Young Master's PoV: Woke Up As A Villain In A Game One Day

Chapter 392: The Crimson Guild [III]

It was evening.

Way too much had happened in the course of a single day.

Two delegates were killed in cold blood, my father apologised then threw me into a war, and my aunt gifted me a new right arm.

Yet something told me that the incoming months were going to become even more hectic.

My mind couldn’t help but wander back to what I had just learned about the Crimson Guild — that they already had enough influence to easily slip their members into the ranks in my family.

Bad...

Very bad.

The entire situation was much worse than I had expected.

If I remembered correctly, at this point in time, the Syndicate must’ve been almost done with their preparations for awakening the Queen of Black Rot.

In fact, they must’ve already chosen Saint Inyasa as a prospective candidate to be the vessel they’d inject the Spirit King’s dark ichor in, turning her into a beast by corrupting her soul so that the Most Profane One himself could make her his general.

Of course, that event was still more than a year away.

Michael was in the middle of his third academic year at the Apex when he and the main characters had to face their mentor, Selene Valkyrn.

The Witch Queen of the Eternal Night, one of the strongest Awakened of the generation and the Zaré Anash, Selene Valkyrn was among the three main antagonists during the Queen of Black Rot arc.

She was a major hurdle that the heroes needed to overcome, not only because she was a former ally of the main characters but also because she was the one who personally tutored so many of them.

It was only because of her that, even in some of the game routes where either Michael or Kang managed to uncover the Syndicate’s plans, Inyasa was successfully manipulated into blooming the seed of Eternal Blight and destabilizing the Northern Safe-Zone.

She alone held back the whole main cast until it was too late.

So yeah, she was dangerous.

But that entire ordeal was still so far away.

My current headache was going to be finding a way to save Alice and Willem... not that I wante

And it was going to be that much harder now that I knew the Crimson Guild might already be a part of the Academy...

Or maybe not.

After all, my knowing this now rather than getting surprised later when it would’ve mattered the most was a good thing.

So what if the Crimson Guild was already inside the Ascent Isles? And so what if I couldn’t stop the Scarlet Assassin from infiltrating Apex?

"I’ll just have to set a trap for them," I murmured to myself, thinking aloud.

If I had to fight, I would fight them on my turf.

I exhaled slowly, flexing my new right hand subconsciously. That thing was still cold. In the back of my mind, I wondered how long I would have to live with that chill.

Anyway, because the Crimson Guild was a pack of professional assassins and not mindless murderers, they didn’t move without a cause.

They needed targets and orders.

And to carry out their missions, they relied on three things — stealth, anonymity, and immaculate timing.

If I stripped them of even one, they became significantly less terrifying and all the more easy to deal with.

I could do nothing about their stealth and anonymity.

But their timing...

I could definitely do something about their timing.

The Crimson Guild attacked the Academy when the Grandmasters were away, providing aid to the Central Dukes and Monarch in suppressing a Phase-7 Portal — the very first of its kind that appeared on Earth.

That happened when the main characters were starting their second year at Apex. I couldn’t recall precisely, but it was probably the end of February at the time.

Right now it was the start of November.

So I still had time.

Not a lot of it, but enough. Enough time to interfere and ruin someone’s perfectly crafted plan.

...And more than enough to be a problem.

•••

I stopped by my room to grab another shirt. The one I had been wearing was drenched in sweat and littered with splashes of dried blood.

The servants and soldiers I passed by flinched when they saw my grafted arm, and while it was funny to see their reactions, it was also a bother.

So, I decided I’d hide it.

Besides, I wanted it to be a sort of surprise — a trick under my sleeve for when I found myself in a ditch. As such, I didn’t want many people knowing about it... and who knew who was reporting to whom here.

Hence, along with the shirt, I also grabbed a pair of black gloves from the wardrobe.

They should be enough to conceal the unusual shape of my right hand, at least from a distance. Up close... well, up close I had six fingers so an extra bump was clearly visible.

I’d get better ones later.

For now, after getting ready for the second time today, I had a butler call an automated carriage for me to take me to the outer districts of the estate.

Yeah, as I said earlier, while the ruling seat of the Golden Sanctuary was situated in the Golden Fortress, the fortress itself was as big as a small city.

The carriage arrived without much fanfare — accompanied by nothing but the quiet buzz of engraved runes beneath its chassis and the soft click of metal locking into place as the doors opened.

It was modern and efficient here in the Spirit Realm... and very, very expensive. It brought me to my destination within minutes.

I immediately exited the carriage and entered the guest mansion that dominated a good part of this district, asking the guards stationed outside the gates about my companions’ whereabouts.

They straightened immediately at my approach, their backs snapping into a rigid posture so fast I worried they might get a sprain.

"They are in the East Wing, my lord!" one of them said, bowing slightly but never quite meeting my gaze.

I nodded once and made my way inside without another word.

The guest mansion was quieter than the main estate. Soft lighting ran along the corridors, the walls lined with polished wood and muted gold accents.

Everything here felt curated, like whoever designed it wanted visitors to feel both welcomed and watched.

I continued walking until I reached the East Wing. And soon enough, I heard some very familiar voices.

"...I’m telling you, that move was illegal. You cheated."

"I did no such thing! You simply failed to adapt. A tragic but common ailment."

Then there were a few panicked voices.

"Alexia, no! No, no, no! Don’t jump on me!"

"Ready or not, here I come!"

Thwaaamp—!

I stopped before the door, contemplating whether I really wanted to go inside or not, then sighed and pushed it open.

The room inside was warm, comfortably so.

The expansive space was dominated by tall windows on one side, with plush chairs, a long table, and a scattered board game laid out all around.

Papers, notes, and half-finished cups of various drinks littered the entire chamber. At the center of everything was a large jacuzzi, with soft bubbles rising nonstop to its gently steaming surface.

And in that jacuzzi was Juliana, barely conscious and half-drowning from the looks of it because Alexia seemed to have dive-bombed on her.

Both girls were in a bikini (...again), and not too far from that scene were Kang and Vince, playing some kind of dice game. Both of them were in swim shorts.

I squinted. The fuck is going on here?

But wait for it, because there was something even weirder.

Ray and Michael sat at the edge of the long table, completely dry from the water of the jacuzzi but completely wet from... tears.

The two of them appeared to be crying. No... not just crying, they were bawling their eyes out, weeping and sobbing uncontrollably.

No, really. The fuck is going on here?!

As if to answer my silent question, Ray, between his desperate and ugly sniffles, tilted his head as his watery eyes fell onto me.

He gasped, then shouted, "Saaaaaaam!"

I didn’t even get a chance to acknowledge his greeting — if it could even be called that — before the boy slammed into my ribs and threw his arms around, wrapping me into a tight hug.

"Sam! Sam! Saaaaa—!" he choked out, his voice cracking as if he had been hyperventilating for hours. "I hate your family! I’m sorry but I do! I do! I hate every single one of them! They took my drone! I swear if they delete even a second’s footage, I’ll start crying!"

I wanted to say, wasn’t he already doing that?

But the force with which he had speared me made me stumble back a step before I could recover my breath and my footing.

Coughing, I patted his head a few times. "Hey there, buddy! Mind getting off me before I, you know, throw you off—"

I never got to finish my empty threat.

Because right at that very second, another body slammed into me. This one belonged to Michael.

Thwaam—!!

"Saaaaaaam!" he cried out, huffing and puffing.

Oh god...

I barely had time to register the second impact before the weight of Michael started dumping his entire trauma onto me.

"Sam! Sam—!" Michael hiccuped, clutching onto me like I was the last solid object in his collapsing world. "It’s over! It’s really over!"

"What’s over?" I asked, trying to keep my balance.

"My—" he choked, shaking me like he was both angry and sad. "My life! My life is what’s over!"

I looked around the room again.

In the distance, Juliana was struggling to push herself out of the jacuzzi, one hand gripping the edge while the other dragged Alexia’s leg off her shoulder.

Her eyes locked onto mine as she weakly pleaded, "Sa-Save me..." before being pushed into the water again by the blind girl perched on top of her.

To their right, Kang had now thrown Vince flat onto the floor and mounted him.

The werewolf was currently in the process of choking the life out of the blue-haired boy while screaming, "Admit it! Admit you cheated!"

I blinked a couple of times.

Maybe going to that war wouldn’t be so bad.