Unholy Player

Chapter 527: Forgetting Something Important

When humans first arrived in the Beyond, Pacthold had been the first place they established. It was their earliest foothold. It was where they built their strongest infrastructure and their most reliable information network. Anything that came out of Pacthold was rarely just noise. It was usually a warning.

"Did you find anything about their intentions or power levels?" Henry asked. His voice stayed calm, even as his eyes narrowed on the report.

"No, sir. Their features are hidden under dark robes. Based on what we collected, we assume they are strangers to the region. As for their power level..." The voice paused, attempting to be cautious with what he was about to reveal. "Most likely all are Rank 4 Practitioners, if not higher."

Henry didn’t ask how they reached that conclusion. He didn’t ask what methods they used. That unit was the best intelligence and observation team he had. They were trained for this exact kind of early detection, the kind that happened before panic spread.

Even if the report was wrong, the margin for error couldn’t be large. The gap between Rank 3 and Rank 4 wasn’t just numbers. It was the kind of difference that erased kingdoms and wiped out entire races when people underestimated it.

Henry kept his composure. "Keep watching their movement. Inform me directly if they change their route."

"Understood, sir."

The call ended. For a moment, the room felt quieter than it should have.

Henry stared at the papers on his desk. He wasn’t reading them anymore. He was thinking. He let the implications settle, letting them form a shape he could actually deal with.

"So this is what you were preparing us to face?" A heavy sigh slipped out before he could stop it.

He pushed his chair back and stood. The decision was already made. Sitting behind a desk wouldn’t help if trouble was heading straight toward the city.

Adyr was still in deep sleep, trying to replenish his life force. It had been three months, with no sign that he was close to waking, the secluded room kept quiet and guarded like a shrine. Even so, Henry was not hopeless if these three uninvited guests turned out to be enemies.

Thanks to Adyr’s unreasonable demands, humanity had been building strength without pause. They invested, trained, and prepared. They had been preparing for a moment exactly like this.

"It’s time for those moochers to pay back for our generosity."

He stepped out of his office and headed down the corridor. His destination was already set: the training building, where the VR rooms were located.

—

"How long do we need to keep moving like this?" Sevrak asked impatiently, still holding the reins, his knuckles tight around the leather as the carriage rolled on.

They had long since left the Pacthold borders. Now they were on the road toward the old Umbraen territory, with the city’s noise fading behind them until it became nothing but a distant hum, replaced by wind, wheels, and the occasional cry of distant birds.

But Kaelor’s overly cautious nature kept them traveling like shadows. They concealed their powers. They concealed their identities. Their auras stayed wrapped up and buried deep.

For Sevrak, that caution was starting to feel like a burden. Like walking with chains when he wanted to run.

When he left the region, he had spared Zephan, Liora, and Throgar, seeing it as his generosity and proof that he could be forgiving, a clean ending to something he could have made uglier.

But now, hearing that those ungrateful bastards had claimed his territory behind his back was unforgivable; he wanted to move at once and show them what it meant to cross him, to remind them whose shadow those lands once belonged to.

"Why this impatience and anger?" Arvyn asked, unable to make sense of Sevrak’s restless behavior. "I thought you were the one who killed all your people."

They all knew his past now. They knew why he left his kingdom behind. He had sacrificed his people to upgrade his Black Dragon. He was the one who destroyed everything.

So what right did he have to hate anyone?

Sevrak snorted, not hiding his irritation. "There are other people I should have killed before I left."

Arvyn tilted her head slightly. "Oh? And why didn’t you kill them? You had a Blood Dragon at that time, if I’m right. You should have been able to crush them like insects, shouldn’t you?"

Sevrak paused for a moment. "Why?" The question hit him harder than he expected. His earlier anger suddenly hollowed out, as if something in him dropped into a silent pit.

He found himself truly thinking about the reason.

I let them live, but why? he thought silently, realizing something in his memory was missing, like a page torn out of a book he’d read a thousand times.

Faces surfaced in his mind. The ones he hated. The ones he should’ve killed. But there was one face his true anger had centered on. That face was blurry. He couldn’t remember what it looked like. He couldn’t remember who it was.

Worse, he couldn’t remember why he hated that blurry face in the first place.

No, something’s wrong... The thought sliced sharply through his mind.

He was a Rank 4 Practitioner, with a mind shaped over centuries into something as solid as steel, disciplined against decay and distortion.

And yet he couldn’t remember something now. Something important enough that it should’ve been impossible to lose. In an instant, the anger he’d been holding down sank away. It left behind emptiness. Then fear.

"What’s wrong?" Kaelor asked, noticing his strange silence, his voice calm but attentive from under the hood.

Sevrak didn’t answer. He didn’t even have time.

Their attention shifted upward, pulled by something in the sky.

It was still daytime, with an open sky and only a few clouds drifting peacefully above, but strangely, lightning was flashing across the heavens, racing toward them in sharp, silver streaks that didn’t scatter like natural storms.

"Looks like someone is coming to greet us," Arvyn said playfully, realizing this silver-colored lightning did not belong to nature, her tone light even as her eyes narrowed with interest.

A moment later, the bolt crashed down in front of them. Silver light flooded the ground, then tightened and condensed. It formed a silhouette. It shaped itself into a man.

He wore a strange white suit. It covered his entire body like protective skin, smooth and fitted as if it had grown on him rather than been made.

He placed his hands behind his back and stood tall. Wind stirred his long silver hair. His silver eyes locked onto the three figures without blinking.

Then he spoke. "This isn’t a route you can just travel on a whim. Mind introducing yourselves?"

Sevrak looked at the man blocking their path and started to laugh. "Asking me to introduce myself?"

He lifted his hands to his hood. Slowly, he pulled it back. Long black hair fell free. Two crimson eyes stared out from a sickly pale face.

Silverlight Zephan saw the face, and a brief flicker of surprise crossed his features, but that was all.

"So you came back after all." He didn’t look even slightly uneasy as his eyes tracked Sevrak’s subtly changed appearance.

His dark eyes were now completely red, and the red scales visible on his neck under his robe stood out as he took in every detail. Then he looked at the other two robed figures behind him; he couldn’t see their faces, but he could sense they were at least Rank 4 Practitioners, their presence heavy even while hidden.

Are they the cultists of the Blood Path? Zephan thought silently.

He had suspected it before, while fighting the Blood Dragon, that Sevrak was one of them, that the stench of that Path clung to him too closely.

And now, seeing him return to these lands with new companions, that suspicion sharpened.

"Wow, is that a Lunari?" Arvyn asked. Excitement lit her voice as she pulled her hood down, too. Her red-colored twin tails fell like silk on both sides. Against her dark skin, her crimson eyes gleamed like jewels.

"I thought their lineage had gone extinct. But it seems there was still someone left in this region."

She jumped down from the carriage, boots hitting the dirt with a light thud. She moved toward Zephan to get a better look.

Then the ground in front of her split.

A deep line cut across the dirt, clean and precise. It forced her to stop short.

"What an aggressive animal." Her face turned sour as she stared at the sword in Zephan’s hand. Silver lightning cracked around its tip, sparks snapping into the air.

"Are you all from the Blood Sect?" Zephan asked finally. His tone stayed calm, but a faint edge of irritation slid into it.

If there was anyone who truly deserved his hatred, it was them.