Shin’s questions piled up with no answers, swirling in his head as his mana dropped lower with every second, now barely holding at 20MP. The throbbing headache didn’t help. Paired with the constant mana loss, it was only a matter of ti before he collapsed into unconsciousness, helpless as his body gave in. Slumped beneath his sheets, sweat clinging to his skin, he was a prince of power rendered nothing more than a fragile shell.
His weapons lay beside the bed like loyal hounds awaiting orders—the twin hooking daggers, still stained with blood, and the scavenged rifle, freshly claid from the corpse of Leonel’s comrade.
Near him, the tension in the air was thick enough to choke on. His two servants kept silent vigil, fear etched deep into their eyes.
"Do you think the master will be alright...?" Sylvia whispered, her voice frayed with uncertainty. Her loyalty ter for Shin had quietly climbed upto 40—a digital number with very real aning in this cruel world. But it did little to ease her dread.
Lilian didn’t answer at first. She was pacing in the room, her boots thudding against the bare concrete floor of the hideout. "Sothing’s wrong with him," she finally muttered. "Really wrong. I don’t know what it is, but I can feel it in my bones—this isn’t just so flu or mana sickness. It’s deeper."
She stopped pacing and glared at the sealed windows. "Everyone out there hates the master. We can’t let them know he’s down. If they even suspect he’s vulnerable... they’ll strike. Like hyenas."
Sylvia clenched her fists as she nodded slowly, her face pale. Shin was the only reason she was still breathing. Her kind had been wiped from existence. Now, her only purpose in life was to serve this child of the gods. If anything happened to him...
"No!" she growled, shaking her head violently. "Nothing will happen to him! The master’s strong—stronger than all of them combined! He won’t fall!"
Lilian nodded sharply. "Then we keep moving like everything’s normal. He’ll need food when he wakes. I’ll get it. You stay here. Ard. Anyone tries sothing—kill first, no questions."
Sylvia grabbed her axe with a firm nod.
They kept the curtains drawn. Letting in fresh air ant letting the outside world peek inside and that couldn’t happen. Lilian changed clothes quickly into a casual outfit as if everything was okay: tight yoga shorts, a loose top, cheap slippers, and a wide-brimd sunhat to hide her striking silver hair. She stepped outside like a casual citizen.
Just smile. Keep walking. Act like everything’s fine, she told herself as she moved through the ruined streets, heading toward the Bureau. A place once bustling with activity, now reduced to hushed paranoia and digital shadows.
People stared. n licked their lips at the sight of her curves. Others watched with puzzled suspicion—why didn’t she have NPC text above her head anymore? Where were the familiar floating speech prompts?
Could this be that boy’s doing? If soone had the power to strip system text from NPCs, it had to be him—the hacker boy. With that thought, most people looked away, pretending not to notice her as they returned to their miserable lives.
The supply drop that day was pitiful. A few stale baked buns. Bottles of water hurled carelessly from the portals, unwrapped and dented. No containers. No packaging. Just scraps for the rats.
Lilian snatched two buns and a bottle of water. The drops for the day wasn’t even enough to feed half the population of people in the safezone. And just after she managed to grab two buns and one bottle of water, the crowd turned feral and began to shout at one another.
Fights broke out almost imdiately And though PvP wasn’t allowed within the Safezone, those who violated the rule were instantly punished by getting reduced to pulsing chunks of at and blood by the system’s automatic enforcent protocols.
The blood soaked the bread, turned it red and soggy. Useless. Inedible. Desperate players limped away, seeking the nearby restaurants where alternate drops occurred, hoping they’d find sothing to grab: unstained bread without blood and chunks of human at only to find chaos there, too.
Lilian didn’t flinch. She ignored the ss as she returned to the hideout in silence, clutching the ager supplies firmly in her hands, but what she couldn’t ignore was the way the god’s blessing in this world, the aura that once surrounded this entire place, giving them orders and what to do was fading, second by second. Getting weaker every day like the gods had finally had enough of this world, and we’re now abandoning it.
Finally, her cautious steps made their way to their room where she knocked softly, and told Sylvia it was her. When the dwarf girl opened for her, Lilian walked inside, moved to the bed and stirred Divine Lord Shade gently. His eyelids fluttered open, revealing dull, sunken eyes. Hollow. She helped him drink so water and eat part of a bun. He forced it down—he had to. He wasn’t planning on dying anyti soon, and he knew not eating will give him a quick ticket to the afterlife, if there even is any!
He drank a few gulps of water and forced down a bite of bread. Just enough to survive. Barely. Even half a slice was enough for now.
More days passed.
One... two... three... four.
By the fifth day, the murmurs began.
People noticed Shin was missing. His cocky grin. His sharp gaze. His presence.
Only Lilian erged from the room now and always alone with a smile on her face that looked too wide to be real.
"Hey... where’s that brat you call master?" soone slurred. He looked tipsy, cradling a bottle from the previous night’s drop—which had included only alcohol and nothing else.
Lilian sat silently on a wooden crate, her posture indifferent but alert.
"Hah! She won’t answer!" another drunk jeered, swaying beside him.
The others were all drunk too—every one of them clutching their bottles of alcohol like salvation. But what these idiots didn’t realize was that this wasn’t rcy from the system. Giving them alcohol was a form of manipulation, a ntal rot to poison their minds, stirr chaos amongst the players and cause them to fight against each other even more.
"Leave the girl alone," a woman said, half-sober. "That boy’s trouble anyway. We’ve been waiting for him to leave this zone so we can finally have peace!"
The others nodded with the woman. Most of them wanted the boy to live.so they could live here in peace. No one wanted to risk entering the next Safezone through the small gates that had appeared on every street. No one knew what lay beyond. The internet was silent on any info about the second tier safezones. The players who’d gone through... never returned. No ssages. No confirmation.
People began to believe the gates didn’t lead to safety at all. They led to death.
Despite their levels and the coins they’d gained, most refused to move on. Fear held them hostage.
"The kid must be dead," a short, wiry man muttered. He wore a torn 1920s-style cap and had a crooked mustache twitching beneath his nose. "Haven’t heard his voice in days whenever l passed by their room to eavesdrop."
"Forget about the kid, Tan," his brother groaned—a similar-looking man but with a beard and a more serious deanor. "Focus on surviving this shit."
"But wouldn’t it be fun to pay him a visit? Torture him a bit if he’s even still alive? Maybe take his servants too." He pointed at Lilian. "Look at her. Damn gorgeous. I rember her from before—back when she was a hostess. I couldn’t afford to screw her back then. She said she wasn’t for pleasure. But now?" He grinned. "I just might get lucky."
Lan, his bearded brother, sighed. "And what if the boy’s still fine?"
"Then we find out tonight," Tan replied with a grin. His mustache twitched with anticipation.
Lilian ignored them. For now.
The new drop ca—just water. A mad scramble followed.
She reached out and grabbed a bottle—only for Tan to snatch it from her hand.
"Leave it, girl," he grinned, grip tight despite his scrawny fra.
"No. I picked it up first." Her voice was like steel.
"Must be getting desperate, huh?" he sneered. "Holding onto a bottle like it’s your last lifeline. No backup supplies in your little hacker room?"
"I said—let go!"
He laughed. "Or what—?"
CRACK!
Her fist from her free hand slamd into his face. Blood sprayed from his nose as he dropped like a sack of stones, letting go of the bottle of water. The room fell into silence, every eye turning to her.
Tan didn’t groan. He laughed.
"Brother Lan," he chuckled through broken teeth. "I think sothing really is wrong with that boy."
Lan helped him up with a groan. "Can’t you stop causing problems for one damn minute?"
"I’ll stop after tonight," Tan said, grinning as he wiped blood from his mouth. "We’re going to pay the brat a visit. And maybe... finally have our fun."
With a single bottle in hand, Lilian walked out of the place, water clutched in her hand.
And behind, the enemies were planning to knock at their door tonight.
And they wouldn’t knock softly!
TBC
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