God-Tier Extraction Talent: Reincarnated in a Game-like World!

Chapter 534: The Origin of Black Star

Gabriel stood there for several seconds, unable to move his gaze away from the direction the boy had gone.

For a moment, he wondered if the memory fragment had broken. Maybe the scene had glitched. Maybe what he saw was not truly the young king looking at him, but just a flaw in the memory showing something that never happened.

However, when Gabriel walked closer to Torin and Aston, that thought quickly faded.

He stopped directly in front of young Torin but got no reaction.

Gabriel lifted his hand and waved it once in front of the young man’s face, but there was still no response. When Aston walked forward to retrieve a broken part of the monster’s horn, his shoulder passed straight through Gabriel’s body as if Gabriel was not there.

Gabriel looked down at himself and frowned slightly.

"So it was not the memory."

He turned his head back toward the path the young boy had taken. His expression stayed calm, but his eyes were much more serious now. If Torin and Aston could not sense him even when he stood right in front of them, then the young king had either truly seen him or had somehow looked through the memory itself.

That made no sense.

If this had been the king’s own memory, Gabriel could still accept it somewhat. But this was Torin’s memory. The king should have been nothing more than someone inside another person’s recollection.

Gabriel stayed silent for a while before slowly exhaling.

"Or maybe he only looked in that direction, and I happened to be standing there," he muttered.

Even as he said it, he did not fully believe it.

The young king’s eyes had met his too clearly. It did not feel random. It did not feel like coincidence either.

Before Gabriel could think deeper, the scene around him started to change.

The broken ground, the dead beast, and the young versions of the two men began to blur. Colors stretched, sounds faded, and the memory shifted forward like pages being turned too fast.

When everything became stable again, Gabriel found himself in Stellar City.

This time, the two men were older.

Not old yet, but no longer teenagers. Both wore Valerian military uniforms, their shoulders straighter and their bodies stronger than before. Aston looked serious and disciplined, while Torin had a calmer expression than Gabriel expected from the future Black Star leader.

From the way the men around them looked at them, both had already risen high. They were top captains of the kingdom and were clearly on the path to becoming generals. Their names had weight here. Their orders were obeyed quickly, and the soldiers around them stood more carefully whenever they passed.

The memory shifted again.

Torin now stood inside a simple house. The room was warm, with clean wooden furniture, folded clothes, and a small table near the window. A woman stood nearby with a gentle smile while a young boy ran around Torin’s legs, laughing as Torin pretended not to catch him.

Gabriel watched quietly.

This was a side of Torin he had never expected to see.

The man who later led Black Star, hunted players, and burned himself to ash rather than speak had once lived like this. He had a wife. He had a son. He had a home that did not smell of blood or secrecy.

The scene changed again.

This time, Torin was outside the city gate, speaking with a group of otherworlders. Players. But something was different about them. Their clothes, reactions, and the way they spoke made Gabriel realize they were not Earth players.

They were from another world.

A parallel universe.

Gabriel remembered something from the time he first transmigrated here. Some inhabitants of this world had mentioned otherworlders before, and at the time, it had sounded strange. Now it made more sense.

Earthlings were not the first batch.

They were the second.

Torin handed a pouch to one of the players and gave instructions in a patient tone.

"Bring the herbs back before sunset. The southern road has beasts, so do not travel alone."

One player looked shocked by the reward. "You are paying this much for a herb gathering quest?"

Torin waved him off lightly. "If you risk your life, you should be paid properly."

The players smiled at once.

Gabriel watched with a strange look in his eyes.

Torin had been generous.

Not fake generous. Not someone using players as disposable tools. From the way the players reacted, he must have been one of the most liked figures in the city back then. Someone players visited often. Someone they trusted for fair rewards.

Gabriel’s expression turned more thoughtful.

"What went wrong?"

The moment that thought appeared, the memory shifted again.

This time, the house was silent.

Gabriel stood in the same home from before, but the warmth was gone. The table was broken. A chair had been knocked over. Blood stained the floorboards near the center of the room.

Torin’s wife lay there, and his son was not far from her.

A group of players stood inside the house, speaking among themselves while checking quest prompts.

"Target eliminated," one of them said. "Both of them."

Another player let out a breath. "That NPC better pay properly. This was harder than expected."

A third frowned slightly at the woman’s body. "Feels kind of messed up."

The first player snorted. "They are NPCs. Stop acting weird."

From the conversation, Gabriel began to see the bigger picture.

At that moment, the door opened and Torin stepped in.

For a few seconds, nobody moved.

The players turned toward him, and one of them quickly raised his weapon. "Oh. Another one."

Torin did not speak. His eyes moved from his wife to his son. His face did not twist with madness immediately. It simply emptied.

It was the kind of grief that left a person unable to react, as if everything inside had gone still.

A player stepped forward. "If he attacks, kill him too."

Torin’s hand moved. The memory blurred after that, not because Gabriel could not follow, but because the violence happened too fast. Blood hit the wall. Bodies dropped. Screams filled the small house before cutting off one after another.

By the time the memory settled, all the players were dead.

Torin stood in the middle of the room, soaked in blood, his breathing rough, his eyes fixed on nothing.

That night, he did not stop with the players who killed his family.

The memory shifted through several scenes of Torin killing players in alleys outside the city and even waiting at the respawn point.

Players screamed, cursed, begged, and logged back in only to die again. He killed them until their levels dropped. He killed them until their items vanished. He killed them until the game became unplayable for everyone connected to the group that ruined his life.

He gathered people who had lost family to otherworlders. He trained assassins who would later carry out his plan of eliminating all otherworlders.

The previous player batch came to dread his name so much that entire groups stopped entering areas where he and his people were rumored to be.

This was how Black Star began.

Not as some random assassin group created only to hate players. It started from grief, anger, and the realization that otherworlders could kill people here while believing they were only completing a quest.