Chapter 33: An Old Face, A New Mask

The Frostscale Python made its den on Frostfang Ridge, a stretch of broken, windswept terrain a hundred miles north of the capital home to a Gold-tier boss sitting somewhere around level 25, according to the bounty board back at the Guild.

Kael pushed north at a steady clip the moment he cleared Frostwatch’s gates, boots crunching over half-frozen ground, breath fogging in air that hadn’t warmed up since dawn. A few miles out, something at the back of his skull started itching.

Someone’s behind me.

Whoever it was knew exactly what they were doing. Multiple bodies, trading off the tail in short, disciplined intervals, dipping in and out of stealth like they’d rehearsed it.

The kind of tracking an average player would never notice in a hundred years hell, most veteran players wouldn’t catch it either.

Kael only picked up on it because two and a half years of staying alive in a world that actively wanted him dead had rewired exactly how his senses worked.

Even now, catching the pattern took real, deliberate focus a faint disturbance in the frost-crusted grass here, a shadow that lingered half a second too long there.

Who’s careful enough to pull this off?

He ran through the short list in his head as he walked. Ironclad, obviously except their entire elite roster had just gotten gutted in a graveyard less than a day ago.

Too soon for round three, unless Cynthia had lost every last shred of sense overnight. The Voss Cartel had already eaten two humiliating losses; a third seemed like a stretch even for someone as thick-headed as ReaperDrake.

Maybe it’s just curiosity. Somebody scouting the class, not looking for a fight.

He filed the thought away, already sketching out how he’d shake the tail without tipping his hand when a figure stepped out of the tree line ahead of him, cutting the thought off completely.

A mage. Level 13, dressed in pale blue robes that caught the wind, blonde hair falling loose around a face arranged into something practiced and pretty.

She carried herself like someone who’d spent years getting used to being looked at, and expected nothing less right now.

She smiled the moment she spotted him and started walking over, staff swaying loosely in one hand.

Kael’s stomach dropped before his brain even finished processing the gamertag glowing over her head.

BabyAsh.

Of course it’s her.

Distaste settled cold and immediate behind his mask.

Ashley had absolutely no idea who she was looking at none at all and judging by the easy, confident set of her smile, she believed this whole encounter was unfolding exactly according to some plan she’d already rehearsed in her head a dozen times over.

"Hey there, big shot." Her voice came out warm, syrupy, calibrated. "Funny running into you all the way out here. I’ve actually got an A-rank Beastlord skill book on me. Thought you might be interested."

A-rank.

That much genuinely caught his attention, cutting straight through the disgust.

He waved off the order he’d been half a second from giving the General six inches of spear through her spine could wait a little longer and kept his tone carefully, deliberately flat.

"What skill."

Ashley’s whole expression lit up, sensing an opening crack open in front of her. A panel bloomed in the air between them a beat later.

[BEAST SOUL WARD]

Grade: A

Effect: Channel the Beast God’s blessing onto a bonded companion, granting a shield equal to 30% of its max HP for 30 seconds.

Cost: 100 mana | Cooldown: 45s

A genuinely strong shield skill. Layered onto the Behemoth’s already absurd health pool, it would turn an already unkillable tank into something closer to a walking fortress that simply refused to fall over.

"How much for it," Kael asked, and meant it genuinely interested now, despite everything he already knew about the person offering it.

"Oh, this one’s not for sale." She leaned in a fraction closer, voice dipping into something meant to sound shy, coy, harmless.

"I picked up a bounty I honestly can’t handle solo some level 20 Silver-tier boss, way past what a mage like me can survive alone. I was kind of hoping a player as strong as you might be willing to lend a hand."

Kael read the whole play in the space of a single breath.Dangle the rare skill book, get me committed to a quest with her, spend a few hours conveniently alone together, manufacture a moment or two along the way, let the rest take care of itself.

It was the exact script she’d run on him once before, word for word, back when it had actually worked.

She’d spent a genuinely obscene amount of money three million dollars, as it happened, money that had been his in the first place just to get close enough to the server’s hottest new name to try the same routine all over again on a total stranger.

Bankrolling her next con with my own severance check. Almost impressive, in a nauseating sort of way.

"Last I heard, you had a boyfriend," Kael said, keeping every trace of feeling out of his voice.

"Kael Mercer, wasn’t it? A boss that low should be nothing for a player like him."

Right on cue, Ashley’s face folded into something carefully, artfully heartbroken.

"Please don’t say his name." Her voice wobbled at exactly the right pitch. "We’re done. Completely done. He turned out to be nothing like the person I thought he was."

Textbook, start to finish. Put distance between herself and the ex, plant the idea that she was newly, conveniently single, leave just enough unsaid that curiosity might do the rest of the heavy lifting on its own a tragic

sympathetic backstory sitting there fully loaded, ready to deploy the second he asked a single follow-up question, ending, if she played her cards right, with tears and an armful of some brand-new hero to replace the old one.

She had absolutely no way of knowing the man standing behind that mask already knew exactly how this particular story ended, because he’d personally lived through the other half of it less than twenty-four hours ago.

Kael let none of that show. Kept his voice level, faintly bored, entirely uninterested in the bait dangling in front of him.

"I’ll help with the boss. Hand over the book first."

Disappointment flickered across her face for half a second he hadn’t taken the hook on Kael Mercer at all, hadn’t asked a single question, and the whole rehearsed tragedy sat there completely unused.

Still. Step one of the plan had landed clean. He’d agreed to help. That was more than enough to keep the rest of it alive.

She brightened again almost instantly, pulling the skill book free from her inventory and pressing it into his open palm, fingers trailing against his a beat longer than the exchange strictly required.

"Right this way, then." She flashed what she clearly believed was her most disarming smile yet, turned, and led the way deeper into the tree line, every step just a little more deliberate than it needed to be.

Kael absorbed the skill’s knowledge in an instant, the words settling neatly into his class panel like they’d always belonged there.

Then he glanced sideways, once, toward the General standing silent at his flank.

The look needed no words attached to it.

The General understood immediately surging forward in a sudden burst of speed, spear rising, point driving hard and fast toward the center of Ashley’s completely unsuspecting back.