Unholy Player

Chapter 464: Meaning of Love

"Quick, prepare the Cold Room. We will host our guests there," Henry said, not losing another second as he turned and started down the corridor with urgent steps, already thinking about security layers, containment protocols, and escape routes.

Cold Room was the code name for a special chamber at the very top of the headquarters, designed exactly for rare guests of that level. From the very beginning, they had built it with people like Silverlight Zephan in mind.

The room had been constructed with a single purpose: to buy time if an overwhelmingly powerful guest suddenly became a threat. The best technology they had was buried in its walls, and even the materials chosen to reinforce it were strong enough to withstand a nuclear explosion for a while. It was not a perfect shield, but it was the closest thing they had to one.

Just as Henry was about to move past Rhys, the man stepped in his way. "Unfortunately, we cannot do that. Adyr insisted on coming here and joining the current meeting."

Henry stopped dead, his legs locking in place as he stared at Rhys, as if waiting for him to admit it was a bad joke. "Does he not know his mother and sister are currently inside?"

"We already gave him that information," Rhys replied casually.

Henry stared at him, his thoughts stumbling over each other. Bringing 3 city-destroyer-level forces into the same room as his own mother and sister was so far outside Henry’s sense of logic that, for a moment, he could not even form a response.

What is he really planning? Did he truly lose his mind? The questions moved through his mind in a slow, heavy loop.

"Do you not think you just underestimated him?" Rhys asked after a brief pause, his fingers brushing the hilts of the knives at his waist in a familiar habit.

"Underestimated him how?" Henry frowned, genuinely not understanding what Rhys was getting at.

Out of everyone in both worlds, Adyr was the last person Henry would ever describe as weak or easy to read. That was exactly why he had tried to build a system around him instead of clashing with him directly.

In Henry’s mind, if there was anything that could hold Adyr back, it would be his mother and sister. As long as those 2 stood on one side of the scale, Adyr would never let it tip too far toward madness or destruction. That idea had been the core of Henry’s whole plan.

But now, seeing Adyr coming to this meeting with 3 Rank 4 Lunari walking behind him, that certainty started to crack. Henry wondered for the first time if Adyr saw his mother and sister as shields or restraints, or if they were just pieces he was willing to move if he needed to.

Rhys spoke again, cutting straight into that doubt. "Did you ever ask him what he actually wants? What his real goal is, where his ambition points, and what kind of future he is trying to reach?"

Henry exhaled slowly, feeling his patience thinning. "Rhys, we do not have time for wordplay. Just tell me clearly what you want to say."

Rhys laughed softly. "You idiot politician. You should have listened to me when I told you your plan would backfire."

Back when Henry had first explained the idea of using Marielle and Niva as a way to restrain Adyr, Rhys’s first reaction had been simple and sharp: ’You are playing with fire.’

Nothing in his thinking had changed since then. He watched Adyr with different eyes than Henry did. He measured not just what Adyr did, but what kind of man he chose to be.

"You thought he is a man who exists to protect," Rhys said, his voice losing its amused edge and turning more serious, "but in reality, he is a man who exists to destroy. It does not mean that he does not care about his mother and sister. On the contrary, I think they are the only ones he truly cares about. But you thought he loves like normal people, and that misunderstanding is what made you fail, and it will keep making you fail every time you try to manipulate him."

The words sank in slowly, and Henry found himself staring at Rhys without answering.

To most people, love was a reason to hold back. If a man loved his family or anyone deeply enough, he would avoid risk, avoid danger, and avoid choices that could put them in harm’s way. That was the logic Henry and the 12 City Managers relied on when creating this plan.

Only now did Henry start to see how wrong that logic might be when applied to someone like Adyr.

For Adyr, the word "love" did not sit in the same place. The love he held was not a soft, restraining force that pulled him back from the edge. It was something sharp and possessive. His love meant control. He wanted everything around the people he cared about to be under his hand, within his reach, like birds in a cage he could close and lock whenever he wished.

If a threat moved toward that cage, he was not the type to fear his own death or even theirs. He was the type who would rather burn the whole world down with them inside and make everyone who had dared to touch them regret it, even if there was nothing left afterward.

"To ordinary people," Rhys continued, seeing the change in Henry’s expression, "love is what ties them down. It makes them cautious. But for him, the more he cares, the less he hesitates. Love is not his chain. It is his reason to erase whatever stands in front of him."

For a former serial killer who was constantly trying to hold himself back, he only needed a reason to kill and spill blood.

Even during the Mad Scientist’s kidnapping of his mother and sister, when Adyr realized he did not have the power to save them, his choice had been destruction, not surrender. He decided to bring down the entire Player Headquarters, like a scorpion trapped in a ring of fire, killing itself with its own poison and taking everything around it with it.

Rhys tapped the knives at his waist twice, a small, dull sound in the empty corridor. "He is not someone operating on human logic, Henry. He is a wild beast who loves revenge more than anything."

This time, the words did not just sound dramatic. They slid under Henry’s skin and stayed there.

He felt his chest tighten as he finally accepted what those sentences really meant. There was no power on Earth left that could control Adyr, not emotionally and not physically. The leash Henry and the others tried to create, the one tied to his love for his family, was not a leash at all. It was a trigger.

And now they had pulled it without even realizing what they were touching.

As that thought settled in, Henry heard a faint sound: footsteps, not hurried or hesitant, but steady and sure, their echoes rolling along the wide corridor walls as the source drew closer.

"They are coming." Rhys’s calm smile returned as he turned his head toward the end of the hallway, where shadows had begun to shift.

He spoke without glancing back at Henry. "Never forget this, Henry. You were the ones who wanted him to rule us in the first place. And now, if you want my advice, since it’s already too late for any other path..." He took a step forward, moving to meet the approaching figures.

Just before he dropped to one knee to welcome them, Rhys finished his thought in a low whisper. "Just keep playing along."