Chapter 78: Aclyris

The air felt genuinely broken, thick with a spreading stench of decay. Dust drifted everywhere, the roads torn apart, cars long since reduced to colorless, rusted heaps of scattered metal, and towering buildings collapsed into fragile piles of rubble.

It was a familiar sight. Though not the exact same place Julian had woken up in when he’d first arrived in this world, the atmosphere was unmistakably the same, the same air, the same pattern of destruction.

He stood there, taking it all in, before suddenly noticing something. He glanced across at Aveela, his gaze flat, empty, and cold.

Catching that stare, Aveela tilted her head with a puzzled smile. "What’s wrong, darling?"

"...Please tell me you meant to do that."

Right, Julian had genuinely felt like he might die from shock just moments ago. Just imagine, suddenly being swallowed whole by a blob of light with such an ominous color.

Aveela’s brow furrowed as though confused, then she suddenly seemed to catch on, giving an awkward smile with a bead of sweat on her cheek.

"...I forgot your expression’s stuck like that now. So I just assumed everything was fine since you didn’t look scared or anything."

"I’m terrified, manager."

His stomach churned violently, he genuinely felt like he might throw up right then and there.

That made Aveela laugh, amused, covering her own mouth with her fingers. "Hehe, sorry about that?"

She then brushed off Julian’s complaint entirely, choosing instead to look around. "We’re currently in invaded territory now, quite a distance from the Safe Zone."

"Aren’t you going to ask about the merchant we’re meeting? What exactly I’m planning to buy, and so on?"

Julian paused for a moment, then let out a sigh. "How would I possibly know that?"

Then, watching Aveela start walking ahead, Julian quickly followed after her. He had no idea where they were headed, but he wasn’t particularly worried about the possibility of this being some kind of trap.

Aveela was a Rank-A hunter, to someone at her level, Julian meant absolutely nothing. She could kill him anytime she wanted, without even having to lift a finger herself. So if Aveela had wanted Julian dead, he would’ve been dead the very first moment they met.

"It’s just, what exactly does a merchant do in invaded territory? Wouldn’t heading to a Safe Zone be the obvious choice for actually doing business?"

"You’re right," Aveela nodded and smiled. "But I think you won’t really understand until you see it for yourself."

Julian didn’t get the chance to ask anything further, since Aveela led him into a long-abandoned building. They walked until they reached a back door, finding a field with long-dried grass beyond it.

But what actually caught Julian off guard wasn’t the field itself behind the building. That, in itself, was fairly ordinary.

The problem was that the air here felt genuinely tainted and distorted, the dust far thicker, forming a haze dense enough to noticeably obscure visibility.

Then, the further Julian followed Aveela into that haze, he eventually arrived at an enormous crater stretched out before him.

It was a crater that made Julian’s eyes go wide, because, just as he’d seen before, right at the center of that crater stood an open Breach.

A crack torn through the air, revealing within it a dark, star-scattered galaxy.

"This...? A Breach?" Julian murmured, hoping Aveela would give him some kind of answer. But no answer came, Aveela simply stood there in silence, staring at the Breach, until finally.

Kring—! Kring—! Kring—!

The sound of a bell rang out, something that made Julian’s entire body shudder with dread. That sound came directly from the Breach, and as Julian stayed transfixed on it, he watched a figure slowly begin to emerge.

"Manager... that’s—"

"Stay quiet, don’t be scared."

Julian followed what Aveela said, clamping his mouth shut, tense, while his gaze stayed locked on the figure finally stepping out.

An Alien, its entire body draped in dark black cloth from head to toe, a bone crown adorning its head, paired with a transparent, dark blue hood scattered with stars, covering its eyes.

Around its neck hung a necklace strung with strips of white paper, forming strange symbols Julian couldn’t begin to comprehend.

After that, the Alien took step after step, stopping roughly four paces from Julian and Aveela, then suddenly extended both hands.

"Welcome, human customers, is there something you need?"

Then, it bowed slightly, one hand spread wide while the other rested against its own chest.

"I am Aclyris, a traveling merchant across the universe, selling all manner of goods from various different civilizations."

Its voice sounded remarkably heavy, sometimes carrying the deep tone of a man, other times a deliberately deepened voice of a woman.

The Alien also showed clear signs of being somewhat unfamiliar with speaking in the human language.

But did any of that actually matter?

What mattered was that Julian’s manager had come here to meet with a merchant, and here Julian was, watching an Alien emerge from a Breach, claiming to be exactly that merchant.

’Don’t tell me this merchant is actually this Alien? No, wait, why does this Alien not seem hostile at all?’

Had Julian just uncovered the secret that not all Aliens were actually evil, here? Was that it? Or what exactly was going on?

Julian stood frozen, his expression completely flat, though deep inside his own head, his lips curled up, mouth hanging open in disbelief as he tilted his head and glanced at Aveela.

"...Manager?"

Aveela blinked, then glanced at Julian and smiled.

"Aclyris sells a lot of things you might actually need, you know, so you should probably start building a good relationship with them."

Responding to that, Julian’s brow furrowed. "You know that’s not what I meant."

But Aveela simply kept her smile in place and turned her attention back to Aclyris. ℴ

"Could I get a Serum with around fifteen percent Mana concentration?"

And, as though this were nothing more than an ordinary convenience store, Aveela launched straight into stating exactly what she needed.

She completely ignored Julian, who was still struggling to process what on earth was actually happening.