"Don’t you think Purple’s mother may be miserable because her father disappeared?"

After work, Scar kept a small date with Amber. Nothing elaborate, just the two of them, time set aside deliberately. Their lives were already tied together, and he wanted something genuine to build from that. It was slow. He knew it would be. That was fine.

The cemetery, specifically.

Paying respects to their deceased parents... Amber had suggested it, and Scar hadn’t been able to find a reason to say no that didn’t make him look worse than just going. It wasn’t where he wanted to be. He went anyway.

"Hmm... that might be part of it, but I think she’s mostly stressed because she doesn’t want to lose Purple, especially after already losing her husband to his own selfish choices."

Scar turned to Amber, searching for some emotion in her expression.

They stood before her father’s grave. Scar had already paid respects to his own family, and now they were before Arthur and his wife’s grave. But not a single emotion broke through Amber’s composure. Scar was impressed.

Amber exhaled and tilted her head back to look at the night sky. Scar wasn’t sure if that showed emotion or not, but there was definitely something there.

"Would you say Lionel lost himself in his love for Halen? Without that intense love, Cindy wouldn’t have committed murder, and Lionel wouldn’t have become a historical error."

Oh right... the cemetery had an invisible barrier around it. This was where the Clerk family was buried. Afterward, Lionel would use his necromancy on them, controlling their corpses for the Karma game.

A soft smile tugged on Scar’s lips.

"We are mere mortals. What is a person if they can’t lose themselves? Life brings one trial after another, and sometimes, it’s in losing ourselves in something that life truly becomes worth living."

Scar understood it all too well. He’d spent nearly his entire life seeking to avenge his parents’ deaths. That gave him purpose, a reason to live. Even when it seemed impossible, he’d never faltered.

"We are all fools. The important thing is that our folly brings a smile to our faces in the end."

Amber smiled.

"How exactly was he stopped? The Karma Game was brutal, wasn’t it? I’ve heard they stretched across Barbados, rewarding virtue with life and punishing sin harshly."

The Karma Game was a city-wide ritual sealed beneath an unbreakable barrier, where every citizen became a player and every action was judged by invisible scales of karma.

Through game control, Lionel reshaped reality itself: rewarding virtue with survival, punishing sin with death, and raising the fallen as witnesses to ensure no deed escapes judgment.

Though according to analysts, Lionel couldn’t have pulled this off alone. Either he possessed the ability to use dead wielders’ Inheritances, nearly impossible, or he had supporters: a barrier Inheritance wielder and someone with a game design-related Inheritance.

The only thing that exposed the game was the rapid death toll. Back then, every district had a barrier covering it to keep out weaker and smaller Scarlet Kins, but this game added an additional barrier. Barriers weren’t invisible in those days like they are now, it was easy to notice.

This massacre overshadowed everything, which was why V, the Zheng clan’s prodigy, killing went nearly unnoticed.

"As far as I know, Aemon the Hero was the one who ended it. He also established the rules for how barriers could be deployed."

Amber turned to Scar with a confused look.

"Wasn’t he the one who wielded Owner of All? Then how did Lionel escape? And if anyone assisted him, why weren’t they caught as well?"

Scar shrugged.

Aemon the Hero was powerful, and that was the modest version. He was reportedly the only person in recorded history to have reached tier-1. None of Scar’s predecessors had laid eyes on him personally, but the rumors surrounding that achievement had never quieted enough to be ignored.

Aemon modeled himself after Yashe, humanity’s savior. That was where the self-proclaimed hero title came from. His achievements made it hard to argue with.

Aemon’s Inheritance was space-related, which already put him in a category above most. He was overpowered before accounting for anything else.

The full measure of his strength, though, was something only two people could speak to. Adisa, who should have stood as Aemon’s nemesis, was killed by Scar not long ago.

And Haven, whose own Inheritance had oriented her entirely toward the Owner of All. Not as a rival. Not as an enemy. Something closer to obsession.

"The only person who can verify how Lionel escaped is Aemon, but he’s been gone for ages, hasn’t he?"

"Could it be that he went after Lionel, as Purple’s father did? He was too strong for the human domain, so perhaps they assigned him a mission somewhere else."

None of that mattered to Scar right now. The Chosen One tablet had to be obtained by him and read by him.

Before leaving work that evening, he’d assigned Herd and Bend to investigate the secret auction Marvel had heard about to find out whether the tablet was truly there.

Those two would handle what he’d assigned them. That left his own part: training and getting stronger.

Something nagged at him, though. The whole point of this had been to get to know Amber — to actually learn something about her. And yet she stood there without a trace of emotion, offering nothing about herself.

"You seem very invested in this story."

Amber’s expression shifted.

"Am I bothering you by talking about this? I didn’t want to leave you in silence."

Scar shook his head in disbelief.

He wanted the formality stripped away. Yes, they were master and servant, but they were cousins before any of that, and Arthur had been as close to a father as Scar had in many ways. The old bastard had died because of him. That wasn’t something formality could sit comfortably on top of.

This was going to take more out of him than he’d thought. But he wasn’t going to push it. He’d wait, however long that meant, until Amber felt comfortable enough to let something through.

"Would you like it if we paid our respects every day after work?"

Amber furrowed her brow.

"If it’s okay with you, I wouldn’t mind."

Before Scar could speak.

"I think you might have noticed too... people are starting to recognize you as the boss of the casino. On our way here, we were being followed. There were three of them."

Scar nodded in agreement.

He’d caught wind of them too, but even drawing on the moon’s Blessing, the distance made it impossible to get an accurate count. To think Amber could tell from here.

Her reputation as one of the strongest wasn’t for show. Those bastards had probably held back because of her.