Then, his vision began to fade.

Was he staring at the sky?

Hard to tell. 

Everything blurred at the edges. 

His body was growing stiff, each breath colder than the last… and then colder still.

His chest barely moved now.

Is this… death?

I wonder what really happens when someone dies.

Is there something after? 

Heaven? 

Hell?

....

If there is... I’m probably heading straight to hell, huh? 

After everything I’ve done before. 

Thoughts flickered behind his eyes, flashing by like fragments of a life unraveling. 

That strange clarity people talk about before death? 

Yeah… maybe it’s real.

Kelen had never been a good person. Not really.

Was I ever?

Before the adventurer’s guild, he’d done things, awful things, ones that still clung to his conscience even when the world had forgotten.

Maybe that’s why he joined the guild. A last-ditch attempt to scrub his name clean.

Wishful thinking, really.

Ilya…

He almost smiled, even as the numbness crept up his limbs.

That girl. Cute as hell when she was mad, fake mad, the kind where she’d yell and fuss but never walk away. 

She always stayed.

But did I even deserve that? Her?

The alley around him dimmed. 

Colors drained from his eyes, sound turned to static, then silence. 

His ears stopped hearing. All that remained were his own thoughts, quiet, fading like breath on glass.

I hope she finds someone good… someone better.

Someone who can stay alive longer than I did.

…

Dumb girl. She liked me from the start, didn’t she?

I am not that much of an idiot not to notice. 

This is it.

Death... man, it really does feel uncomfortable.

Then, zip.

Everything went black. Thoughts vanished. Breathing ceased. And with that, Kalen was gone.

...

Not long after. 

Footsteps echoed from the end of the alley.

A tall figure stepped into the clearing, armored from head to toe, the steel of his holy sword rising high over his back. 

Every step he took made the tile beneath groan in protest, crushed under his weight.

He stopped for a beat, gazing at the charred corpse of the monster, twisted, broken, its form barely recognizable after the explosion.

Then his eyes slid forward… and landed on the man lying still on the ground, staring skyward with lifeless eyes.

He approached in silence, pausing by Kelen’s side. 

The expression on the dead man's face remained frozen, resolute, tired, as if caught somewhere between pain and peace.

“Tier 1. Agile attribute user… mixed with airborne poison tactics,” the man muttered, his voice echoing faintly through the gaps in his helmet.

“An assassin.”

He glanced around the wrecked alley, burn marks along the walls, chunks of tile and blood scattered everywhere.

“He took it head-on… went toe-to-toe with the target. Strong killing intent. He came prepared… but underestimated its strength. Still used his right arm after the bite, poison’s still circulating through his system.”

…

A low sigh escaped the helmet. 

Then the armored figure crouched down and gently reached for Kalen’s eyes, pressing them closed with a steady hand.

“You were brave,” he said softly. “Didn’t expect anyone to discover these creatures this soon. Their disguises… they’re damn near flawless.”

He stood back up, stepped over to the monster’s remains, and pulled a slim blade from his pack. 

With a clean motion, he cut into the corpse, searching.

A moment later, he held up a pulsating orb, dark, fleshy, and beating strangely with swirling black dots inside.

“This one… already consumed ten people,” he muttered, his voice cold now. “No wonder it was stronger than the usual ones. Almost at Tier 2.”

“That explains why you lost.”

He clenched his gauntlet and crushed the orb. Ghostly wisps, faint, blurry faces, floated up from the shattered remains, smiling softly as they dissolved into the air.

“I’ve taken down seven of these things already. This would’ve been the eighth… but something’s wrong.”

He paused, eyes narrowing under the visor.

“It feels like they’re multiplying. Fast.”

“They’re using beggars. Desperate ones. Offering strength in exchange for their humanity… and too many are taking that deal.”

Another heavy sigh. He shook his head.

Then, standing still at the center of the alley, he reached into his storage bag and retrieved a small ivory statue. 

He held it gently in both hands, lifting it to his chest plate as he bowed his head.

A quiet prayer filled the space.

“In the name of the Mother of Life, I offer this prayer. May these souls return to your sacred land…”

“…to peace, to their loved ones.”

“O gentle Mother, cleanse this place of its filth… of its darkness. And let your light return. Let us see the light again.”

Once the prayer ended, he tucked the statue away.

But as he turned, his body stiffened.

His eyes widened behind the helmet.

“What… the hell is this…?”

-----

Snap!

It was blinding, so bright that it stripped away every thought.

I couldn’t recall what came before. Everything felt… off. Like waking up from a dream you didn’t know you were in.

And then suddenly, I was back. Right in the same alley where I… died?

I should’ve been dead.

But I wasn’t.

Kelen slowly pushed himself up from the cold stone ground, his breath catching as his fingers dragged across the cobbles. 

Damp air clung to his skin. 

His hair had fallen across his forehead in messy strands, clinging to the sweat slicking his brow.

His right hand trembled as he lifted it, reaching across to grasp his left arm, still there, solid, warm. 

The limb that had been severed. Or hadn’t it?

No… no, that’s not right.

“What happened?” he whispered, voice hoarse, barely more than a breath.

His hand drifted to his chest, brushing over his cloak. It was whole. 

The shirt beneath, the hidden leather armor, intact. No blood. No gaping wound. No pain.

“I died. I know I did…” His breath caught.

 “What the hell?”

His eyes jerked up, darting around the alley.

The monster’s corpse, gone. Just... gone.

But the aftermath remained. The splintered floor tiles, the fractured walls, the gouged craters, they hadn’t vanished. 

The damage was real.

He staggered to his feet, legs shaky, barely holding him up. “I’m alive? How?”

There was no answer. And that silence, that lack of sense, was more terrifying than death itself.

Did someone save me?

No, that doesn’t make sense. Who could bring someone back from the dead? That’s not something people can do. 

That’s not how the world works.

Fear wrapped around his spine like frost.

 Every movement felt... wrong.

 Unfamiliar. His own body didn’t feel like it belonged to him anymore. 

“What the hell… what the hell,” he muttered, voice unraveling into panic.

His composure crumbled, sharp as glass under a boot. 

In a frenzy, he scrambled toward the discarded mask lying near the wall, his daggers beside it, and snatched them up, hands fumbling.

Then he ran.

No hesitation. No looking back. Just the frantic rhythm of footsteps echoing down the alley as he fled, breath ragged, refusing to stop until he was far, far away.

He wasn’t going out again tonight.

Not until he could convince himself that this wasn’t some sick hallucination.

From the rooftop above, Mize had watched the entire thing unfold. 

Her chin rested against her knuckles, her ruby eyes following Kelen’s retreating form with casual amusement.

“Haha… that look on the girl’s face when she saw him healed? Priceless,” she chuckled, voice light with mischief.

Kelen... she recognized him.

 A familiar face she’d only glimpsed once before. Now he had her attention.

“But I wonder where this ‘holy knight’ title came from,” she mused aloud, eyes narrowing slightly. “Seems like Harapan’s been busy... even managed to cook up a new gene seed. A little gift for these kids.”

With a faint hum, she reclined against a tilted chimney stack, her eyes glazing with thought.

 She’d already seen through the knight’s body with a single glance.

The structure was familiar, eerily reminiscent of how Harapan himself had been forged, but more diluted.

To her, it didn’t look like a blessing. More like a contract.

Yes, they were strong, capable of fighting one tier above them. That worried her.

“If he keeps this up, these knights might become taboo beings…” she muttered, shaking her head with a soft sigh. “He still doesn’t understand the depth of what he’s made.”

“Giving out his gene seeds like candy,” she scoffed. “But not knowing how the power inside them truly works? Naive.”

There was something… unnatural about these holy knights. Similar to those forbidden entities of the past, but not quite the same.

She paused, fingers tapping her chin thoughtfully. 

In her eyes, the truth unfolded like a web: these knights were fragments, born not just of Harapan’s science, but of his faith in her.

Hope made flesh.

“As long as there’s hope... they won’t die,” she whispered, almost amused. “Not their spirits, at least.”

What a strange, layered creation he’d come up with. A hive. Harapan at the center, like a queen. The believers acting as the web’s delicate strands. And these knights? The warriors born to protect the hive.

“As long as the faithful remain,” she said, “so will the knights.”

It was a law-level concept, a terrifyingly powerful system. She tilted her head. “How did he come up with something like this?”

Genius? Luck?

She doubted either. Maybe she had underestimated the depth of the gift she’d granted Harapan long ago.

“Each knight, once blessed, becomes a peerless genius,” she muttered. “Their strength grows like wildfire… but just like lords are bound to their territory cores, these knights are tethered to Harapan.”

Her smile turned faintly crooked.

She opened her divine connection with a thought, sending a message to Titrus and her clone stationed at the church.

They would keep an eye on things. If something went wrong, the clones would intervene.

For now, these holy knights would be her blade in the dark.

Her gaze dropped to the alley below. That twisted kind of monster… they still lingered in her thoughts.

No matter how hard she tried to eavesdrop, no matter how deep she sent her divine perception, she couldn’t find the origin. 

The monsters never spoke of how they became what they were.

“A fluke?” she wondered aloud. “A natural evolution?”

Strange, she felt an extremely powerful mist each times her divine thoughts approached these hiding insects. 

Like a mist, deliberately preventing her from prying their words, and even what they were doing. 

She didn’t buy it. 

Not for a second.

There was a design to it, a deliberate, terrifying architecture in how the infection spread. 

Even with her immense spiritual power, she couldn’t find the root. 

Couldn’t trace it. Couldn’t even tell when or how the transformation took place.

It was maddening.

"Liam was right... It seems a very dangerous being is controlling these chess pieces from behind the scenes"

"But against who?" 

"Me?"

She mulled, her eyes gleaming dangerously at the thought of this, "Taboo beings?"

"Then... " Her eyes turned colder, "Let's see which one of us will die first, filth!"

She stared silently for another half-hour, probing, analyzing. 

Then, reluctantly, she gave up.

This was Harapan’s mess now. And honestly, watching him clean it up might be the only entertainment she had left.

She doubted the enemy boss would directly jump out into the open to fight. It seems this was the play style for now, creating chess pieces and let them fight against each other to see which side is stronger. 

These fights against the darkness… they were like soap operas to her now.

And really, how could she help it?

The higher she climbed, the more distant the world below became.

Outside of her goal, and the few things that stirred her curiosity, nothing else truly mattered anymore.

“I’m not cruel,” she murmured. “Just a selfish idiot who likes doing whatever she wants.”

"And as long as these monsters doesn't directly destroy this city, then I would play a game with whatever being is behind them for awhile"

With a soft pulse of divine light, she vanished into the air, leaving only silence behind.