NOVGO.NET Chapter 839: Bad News
Chapter 839: Chapter 839: Bad News
Ronan sat hunched on a low bench, knees jammed against his chest, eyes watery and pupils blown wide. His hands trembled, sweat slicking his palms. He’d eaten the soup. That cursed soup. If the Knight’s spiritual circuitry—forged by a six-star beast tamer’s power—could be shredded by that colorless liquid, what did it mean for his own brittle, failing body? His heart thumped like a trapped animal, each beat screaming you’re next. The sterile lab around him, with its humming machines and acrid, burnt-metal smell, felt like a tomb closing in.
Kain approached, steps deliberate, his face still a maddening blur, like a half-remembered dream. Ronan braced, expecting agony like the Knight’s convulsions. When Kain’s hands touched his head—palms warm, one at his temple, another at his sternum, a third at the base of his skull—Ronan let out a bloodcurdling scream, half-sure he was about to dissolve into a writhing heap.
But no pain came.
Instead, a steady warmth flooded him, like a tide rolling through his veins. The sterilization crystals embedded in the lab’s walls pulsed faintly, their light syncing with Kain’s low murmurs, as if he were coaxing some unseen force. Pressure traced his spiritual pathways—or what little he had—gentle but unyielding, flushing out the poison’s lingering threat.
“All done,” Kain said after what felt like mere minutes. Ronan blinked, his disbelief plain as day. Cured? Just like that? Kain’s voice stayed clinical, not a hint of comfort. “Your body doesn’t have enough spiritual power for the bacteria to latch onto and gain strength. It needs strong circuits—yours are barely existent.” The words landed like a slap, but Ronan was too relieved to care.
Kain slid an arm under him, hoisting him up like he weighed less than a wet rag. Ronan’s legs wobbled, his pride stinging, but he didn’t protest. He was alive. That was enough for now.
Before he could process the miracle, Darius clapped a hand on his shoulder, nearly toppling him again. “Now that you’re not a walking biohazard, let’s go break the news to your teammates. Fifty-two points, kid!” Darius’s voice brimmed with a coach’s pride. “You did it. That’s a hell of a windfall.”
Ronan blinked, the points system a distant memory in his panic-fogged brain.
Points? Right. Those.
Darius kept talking, undeterred. “Your two partners—useless in the actual takedown, mind you—scoured half the city. Just bad luck they never crossed the Knight. No intel-split for them, so no 26 points, but ten apiece for effort isn’t bad. Beats scraping by on one- and three-point jobs. They shouldn’t be upset”
Ten points for endless, fruitless searching was a decent haul, Ronan supposed. It shoved them closer to the mysterious 100-point threshold—whatever that unlocked. His own 52 points felt like a fortune, but the cost? He’d nearly poisoned a city. Hardly a fair trade.
Kain stayed silent, his lack of objection a tacit nod. He turned to Vauleth, the massive dragon looming in the corner, its red-and-black scales glinting like molten obsidian. “Burn it,” he ordered. Vauleth’s forge-like eyes flared, and a dual breath—scorching red flame laced with black corrosion—swept the room, reducing every potentially contaminated surface to ash. The acrid stink stung Ronan’s nose, but he didn’t dare move.
Darius, taking Kain’s preoccupation as a cue, nudged Ronan toward the exit. “Let’s go, hero. Time to face the music.”
Ronan stumbled after him, legs still shaky, mind reeling. Hero? Me? The guy who drops vials in soup?
The thought was laughable, but the weight of “Knight-slayer” clung like damp cloth. He glanced back at Kain, who was already bent over the Knight’s charred, restrained body, the Queen’s golden glow flickering as she worked to stabilize his half-burned leg.————
Kain waited until Darius and Ronan were gone before diving deeper. The lab’s sterile hum was a faint comfort against the storm brewing in his chest. He needed answers, and the Knight’s mind was the key. With a steadying breath, he linked with Bea, her intelligent splits shimmering in his awareness like a constellation of tiny stars. “Guide me,” he murmured, and let his consciousness slide into the Knight’s fractured mind.
It was like plunging into a maelstrom of shattered glass. The Knight’s mental defenses—whether from his six-star strength, Black Dawn’s training, or the bacteria’s havoc—lashed at Kain like a storm of razor shards. Sounds distorted into screeches, smells of blood and ash choked him, and images flickered too fast to grasp. Bea buffered the assault, her splits weaving a protective net, but even she strained, her energy dimming with each passing second.
Finally, a stable memory coalesced. Kain stood in a foreign city, its sloping, lacquered roofs and multi-tiered stone towers unfamiliar yet unmistakable—Eastern Continent architecture, vibrant with banners in looping, alien script. People with pale skin and straight black hair, clad in exotic silks embroidered with cranes and lotuses, fled through bustling streets. Their screams pierced the air as an ocean of black—not water, but something alive, like oil laced with starlight—surged from the horizon. Insect-like creatures poured through it, their forms twisting between shadow and chitin, mandibles snapping. Men clutched children, women stumbled over carts, their faces etched with terror as the swarm descended. A merchant, his silk robe torn, tripped and was swallowed by the writhing mass, his scream cut short. A young girl with braids clutched a doll, only to collapse, her body dissolving into the black tide. The city’s vibrancy—its markets brimming with jade trinkets, its air thick with incense and spice—faded to silence in minutes. Towers that once glittered with lanterns crumbled, their lights snuffed out. The streets, moments ago alive with chatter, grew still, the only sound the skittering of countless legs.
Kain’s perspective shifted, rising to a bird’s-eye view. The city sprawled below, its beauty now a graveyard. Then, with a sickening lurch, the ground split open. A single, enormous violet eye stared up from the earth, its pupil a black abyss that pulsed with hunger. The city—its towers, its streets, its silenced people—was sucked downward, swallowed whole into that void. The eye blinked once, and the land was barren, as if the city had never existed.
Kain’s breath caught. That eye. He’d seen it before, burned into his own memories—a relic of dread, a harbinger of annihilation. The Eastern Continent, once a distant concern, was no longer abstract. The bustling capital, its parks alive with cherry blossoms and koi ponds, had been a beacon of culture. Now it was gone, devoured in moments, its people’s screams echoing in Kain’s mind. The quiet that followed was worse—a void where life had been, erased by that unblinking gaze.
Scattered fragments followed: timelines, coordinates, logistics. A date seared into the Knight’s mind like a brand due to the repeated warnings of an oracle associated with the Black Dawn—ten months from now. Not a vague “sometime.” A precise apocalypse, aimed at the Central Continent and the Celestial Empire.
Kain wrenched himself back, gasping as if he’d been punched. The lab snapped into focus: white metal walls, singed edges from Vauleth’s breath, the Queen’s golden glow fading as she stabilized the Knight’s leg. Bea’s splits pulsed weakly, exhausted from shielding him. His chest felt like iron, heavy with the weight of what he’d seen. Ten months. A laughably short fuse for a war clock when cities were already vanishing overseas.
The memory of the Eastern Continent lingered, vivid and raw. Kain saw the faces again—pale, terrified, their exotic clothing fluttering as they ran. A scholar with ink-stained fingers, clutching scrolls, trampled by the swarm. A street performer, his flute still in hand, dissolving into shadow. Parks where families had laughed under blooming trees, now silent, their koi ponds churned to sludge by the black tide. The city’s heart—its markets, its temples, its life—had been vibrant, alive. Now it was a scar, swallowed by that violet eye. The quiet wasn’t peace; it was absence, a wound in the world.
He closed his eyes, the world tilting. This morning, he’d woken to a mundane day, teasing Cherry, finishing up school assignments, unaware doom was barreling toward them. Did the Empire know? Were they hiding it, preparing in secret to avoid panic? Or were they clueless, leaving Kain’s small, shadowy organization as the only ones aware of the ticking clock?
Most likely they were hiding the impending attack, chaos bred opportunity. If word of this apocalypse leaked, groups worse than Black Dawn would swarm like vultures, recruiting the desperate with promises of salvation. Kain’s mind raced. His force was too small, too new. Ten months to build an army, to hide, or to strike. Ten months to outrun an abyss that ate cities whole.
He glanced at the Knight, now still, his breathing shallow. The Queen’s healing kept him alive and was helping him to regrow his burned leg. Although Kain had no intention of taking helping him to heal his spiritual pathway.
But he also didn’t think he should kill him. Interrogate him? The Black Dawn’s plans could be invaluable. Let him die? Cleaner, safer. But it may cut him off from valuable info.