Chapter 251: Dark

Consciousness returned with a convulsion.

Hide's eyes snapped open in the dark, and before his mind could register his surroundings, his stomach heaved with volcanic intensity. A ragged, guttural spasm seized his diaphragm, forcing him to purge onto the cold floor. A sickening torrent of clotted blood, acidic bile, and foul gore spewed from his lips, splattering against the stone beneath his face.

His throat burned as if he had swallowed glass. His stomach continued to churn, dry-heaving painfully in empty tremors that sent sharp, radiating spikes of agony up into his chest.

COUGH! GAH—!

He gasped desperately for air, but the breath that entered his lungs was rancid and thick. The air was heavy with the stench of rotting flesh, damp mildew, stale copper, and caustic chemical disinfectants. It smelled like a slaughterhouse cellar that had been abandoned to fester in the dark.

Hide lay in his own vomit, panting erratically, his cheek pressed against the rough, freezing wall.

'Where... where am I?'

He tried to push himself up, but nothing happened.

A cold spike of terror drove through his chest. He tried to move his fingers. Nothing. He tried to kick his legs, to flex his calves—nothing responded. There was no sensation of touch, no warmth, and no resistance. His body felt completely detached, as if his limbs had been cleanly severed at the joints and discarded in the dark.

'No... no, no, no!' Panic clawed at his throat. 'Did they cut them off? Did Walter cut off my legs?!'

His head throbbed with a deafening, rhythmic pressure that made his vision swim with dancing grey static. His skull felt as though it had been cracked open with a sledgehammer, his brain swollen against bone. What had happened? How did he end up here?

Then, like a dam bursting beneath the weight of a black ocean, the memories crashed back into his mind.

The fake 3 star dungeon break. The B-Rank calmity lord.

Vanessa and Harry crushed beneath tons of concrete, their young faces frozen in shock.

Fuu standing motionless in the mud, his shield shattered, a three-foot-thick obsidian spire punched directly through his heart, dead on his feet to protect Kai.

Kai screaming in the muck, his thigh impaled and bleeding out.

Fikel falling dead beside his boots before he could even touch the metal device on Hide's back, slain by an invisible attack.

And then... Risa.

Hide stared unblinkingly into the void above him. The ceiling was plain, bare concrete, devoid of life, devoid of light, devoid of everything.

"Hide... there... there is a ring in my bag... Enji wanted me to... give it to you... It also has a letter..."

Her faint, trembling voice echoed inside his ears with crystalline clarity. He could still feel the warmth of her blood pouring over his hands. He could still feel the light slipping from her eyes, the soft, tragic smile curving her lips as she looked up at him one last time, and the hollow thud of her cold hand falling onto the soot.

Risa was dead.

The girl who had been his only anchor during the darkest years of his life. The girl who had shared cheap convenience store buns with him on the curbs of Area 17.

She had thrown herself in front of an S-Rank commander's strike to save him.

Hot, burning tears welled in Hide's eyes, spilling over his bruised eyelids and tracking down his blood-smeared cheeks into the pool of bile on the floor. His chest heaved in silent sobs that racked his unresponsive frame.

She was gone. She was really gone.

And what of the others?

Kai had been bleeding to death, his leg mangled and torn. Even if Zenith got him to the field medics, would he ever walk again? Would he ever smile with that carefree, stupid grin?

And what about Elara? Karnas? The few rookies who had run toward the surface cracks?

What had Walter Bigiva done to them?

Walter was the 1st Commander of the International Exterminator Corporation. He controlled the military cordons, the orbital satellite feeds, and the continental media. If he wanted the Black Shield Agency erased, he didn't need to justify it. He could execute Elara and the surviving recruits in a cold holding cell, falsify the telemetry logs, and broadcast to the entire world that Hide's fledgling agency had been tragically wiped out inside a rogue dungeon break.

And it was all Hide's fault.

The guilt settled upon his chest like a mountain of lead, crushing the air from his lungs. It was his arrogance. His naive, foolish pride. He had thought that reaching A-Rank and commanding phantoms made him untouchable. He had walked right into the trap with his eyes wide open, bringing ten hopeful, trusting rookies straight into an executioner's yard.

Those higher gods—House Odo, House Mord, House Wartz. They knew about him. They were moving the pieces on the board, and Hide was so weak, so utterly pathetic, that he couldn't even protect a single person standing in his shadow.

What would Sora think when she heard the news? What would Gideon say? Evelyn?

And what about Claire?

Claire was lying in a hospital, trapped in an endless coma. Hide had stood beside her bed just weeks ago, arrogantly promising her still, pale face that he would ensure there was a world left for her to wake up to.

What a joke. What a sick, disgusting joke.

How much time had passed since Walter struck him down? Days? Weeks? Was the war already over? Had Earth already been dragged into the abyss?

"ARGHHHHHHHH!"

A raw, ragged scream tore from Hide's throat, vibrating against the damp stone walls. It wasn't a roar of defiance, but a desperate, agonizing shriek of a broken eighteen-year-old boy.

His mind was completely erratic, drowning in a chaotic storm of grief, rage, terror, and profound despair. He was terrified. He wanted the pain to stop. He wanted to wake up. He wanted to be back in that noisy, run-down classroom in Area 17, listening to the teacher drone on about pre-cataclysm history, with Risa sitting to his right scolding him for sleeping, and Kai leaning over his desk to crack a stupid joke.

He didn't want to carry the fate of the cosmos. He just wanted his friends back.

Hide thrashed with all his mental might, desperately trying to force his nervous system to fire.

CLINK.

A dull, metallic sound rattled near his shoulders.

The titanium apparatus was still clamped to his upper spine. The needle-like talons were buried deep into his vertebrae, humming with that nauseating frequency that completely scrambled his central nervous conduits and severed his mana circulation.

Through the dim, shadowy gloom, Hide strained his neck, his blurred vision sweeping down toward his lower body.

Clamped around both of his ankles were two thick, matte-black metallic bands. They pulsed with faint runic inscriptions, their surfaces cold and heavy.

Hide recognized them instantly. They were the exact same high-grade military restraints that had been used on him back when he had awakened. His arms, too, were wrenched painfully behind his back, bound at the wrists by a matching pair of blackened alloy cuffs.

"FUCK IT! FUCK IT! FUCK IT!" Hide cursed, screaming until his vocal cords bled.

He dug his chin into the filthy wall, trying to leverage his torso upward. But without nervous feedback, his body failed him. He slipped on the puddle of vomit, his shoulder slamming hard against the stone as he tumbled awkwardly onto his left side.

He lay there, paralyzed, helpless as an upturned turtle.

'System!' Hide screamed into the dark corridors of his mind. 'SYSTEM! STATUS! OPEN THE SHOP! ACTIVATE ABYSSAL CARAPACE! EVOLVE!'

Silence.

No translucent blue interface materialized before his eyes. No familiar golden text danced across his vision. No synthetic chime echoed in his skull.

"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG?!" Hide yelled at the empty room, tears streaming into his hair. "WHERE THE FUCK DID YOU GO?! ANSWER ME!"

The system did not reply.

It hadn't answered when Risa was bleeding out on the gravel. It hadn't provided a potion, it hadn't triggered an emergency adaptation, and it hadn't saved the girl who gave her life for him. And now, when he was chained in the dark like an animal waiting for slaughter, the divine seed of House Wartz remained completely, utterly dead.

"WHY?!" Hide sobbed, his voice cracking into high, pathetic gasps. "Why give it to me if you're just going to abandon me?! Why make me a piece in your fucking war if I can't even save one person?! WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY!"

His desperate cries slowly faded into ragged, wet wheezes. The silence swallowed his voice, cold and indifferent. He was completely alone.

CREEEEAK.

A faint, sharp sound echoed through the gloom.

Hide's breath hitched.

Somewhere far to his left, the heavy hinges of an iron door groaned as it swung inward. No light spilled into the chamber; the corridor beyond was just as black as the cell. The heavy door clicked shut with a muffled, definitive latch.

Slow, deliberate footsteps began to approach across the stone.

Step. Step. Step.

Accompanying the footsteps was an abrasive, rhythmic screech.

SCREEECH... clatter. SCREEECH... clatter.

Someone was walking into the room, casually dragging the metal legs of a heavy chair across the rough concrete floor.

Hide strained his eyes, but a thick partition wall projected outward from the side of the room, blocking his line of sight. The person rounded the corner and stopped. They were clever—deliberately positioning the chair just behind the edge of the stone partition, at an exact geometric angle where they could sit in the shadows and look down upon Hide's battered, bound body, while Hide was entirely unable to see their face.

Thud.

The chair settled heavily onto the stone. The visitor sat down, the fabric of their clothes rustling softly in the stillness.

For a minute, neither of them spoke. There was only the sound of Hide's shallow, ragged breathing and the faint, rhythmic ticking of the device in his spine.

Then, a voice broke the quiet.

"You look pathetic..."

It was a raspy, dry whisper—unnatural and hollow.