The bright flash was followed by a huge gust of wind instantly afterward.

Allen had braced himself but the force of the shockwave still slammed into him and made him stumble back a step.

Luna on the other hand who was closer and completely unprepared was knocked off her feet. She fell to one knee with her ears ringing from the deafening blast.

A thick cloud of black dust and smoke now covered the spot where the man had been while the air around the area was heavy with the smell of burnt chemicals.

Allen didn't move. His eyes were locked on the drone feed in his mind.

Zoom in, he commanded internally.

As the smoke slowly started to disappear, the drone's cameras zoomed in as the drone itself descended in altitude, getting a better picture of the place where the grenade had gone off.

The feed on the holographic screen before Allen's eyes showed nothing. There were no signs of a body. Not even a corpse seemed to be present there.

It bugged Allen a little, and he still wasn't convinced.

Therefore he started walking forward with the MP5 appearing back in his hands and held at the ready. His steps were slow and careful.

Luna looked up with a confused and pained look on her face, but she didn't try to stop him.

He reached the spot where the man had been trying to escape. The smoke was almost gone now.

There was no body. The man was gone.

But it wasn't as if all of him was gone. Some parts had ended up remaining. On the glassy black ground, there was a splatter of dark blood.

Allen also saw a few small pieces of flesh and some twisted scraps of silver armor. It looked like the grenade had caught him just as he was disappearing and had ended up tearing a piece of him away.

Allen stared at the remains for a long moment, his face showing no emotion.

Ascend in altitude. I want a full view of the area, he commanded.

In his mind, the drone's view shot upwards until the entire crater and the fields around it were laid out below him like a map. He scanned every inch of it.

The battlefield. The forest. The plains.

Nothing. No silver armor. No running figure. The man was gone.

Only then did Allen let himself relax. He let out a long and slow breath which he didn't realize he had been holding. The tension in his shoulders finally went away.

And right on cue, a familiar message popped up in his vision.

[Congratulations!]

[Quest Completed!]

[+3000 EXP!]

[+300 CP!]

[+2 New Shop Items!]

The final proof. Since the system had marked the quest as complete it meant that the threat was finally gone.

As he was processing the things that had just happened, a new stream of notifications popped up before his eyes.

[You have gained a total of 6000 EXP!]

[Congratulations!]

[You have levelled up!]

[Tier 4 of Armory has been unlocked!]

Well, that kind of came from nowhere. I wasn't even looking at my EXP that much. Not that I'm complaining though.

Anyways, I'd deal with it later.

He then brushed away the notifications and decided that he'll see the new levels later on, focusing on the situation at hand first.

"Phew. Seems like we're done here," Allen said, the words coming out in a cloud of relief. The MP5 in his hand dissolved into light and he started walking back toward Luna.

She was still on one knee and looking at the area around her, her body shaking from the shock of the blast. She looked exhausted and beaten.

He stopped in front of her and held out his hand.

She looked up at him. Her red eyes were filled with a mix of confusion, exhaustion, and something else he hadn't seen before.

Appreciation.

"T-thank you," she said, her voice barely a whisper as she took his hand. He pulled her gently to her feet.

***

A flash of silver light appeared in the middle of a huge hall.

The room was silent. The floor was made of polished white marble that reflected the light from the gold chandeliers hanging high above while tall windows lined one wall, looking out onto an endless sea of clouds.

The light faded and the man in the silver armor appeared, floating in the air for just a second before he fell like a bird who'd lost its wings.

He crashed onto the floor with a loud sound of metal hitting stone. He didn't even try to catch himself and instead just dropped like a rock with his body skidding a few feet across the clean marble and leaving a smear of blood behind.

He lay there with a broken mess in his ruined silver armor. His breastplate was full of dark and ugly holes along with a larger and gaping wound in his chest from Luna's sword that was bleeding badly, staining the white floor a deep, ugly red.

But the worst part was his face.

The left side of it was a ruin. The grenade blast had torn half of it clean off. His skin was gone and itt was just a mess of raw and burnt flesh. His eye was a swollen and bloody mess and part of his cheek was just… missing.

For a second there was only a shocked silence before the hall eventually erupted into chaos.

Armored guards rushed in from all sides. Maids and servants in fine uniforms cried out in shock with their hands flying to their mouths.

"Sir Hayyel!" one of the guards shouted, his voice full of disbelief. They all ran to him like a panicked crowd surrounding their fallen master.

"What happened?!"

The maids reached him first and knelt down beside him. They gently tried to help him in order to support him so he could at least sit up.

The sight of a highlander in such a state was something they had never seen. It was impossible. He couldn't have been hurt like this. Well, unless and until he had fought another highlander.

But that was outright impossible since that wasn't what he had gone out for. And highlanders generally didn't fight much amongst themselves unless there was a reason involved.

Hayyel pushed their hands away, he coughed and more blood trickled from his lips. He ignored it. His one good eye scanned the panicked faces around him until it found the person he was looking for.

An older man with a perfectly trimmed white mustache and hair who was dressed in a black butler's uniform. He pushed his way through the crowd.

His face was also pale with shock but unlike others his movements were calm.

Hayyel's gaze locked onto him.

"Zenil," Hayyel rasped. His voice was a broken and painful whisper.

"Sir Hayyel," the butler said with his voice low and steady.

"Get my father," Hayyel commanded. His voice was filled with a desperate urgency that cut through his pain.

"Fix a meeting. Now. I must speak with him."

He coughed again with his body shaking and trembling in pain as his own blood began to pool around him.

"Tell him it is a matter of the highest importance."

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