees at the forest's edge. Then it vanished.

Luke leaned forward, eyes narrowing.

No way... Did I just get that lucky?

He couldn't ignore it. Even if it was a false lead, it was worth checking out.

In a smooth motion, he rose to his feet and grabbed hold of the rope he had anchored days ago. His body dropped in a controlled descent, tension building as the rope caught his weight. The moment his boots hit the ground, he pushed off again, using the momentum to leap from one building to the next.

His movements were clean and instinctive. The soles of his boots barely touched each rooftop before the next launch. He moved like a shadow, quiet and focused.

The image of the torch was burned into his memory, guiding him forward like a faint trail of breadcrumbs.

If that really was what I think it was, then maybe, just maybe, I've finally found a lead.

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