"Maximus..."
Kaisen uttered the na and slowly walked inside, the doors behind him closing, locking him once again in this vast grassy plain.
Maximus, the mastermind behind all of this, wiped a wad of tears from his eyes as he looked at his fiancée.
His hands trembled, mirroring hers, as he raised his sword against her.
He had cut down both Lloyd and Elfie, and now he was going to cut down his fiancée.
"After all this, h-how could you...?"
Sable asked, taking a shaky step forward. Blood was sared across her face, trickling down from her lips and forehead.
It looked like these two had just engaged in a slapstick brawl monts ago.
Both of them were in no emotional or ntal state to fight again, but duty calls.
When a traitor is among your ranks, you shall cut them down, even if the said traitor is your brother, father, or even your fiancé.
And that was what she was going to do right now. She gripped the sword in her hands tightly, as determination washed over her.
She had loved this man once; even after Kaisen ca, she held a special place for this man in her heart.
But right now, her emotions were running wild like a herd of spooked cattle.
"I-I'm sorry...I-I don't want this...I truly don't want this...but her..."
Maximus stamred, his hands trembling like he was holding a live eel. Kaisen stepped forward and stood at a distance from them, gazing upon the perpetrator of all this ss.
Was he surprised at the revelation? Why should he be surprised at sothing he already knew?
From the mont he found out who was the boss of the Night Shades, he understood what was happening.
It was all a simple calculation, like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle with all the edge pieces already in place.
Firstly, Maximus and Sable were two powerful NPCs who were practically glued to the Queen's side.
In the ga's first early area, these two were the secret sauce, the MVPs you didn't know you needed until you had them.
They were recruitable powerhouses designed to help players take down the main boss.
This betrayal was even in the script! Players without these two ended up as Night Shades, essentially the ga's equivalent of cannon fodder.
But his party?
They were the exception, the only ones who managed to level up instead of leveling down, and it was all thanks to Maximus and Sable.
If you rewind the tape, all of this started because he had the brilliant idea to guide Lloyd towards the Morning Fox, the first hidden boss they encountered and defeated.
That victory punched their golden ticket, and Maximus invited them to the castle, setting this whole convoluted plot in motion.
Other players? They didn't stand a chance; they were playing checkers while he was playing 4D chess.
Now, let's zoom in on our NPC duo. Maximus always had a hard-on for the Second Light Bearer, treating his "Lady Second" like she was the ssiah.
He'd recite her deeds in nauseating detail, like a bard who only knew one tune. At the ti, nobody thought much of it.
Like, who pays attention to a fanboy, right?
But now, in hindsight, it was like a neon sign screaming, "SUSPICIOUS!"
How did this guy know so much about soone who vanished 7,000 years ago? It was like he had a ti-traveling diary.
Hell, he even had a picture of the said woman in the Queen's palace. These were all lore nuggets the ga threw at you like breadcrumbs.
Forget a linear storyline or a neat little info package; this ga was the equivalent of a drunken scavenger hunt.
The NPC dialogues? They were like cryptic crossword clues, each holding a tiny fragnt of the world's lore.
And piecing them together was like assembling a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle with no edges.
He never suspected Maximus, not even for a second. Why would he? Maximus was his ride-or-die NPC.
But now, looking back, it was like seeing the plot twist of a movie you'd already watched a hundred tis.
This guy was always trying to convince Sable to throw in the towel and head back to the palace.
From day one, it was, "Let's quit while we're ahead," like a broken record. Everyone assud it was because he was clueless about what they were up against.
Turns out, Maximus knew exactly what was lurking in the shadows. He always had a counter-argunt ready, waving the flag of caution.
"We don't even know what happened to the millions of adventurers before us," he'd say. Or, "Do we really understand what a Night Shade is?"
It was all clear now. The guy wasn't clueless; he was practically holding a spoiler card to the entire ga.
But the undeniable truth was, this man was a cuck. That was no award-worthy performance; it was the raw, unfiltered truth.
Whenever Kaisen was busy with Sable, Maximus would start spouting lore like a historical docuntary.
It was as if seeing his fiancée being intimate with another man unlocked a veritable floodgate of information.
This dynamic played out in the forest and the desert alike.
When Kaisen confronted Maximus with Sable back then, he had indeed admitted everything but promised never to betray them.
He swore his undying love for Sable and the others in the palace.
So how did Kaisen piece this together?
Well, he figured out that the lady the Guardians and the shapeshifters kept referring to was indeed the sa woman Maximus was always blabbering about.
It all clicked together like a well-oiled machine.
The starting area, the NPCs who assist them, the NPC obsessed with a certain character, the main boss's minions—everything led to this conclusion.
Even soone with half a brain cell could connect the dots.
This was the big brain mont of the ga... if you were playing it from the outside world.
So how were Lady Second, or the second Light Bearer, and this boss monster connected?
It was simple: the woman Kaisen was looking at, the sa woman who was the final boss of this area, was none other than the revered Second Light Bearer herself.
Aveline Starshade is the boss of Night Shades.
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