The drive to Ardyn's home was a silence so profound it had its own texture. Inside the car, two powerful minds were racing on entirely different tracks. Ardyn's knuckles were white on the steering wheel.
Yet, the image of him standing alone on the curb, a man with a small fortune but with nowhere to go, had triggered something in her that wasn't just professional duty. It was a dangerous, burgeoning sense of... responsibility. And something else she refused to name.
In the passenger seat, Noctar's thought process was significantly less noble and far more focused.
// I am not moralizing! S.A.R.A. protested, her voice a shrill whisper in his mind. // I am pointing out that non-consensual visual acquisition of a private individual is a violation of ethical code 7.3—
// That was... tactical profiling! To assess a potential threat!
Their mental bickering was cut short as Ardyn pulled up to her home. It wasn't a sprawling estate, but a modern, boxy mansion of clean lines and dark wood, nestled in a quiet, upscale neighborhood. It was elegant, secure, and surprisingly compact, a fortress of solitude for one.
Noctar's first impression was impressed. His second, driven by a lifetime of competitive one-upmanship, was a sudden, burning need to eventually acquire a better one.
//Boss, you really are computing your system to match hers. Fine. I'll help you find the perfect house.
Ardyn pressed a button in the car and the gates opened. She drive in down her driveway and parked near her garage. The view in Noctar's eyes was breathtaking. The front garden was a stunning explosion of roses. Every color and variety imaginable grew in organized, beautiful chaos, a stark, living contrast to the sterile interior of her office.
Noctar stepped out of the car and watched as Ardyn opened the gate to her home walking in calmly leaving the door half open for him. He looked down at his own state, the ill-fitting gym clothes from the Authority, now looking even more pathetic against the backdrop of this refined setting.
"I need to acquire adequate clothing," he stated, the understatement of the century. "I saw a retail establishment a few blocks away."
Ardyn, already inside her house, nodded. "Fine. Don't get lost,there's a retail shop in the community. Dinner will be ready when you get back." The domesticity of the statement felt surreal.
Noctar didn't walk. He moved. A blur of motion to any normal observer, he was at the high-end boutique in five seconds. His Appraisal Eyes scanned the entire inventory in a moment. He bypassed the gaudy and the impractical, selecting a few sets of comfortable, impeccably tailored, dark-toned chic wear that spoke of understated wealth and taste. He paid with a platinum coin, stunning the cashier, and was gone before she could finish her thank you.
Instead of returning to the front door like a civilized person, his feet carried him around the side of the house. His eyes, enhanced and hungry, scanned the second floor. One window had a different texture to the mana around it. The bathroom.
`It's not peeking if I'm not caught,` he rationalized, his pulse quickening. `It's... reconnaissance. Gathering data on an asset's vulnerabilities and routines.`
// YOU ARE A DISGUSTING PIG! S.A.R.A. screamed, even as her own sensors locked onto the heat signature inside the room, ready to capture every detail.
With the silent grace of a shadow, he scaled the wall, his fingers finding invisible holds in the sleek architecture. He perched on a narrow ledge just as the bathroom window, its frosting deactivated for privacy, came into full view.
And there she was.
Ardyn Vermont, the Rose Knight, the unshakeable head of security, in the process of shedding her armor. Her back was to him, the suit jacket already off. Her hands were at the clasp of her trousers, the elegant line of her spine a masterpiece of sculpted muscle and grace. The silver hair was down, cascading over her shoulders like a waterfall of moonlight. It was a vision of raw, unguarded beauty that was more powerful than any S-Rank skill.
Noctar's mind, for the first time since his death, went completely, blissfully blank of code. It was filled only with the image before him.
He drank in the sight for one perfect, eternal second. Then, with the discipline of a master hacker closing a backdoor after a successful breach, he pushed off from the wall. He landed silently on the front porch, his heart hammering against his ribs. He took a deep, steadying breath, smoothed his new, expensive clothes, and pressed the doorbell.
He would wait for her to come down, hopefully in a gown, the image of her seared permanently into his memory. The ultimate, undetected exploit.