The entire building was enveloped in a scanning net formed by Felix's drones. Aside from him, a few other families lived there, though at this hour they were all at work. While he was confident in his own strength, he did not want his subordinates to suffer injuries from stray grenades. He ordered the drones to form a defensive formation. If any suspicious noble troops or members of Reunion were detected, they were to be eliminated on the spot.
After entering the city, they were positioned in Chernobog's middle class district. Felix had been to Chernobog before and was thoroughly familiar with its layout. After sending Ines and W out to rendezvous with Scout, the remaining senior operators departed on reconnaissance missions. Only Nearl stayed behind, standing guard at Felix's side.
Propping his head on one hand, Felix watched the battle beneath the city walls through the images relayed by the drones.
Reunion was attempting to seize the northern gate. They had committed all their forces there, with adventurers charging at the front. They hurled Originium bombs at the defenders without regard for their lives. Once the bombs were gone, they pressed forward with blades in hand. The high level players among them were mostly chaotic evil red named players. They did not care that excessive use of Originium caused their bodies to die again and again, worsening their infection each time. What they wanted was a world engulfed in war. As for the gate before them, conquering it was simply a form of enjoyment.
They had no interest in killing NPCs that respawned on fixed timers in instances. Slaughtering NPCs in the open world was far more exciting.
These red named players gathered together and formed a guild identical in spirit to the Laughing Coffin from Sword Art Online. The guild had no events or rigid requirements. Its sole purpose was to seek amusement on the land of Terra through PvP.
In a previous life, this guild had been placed on the blacklist of raid groups and professional teams. Whenever they appeared, they were hunted down. By the end of version 3.0, their guild leader was captured and thrown into the Baizao Prison of Yan. With escape and jailbreak impossible, Laughing Coffin collapsed on its own. The remaining lackeys were also apprehended by players and imprisoned, ensuring those accounts could never commit crimes again.
As for creating new accounts, growing to a level where one could kill NPCs and players required an enormous amount of time. A level 90 player could casually obliterate a level 1 with a single punch and then loot the body. This behavior was met with unanimous approval from the player base. Red named players deserved no less.
Under Laughing Coffin's suicidal bombing assaults, the noble troops defending the city began to waver. At the end of the day, they were only ordinary guards, earning a modest wage. Why would they risk their lives against such maniacs?
Yet they had no choice. Their families were in Chernobog. If this line of defense fell, their loved ones would be slaughtered without mercy by these brutes.
While Felix observed the battle, panic spread among Chernobog's residents. Even at work, they could hear explosions and shouts coming from the north. Some tried to grab their bags and flee, only to be sternly stopped. Their superiors insisted that Chernobog was still safe and that no one was allowed to leave without orders from the nobles and the city lord.
This sparked widespread resentment, but no one dared to resist. After all, they were powerless. How could they voice their anger to the nobles?
However, the real problem did not lie outside the city.
Felix shifted his gaze to another feed relayed by the drones. The image showed Chernobog's slums, home to many heavily discriminated infected. Under normal circumstances, they were not even allowed to leave this area. In Chernobog, attitudes toward the infected had long surpassed mere discrimination. With both internal and external crises converging, did the nobles truly believe their city was impregnable?
After a fiery speech by Reunion members on a makeshift stage, the infected, their bodies covered in Originium shards, accepted uniforms and put them on. Felix knew that perhaps not even until tomorrow, this city would fall.
"Is there really nothing we can do?" Nearl asked softly, unable to hide the pain in her expression as she watched the scene.
Having seen much during her years with Tomorrow's Development, she would not say something as naive as rushing off alone to save them. Yet as a knight, as a knight of the Nearl family, she had asked herself more than once whether her thoughts and decisions were truly correct.
"What do we fight for, Nearl?" Felix asked.
"For our beliefs," she replied. "For our goals. And also for both the uninfected and the infected."
"Then what do you see now?"
"The infected are taking up weapons. They want to raise their blades against ordinary people."
"Even if this is their revenge, do you still want to stop them?" Felix looked at her. "Even knowing that the targets of their revenge are those who once treated them like garbage?"
His tone was not that of a king, but gentle, like an older brother speaking to his sister.
Nearl stood up, meeting his gaze with eyes full of a knight's conviction.
"Brother Felix, I have thought about this a great deal. The conflict between the infected and the uninfected in Ursus may be a calamity that cannot be resolved in the short term. Among those the infected wish to kill, some truly deserve it, but there are also innocent people. They should not bear the consequences of others' crimes. Revenge should be grounded in justice, not blind retaliation."
Nearl paused for a moment. "Even if such justice does not truly exist in Ursus."
"They have merely changed roles, from the oppressed to the oppressors. Revenge may ultimately destroy them. The desire for vengeance will devour their reason and their hearts, until the Infected lose who they once were and become nothing more than tools driven by hatred."
Her voice grew steady once more. "The Reunion Movement is only using them to achieve its own ends. The Infected should not have only one path before them, burning away their lives in revenge."
Felix nodded. "Then go. I will inform Shining and have her assist you. What comes next will be a choice you must make for yourself."
"But… will this affect your plan, Brother Felix?"
Nearl asked quietly.
Felix did not seem concerned. "From beginning to end, what I intend to do does not conflict with what is happening inside Chernobog. Tomorrow's Development is here only to help Rhodes Island retrieve the Doctor."
"Go and do what you believe is right, Nearl. Nothing will happen on my end."
"…I understand, Brother Felix."
Nearl revealed a gallant smile, fastened the longsword at her side, and left the safehouse.
Felix rubbed his wrist and remained seated on the ornate golden chair that Jesselton had somehow procured. He continued watching the live feeds transmitted by the drones. The school beside them seemed familiar. If he remembered correctly, it was called Chernobog Fourth Secondary School.
…
Chernobog Fourth Secondary School stood in a middle-class district and was known for its solid education. Its students were not limited to ordinary families. Many came from households with ties to government offices or noble lineages, and within the school they were clearly divided into two camps.
None of this affected Anna Morosova's life.
Her parents worked in government institutions, but their circumstances were no different from any other middle-class family. She paid little attention to the conflicts within the school and cared even less about them. What she loved most was reading.
She had no dealings with the aristocratic students either. Their lives simply did not intersect.
That changed when she overheard several noble students whispering anxiously among themselves. Words like "abandoning the city" and "escape" reached her ears, and she immediately sensed that something was wrong. She put down the Kazimierz-imported collection of knightly epics in her hands and looked toward the center of attention in the cafeteria.
Natalya Andreyevna Rostova.
Most people simply called her Natalya, or directly addressed her as the student council president. As the heiress of one of Chernobog's rising noble families, her very presence drew attention. She excelled academically, treated others kindly, and seemed capable of anything, as perfect as the dream heroine from a novel.
Even under these circumstances, the student council president remained calm. That alone reassured many students. If even the nobles were not panicking, then surely there was nothing to fear.
Anna, however, felt uneasy.
Since noon, her communicator had been cutting in and out, her contact with her parents unstable at best. Because her parents worked in government, Anna usually received frontline information quickly. This time, though, even they had received no instructions from their superiors.
After school, Anna said goodbye to her friends and headed home. Her house was only a few blocks away, less than a ten-minute walk.
In weather like this, she unconsciously quickened her pace. Like many in Ursus, she wanted to get home as soon as possible. Who knew if a noble officer might grab people off the streets and send them to the front lines? Fighting the Infected was the most foolish thing imaginable. With everyone living in fear, people hid indoors and avoided going out.
At this hour, there was usually no one around.
Anna stepped onto the stairs and froze. The stairwell leading upward had been cleaned spotless. She clearly remembered that Old Man Pete, who lived upstairs, had passed away long ago, and the place had never been sold. Who would take the trouble to thoroughly clean the area at a time like this?
She bit her lip. It could not be those thugs. They would never bother cleaning a stairwell. So who was it?
Anna disliked trouble and preferred quiet solitude with her books. Still, if the vacant room upstairs had changed hands, it might pose a danger to her family. With that thought, she hugged her book tightly and crept upstairs. If things turned bad, she could smash the book into the intruder's head and run.
There was only one room upstairs, an attic. The doorway, once cluttered with Old Man Pete's belongings, had been completely cleared. Not a speck of dust remained on the floor.
The door was closed.
Anna let out an inexplicable sigh of relief. Perhaps it had been cleaned by a social worker. If a thief had broken in, that would have been truly terrible.
With that thought, she reached out and turned the handle. To her surprise, it opened.
"You've been standing outside for quite a while. Come in."
A calm, indifferent voice came from inside. Hearing that magnetic tone, Anna's face flushed reflexively. Her mind involuntarily painted an image of the speaker, someone like the noble and elegant knight from the Kazimierz chivalric literature she had been reading at school earlier that day.
What surprised her most was that she felt no hostility at all. It was as if she could trust the owner of that voice without reservation.
The sunset poured in through the window. A gray-haired young man wearing a translucent golden crown sat on a golden chair, resting his cheek on his hand as he looked at a luminous panel that seemed to be made of advanced technology. Several small, spherical objects floated around him, rising and falling gently.
In that instant, Anna felt as if she had fallen under a spell. Her cheeks burned red, her heart pounding wildly. She had never seen a man so strikingly handsome, even more so than Columbian movie stars. It felt as though she had stepped into a novel and fallen in love with the male lead at first sight.
Only after a moment did she come back to her senses. Realizing that the young man had not even looked at her, she cleared her throat softly, trying to cool the heat on her face.
"Sir… may I ask who you are?"
With just that glance, Anna felt an almost instinctive urge to bow. She was quietly shaken. Because of her parents, she had seen many officials and nobles, people who always carried themselves with an air of elegance and prestige, a kind of cultivated bearing.
Yet in front of this young man, all of that seemed pale and hollow, like a clumsy imitation, like a child stumbling through its first steps.
His presence was gentle, empowering, and commanding without anger. At the very first sight of him, a single word came unbidden to mind.
King.
"My name is Felix."
The young man smiled, lending strength to the shy, quiet girl before him. "And yours?"
Anna repeated the name in her mind, then smiled faintly. "My name is Anna."
"Brother Felix… you don't seem to be from here. Why haven't you left yet?"
She lowered her gaze and hugged the books to her chest, as if they could give her some sense of security. "Chernobog right now… it's very dangerous."
"Are you afraid?"
"… "
Anna pressed her lips together. The slight trembling of her body answered for her.
"I see… then I will protect you and your family."
A warm hand gently rested on Anna's head. The girl let out a soft breath, her tear-bright eyes lifting to meet his. After a moment, she nodded lightly.
"Mm."