Chapter 108: The One She Wants

Ethan and Rune arrived at the outer gates drenched by the heavy rain. After a brief inspection the guards let them through. Night was already approaching by the time they made their way toward the Adventurer’s Guild. Ethan spotted only a sparse handful of hunters and mercenaries braving the weather on the roads.

As soon as they entered the guild, Ethan spotted the young clerk sitting at her desk, staring out at the room, the hall nearly empty, which was rare, since it was usually bustling with one thing or another at any hour with its usual chaotic atmosphere. Her eyes found him the moment he stepped through the door, and she rose to her feet at once.

"You’re back," she said, a smile spreading across her face.

Ethan nodded in return, making his way to the counter without hurry, and handed over proof of his completed delivery mission to Bloomside. She processed the details quickly and handed him his reward.

"It took you a bit longer this time," she remarked, leaning over the desk with curious eyes. "Did you run into trouble?"

"No," Ethan replied smoothly. "The journey was just a bit exhausting."

"See? That’s exactly why I told you nobody likes taking delivery commissions." She seized the opening to lecture him at length on how to choose proper missions, boasting about her own experience as she went, while Ethan simply listened, unbothered.

He’d found her a little abrasive when they’d first met, but over the past few weeks of familiarity, he’d come to understand she wasn’t actually bad-natured, just shaped, like most people in this line of work, by constant exposure to rough hunters and mercenaries. Her manner had simply adapted to match.

Finally, she finished her lecture with a proud, puffed-out chest, which only made Ethan realize she likely had far less real experience than she liked to project. He couldn’t recall ever meeting her in his previous life, so he asked her a few idle questions, which she answered with obvious enthusiasm, clearly aware, from a handful of past encounters, that Ethan was probably close to the Commander of Northwatch.

Perhaps because Ethan had actually taken the time to ask, Melissa seemed more than happy to talk. What began as a few casual questions quickly turned into a surprisingly lengthy conversation, with the young clerk occasionally wandering into stories about her life at the guild before remembering herself and returning to whatever Ethan had asked.

He learned she was an orphan who hadn’t awakened in either of her first two attempts, and that Evelyn had been providing her resources to support her in the meantime in exchange for her work at the desk. She mentioned, too, that she was looking forward to this year’s ceremony, and finally revealed her name—Melissa—something Ethan realized he’d never actually gotten around to asking until now. Hearing it, he searched through his memories carefully, but couldn’t place her at all. Still, something tugged faintly at the back of his mind, a memory too foggy to properly surface.

Finally, he excused himself, offering a quick goodbye before making his way toward the barracks.

The Next Day

Ethan woke early and finished his daily training routine, then showered after a heavy workout. He’d just finished dressing and tying his boots when a knock sounded at the door.

He recognized the presence immediately—Van, one of the Black Raven Knights, and opened the door.

"Good morning, Sir Van," Ethan said, stepping out.

"Good morning, Young Master," Van replied.

"The Commander asked me to bring you," the knight said.

"Did he say why?" Ethan asked.

"You’ll find out soon enough." Van only smiled, turning to gesture for Ethan to follow. Rune fell into step beside them as they made their way after the veteran knight.

They moved through the outer districts, already passing the command building where Ethan usually met with Marcus, continuing instead toward the gates of the Inner Fortress. After walking for what felt like a few dozen miles, the Inner Fortress finally came into view, massive dark walls stretching hundreds of meters into the sky, guards stationed at regular intervals along the ramparts, their silhouettes barely visible against the grey morning light.

Enormous iron gates, each easily several meters wide, stood open, their surface scarred and pitted from what must have been centuries of use. Runic reinforcement bands, faintly glowing even in daylight, ran across the metal in overlapping patterns—old magic layered over older craftsmanship, built to withstand far more than any ordinary siege. Dozens of soldiers and hunters moved steadily in and out, hauling beast corpses of every size. Several supply wagons moved in and out laden with weapons and armor.

The moment the guards spotted Van, they bowed and waved the group through without hesitation.

Northwatch was a sprawling military city, stretching for hundreds of kilometers across both its Outer and Inner Districts, built specifically to serve as a critical line of defense against the dangers that emerged from the Winterveil Mountain Range. The Outer District carried the ordinary rhythms of everyday life—shops, guilds, organizations, families going about their business, largely untouched by the war being fought just beyond their walls.

The Inner District was something else entirely: a place given over almost completely to military personnel, hunters, and mercenaries, all of them bound to the singular purpose of holding the line against the beast tides that surged down from the mountains every few months.

The Winterveil range itself stretched for thousands of kilometers across the Northern Frontier, its reach extending into both Valerian and Duke Albright’s territories as well. Along its length, certain regions gathered monsters in far greater numbers than others, and defensive fortresses had been raised at each of those points to hold the line. Northwatch stood as the largest and most critical among them, the anchor of the entire Northern Defense Network.

The scent of beast blood hung heavy in the air the instant they crossed into the Inner District, thick and unmistakable, utterly unlike the ordinary smells of the Outer District behind them. Van glanced sideways at Ethan, checking for any sign of unease—only to find his expression completely unreadable, not a single trace of discomfort anywhere on his face.

I suppose I was worried for nothing, Van thought.

After several more hours of walking, they finally reached the Command Building, where several hundred Black Knights stood posted throughout the grounds. Barely two or three of them recognized Ethan as the young heir of House Ravencrest. Each of them offered Van a proper bow, and gave Ethan only the faintest, almost imperceptible nod in return, following Marcus’s explicit orders not to reveal Ethan’s identity until he said otherwise.

It seems Uncle already informed them...

Unknown Location — Northern Frontier

The crimson-eyed woman, who had withdrawn the moment she sensed the Mage Saint’s presence, sat upon a throne within a dark, boundless space, her eyes closed, the silence around her absolute. Her thoughts kept circling back to the black-armored knight who had wielded a thread of Intent that night on the battlefield.

There had been something different about him, something she couldn’t quite place no matter how many times she replayed that night in her mind.

Even though Ethan wore an artifact he obtained from the Eclipse Conclave members specifically designed to conceal his true cultivation, it hadn’t escaped her perception that he’d stood only at the Knight realm, and yet somehow carried combat power that had exceeded Peak Knight Commander.

A faint smile formed on her lips as her thoughts lingered on him longer than she intended. For days now, no matter how deliberately she tried to steer her mind elsewhere, toward her plans, toward the countless things she still needed to manage—it kept drifting back to him, again and again. The plan she’d spent years carefully weaving from the shadows was now torn apart in a single night. And yet, strangely, she felt no anger over the loss at all. Only a single, quietly growing obsession: to understand more about the Black Knight, to know exactly what he was.

But the instant her thoughts turned toward the Mage Saint who had taken him away, a thread of killing intent leaked from her posture. It was barely anything at all by her own standards, and yet everything within a hundred meters of the throne was instantly ground into fine, drifting dust, the very air itself seeming to hold its breath. Not so much as a single speck rose from where she sat, undisturbed at the center of the destruction she’d caused without lifting a finger.

"I want him..." she whispered into the darkness, a slow grin spreading across her lips.

A spatial fluctuation stirred somewhere in the void beyond her throne, faint at first, then unmistakable. She opened her eyes.

An enormous beast, its true form stretching for hundreds of meters, emerged slowly from a rift torn into the darkness, its massive silhouette folding and reshaping itself into the form of a man as he landed before her with perfect, unhurried calm. Even within the pitch-black void, where nothing should have been visible at all, he located the crimson-eyed woman within a fraction of a second, as though drawn to her by instinct alone. Space rippled beneath his feet as he took a single step forward, closing the distance between them entirely, arriving directly before her throne.

He knelt at once, his eyes glowing faintly with quiet, unwavering reverence.

The black-haired woman studied him for a moment, her gaze tracing the massive, unhealed wound tearing across his chest before finally lifting her eyes to meet his.

"Did you find out what they did to her?"