Chapter 36—The Red-Eyed Contract.
Chapter 36—The Red-Eyed Contract.
The wet, sickening crunch of bone echoed through the shattered silence of Vault Room B-4.
Kaelen didn’t yell. He didn’t unleash a dramatic outburst or raw aura. He simply closed his right fist, tightening his grip on Malakor’s throat until the newly refined, high-density Void mana crushed the Blood Mage’s windpipe and severed his primary magic pathways in a single, devastating pulse.
GLING!
[SKILL:- VOID ANNIHILATION—SYSTEMIC PURGE TRIGGERED]
[ TARGET: -MALAKOR THE BLOOD MAGE (LEVEL 28—A-RANK BOSS)]
[ STATUS: -CRITICAL INJURY/MERIDIANS SHATTERED/UNCONSCIOUS]
Malakor’s wild, crimson eyes rolled back into his head. The horrifying blood aura that had threatened to consume the vault dissolved into the air, leaving the disgraced boss hanging like a limp ragdoll in Kaelen’s grasp.
With a flick of his wrist, Kaelen tossed the unconscious titan onto the blood-stained marble tiles. The massive body hit the stone with a heavy, unceremonious thud, sliding to a stop near Tsubaki’s boots.
Across the room, the Blood Shadow Assassin gasped through his shattered jaw, his remaining daggers trembling in his grip.
Seeing his master broken in a fraction of a second, the assassin melted backward into the shadows of the ceiling, completely abandoning the fight.
Kaelen didn’t chase him. His cosmic, galaxy-flecked eyes remained locked on the figure standing near the rear archway.
The red-eyed player hadn’t drawn a weapon. He stood perfectly still behind his blank white mask, his hands tucked loosely inside his dark grey coat.
Yet the narrow crimson slits of his mask burned with a sharp, terrifying intelligence.
"Impressive," the masked player spoke. His voice carried that strange, dual-layered metallic resonance—the distinct signature of a high-tier system user manipulating his audio output.
"A mid-stage ascension was completed in under thirty seconds. You unraveled an A-Rank Blood Core spell without using a single defensive chant.
Your class blueprint... it isn’t just standard Void magic, is it?"
"You talk too much for a thief caught in someone else’s vault," Kaelen said coldly.
He took a slow step forward.
The ten-meter [spatial domain] beneath his boots rippled like liquid obsidian, the ambient air bending around his frame as if the room itself were bowing to his presence.
"A thief?" The red-eyed player let out a dry, quiet laugh that held no warmth.
"Is the wolf a thief when he takes sheep from a shepherd who doesn’t even know how to count his flock? This Void-Core Fragment was rot in this archive for two centuries.
High Chancellor Sterling didn’t even know what it was—he used it as an anchor to power the decorative fountains in the upper courtyards."
Lyra pushed herself up against the far wall, clutching her fractured ribs. Her broken rapier hilt clattered onto the floor, but her golden eyes burned with quiet fury.
"You slaughtered seven academy wardens just to reach this altar!"
"Wardens" The red-eyed player turned his masked head toward Lyra, his tone utterly dismissive.
"Natives die every day, little holy knight. They are mere background noise in a script written by people who operate on a higher plane."
Kaelen’s dark eyes narrowed. The word Natives. It was the definitive proof he had been looking for since the tournament began.
"You’re a player," Kaelen said softly, his voice dropping into a razor-thin register that only the masked man could hear over the hum of the spatial wards.
"A regressor? Or a transferred system operator?"
The red-eyed player tilted his head slightly, his crimson eyes flaring with a sudden, sharp interest.
"Ah," the masked man whispered, taking half a step forward. "So you aren’t just an anomaly within the local world’s lore. You understand the language of the interface.
That explains how you’ve been optimizing your stats at a rate that defies this realm’s natural growth caps."
"State your purpose," Kaelen demanded, his left hand flexing as violet spatial runes began to orbit his fingertips.
"You didn’t break Malakor out of Iron-Spire just to steal an ascension core."
"Malakor was a pawn," the Red-Eyed Player replied smoothly. "A loud, bloody hammer meant to draw the Royal Guard away from the inner city. But since you’ve forced my hand and absorbed the core I needed... perhaps we can reach an understanding."
"We don’t negotiate with murderers," Tsubaki growled, stepping up beside Kaelen, his dark katana dripping with black blood despite his wounded arm.
"You should listen before you swing your steel, swordsman," the Red-Eyed Player said, ignoring Tsubaki entirely as he addressed Kaelen.
"You think you’re winning this tournament? You think beating Garrett Vane and Valerius makes you safe? You’re playing right into Julian Vance’s hands."
Lyra’s brow furrowed. "What are you talking about?"
"The Vance family doesn’t care about the academy trophy," the masked player revealed, his metallic voice echoing against the cold stone.
"While you three are playing gladiator in Arena Beta, the Conservative Faction is using Malakor’s northern riot as a pretext to declare martial law across the Capital. By tomorrow morning, Chancellor Sterling will sign an emergency decree authorizing the purge of all non-noble students with ’uncontrolled’ magical origins."
Kaelen remained stoic, though his mind was swiftly calculating the political ramifications.
"A purge under the guise of national security."
"Precisely," the Red-Eyed Player confirmed.
"Julian’s father has already stationed three squads of black-tier enforcers at the academy gates. The moment the tournament concludes, every commoner who performed too well—every threat to the nobility’s bloodline monopoly—will be arrested as an ’alleged accomplice’ of Malakor’s cult. Starting with you three."
Silence stretched across the ruined vault.
"And why tell us this?" Kaelen asked, his spatial domain remaining active, refusing to lower his guard. "What do you gain from giving us this intelligence?"
"Balance," the red-eyed player said simply.
"If the Vance family takes absolute control of the capital’s military grid, they seal off the lower catacombs before the real event begins. I need the capital in chaos, not under a noble dictatorship.
And you... you need a way out when the cage snaps shut."
The red-eyed player reached inside his coat. Instantly, Tsubaki shifted his stance, but the masked man didn’t pull a weapon.
Instead, he tossed a small, heavy silver coin across the room.
Kaelen caught it effortlessly midair within his spatial domain. The coin was cold to the touch, engraved with a crimson serpent biting its tail—a high-tier teleportation anchor.
"That coin is tied to a private portal beneath the western slums," the Red-Eyed Player explained.
"When the final round begins at Chapter 40... the sky above this academy will turn red. The Vance family will strike, and Malakor’s true horde will breach the southern wall. When that happens, you can either die in the arena ring fighting noble puppets... or you can use that key to enter the real war."
"And if I decide to kill you right here and take your inventory?" Kaelen challenged, his violet aura flaring brightly.
The red-eyed player chuckled—a cold, terrifying sound that vibrated deep within the vault walls.
"You’re strong, Kaelen. Your mid-stage ascension makes you lethal in close quarters," the masked man acknowledged, his body suddenly beginning to blur into a distortion of red pixels and crimson static.
"But you aren’t the only one with an escape mechanic."
[ALERT: -TARGET IS USING HIGH-RANK SYSTEM RECALL—SPATIAL INTERCEPTION BLOCKED]
"Keep the coin," the Red-Eyed Player’s voice faded into the air as his physical form turned into a cloud of glowing red light.
"Focus on your third-round match. Julian Vance is bringing an A-Rank spatial suppression artifact to the ring... See if you survive long enough to need my exit."
With a final, violent flash of crimson light, the masked player vanished completely, leaving behind nothing but the faint scent of ozone and copper.
WAAAAIL!
The sudden, piercing scream of the main Academy Security Siren echoed through the stone ceiling above, violently shattering the silence of the subterranean archives.
The red emergency light illuminated the vaulted corridor outside B-4. High Chancellor Sterling had finally realized that the northern prison break was not an isolated incident.
"Kaelen..." Lyra gasped, leaning heavily against a shattered stone pillar, her breathing ragged. "The guards... they’re coming down the main stairwell."
Tsubaki wiped his blood-stained blade on his sleeve, his eyes sharp as he listened to the heavy, rhythmic thud of armored boots echoing down the distant hallway.
"At least thirty high-grade wardens. And they aren’t coming to investigate... they’re coming with weapons drawn."
Kaelen looked down at the unconscious Malakor, then at the silver serpent coin resting in his palm.
The red-eyed player was right about one thing: the trap was already closing around them. The Vance family was going to frame them for the archive breach, using the destruction of Vault B-4 as the ultimate legal justification to eliminate them.
"We don’t run yet," Kaelen said, his voice cold, steady, and terrifyingly calm. He crushed the silver coin into his coat pocket and turned toward the vault exit.
"We don’t?" Lyra asked, her brow furrowing as she gripped a broken piece of stone to steady herself.
"If we flee now, we become fugitives before we can secure the rest of the tournament rewards," Kaelen said, his eyes flaring with galaxy-bright starlight as his newly ascended meridians hummed with absolute power.
"We go back up to the arena. We finish the third round. And when Julian Vance brings his spatial suppression artifact to face me..."
Kaelen paused, a dark, predatory smile curving across his face as the heavy vault doors began to groan under the approaching guard force.
"... I’m going to tear his family’s pride apart in front of the entire kingdom."