Madison was walking back to Dragonsteel city on foot, alone. Her party had been exterminated, leaving her behind as the sole survivor. She was lost, and she didn’t know what to do.

The emotion that plagued her mind the most right now was regret. She could definitely have prevented this. She should have prevented this. As the party’s organizer, her words held some sway over her allies, which meant that she could have potentially convinced them to call off the entire plan.

In hindsight, she should have been more adamant about calling it off, but it was too late now. Why didn’t she do anything to stop them? Perhaps, overconfidence was her downfall.

As a result, she was now all alone.

“Waaaaiit!” A voice called out to her, and she turned around. When she saw the tall man running towards her at full speed, she felt a slight tingle on her neck, and her face drained of color.

“AHHH!!! PLEASE, NO! DON’T KILL ME!” she shrieked, forcing Kayden to awkwardly slow down to a halt.

“Relax! I won’t do anything to you! Well, not yet at least.”

That didn’t make her feel better at all, and she crouched onto the ground and began gripping her hair tightly.

“I-if you really have to do it, a-at least do something for me… Tell my family… that I love them…”

Kayden scratched his head, trying to think of appropriate words to say, but soon gave up when he couldn’t think of anything.

“Look, I have a secret to keep. I don’t wish to let people know of what happened, but I don’t wish to kill you either. So what do you think I should do?”

He directed the question to both Madison and Hel, hoping that either of them could give a solution to his problem.

Hel spoke first.

“[Yeah I don’t see a way out of this. It’s either you kill her, or you force her to leave the continent. But even then, she might just come back and report you.]”

Kayden didn’t know what to make of that. He was adamant about his terms, which meant that killing her was off the table. She didn’t do anything to wrong him, and he was no longer in a desperate situation where he needed EXP. That made her innocent, at least in his eyes.

“U-um… If I may ask… Why did you spare me…?”

Her hands were trembling as she struggled to ask the question. Kayden decided to go along with her questions for now.

“I don’t wish to kill innocents. You said it yourself, right? You didn’t do anything, so neither would I.”

“B-but… That doesn’t make any sense! The only person you spared was me! I wasn’t the only innocent!”

Kayden tilted his head in confusion. What was she talking about?

“I spared others...like… the D-ranks and Erene! I could have killed them when I found them unconscious!”

The reason he so blatantly lied about finding them unconscious was that he was very sure that Ezekiel was eavesdropping on him. He was doing his best to steer clear of the topic of his involvement.

Now that he thought about it, Erene knew of his hidden abilities too. He really wasn’t thinking straight yesterday, huh? Back-to-back fights and an encounter with a Goddess really took a toll on him.

Madison’s eyes were filled with rage, and Kayden didn’t know why.

“Y-you didn’t spare them at all! You’ve killed all of them! And you’re g-going to kill me next…”

Her voice trailed off into silence as she began whimpering quietly, but Kayden wasn’t focused on her.

“…They’re all dead?”

“[It would seem so. We didn’t see their bodies when you came back from the conversation with the Moon Goddess. I assumed that they had all run away, but I was wrong. Here, take a look at this.]”

[D-ranked adventurer has been killed (assist)! You gain 450 EXP!]

[C-ranked adventurer has been killed (assist)! You gain 1,350 EXP!]

“[This happened last night when you were asleep. As you can see, you aren’t the direct cause of their deaths, though freezing them a bit did give you the assists. Either they all died in an accident, or someone came by and finished them off.]”

That sounded ominous. Perhaps it was the Moon Goddess that did this? He didn’t know of anyone else that was present. Well, whatever the reason was, he put it in the back of his mind. He had more important matters to attend to currently.

“I’m not going to kill you! I’ve said that countless of times!”

“Y-you’re not…?”

“No! I would have done so yesterday if I wanted to… Um… How about this?” He offered her a hand and gently picked her up.

“I’m gonna bring you to my master! She’ll know how to deal with you…! Probably!”

“You mean… the Raging Alcoholic...? Isn’t she known to be super aggressive? I-if she learns what happens here… She’s gonna kill me!”

Her head became dizzy, and she began rapidly firing intelligible words from her mouth in between panicky breaths.

“Me…Dead…Cold…Beer…Torture…? Torture! Oh Mama…”

Kayden raised his eyebrows and gave her a light slap, successfully knocking some sense into her. As she stood there, stunned, he grabbed her by her collar and started sprinting back toward his allies.

“Aaaaahhh!! Please! No…!”

“Don’t worry! My master won’t kill you too…! Probably! Hahahaha!”

Laughing on his way back, Kayden pumped his fist into the air, eager to finally get back home.

***

A middle-aged man walked swiftly and confidently as he traversed through the forest, never stopping for anything. His footsteps were light, betraying not even the slightest bit of sound, but soon, those footsteps slowed to a stop. His elegant demeanor devolved immediately, and now he had a hunched back and was trembling violently.

“DAMN IT!”

He ruthlessly kicked the bark of a tree, sending wood chips spraying into the air as he did so. One of the chips went into his left eye, and he began cursing loudly, his voice scaring off the nearby birds. Grabbing the monocle from his right eye, he threw it against the tree, only for it to shatter, and a stray glass shard embedded itself right in the middle of his forehead.

“F#CK! Nothing’s going right for me!”

He sought to throw something else to vent out his frustrations and settled for the grey mustache under his nose. Ripping it off, he threw it into some nearby bush.

Laughing at his success, he then plopped onto the ground and began nervously biting his nails.

His name was Devin, a D-ranked adventurer that had been traveling with Ryan and Brandon for the past few days. He had planned to use them to help him to complete his mission, but now both of them were dead, and his mission had failed spectacularly.

“Now’s not the time to be regretting things! I need to first head back to headquarters before coming up with something new. Damn that brat! I should have known he wasn’t an easy target!”

He stood up, sighing. Everything he had done for the past week had all been for nothing, and he dreaded the punishment he was bound to receive once he returned.

“Hmm? What’s this about a brat?”

A feminine voice spoke into his ear, causing him to jump back in surprise. Who was she? Had she been listening to what he was saying this entire time?

He drew the sword at his waist and pointed it at the mysterious figure that had suddenly appeared. It wasn’t very helpful, since that sword was only part of his disguise, and he had no skill in using it. Still, he figured that it was still better than nothing.

“Who are you?! Why are you here?!”

Nobody should have been following him. After all, he had killed all of his remaining witnesses, and the brat should have killed the rest of the B-ranks. This person, whoever it is, is going to be a problem.

The figure turned her head to look at him with a small smile on her face. He immediately recognized her.

“Tch! Should have known you were coming! Well, no matter.” He pointed his finger at the figure and gave an order.

“You will forget about me and everything you’ve seen— AHHHHH!”

He felt a sharp pain in the back of his knee, forcing him to kneel. He reached for his wound and found it to be bleeding profusely, and the pain was getting worse and worse by the second.

“Hey hey! Did you know?” The woman held out her palm and two, pitch-black circles appeared floating in her palm, one on top of the other and facing each other. “When you place an object into portals arranged like this, you can make the object reach terminal velocity in a matter of seconds! Let me demonstrate.”

She picked up a piece of rock from the ground and chucked it into one of the portals, and Devin could see that it kept reappearing at the top portal before falling back down into the other, only to repeat the process continuously. However, as it did so, it dropped faster and faster until it became a speeding blur.

In a split second, the rock disappeared, and he felt the bones of his other leg shatter. A sickening crack resounded, drowned out by his own piercing screams. This time, the figure had the speeding rock break his other leg. Now, all Devin could do was lie down, unarmed and defenseless.

But he wasn’t going to give up now. With bloodshot eyes, he looked at the woman and yelled hoarsely.

“Kill yousel—!”

Bang!

Something pierced his shoulder, and he screamed in pain once more. This situation was extremely similar to what he had seen Kayden do to Ryan, and to think that he once thought his day couldn’t get any worse. Hilarious!

“You better stop trying to do that. I can tell when you’re going to use it! Try it again and the next bullet goes through your head.”

She crouched down beside him and placed the muzzle of her gun onto his forehead.

“So… you’re the one that sent all those goons to harass my disciple. I heard he had a pretty rough time thanks to you.”

Devin laughed and coughed up blood at the same time. There was a manic look in his eyes as he began to shout.

“You won’t get anything from me, Morgan! I may have failed my mission! But there will be many more to replace me! Glory to the God of—”

Before he could finish his sentence, Morgan pulled the trigger, and his brain matter scattered all across the ground. She let the gun fall off from her hands, and it dropped into a portal below, now safely stored away. Sighing, she stood up and began wiping away the blood off her face with a handkerchief.

“Kayden’s going back to Dragonsteel soon, huh? I hope the experience didn’t change him much… All that ice doesn’t bode well with me.”

She had originally sent Kayden here to experience something new. First, to explore a dungeon for the first time. Second, to learn how to work in a team. Third, to gain combat experience and grow stronger. To think that so much happened in such a short span of time…

“Sigh… I only I had anticipated this… what a disgrace of a master I am.”

A tall, black portal emerged from the ground, and she put her foot through it. The bitter look on her face turned to that of resolve.

“Alright, I’ve decided! I won’t drink at all until he comes back safe and sound, so he won’t have to deal with my drunk self! It’s the least I can do for him after all he’s been through…” She dusted herself off, heaved one last sigh, and disappeared through the portal.

Only the dead body of Devin remained, but it too was then slowly consumed by another black portal, leaving no trace of his existence. Just like that, any hint of their encounter was completely erased.

***

Kayden had a lot to think about as he headed back home. First, there was Louis and Madison, who knew his secret. Then, there was the murder of the group of D-ranks. Something definitely was going on behind the scenes, but he couldn’t figure out what. It was like a complicated puzzle for him to solve, only that he was missing way too many pieces.

The first thing he needed to do was to gather clues. The Moon Goddess had already given him one: Brainwash. Why else would she suddenly ask if he could use Mind-altering magic?

If brainwashing was the reason behind his enemies’ strange behavior, then the question now would be who? Who would do such a thing? And why?

Kayden knew the most likely reason. It had something to do with the System no doubt. The Moon Goddess hated him for it, it wasn’t much of a stretch to assume someone else hated him for it too.

As for the culprit, Kayden had a witness that could point him in the right direction.

“Hey… Madison—"

“AH!”

“Calm down! I just wish to ask you something.” Kayden was appalled by her fear of him.

“O-okay… What do you want to ask?”

Kayden got straight to the point.

“Did you feel at any point that your group was acting strange? Or perhaps you found yourself not doing things you would normally do?”

“H-huh? Um… I guess so… Zhang was a cool-headed person, and we had gone through much tougher situations before. He was a lot more… irritable, I would say. I didn’t do anything to stop him too, even though I should have…”

Louis overheard their conversation and jumped in too.

“Right? Right? Now that I think about it. My betrayal made no sense! It must have been the work of someone else!” Louis showed him his tied-up arms. “Mister Kayden! Release me from my bonds! Please!”

Kayden couldn’t tell if Louis was joking or being serious, but he definitely wasn’t going to set him free any time soon. As for Madison, her story was definitely worth digging into…

“Ah, right! There was a suspicious individual! It was a D-rank that served as a spokesperson for Brandon and Ryan.” Madison said as she pulled out a notebook from inside her pocket, “I took note of him because I found it strange that a D-rank was leading the negotiation with us, but now that I think of it, all of us started acting strange once ever since we met him…”

She handed him her notebook, and he was surprised by what he saw. It was a portrait of what he assumed was the man in question, as well as a written description of him. He was impressed, just like that, he had already found his culprit, or at least, the biggest suspect.

“This is great! Now I can…” Kayden began slurring his words, “Now I can… huh? Why is everything spinning…?”

The last thing he heard before he collapsed onto the ground was Hel’s voice, scolding at him.

“[See! I told you! All that potion chugging of yours finally caught up to you—]”

And the world went dark.