The silence in the room was heavy, pressurized by the weight of Garner's question and the even greater weight of the truth poised on Noctar's tongue. Noctar felt Ardyn's gaze intensify, a silent plea and a storm of questions of her own swirling in the depths of her golden eyes.
Her hand, which had been a warm, defiant anchor in his, slipped away as she moved to stand formally beside Garner, the two of them forming a united, expectant front awaiting his answer. The shift was subtle, but profound: from personal protectors to official investigators.
In his mind, S.A.R.A. presented a cascading, prioritized list of diplomatic options, each a branching path of consequence.
// SUGGESTION: Maintain the 'stasis researcher' cover. State your 'Debugger' class allows for advanced sensing of system instability. Low-risk, preserves mystery, low-reward in terms of gained trust.
// SUGGESTION: Partially disclose. Cite a unique spiritual mutation gained from the temporal anomaly of the Shifting Keep. Plausible, but opens avenues for unwanted magical scrutiny.
// SUGGESTION: Deny any specific knowledge. Claim instinct, luck, and a desperate gamble fueled by Ardyn's distress signal. The safest lie, but it makes you look incompetent or miraculously lucky, neither of which is strategically optimal long-term.
Noctar ignored them all. He looked directly at Garner, absorbing the man's sharp, assessing intelligence, then at Ardyn, seeing the trust she had already, foolishly or wisely, placed in him. He weighed the variables the spreading corruption, the need for resources, the value of a powerful ally versus the danger of scrutiny and chose a path of audacious, calculated truth. A truth that was, itself, a carefully crafted version of reality.
He pushed himself a little higher against the pillows, a gesture of meeting them as an equal, despite his prone position.
"My class, Debugger, isn't just rare or unique," Noctar began, his voice calm and steady, cutting through the clinical tension like a scalpel. "It is, for all intents and purposes, a legendary-class function. I am… a designated envoy of the Gaia system itself. A failsafe. My sole purpose is to identify, isolate, and correct the fatal errors that are corrupting its core processes."
The effect was immediate and polarized.
Garner's eyes widened a fraction, the stern analysis in them replaced by a flash of pure, strategic amazement. He didn't scoff. He didn't laugh or demand proof. He looked like a general who had been fighting a guerilla war in the dark, only to be handed a complete satellite map of the enemy's network, illuminated in high definition. The pieces, the impossible survival, the normalized dungeon signature, the nonsensical class name clicked into a terrifying, hopeful picture.
"A system cleanse…" Garner muttered, the words tasting of revelation. His mind, capable of logistics for entire national crises, was already racing, extrapolating. He immediately pulled a sleek, secure looking device from his jacket not a phone per say, but a compact, enchanted comms slab.
Turning slightly, his broad back creating a wall of privacy, he began speaking in low, urgent tones. "…Yes. Confirmed. We have a Category Zenith asset. I need a full, secure briefing package on my authority, priority black. And a privacy ward on this hospital wing. Now."
Ardyn, however, did not move to join the call. She remained rooted before Noctar, her gaze locked on him. The monumental, world shaking revelation explained the impossible, but it simultaneously buried the personal under the planetary. Her questions became more intimate, more urgent.
"Why did you come for me?" she asked, her voice softer now, yet more direct, cutting past the grand destiny to the human choice at its center. "You didn't know about the Death Dungeons then. You had no mission. You bought a house."
Noctar held her gaze, refusing to look away. He gave her the truth, stripped bare. "I didn't want anything to happen to you." No justification, no poetic flourish. It was a simple, undeniable fact, as solid and unadorned as a cornerstone.
A faint, almost imperceptible tremor passed through her lips. She pressed on, the knight seeking tactical clarity. "And the dragon? How did you defeat it when you were so… low-level? Your stats wouldn't allow it."
"My skills are specialized for system errors, not direct combat," he explained, gesturing vaguely toward his own temple.
"I can force a correction, a deletion of corrupted code. But the process… it's like overclocking a processor to its melting point to run one perfect calculation. It bypasses monster defenses but fries my own neural pathways in the process." He gave a slight, wry tilt of his head, indicating the hospital room, the IV, the pervasive ache. "The proof is rather evident."
Before she could formulate her next question likely about the cost, the toll, the why of such a sacrifice, Garner finished his call. The device vanished back into his jacket. When he turned, his demeanor had undergone a subtle but complete transformation. The protective, suspicious guardian was now fully submerged beneath the strategic director, the man who held the front lines against oblivion.
He fired off questions, each one precise, tactical, and devoid of personal sentiment.
"Skill set limitations? Can you only act within dungeons, or on external manifestations?"
"Cooldown periods? What is your recovery time after a… correction event?"
"Mana cost relative to your pool? Is it percentage-based or fixed?"
"Range of detection? Can you pinpoint an anomaly from a distance, or must you be inside the affected zone?"
Noctar answered each one with a tailored version of the truth, weaving his existing cover story seamlessly into the new, grander narrative.
"My background as a researcher is what allowed my mind to interface with the system in the first place. When I was trapped in stasis, I didn't just survive; I made inadvertent, deep contact with a core diagnostic subsystem of Gaia.
The contact is what altered me, granting me this class, and it's also what eventually ejected me, depositing me in the Shifting Keep." He laid out his mission with the clear, unwavering conviction of a man stating a mathematical proof. "My goal is singular: to identify and purge every one of these corrupted 'death dungeons' until the foundational system of Ethron is stable and functional again. It is the reason I exist here."
Garner Vale listened, absorbing the data. This was a man who had seen the strongest Brutes shattered, the most cunning Arcanists driven mad, the most blessed Paladins consumed by the very glitches they sought to purify. He had filed the reports for heroes whose names were now memorialized in stone, not glory.
He looked at Noctar Ville exhausted, low-level, bleeding from a mind pushed too far, and saw the first and only weapon that had ever not just scratched, but surgically removed the infection. He didn't just believe him; he recognized a strategic asset of planetary, existential importance.
The Fortress class adventurer, Director of the National Hunter Authority, straightened to his full, imposing height. He extended his hand once more across the hospital bed, not in a challenge of strength this time, but in a formal offer of alliance. His voice was deep, calm, and carried the absolute authority of a man who commanded nations in their defense.
"Then your place isn't in some random, petty guild chasing loot and prestige," Garner stated, his words leaving no room for argument, only the clear ring of inevitable truth. "Your place is on the front line of the only war that matters.
Join the National Hunter's Authority Guild. We have the resources to support you, the intelligence network to locate the anomalies, and the sovereign mandate to let you do your work without interference." His grip, when Noctar took his hand, was firm, a seal.
"Help us. Help me. Save this world."