Young Master's PoV: Woke Up As A Villain In A Game One Day

Chapter 422: Suspects [II]

The juxtaposition did not go unnoticed by me.

To an outsider, I was a teenage cliché — frozen solid beneath a beautiful girl, trying to pretend the proximity wasn’t rendering me completely brain-dead.

On the inside, my thoughts were charting a course across the Sea of Screams, trying to map out the terrifying reality of a world that was actively pulling its own pins out.

It was a lot to process, and all in the span of a single day at that.

An SS-rank counterspy, an untamed Death Zone where the Faceless King was on a casual venture... and the fact that the Apex Academy was a Trojan horse.

The very institution meant to breed humanity’s shield was already infested with termites.

At first, I thought I’d just kill Selene.

And since she was supposed to be the handler, the Syndicate would have to appoint a new one from the active moles present in the Academy.

I had a plan ready to flush out the new handler.

I’d have then waited until the Assassination of the Royal Twins event to kill the new handler so the entire network would temporarily collapse right at a critical moment.

But now that plan was dead.

Since Selene wasn’t the handler, the real mastermind was out there right now, entirely unaffected by her arrest, smoothly executing the next phase of the grand design.

Even worse, the fact that she was actually on the Siphon Block meant that even the Grandmasters had no idea up to which rank the rot had spread.

So they had to treat her like an actual criminal lest they wanted her double-agent cover to be blown.

The good news was that her cover was intact.

The bad news was that it was my mind that had been blown.

Because this changed my understanding of the story in so many ways I couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

I always thought the Grandmasters and the Monarchs were not aware of the Syndicate. They were in the dark about the existence of the Nameless Lords.

It was never explicitly stated in the game, but it was clearly implied.

I mean, it was the only logical takeaway from the original plot, right?

If the most powerful entities on Earth had known a secret society was building a bridge to a cosmic horror, they wouldn’t have spent their days playing politics or managing tournament brackets. They would have burned the world down to find them.

But I guessed not.

That confirmed two things.

One: either Selene was the only counterspy (not possible), or if there were more like her, none were embedded as deep into the Syndicate’s rankings as her (very much possible).

But even she, for as high as she was ranked, had to steal information on the Faceless King’s whereabouts.

She also had no idea about the exact locations of all the Nameless Lords, otherwise they’d all have been wiped out by now.

That meant even she wasn’t trusted enough, and penetrating any deeper into their hierarchy was a practical impossibility. At the moment, at least.

Two: there was a larger game at play.

Because if the Monarchs actually knew about the Syndicate — even if they were only grasping at the fringes of its true scale — then they had been at each other’s throats for a long time.

So many things, I thought. This changes so many things from the original story.

I’d never been the one to follow the plot, but I thought I could at least rely on the framework of it. Now, that framework was just a handful of splinters.

Every historical milestone and heroic feat I had memorized from the game were of no use to me. If anything, they were making me vulnerable to getting blindsided more easily.

I could not trust anything I knew related to the Syndicate.

’It can’t be changed. I have tried. You can alter the path, but the destination will always be reached. The end will always be the same.’

That was what Vaeghar had told me about the redundancy, the utter futility, of trying to change fate.

I exhaled.

Well, so what?

So what if Vaeghar was a seer of no equal?

So what if he had achieved more things in his interminable life than I had in my mayfly one?

So what if he had tried changing fate and failed?

I hadn’t.

I had already defied the will of the cosmos once.

I would do it again.

Yes, it would be riskier, more dangerous, and harder now that I had realized the real scale of things. Regardless, I did have a plan ready.

All I needed to do before springing my trap was flush out the real handler and know exactly who it was that I was trapping.

•••

Michael still had only one eye. And he could still fix me with a mean glare while a pirate-like patch covered the other.

"Are you even listening to me?" he said. It was getting late, and I was, in fact, not listening to him.

The handler. I had sorted through a few guesses and finalized a few speculations about who they could be.

The list of suspects wasn’t as long as you’d think after I crossed off Selene’s name. Because that gave me an insight into their psychology.

If the Syndicate wouldn’t use a high-profile Awakened like Selene to get their hands dirty with the low-level sleeper agents — either because they mistrusted her or feared getting caught — they wouldn’t use anyone else in the upper echelon of the faculty either.

The actual handler had to be someone invisible. But not invisible enough.

Someone with power, authority, and the means to move freely through the Academy, but not freely enough.

That would make them less conspicuous, so the chances of them getting caught would be fairly low.

Simultaneously, they’d possess enough influence to exert the Syndicate’s will.

Cadets.

The answer was staring me in the face.

The suspects were Cadets.

Top-ranking Cadets.

Legacy Cadets.

And if I were being daring...

The three Aces. Only they were in a position to both avoid drawing suspicion, since they were kids, and still keep cultivating resources and information in secrecy.

Of course, out of the three Aces, I took the liberty to excuse myself — the last Cadet to hold the title of first-year Ace.

That left two.

Aarav Caldwell, the second-year Ace.

And Vereshia Morrigan, the Cadet Council President and the third-year Ace.

My hand touched something soft yet firm.

My thoughts refused to leave the train they were on, however.

Both of those choices made perfect sense.

Aarav Caldwell was talked about by his peers like he was a messiah. I would’ve laughed the talk off if he hadn’t saved me in Ishtara.

I had personally witnessed him in action and in command. He was every bit the hero his comrades tended to make him out to be.

Yet, he wasn’t talked about enough, because second-years usually spent most of their time outside the safe walls of the Academy on missions.

As such, he was in a place of both influence and isolation.

Perfect for a handler who needed justifications for why they couldn’t be reached for weeks at a time, or why they were constantly crossing borders into untamed territories.

Then there was Vereshia, the girl who held the keys to the kingdom of Apex. The seat of the President of the Cadet Council was both an honor and a burden.

Because all the adults in the Academy swore off from ever mingling in the business of Cadets unless it was a matter of life and death, major responsibilities of keeping the institute running fell on the Council.

The policy was a tradition as old as the Academy itself, meant to breed ruthless self-reliance in the future shields of humanity.

Vereshia was in the spotlight of it all, the wet dream of a position for every Cadet at Apex. And still the weird thing about her was that I had never seen her owning it.

Her name came in neither controversy nor consensus, ever. She was strong, apparently having participated in a 1v10 match-up like me.

She was respected and feared in equal measure by the third-years, but at the same time, she was loved and revered.

But for someone who held that much sway, her footprint in the Academy’s social landscape was practically nonexistent.

She was the first noble who didn’t indulge in politics! Imagine that, a noble away from courtly drama. Imagine!

How suspicious was that?!

Okay, maybe I was reaching. But still!

Both the second- and third-year Aces were hiding behind impeccable reputations and the glittering armor of the Academy’s highest honors.

Either one of them would be a perfect masterpiece of deep-cover infiltration.

A handler who seemed like the very future of humanity instead of a spy, a thief, a liar.

My fingers stiffened against the soft surface.

Michael decided it was time to explode. "Stop ignoring me to my face, you two! And can you now stop flirting with her and listen to me?!"

I shot both my eyebrows up at him, then looked down.

It took everything I had not to flinch upon seeing my fingers were playing with Juliana’s ear, softly tracing its curve and stroking its lobe.

But then seeing how red its tip had turned snapped me back to reality, prompting me to snatch my hand away.

Her face was still buried in my thigh, out of my sight as she was rolled away. I couldn’t see her expression... but Michael could.

And he gave us both a deadpan look that said all that it needed to. I didn’t want to interpret it.

Thankfully, he changed the topic. "Did you get in contact with Alexia?"

At his question, I was reminded that Alexia was indeed supposed to return to Apex before us.

Yeah, where the hell was she?

She must’ve heard the news of our return.

I shook my head. "No, I forgot. Did you?"

"She’s not responding," he told me. "Her phone is switched off. Kang’s the same."

I narrowed my eyes at him incredulously. "Are you sure you aren’t just blocked?"

Michael seemed hurt. "Wh-What? She wouldn’t do that, right?"

"Dude, all I’m saying is people take sides in every breakup," I informed the boy. "And considering you’re up against Lily, not many would take yours."

Michael seemed like he wanted to object to the sheer ridiculousness of my logic, but the more he thought about it, the more jittery he got.

"I haven’t been able to contact her either though," said Juliana.

I wanted to say people would block her just to preserve their sanity, but since I didn’t wish to enter Valhalla yet, I kept my tongue.

Instead, my hand was inexplicably drawn to her again. I softly grazed a nail along the length of her neck, and was rewarded when I felt a subtle shiver of her body on mine.

"Oh-kaaaay," Michael jumped to his feet and turned around. "I’ll give you two some room."