The heavy gates of the Dawinton Palace groaned as they swung open, exhaling the scent of incense and old stone into the salt-tinged air of Ashburg. Rayn stepped out first, his white hair catching the pale light of the twin moons like a halo of frost. Beside him, Vespera moved with the silent, predatory grace of a night-stalker, her golden eyes scanning the horizon for any hint of a threat. Behind them followed the "Inner Circle": Matthew, looking every bit the weary veteran, and Chandler, his hand never straying far from his blade.
And then there were the others. Freddy and Victus.
They walked like men going to their own gallows. The moment they turned right out of the palace gates and began the two-street trek toward the center of town, the atmosphere changed. The crowd was thick—hundreds of citizens, laborers, and displaced families had gathered, their murmurs rising into a roar of collective bile.
When the people saw Rayn and Matthew, they bowed their heads, offering the "Sovereign's Respect". They saw power. They saw a future. But when their eyes landed on the two men trailing behind like whipped curs, the respect vanished, replaced by a raw, primal hatred.
"Traitors!" a man screamed, his voice cracking with rage. "You goddamn parasites! Why are you still breathing the air of our town?"
"Go and hang yourselves! Save the hangman the trouble of touching your filthy necks!" another shouted.
A barrage of filth followed. Rotting eggs, bruised tomatoes, and clumps of street-muck rained down on Freddy and Victus. They didn't fight back; they couldn't. They simply hunched their shoulders, the red pulp of tomatoes sliding down Victus's once-royal robes like mock blood. Freddy, the man who had built his empire on the backs of these people, was now being pelted with the very waste of the town he tried to sell.
"Why didn't you kill them yet, Rayn?" someone cried out from the back of the crowd. "Why let these snakes crawl among us?"
Suddenly, the crowd parted. A young woman, her face weathered by more than thirty years of hardship and grief, lunged forward. Her eyes were red-rimmed and hollow, tears streaming down her soot-stained cheeks. Before the guards could react, she ripped off her heavy, mud-caked slipper and slammed it into Freddy's face with a wet thwack.
"You motherfucker!" she shrieked, hitting him again and again. "You killed him! You killed my husband! He was just a man who handed out your fucking pamphlets, Freddy! He believed in you! And you let killed him to get sympathy from people. My husband body was on the ground like a pig in the street!"
Two small children, a boy and a girl no older than six, clung to her skirts, wailing in terror. Freddy didn't look up. He just took the blows, the sting of the slipper nothing compared to the weight of his own failure.
Rayn stepped in, his hand catching the woman's wrist with a firm but controlled grip. She collapsed into his arms, her strength spent, sobbing into his black robes. "Sir... I have nothing. No work, no husband... how am I supposed to feed them? How do I keep my children alive in this shithole?"
Rayn's face was unreadable. He reached into his Black Ring—the artifact that had become his portable treasury—and pulled out two heavy gold bars. The metal gleamed with a dull, heavy luster under the moonlight. He pressed them into her shaking hands.
"Take care of your children," Rayn said, his voice surprisingly soft. "Take care of yourself."
But as she looked up to thank him, the "softness" vanished. Rayn's eyes turned into the cold, pitiless voids of a demon. He looked at the crowd, and his Vortex flared—not enough to kill, but enough to make their hearts stutter.
"Listen to me, you lot," Rayn hissed, the sound carrying to the edge of the square. "If I have taken these two out of the pit, there is a reason. I am the Sovereign. I do not explain my moves to the livestock. If you lay another hand on the people around me—even these two pieces of shit—I will not tolerate it. Back. The. Fuck. Off."
The crowd recoiled as one. The silence that followed was heavy with fear and a strange, twisted kind of gratitude. They were terrified of him, yes, but they were happy. They finally had a leader who could give them gold with one hand and death with the other.
They moved on. Five minutes later, the hustle of the town center faded into the quiet, overgrown outskirts. They stopped before a dilapidated, two-story house. It was built of graying timber and cracked stone, looking like a relic from a forgotten age.
"Whose house is that, Matthew?" Rayn asked, his eyes narrowing at the structure.
"It's Dawinton's old home," Matthew replied, a hint of nostalgia softening his voice. "Before he was the leader, before the town was divided, he lived here with his wife and a young Victus. It's where the dream of Ashburg started—before it turned into a nightmare."
Beside the house was a small, iron-fenced graveyard. Two fresh mounds of earth sat side by side.
Vespera turned to Victus, her brow arched. "I thought you said there was only one grave—your mother's. Why are there two?"
Victus and Freddy remained silent. They were still covered in the remnants of the crowd's "gifts"—yolk dripping from their hair, the smell of rotting vegetables clinging to them like a second skin.
Rayn looked at them and sighed. "You look like pathetic clowns. I can't have my 'elite' looking like a trash heap."
Rayn's hands moved in a fluid, rhythmic pattern. He channeled his Water Magic, a shimmering bubble of crystalline liquid forming in his palm. With a flick of his wrist, the bubble surged into the air, expanding and bursting over the two men. A localized torrential downpour washed the filth from their bodies in seconds.
He didn't stop there. His eyes shifted from red-black to a piercing, luminescent red-white. He summoned the Wind, a sharp gust swirling around Freddy and Victus to shake off the excess moisture. Then, with a snap of his fingers, he ignited his Fire Magic, heating the air until it became a dry, comforting steam. In less than a minute, they were clean and dry.
"There," Rayn said, his eyes returning to their natural state. "Now, why the long faces? This humiliation is the interest on the debt you owe this town."
Freddy's anger finally boiled over. "I am not the one who did everything! You're the one who pulled the strings! You suggested I do this, you made me—"
Rayn didn't let him finish. In a flash of movement, he grabbed Freddy by the throat, hoisting the man's heavy frame several inches off the ground.
"Listen to me carefully, Freddy," Rayn growled, his face inches from the other man's. "I give suggestions. I provide paths. But you chose to walk them. You chose your greed over your people. If I have to explain myself again, I'm going to kill everyone in this fucking graveyard starting with you."
He dropped Freddy, who crumpled to the mud, gasping for air. Rayn turned his gaze to the second grave. "Now, Victus. The grave."
Victus rubbed his bruised throat. "It's my father. After the... funeral... we chose to bury him here. Beside my mother. He loved her more than the town. I thought... maybe he deserved to be with her."
Rayn smiled, but it was a cold, mocking thing. He looked at the spirit of Silas—the entity that shared his internal space. "See that, Silas? The boy who murders his father thinks he can purify his soul by burying him next to his mother. How fucking pathetic is that?"
Silas's voice echoed in Rayn's mind, a dark, cynical rasp. "That's fate for you, boy. Life doesn't give you what you want; it gives you what you deserve. Even Dawinton didn't think his own blood would be the one to send him here."
They both laughed—a hollow, chilling sound that made Matthew shiver.
Matthew stepped between the two graves. He knelt in the mud and reached into a small, hidden crevice in the stone divider. There was a faint click, followed by a low, vibrating hum that seemed to come from the core of the earth.
Suddenly, the world flickered. It wasn't a door opening; it was a spatial tear. For a split second, Rayn felt his stomach drop as if he were falling through a void. Then, the sensation vanished.
Everyone—including Vespera—gasped as they looked around. They were no longer in the graveyard. They stood on a floor of damp, heavy mud inside a cavern that seemed to stretch into infinity.
"What the fuck?" Rayn whispered, his mind racing. Teleportation? Hidden dimensions? He looked at his hands, making sure he was still real. This is like those fiction comics I used to read back on Earth. Am I living in a goddamn manhua? He shook the thought away. This wasn't a book; the smell of the damp earth and the cold bite of the cave air were too real.
"What is this place, Matthew?" Rayn asked, his voice echoing. "You said there was a treasure, but this looks like a sewer."
"The treasure isn't just lying on the floor, Rayn," Matthew replied, his voice tight. "Dawinton didn't build a 'fancy' vault. He built a gauntlet. This is my first time here, too. He only gave me the key because he trusted me more than his own son."
They moved forward, their boots squelching in the thick mud. The light from the entrance was gone, replaced by a faint, sickly green bioluminescence from the cave walls.
Then, they heard it. A low, vibrating snort.
Out of the darkness emerged a beast that defied logic. It looked like a boar, but it was the size of a carriage, its hide armored in thick, obsidian scales. Two massive thorns protruded from its forehead, glowing with a white-hot intensity. As it breathed, jets of orange flame erupted from its nostrils, illuminating the cave in flashes of violent light.
Vespera's hand shot out, grabbing Matthew by the collar. "What the fuck is that? Are you trying to get us killed, old man?"
"I told you!" Matthew choked out. "I only knew the location! Dawinton said this cave was around 200 kilometers long. It's filled with the beasts he captured and 'stored' here to guard the artifacts. We're in their home now."
Rayn looked at the beast. It was a Phase 8 or 7 creature—strong, but not invincible. "Vespera, how many attacks?"
"Two," she replied, her eyes glowing with a dark, hungry light. "One to break its hide, one to take its heart."
"200 kilometers," Rayn mused, a dark smirk playing on his lips. "Ten thousand bandits are waiting for us outside, and we have a 200-kilometer slaughter-house to clear first. If we survive this, those bandits are going to be a goddamn vacation."
He stepped forward, his Gnosis swirling around his fists, the "Lion of Ashburg" ready to confront the first of many demons.