Chapter 23: Who Needs a Forecast When You Have Overthinking?

Y'all... I have no self-control. 💀 I literally told myself I’d take a break after Friday, but I got so hyped up writing that I didn't even notice I kept posting through the entire weekend! My schedule is officially ruined by my own excitement, but hey—more chapters for you guys! Enjoy!

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Two days had bled into the horizon, and the world felt fundamentally altered.

Seo-Yeon stood upon the rooftop of the Crimson Scale spire, the highest point of her empire. The morning air was a sharp, crystalline blade that cut through the silence of the dawn. In her hand, a porcelain cup held a dark, steaming coffee, the aroma mixing with the scent of ozone and altitude.

She didn't drink. Instead, she stared.

For as long as anyone could remember, the world had been draped in a suffocating, eternal shroud. A monolithic fog—a gloom that didn't just obscure the view, but seemed to weigh down the very soul of the earth—had blanketed the sky, turning the sun into a pale, distant memory. It was the atmospheric scar of the Gates, a reminder that humanity no longer owned the horizon.

But three days ago, the veil had vanished.

The sky was no longer a ceiling of grey; it was an infinite, breathtaking expanse of cerulean and gold. The morning light poured down in torrential waves, illuminating the city below with a clarity that felt almost violent. The world was naked, exposed, and terrifyingly beautiful.

“Strange,” Seo-Yeon whispered, her voice barely a ripple in the wind. “The fog... it didn't recede. It didn't drift. It simply ceased to exist.”

She narrowed her grey eyes, scanning the horizon. “Who witnessed the moment of the break? Who knows how the invisible weight of the world was lifted in a single night?”

“Guild Master.”

The voice behind her was steady, anchored in professionalism. Seo-Yeon didn't need to turn to know it was her Vice Guild Master. He stepped forward, his short, sapphire-blue hair shuffling in the morning breeze. He reached up, adjusting the bridge of his glasses with a precise, clinical motion, the lenses catching the newfound brilliance of the sun.

“We have monitored the atmospheric readings across all sectors,” the Vice Guild Master reported, his tone devoid of emotion. “There is no scientific explanation. No mana spike, no gate fluctuation, no recorded phenomenon. The gloom is gone, and as far as our data is concerned... it happened for no reason at all.”

He paused, his gaze following hers toward the shimmering horizon. “Perhaps it is nothing to be concerned with? A natural cycle of the world? A temporary reprieve?”

Seo-Yeon finally took a sip of her coffee, the bitterness grounding her. She didn't share his optimism. In her experience, the universe never gave gifts without a hidden price.

“A few grains of sand can shift the course of an avalanche,” she mused, her voice drifting into a philosophical cadence. “A single, minute change is rarely just a coincidence; it is a clue. A fracture in the status quo.”

She looked down at the city, which looked fragile and small beneath the oppressive beauty of the clear sky.

“Perhaps this is a sign of healing,” she continued, her eyes darkening, “or perhaps it is the silence before a storm we aren't prepared for. When the world changes its skin, it usually means something new is trying to crawl out from underneath.”

The Vice Guild Master remained silent, sensing the tension in her shoulders. He wondered if she was truly sensing a coming apocalypse, or if the sheer weight of her responsibilities—and the frustrating enigma of a certain lazy E-Ranker—had finally pushed her toward the brink of obsession.

Seo-Yeon didn't care which it was. She only knew that the world had changed, and she would be the one standing at the peak when the truth finally revealed itself.

...

While the world’s elite were contemplating the metaphysical implications of the clear sky, the atmosphere at the E-Rank gate was significantly less profound and significantly more anxious.

Three figures were perched on the concrete curb, looking less like legendary hunters in the making and more like people waiting for a bus that had been cancelled three hours ago.

Lindis was not sitting. Lindis was currently in the middle of a frantic, pacing marathon, walking left and right in a tight circle that was slowly carving a trench into the pavement.

“Can we just enter already?” Zane groaned, leaning back on his elbows and staring at the gate with a look of profound boredom. “It’s been two hours. Two. Hours. I could have fought a dozen goblins, taken a nap, and had a three-course meal by now.”

Lindis stopped dead in her tracks, her expression pained. “Umm... thirty more minutes! Maybe this time Ethan will actually show up!”

Kaela, who had been watching her sister's spiral with a mixture of amusement and judgment, tilted her head. “Don’t tell me you’ve gotten this attached to him after meeting him twice, Lindis. It’s a bit much, don’t you think?”

Lindis spun around, her face flushing a shade of red that nearly matched her hair. “I AM NOT!” she shrieked, though the sheer volume of her denial suggested otherwise.

In her agitation, she subconsciously shifted her weight, and the massive, heavy bottom of her war-axe hit the ground with a resonant CLANG that made a nearby pigeon fly away in terror. She began scratching her pink hair frantically, her eyes wide and shimmering with a sudden, dramatic wave of despair.

“What if he’s dead?!” she cried, her voice reaching a pitch only dogs could hear. “What if he tried to dive into an E-Rank alone, or worse, a D-Rank, and got eaten by something with too many teeth?! Or maybe—!” She gasped, her heart breaking in real-time. “Maybe he hates us now! Maybe we were too loud! Maybe he thinks I’m too aggressive with my axe!”

Zane rolled his eyes so hard it looked pained. “She’s overreacting. Definitely overreacting. He probably just needs a few days of rest. He looked like he was one bad day away from becoming a professional bed-tester the last time we saw him.”

“Exactly,” Kaela added, her voice calm and logical. “Didn't you say he has a little sister? It's just the two of them. Maybe he’s just catching up on family time, or he’s just being his usual, elusive self. That’s probably why he hasn’t checked in.”

“Oh...” Lindis whispered, her mood shifting from total apocalypse to deeply worried in zero point two seconds. “I just... I wanted to help him more. I felt like we had a connection! A connection of... mutual confusion!”

Zane sighed, sitting up. “Look, if you’re that worried, why don’t you just go to the Guild Association? Look up his name, find his registered address, and just go knock on his door. Problem solved.”

Lindis froze. She looked at Zane as if he had just suggested they jump into a volcano for fun.

“Asking for an E-Ranker?!” she hissed, her voice trembling. “A woman asking the association for the private address of a random E-Rank man?! Do you know how that looks?! I’ll be flagged as a stalker! I’ll be the Pink-Haired Axe-Stalker in the guild records forever!”

Zane blinked, glancing over at Kaela. Kaela simply offered a slow, nonchalant shrug, as if to say, She has a point, but she's still crazy.

Lindis let out a long, defeated sigh, her shoulders drooping. “I don’t need to do that. I don’t want to. I just...” She glanced off into the distance, her voice trailing off into a dreamy, melancholy murmur. “If only we knew where Ethan lived. Then we’d know exactly what he’s doing right now. Probably napping. God, I bet he’s a great napper.”

TAP. TAP.

A light touch landed on Lindis’s back.

“Umm... excuse me? Are you talking about my brother?”

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Author’s Note

Hey guys! Since I’ve been posting non-stop for a whole week, I’m gonna be switching back to my regular upload schedule starting now. As much as I’d love to keep spamming chapters daily, I can’t keep that pace up forever! 😅

From here on out, we’re back to 2 chapters a week:

🗓️ Mondays & Thursdays

⏰ 8:00 AM – 9:00 AM & around 6:00 PM