Chapter 100

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Episode 22 - Inevitability [3]

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The plate-armored knight’s armor was covered in dents, scratches, and cuts everywhere, worn down by the passage of time.

The armor’s pale black color contrasted with the surroundings.

Around the trio stretched a desolate forest. The ground was covered with flat black rocks, while the trees bore blood-red leaves.

Mountains as black as obsidian rose in the distance beneath a sky completely covered by dark gray clouds, where a faint reddish light glimmered.

The wind swayed the treetops, causing a few red leaves to fall onto the smooth black stone ground.

The plate-armored knight, with a katana at his waist, seemed to be observing the trio of newcomers.

He did not say a single word, or perhaps, in truth, he could not.

Adel, Charlotte, and Luminus remained frozen, motionless and silent.

There was a strange feeling coming from the plate-armored knight.

A familiar feeling because of Luminus’s words.

And another even more familiar because of the memories from Luminus’s past.

None of the three said anything. Instead, the plate-armored knight simply remained there, unmoving like a statue.

’Tell me he’s not the person I think he is.’

That thought crossed both Charlotte’s and Adel’s minds.

The two of them slightly turned their heads toward Luminus.

She was completely frozen, her face expressionless, though a faint tremor ran through her lips and eyelids.

Then Charlotte and Adel focused their attention back on the plate-armored knight.

’It’s him...’

Both of them thought the same thing. Both noticed Luminus’s emotions.

Both felt Luminus’s emotions spilling into their own because of the Memory Gate.

And both of them felt Luminus’s emotions, especially Charlotte.

***

Luminus stared fixedly at the plate-armored knight. Her mind shut down for dozens of seconds.

She could not think about anything. Her eyes remained locked onto the figure standing only a few meters away.

She did not know how to react. In truth, she did not even know whether she should.

The person standing before her was unmistakable.

Easily recognizable to her, because she had remained by his side for a very long time.

From the first time she met him to the last time she saw him.

An avalanche of emotions surged within her.

Happiness, joy, longing... there were too many.

However, at the same time, she could not help but notice it.

’Something... something is... different.’

That thought crossed her mind, critical yet realistic.

There was something strange about Kyle. She did not know how to say it or how to describe it.

A woman’s instincts reacted quickly. She could not identify the difference immediately, but she could feel it.

She pressed her lips together while holding back her tears and said:

"R-remove your helmet."

Her voice was weak, so weak that even she did not understand why it had sounded that way.

But she did not care. Shame and any similar emotions were immediately cast aside.

She focused on staring at the man before her, trying to discover what lay behind the helmet covering his face.

She wanted to see that carefree smile he used to show back then.

She wanted to hear his voice, just as she had longed for it during the days when they were apart.

She wanted to confirm whether he was still the same person or, at the very least, someone similar to who he had once been.

Luminus looked at the plate-armored knight. In response to her words, he did not move even slightly.

Completely motionless, the knight seemed to be observing all three of them at the same time.

’Why... why won’t he remove his helmet?’

Luminus swallowed unconsciously. She clenched her fists and tightened her lips into a thin straight line. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

"I told you... t-to remove your helmet."

However, the armored knight neither moved nor reacted to her words.

Luminus swallowed hard again.

Why wasn’t he listening to her?

Why was he still standing there?

Why wasn’t he saying anything?

Why was he remaining silent?

The armored knight remained motionless. Luminus repeated her words for the third time, but he simply stayed the same.

She frowned.

"You know I don’t like jokes, right? So stop acting like an idiot and take off your helmet... Now!"

She clenched her jaw and tightened her grip on the hilt of her sword while her eyes burned with rage and frustration.

Her emotions were destabilizing her.

It was inevitable, a suffocating pressure impossible to contain.

Because Luminus understood that the man standing before her was no longer Kyle.

She could not see his face, but she knew he was no longer the person who teased her and told her sweet things.

He was not the same person.

He simply was not.

Luminus’s mana became turbid as her negative emotions blinded her and she shouted once more.

"I said, take off the damn helmet, now."

She screamed so loudly that her voice reverberated throughout the entire area.

Charlotte trembled while Adel had already started moving away from the place.

Adel knew this was not going to end well.

Adel knew a storm of emotions was about to erupt.

From Adel’s perspective, Luminus’s emotions were vivid, different colors representing both negative and positive emotions at the same time.

All of them clashed against each other, disrupting Luminus’s mental state.

Adel grabbed Charlotte’s hand and said,

"Let’s move. This will become dangerous if we stay here. We need to help destroy the base so we can move on to the Second Chapter."

Charlotte continued staring at the scene before her; her master was losing control because of her emotions, and the person Luminus loved most was no longer the same as she remembered.

Adel used force and compelled Charlotte to move.

Thus, the two of them slowly began to leave the area while the armored knight did not seem bothered by their retreat at all.

He focused all his attention on Luminus, who was breathing unevenly.

Then he placed his hand on the hilt of his katana and slowly unsheathed it.

The sound of metal scraping against the sheath echoed faintly through the surroundings.

Luminus froze for a second before her expression darkened.

"Good, very good, then I’ll force you to take off that helmet."

Just like the armored knight, Luminus adjusted her sword, tightened her grip on the hilt, and prepared to charge forward.

The armored knight took the first step and, in the very next second, vanished.

Boom!

A powerful sonic explosion roared through the area, destroying everything in its path as the katana and the longsword collided against each other.

***

Not far from there, Adel and Charlotte had already moved far enough away.

Shortly afterward, they felt the ground tremble.

’So they started fighting.’

Adel let out a long sigh. From the atmosphere and Luminus’s emotions, he had understood from the very beginning that a fight was inevitable.

Luminus’s emotions had eaten away at her mind, causing her to be consumed by her negative emotions.

’I don’t know what the outcome will be. Most likely, the leader of this place, a Class 9 villain, will confront Luminus alongside the strongest ones.’

Perhaps even the Class 6 villains would be sent onto the battlefield.

Luminus possessed the Divine Body, and from what Adel had noticed combined with Alice’s experience, he knew she only needed one more step to reach 10 Stars.

The breakthrough to 10 Stars depended on the individual. Some advanced through training, others during combat, rituals, or magical formations.

’She shouldn’t be defeated. Even if three or four Class 9 villains appear, she would only suffer relatively serious injuries.’

The plated knight was a 9-Star, so in total there were only two entities with similar strength.

Adel turned toward Charlotte. She was still staring in the direction they had both come from.

Adel spoke while using his senses to search for the villains’ presence.

"She won’t die, and in her current state, it’s obvious that if anyone interferes, she’ll tear them apart in an instant. It’s better if the two of us complete Chapter One as soon as possible."

Charlotte pressed her lips into a thin line and finally said:

"I already know that, but even so..."

"No hesitation. All of this is fake, and your current emotions do not belong to you. Keep in mind that the Memory Gate immerses Invaders in the protagonist’s emotions."

Everyone who entered a Memory Gate was known as either an Invader or a Cleaner.

Upon hearing his words, Charlotte finally turned toward Adel and slowly nodded.

"Yes, yes, I know... fine. If my emotions take over, I’ll allow you to... hit me."

"..."

"With pleasure."

Adel ignored Charlotte’s blank expression. In any case, he had something he needed to accomplish.

Aside from the two of them, there was also a small group of villain Invaders from the real world.

Adel was certain they were inside the villains’ main base within this Pocket Gate.

’I need to kill them before they fulfill the requirements to plant the Seed of Chaos.’

Even though a month had passed, Chapter One had halted its progress.

But now that they were confronting the villains, the system was displaying Chapter One’s progress once again.

The progress was already approaching 80%, and it had made a huge leap when they entered this Pocket Gate.

The requirement for planting a Seed of Chaos was for the Chapter progress to reach 90%.

Adel needed to find the villains before the progress reached that point, but considering the time and the speed of the advancement...

’I don’t have much time left.’

Once the Seed of Chaos was planted, the Main Mission would fail.

So Adel gritted his teeth and took a deep breath.

He inhaled and exhaled repeatedly. He was about to do something that would probably bring fairly severe consequences.

’A Pocket Gate is massive in size.’

And the one they were in contained a Class 9 villain, which meant this Pocket Gate covered at the very least between 100 and 500 square kilometers.

Currently, Adel could only extend his senses to a maximum range of twenty kilometers.

Beyond that, he would suffer severe consequences at the cerebral level.

’Phew... I just hope my head doesn’t explode.’

And so, in the very next second, he extended his senses.

———————

Well, congratulations on reaching Chapter 100 💯👍🙏

Anyway, tomorrow there will be a release of 10 Chapters. A week ago, I said I would publish 10 Chapters, and now I’m delivering on that promise.